The "free market" theory is obviously worth as much as tits on a bull when it comes to ISPs.
Blasphemy! Are you suggesting that the "free market" might not be able to solve all our problems?!
Will someone please define "free market" for me? I'm serious, I really don't know what you mean when you say it? Is a free market one in which Comcast controls everything b/c the government keeps its hands off? Or is a "free market" one in which I am free to choose among competitors, because they are free to do business, b/c the government breaks up monopolies? Obviously one of these is more "free" than the other. Has a "free market" ever even been tried in this domain?
If you scare a man into fearing consequences until he will no longer stand for good, you only degrade society a little bit. ...but if you teach everyone on Slashdot to think of themselves, and never stand for good, you harm society for many lifetimes.
...there probably should be some form of last defense for computer systems throughout the nation.
Why? I'm serious. Why would we need that? Here's how I see it: Some fast spreading worm tricks everybody else's OS into copying it onto their hard drives and executing it. Then the worm approaches my computer. It says "Please copy me onto your hard drive and execute me." My computer says "No", because I don't use the same pathetic vulnerable OS as everyone else. But all the masses want to be safe, so they give the president a kill switch. All this does is put the responsibility on the government to bear our risk--just like bail-outs--just like the liability cap on off-shore driling--etc. This weakens us. It makes us lazy and dependent on the govt. Besides, why don't I have the right to be prepared myself? Why should I have to go down with all the unprepared people?
Don't be silly, of course it does. And so do prohibitions on human slavery. The Free Market just isn't nearly so great as people make it out to be.
You have a funny definition of free market. Giving one person the freedom to walk all over other peoples' freedoms is less free, not more. A system that maximizes freedom must necessarily regulate bullies, monopolies, tyrants, and the likes of Comcast....and I think that's easily as great as people make it out to be.
After reading the article, I think I may have spoken a little too quickly...maybe. My degree is related to data mining. The article says predictive analytics is the last step of data mining. While that's technically true, the other steps are things like "find out what data is available", "understand its context", and "gather the data". There's not really much to study for those steps that an intelligent person wouldn't assume anyway, so it's all focused on building predictive models and using them to drive business decisions. I don't see why ignoring earlier steps really makes this degree any more focused. I think they're just trying to be "unique" to attract interest.
Its ok to try to protect something you poured your blood sweat and tears into...
Even this sounds benign, but is dangerous reasoning. It's really a revenue stream that Copyright holders are trying to protect, not the information itself. Further, the mechanism they use to protect this revenue stream is to tell me what I'm allowed to do with copies. While Copyright may give them that legal right for a limited time, let's not pretend that it is somehow inherently right for content creators to be able to say what I can and cannot do indefinitely just because they poured effort into making something. The content creator didn't ask for me to agree to refrain from copying it in exchange for his labor--he just relied on the government making that agreement for me. But to the extent that the government has drifted away from the constitutional purpose of Copyright, I may still be legally bound, but I am certainly not ethically bound to honor your blood sweat and tears. I work hard to give freely to the world, and I don't think you owe me for that.
If government subsidized telcos want to use my data to make money, I think I will charge them for it.
Could you please enlighten me regarding how to specifically do this? I would like to apply this principle to recover money, rights, and freedoms that have been unfairly taken from me in a number of areas. This would be a perfect solution to end all manner of corruptions...if you really know how to pull it off. You're not just talking big, are you?
I know this must be a naive question, but I seriously can't find the answer. Why is it so hard to separate oil and water? Don't they kind of separate themselves? And since the oil is actually worth something, why aren't there companies lining up to skim the free oil?
Peering sounds good, but it made it harder for new content providers to rise up and become competitive before. It has the same effect now. While I might appreciate having faster service to the provides that you hand-pick for me, there's really not a lot of people that I'd trust to do that hand-picking. Will my ISP have the sense to stop peering with provider XYZ when they become dominant and evil and no one else can enter the market?
Okay, I'll own up. Something inside me won't rest until I admit this. My post was intellectually sloppy. The truth is, I made it because I knew Slashdot would like it, and now I feel like a weenie that it worked so well. Even the most rabid software patent advocates would never suggest that they need a longer term, so my cave-man argument was just an attack against a straw-man designed to make a point that would get people with mod-points excited. That's pretty lame.
The only point you make that I take issue with is the accusation about entitlement. Where did that come from? Are you suggesting that it is an attitude of entitlement for people to feel that they have a right to use ideas that they encounter, rather than to respect that those ideas belong to the person who originated them? That right seems very natural to me.
I counter that it it is a much greater attitude of entitlement to feel that you have a right to all of the laws and infrastructure necessary to make ideas behave as matter. Is it not entitlement to expect that the world owes you these laws and enforcement mechanisms, such that you can distribute your ideas and still tell people what they're allowed to do with them? Why would anyone be entitled to that? I claim that IP laws are an outrageous form of entitlement. I believe entitlement is when you believe everyone else owes you something by virtue of your noble birth. I think IP laws are the perfect example of this. Those laws don't come for free. They come at the expense of tax money, lots of infrastructure, and limitations on freedom. Perhaps there was a time when it was worth all of that, but that era ended with the rise of the easy distribution facilitated by the Internet. IP laws are the most perfect example of entitlement of which I am aware. They are unnatural, and the only reasons people think they are entitled to them are based on historical precedent that is no longer relevant.
...who wouldn't like to invest time and money to create something, then have to turn around and compete against someone who basically just copies it and gives it away?
When you say "copies it", do you mean "ctrl-c, ctrl-v" or "re-engineer from scratch"? If you mean the former, that's a serious accusation, and you need to back it up. What part of their work was electronically copied? If you mean the latter, then so what? Do you really mean to imply that people have the right to distribute ideas and yet still own them? Do you think the descendants of some cave-man should be getting royalties for every combustion engine that internally uses fire? Yes, we should like it when people improve on our ideas. And yes, doing something in open source is a significant improvement (perhaps sometimes even if it's not quite as good).
...that will enable me to learn to see infrared, or magnetic resonance, or metal detection, or high-pitched sounds that only dogs can hear, or police radar?
So you're saying Google might be intentionally implementing circumventable censorship to appease China while simultaneously helping the oppressed, because a more direct refusal to cooperate with censorship would be doomed to be crushed the Chinese government? I hope you're right. What might be the purpose of patenting this process?...hmm, Perhaps they believe it is inevitable that the Chinese people will eventually realize that they are being oppressed, and when that happens, Google wants a monopoly on delivering non-censored information...which would make them loads of money....if that whole "follow the money" mantra really works, then you must be right.
Great. All we have to do is maintain proxies in nations all over the world, and we can be treated fairly. Now if we could just teach everyone on the planet how to use international proxies, no one would be victimized by censorship. Surely governments will never try to close *this* hole. I feel like the world is a better place already due to poor implementations of evilness.
If we keep making such a loud noise every time this company starts to do something so utterly blatantly stupid, they'll keep half-way back-tracking before it makes it to the consumers, and they will continue to endure this company forever. I'm getting really tired of hearing people say things like "yeah they're a little evil, but I like their products", or "they're not really that evil--it's not worth the pain of switching". I say let's just keep quiet about it this time and let the Windows users dawn the Emperor's new clothes. C'mon, it'll be fun!
In general, if you want user-friendlyness, open source software isn't the place to be looking
That's like saying if you want good mathematicians, white Caucasians are the people to consider. Perhaps the mean score of some metric with one class may currently be higher than the mean score of another class, but there is no need to imply that the deviation is so tight that there is no overlap. Open Source is perfectly capable of producing a good UI. In some cases it produces the best UI. Your sweeping generalizations are rude and ignorant.
The anti-RIAA sentiment is so high these days, I'll bet we could use it against them. How about we start a prize for quality free music. To enter, people would have to release a song under a Creative Commons license. People who are against by the RIAA could chip in to strengthen the prize, and all the entries would help to devalue the junk that they sell. We'd have some celebrities pick a few winning artists, and the artists would actually take home some real money.
Do you sue for the purpose of getting rich, or to make the world a better place? What's important here is that Microsoft should have been the one paying the lawyers. (For all I know, the lawyers probably get paid anyway by tax dollars through some legal loophole, and the judge gets a cut too.)
Nice to see everybody taking security so seriously then
Why must you assume it's a "security" thing? Isn't it possible that some of us *want* to share our Internet access? This is the same attitude that people only use P2P for piracy. It's only mostly true.
Slashdot Mirror
The "free market" theory is obviously worth as much as tits on a bull when it comes to ISPs.
Blasphemy! Are you suggesting that the "free market" might not be able to solve all our problems?!
Will someone please define "free market" for me? I'm serious, I really don't know what you mean when you say it? Is a free market one in which Comcast controls everything b/c the government keeps its hands off? Or is a "free market" one in which I am free to choose among competitors, because they are free to do business, b/c the government breaks up monopolies? Obviously one of these is more "free" than the other. Has a "free market" ever even been tried in this domain?
If you scare a man into fearing consequences until he will no longer stand for good, you only degrade society a little bit.
...but if you teach everyone on Slashdot to think of themselves, and never stand for good, you harm society for many lifetimes.
...there probably should be some form of last defense for computer systems throughout the nation.
Why? I'm serious. Why would we need that? Here's how I see it: Some fast spreading worm tricks everybody else's OS into copying it onto their hard drives and executing it. Then the worm approaches my computer. It says "Please copy me onto your hard drive and execute me." My computer says "No", because I don't use the same pathetic vulnerable OS as everyone else. But all the masses want to be safe, so they give the president a kill switch. All this does is put the responsibility on the government to bear our risk--just like bail-outs--just like the liability cap on off-shore driling--etc. This weakens us. It makes us lazy and dependent on the govt. Besides, why don't I have the right to be prepared myself? Why should I have to go down with all the unprepared people?
Don't be silly, of course it does. And so do prohibitions on human slavery. The Free Market just isn't nearly so great as people make it out to be.
You have a funny definition of free market. Giving one person the freedom to walk all over other peoples' freedoms is less free, not more. A system that maximizes freedom must necessarily regulate bullies, monopolies, tyrants, and the likes of Comcast. ...and I think that's easily as great as people make it out to be.
After reading the article, I think I may have spoken a little too quickly ...maybe. My degree is related to data mining. The article says predictive analytics is the last step of data mining. While that's technically true, the other steps are things like "find out what data is available", "understand its context", and "gather the data". There's not really much to study for those steps that an intelligent person wouldn't assume anyway, so it's all focused on building predictive models and using them to drive business decisions. I don't see why ignoring earlier steps really makes this degree any more focused. I think they're just trying to be "unique" to attract interest.
I have an M.S. in predictive analytics, and I'm only months away from my Ph.D. These guys didn't do much research.
So, I say let's do it again with IPV6? The complications would be a little bigger. The payoff would be much bigger.
Its ok to try to protect something you poured your blood sweat and tears into...
Even this sounds benign, but is dangerous reasoning. It's really a revenue stream that Copyright holders are trying to protect, not the information itself. Further, the mechanism they use to protect this revenue stream is to tell me what I'm allowed to do with copies. While Copyright may give them that legal right for a limited time, let's not pretend that it is somehow inherently right for content creators to be able to say what I can and cannot do indefinitely just because they poured effort into making something. The content creator didn't ask for me to agree to refrain from copying it in exchange for his labor--he just relied on the government making that agreement for me. But to the extent that the government has drifted away from the constitutional purpose of Copyright, I may still be legally bound, but I am certainly not ethically bound to honor your blood sweat and tears. I work hard to give freely to the world, and I don't think you owe me for that.
If government subsidized telcos want to use my data to make money, I think I will charge them for it.
Could you please enlighten me regarding how to specifically do this? I would like to apply this principle to recover money, rights, and freedoms that have been unfairly taken from me in a number of areas. This would be a perfect solution to end all manner of corruptions ...if you really know how to pull it off. You're not just talking big, are you?
I know this must be a naive question, but I seriously can't find the answer. Why is it so hard to separate oil and water? Don't they kind of separate themselves? And since the oil is actually worth something, why aren't there companies lining up to skim the free oil?
Is peering now a *bad* thing...
Peering sounds good, but it made it harder for new content providers to rise up and become competitive before. It has the same effect now. While I might appreciate having faster service to the provides that you hand-pick for me, there's really not a lot of people that I'd trust to do that hand-picking. Will my ISP have the sense to stop peering with provider XYZ when they become dominant and evil and no one else can enter the market?
Large parts of .NET... have been released under the Apache license.
Wahoo! Now we can get .NET apps working to a large extent without having proprietary dependencies!
You mean like Octave?
F12 works so well that...
I'm on Ubuntu. I pressed F12. nothing happened. For all of us ignorant and backward Ubuntu users, what does F12 do on Fedora?
Okay, I'll own up. Something inside me won't rest until I admit this. My post was intellectually sloppy. The truth is, I made it because I knew Slashdot would like it, and now I feel like a weenie that it worked so well. Even the most rabid software patent advocates would never suggest that they need a longer term, so my cave-man argument was just an attack against a straw-man designed to make a point that would get people with mod-points excited. That's pretty lame. The only point you make that I take issue with is the accusation about entitlement. Where did that come from? Are you suggesting that it is an attitude of entitlement for people to feel that they have a right to use ideas that they encounter, rather than to respect that those ideas belong to the person who originated them? That right seems very natural to me. I counter that it it is a much greater attitude of entitlement to feel that you have a right to all of the laws and infrastructure necessary to make ideas behave as matter. Is it not entitlement to expect that the world owes you these laws and enforcement mechanisms, such that you can distribute your ideas and still tell people what they're allowed to do with them? Why would anyone be entitled to that? I claim that IP laws are an outrageous form of entitlement. I believe entitlement is when you believe everyone else owes you something by virtue of your noble birth. I think IP laws are the perfect example of this. Those laws don't come for free. They come at the expense of tax money, lots of infrastructure, and limitations on freedom. Perhaps there was a time when it was worth all of that, but that era ended with the rise of the easy distribution facilitated by the Internet. IP laws are the most perfect example of entitlement of which I am aware. They are unnatural, and the only reasons people think they are entitled to them are based on historical precedent that is no longer relevant.
...who wouldn't like to invest time and money to create something, then have to turn around and compete against someone who basically just copies it and gives it away?
When you say "copies it", do you mean "ctrl-c, ctrl-v" or "re-engineer from scratch"? If you mean the former, that's a serious accusation, and you need to back it up. What part of their work was electronically copied? If you mean the latter, then so what? Do you really mean to imply that people have the right to distribute ideas and yet still own them? Do you think the descendants of some cave-man should be getting royalties for every combustion engine that internally uses fire? Yes, we should like it when people improve on our ideas. And yes, doing something in open source is a significant improvement (perhaps sometimes even if it's not quite as good).
...that will enable me to learn to see infrared, or magnetic resonance, or metal detection, or high-pitched sounds that only dogs can hear, or police radar?
So you're saying Google might be intentionally implementing circumventable censorship to appease China while simultaneously helping the oppressed, because a more direct refusal to cooperate with censorship would be doomed to be crushed the Chinese government? I hope you're right. What might be the purpose of patenting this process? ...hmm, Perhaps they believe it is inevitable that the Chinese people will eventually realize that they are being oppressed, and when that happens, Google wants a monopoly on delivering non-censored information ...which would make them loads of money. ...if that whole "follow the money" mantra really works, then you must be right.
...all you need is a proxy to see anything...
Great. All we have to do is maintain proxies in nations all over the world, and we can be treated fairly. Now if we could just teach everyone on the planet how to use international proxies, no one would be victimized by censorship. Surely governments will never try to close *this* hole. I feel like the world is a better place already due to poor implementations of evilness.
If we keep making such a loud noise every time this company starts to do something so utterly blatantly stupid, they'll keep half-way back-tracking before it makes it to the consumers, and they will continue to endure this company forever. I'm getting really tired of hearing people say things like "yeah they're a little evil, but I like their products", or "they're not really that evil--it's not worth the pain of switching". I say let's just keep quiet about it this time and let the Windows users dawn the Emperor's new clothes. C'mon, it'll be fun!
In general, if you want user-friendlyness, open source software isn't the place to be looking
That's like saying if you want good mathematicians, white Caucasians are the people to consider. Perhaps the mean score of some metric with one class may currently be higher than the mean score of another class, but there is no need to imply that the deviation is so tight that there is no overlap. Open Source is perfectly capable of producing a good UI. In some cases it produces the best UI. Your sweeping generalizations are rude and ignorant.
The anti-RIAA sentiment is so high these days, I'll bet we could use it against them. How about we start a prize for quality free music. To enter, people would have to release a song under a Creative Commons license. People who are against by the RIAA could chip in to strengthen the prize, and all the entries would help to devalue the junk that they sell. We'd have some celebrities pick a few winning artists, and the artists would actually take home some real money.
All of which would have gone to the lawyers.
Do you sue for the purpose of getting rich, or to make the world a better place? What's important here is that Microsoft should have been the one paying the lawyers. (For all I know, the lawyers probably get paid anyway by tax dollars through some legal loophole, and the judge gets a cut too.)
Nice to see everybody taking security so seriously then
Why must you assume it's a "security" thing? Isn't it possible that some of us *want* to share our Internet access? This is the same attitude that people only use P2P for piracy. It's only mostly true.
...a cached C++ page takes just as much time to return as a cached PHP page...
The 10:1 ratio refers to server load, not user experience.