If you did use it for customers in the disputed time frame, then your use has satisfied the commercially valuable part.
Basically patents are instruments in commerce. Something was allowed to be patented, i.e. denied to rest of society, if it was shown to have a commercial value, and hence an incentive for the patent holder or agents thereof. It was believed that the benefits from an inventor implementing a patent dwarfed the negatives of denying the rest of the society from being able to freely build upon it.
Your using it for cutomers means that the patent cannot be claimed under new-use as there is nothing "new" about it, and Ray's whole article shows that the patent can't be claimed under "new" method as neither is the method new.
One of the components of patenting something is that it should have a commercially valuable application or manifestation.
If Lotus had the capability to do this, but had no commercial app or app that could be used commercially, then it just existed as a theoretical possibility. The prior art doesn't nullify the patent, but the classification of the patent changes from something equivalent of new-method to something equivalent of new-use. But, the thing is still patentable.
Now, if an invento sees that theoretical possibility, and identifies it with a commercially valuable functionality, that manifestation of method or machine is patentable. I believe it should be, and believe that the Patent Office follows that guideline too.
So,if my understanding of the method and use patents is not flawed, Ozzie's work, if it holds up, merely says the concept is unpatentable under one classification - but, it can still be patented under another classification.
"If database producers know they have some law to fall back on when someone steals their database, they'll be much more willing to get that information out there for free," he said. "Without that law, there's really nothing to protect them."
It is like the allegation of the RIAA that if the artists cannot derive their income from these 5 major record companies, they might be less "willing" to create new music. B.S. Here too a similar wishy-washy justifcation is used to convince the state to become the whores of these "middlemen" between the data and the consumers of the data.
If they can comandeer the law apparatus of the state, and the consequent police infrastructure that comes along as a part of the deal to implement the law, they are saying that they might be "willing" to offer the information for free. Though I think the reality will be that once you can "protect your data" then you will start charging for it. Can I compile another telephone directory ? And even if I can compile it again how does this "output" benefit society as well because it is just unnecessary duplication ?
Data passes thru a tool to become information, information passes thru a person to become knowledge, and knowledge passes thru the syystem to become action.
And worse, the actions in this case and those of RIAA kill off a class of products and stiffles innovation. I would lke the same data not only to be available in different formats, but also in different context - and sometimes in unexpected context. And these different formats are born when companies use the same data, and provide the ability to manage data with their software tools and websites. They are now helping string together this data into information by allowing you differnt options of viewing, and also placing it in a unique context based on the data and information that surrounds this display.
Thus, in the shortsighted vision we will be willing to sacrifice a host of information-building tools, and a host of knowledge-enabling tools - all to satisfy the people who are making these data-collections tools. Data passes thru a tool to become information, information passes thru a person to become knowledge, and knowledge passes thru the system to become action. All this is being blocked, because the people with the data - are now wanting to hoard it and thus preventing everything built upon it.
Electronic Networks are Persistent SociRe:Omission
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Public Net-work
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· Score: 1
I agree with you. Electronic networks are mostly the persistent forms of social or logical networks. The things that happen quite often in reality are the best candidates for us trying to duplicate them in the electronic world.
Thus, broadly I do believe, that the utlimately the real world, with its physical and logical flaws, and goedelian contradictions, will be recreated in the electronic world.
But there is a wild element, and that is something could be created during this process that shall be influential enough to change the patterns of current reality. And thus, there shall be the persistent networks in electronic space that will have have no analogue in the real world.
This "something" was what the dot-coms were all about. And notice that though the dot-coms are gone because they could not make enough money, the ideas that they were chasing are still being pursued. The validity of the ideas is not in doubt - their commercial value was and is in doubt.
So, I guess what I am trying to say is that yes you may be right that all the "X factors" cannot be ignored. But, then, it is possible too, that they can be ignored. Nothing in our collective experience can discount that.
The situation seems to be that RIAA is hurting and so are the consumers. But, RIAA is hurting more... and so the consumer seems to have an edge over the RIAA. But, is this edge sustainable, and is the interface of conflict between the the RIAA and consumers as simple as it seems...
I think the key to visualizing this situation is to understand that the number of consumers are orders of magnitude higher than the number of RIAA participants. It is this imbalance in numbers of the two foes that makes this battle complicated.
Sales of top 10 selling albums, which generate the bulk of profits for record labels, have dropped from 60 million units in 2000 to 34 million units last year, Sherman said.
On one side of this drop of 26 million units are the small number of RIAA participants. On the other side are the large number of consumers who are inflicting the pain. And on the third side of this triangle is this the linkage that the RIAA has alleged between the CD buying market, and the file downloading market, and the result of this "allegation" by the RIAA is their ability to inflict pain upon the consumers. Thus we have this trinity in action-reacion, in parry-thrust; the consumer can hit the RIAA along one path, and the RIAA hits the consumer along another path. Call these the paths A and B.
Now, at the end of path A are a few RIAA participants and when the consumer buys fewer CD's the pain is almost uniformly divided amongst the participants. So, it doesn't hurt much. They will only start defaulting on their mortages in maybe 10 years, if they ever do...
At the end of path B, the RIAA has deliberately identified a few consumers; the thousands that it wants to sue. It wants to spread the pain that it is inflicting on the consumers amongst a few. So that the few will suffer more. And they hope, as they make these few squimer, cry, and die, of the pain the large majority will learn a lesson.
It is similar to what the farmers do when they want to keep the monkey's of their crop. The kill one of the monkeys and hang it on the field. The other monkeys see it and stay off the field.
The RIAA is hoping to do to the consumers what the farmers do to the monkeys. They know that if the battle goes on long enough they will fail, so they are trying to inflict so much of pain on few of the consumers, hoping that they consumer will give up and walk away...
So, the question really is, who is going to be able to sustain more pain. A bunch of RIAA participant feeling a little pain over a long period of time, or a few consumers feeling a lot of pain over a short period of time....
The trend is clear that the RIAA is destined for extinction, but the question is whether the intensity of the experience will be a factor strong enough to change the direction of this trend... will the strategy of RIAA inflicitng maximum damage overcome their disadvantage of suffering a higher rate of loss...in other words, is this victory true victory or pyrrhic victory... and whom is it pyrrhic for - the consumer or the RIAA
A framework for developing the system would be set up during meetings by government ministers in mid- September, followed by committee meetings involving private-sector specialists from each of the three nations in November.
It looks like a good plan, but I hope the execution is not flawed.
First, how good can a product be whose framework are "set during meetings by Governmment ministers followed by private sector specialists".... it seems like a classic mistake of the horse pushing the cart rather than pulling it...
Second I hope these government ministers are not so secretive that they end up producing another "black box" like Windows... which does no good to the concept of open source...
Third I hope the don't start writing the programs in Chinese in the hope of avoiding the best virus and worm writers - who I doubt would go thru the trouble of learning Chinese to be able to penetrate this new system...
Fourth I hope these "private sector specialists" are not clones of Bill Gates... after all who doesn't want to rule the world...
Fifth One Great Wall of China is more than enough. We don't want a "Great Wall of China, Japn, and Korea," and no matter what they say, it is NOT going to be the Eighth Wonder of the World...
Besides the chance of winning one of fifteen monetary prizes totalling US$ 4500
Though it is good start that there is some money, but what comes to my mind is why so little... 15 prizes averaging $ 300 each
that is about 8.5 hours of a coder worth $ 35 an hour
or 1 week (20 hours) of a grad students time....
or 2 weeks (40 - 60 hours) of a coder in India's time
or 4 hours of a coder worth $ 75 an hour
I wonder why doesn't some philanthropist wanting to donate to charity or some rich guy wanting to support Linux just give a couple of hundred thousand dollars, or may be a few millions, in prize money - so that it can support a critical mass of programmers that can devote a decent amount of time..... rather than the tens of hours that are "economically feasible" now....
I know... linux is not about money and all.... but still... why couldn't it be... everyone does not have to pay - just those people wanting it very badly have to pay while the rest get a free ride so that society as a whole benefits...
and seriously - this is not meant to be flamebait...
Blood Diamonds - Does RIAA have blood on its hands
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Diamonds & the RIAA
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· Score: 2, Informative
Because this is about the RIAA, and it brings out the worst in me, I couldn't help but bring your attention in this analogy of the diamond trade and the music trade - the "Blood Diamond." Does the RIAA have blood on its hands... (of course this is meant only in the sense of extending the analogy... so RIAA please don't try to sue me... ha ha.)
Greg Campbell is the author of the forthcoming Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World?s Most Precious Stones (Westview Press), to be released in September 2002.
Illicit diamonds make fabulous profits for terrorists and corporations alike. The trade illustrates with the hard clarity of the gem itself that no matter where human rights violations occur, the world ignores them at its peril.
Thanks for your posts, esp the AC one which is very helpful... the problem has to do with the cable guy authenticating the m/c by the MAC addresss... so the 2nd one wouldn't go thru...
When I look at the mass of audiences that these "blockbusters" want to attract, I wonder how many of these masses can distinguish between "good" science and "bad" science - esp if most of them know very little science to begin with....
Most people don't know much about math...
Most people don't know about Geography...
Most people don't know much about "real" politics...
Most people don't know about Government "secrets"... and thanks to Patriot Act most people don't know who the Govt has "secretly" imprisoned....
Many people still think that evolution never happened...
Many people people think the world was created 10,000 years ago...
My point is that if most people don't know much of science to begin with, how can "good" science or "bad" science have an effect on their experience....
For people who are too discerning, or cannot suspend their beliefs, or cannot appreciate magic.... there is a bunch of "realistic" indy movies to watch....
Not only are the security implications horrendous in the MS products, but servicing them is a nightmare....
This story just caught me at a bad time... I have been trying to do a file/printer sharing between 2 computers running Win 2000 Prof and Win XP Prof using a hub. You would think it would be plug and play, and a little bit of configuration - and that is how I set out my cost estimates for a small business that wanted me to do it for them... big mistake...
It is 3 days past now. I have read probably 100 + articles to understand the security implications for these windows products.... Used all sorts of keywords in google to get many articles to see how the damn networking is done in the first place. And I am now thoroughly confused, tired, and am spending a lot of unpaid hours getting this damn networking done. FOR GOD's sake I am trying to network two products from the same company... How could MS screw it up and make it such a nightmare.... and do such dumb stuff as not turning the security features on by default so that I don't even know what I am exposing, all the patches that are being issued faster than I can download...
I have both the lights from the two computers in my hub flashing - thank god.
I can connect via one computer to the internet - praise the lord.
But I can't get the file/printer sharing done yet... - Forgiveness is divine.
And as the feed is provided by a cable internet operator, which has a pool of computers of its own, I am not even sure of what is secure and what is not - Ignorance is a bliss.
And I have lost a lot of money and time... Lord, give me the strength to forgive those who do not know what they are doing....
Common standards introduced by the national Canadian cellphone carriers would help to eliminate the development of redundant authentication and billing methods and will lead to consistent, simplified access, the group said.
It seems interesting to me that to really tap into the market, different companies are uniting in Wi-Fi. But, on the other hand in the "Instant Messaging" market, it seems that the companies have thrived by dividing the market amongst themselves... why does "uniting" work in the Wi-Fi market, while "dividing" work in the IM market...
Looking at the quote from the article (on top of this comment) it seems that the driving force to common standards in Wi-Fi is to eliminate the development of redundant authentication and billing methods viz. that it is about money.
It makes me wonder if the IM packages became "pay only" would it lead to a set of open and common standards in the Instant Messaging market to eliminate the development of redundant authentication and billing methods. I don't think that many people would relish having to pay for five different IM's.... Personally, I think free is better than not free - but I couldn't help noticing this relationship of money and dividing/uniting..
I clicked thru all the pages. Here is my journalistic report on "gaming journalism" in ELEVEN steps.
Loose your mental balance.
Surf the web like crazy and start bookmarking obsessively.
Look at the sequence in which you created the links.
Add a little about the links to some of the links.
Hmm. Makes no sense.
So add a little of your personal opinions which are already not making sense.
Try to explain the non-sense.
Add some "passion" to it, whatever that is.
Get it up on slashdot. Expect all the hoo ha.
But, there is only boo bah. Loose your mental balance.
If you are sadistic... start again.
Real Cause:Virtual Effect :: Virtual Cause:Real
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Designing Virtual Worlds
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I think one of the most interesting things to me in the games, esp. set in virtual worlds is the relationship of cause and effect.
In real life, we get to "learn" some cause-effects, and use them in making future decisions. But, I personally believe, that there are no hard and fast cause-effects that do not alter when the frame of the system in question is either reduced or enlarged.
I play the games so that I can understand the cause-effect equation. I can sometimes try something in the virtual world and see a real world physical or psychological effect. At other times I can try something in the real-world and see its effect in the virtual world.
The round trip i.e. real-virtual-real is very much possible and observable by me. But the other round trip i.e. virtual-real-virtual is not possible for me, and the only way that I can imagine that is to consider it to be loosely a "mirror" form of the real-virtual-real string.
These cause and effect in the real-virtual-real and virtual-real-virtual strings, and how they in some way help me make sense of my body-mind duality is why the virtual worlds are very real for me.... That is why I am drawn to these "virtual" worlds that very "real" for me...
I have for the past few months being trying to consolidate my personality into a few well defined slivers...
handling different email identities with a single email package has helped a lot, and the fact that I can receive messages from different boxes, and send messages from different boxes - all from a single application is godsent... MS has a product called Outlook which dominates the market..
I also am warming up to password management programs so that I have fewer passwords to forget... MS came up with something that was supposed to help me - PASSPORT
I am trying to consolidate my "buddy" personalities into a manageable interface, and Trillian helps me. Now, wouldn't it be nice if MS came up with a product like they have done for earlier needs. But, no sir, they got nothing in this category. So, what do they do. They try to destroy the entire category.
I think this is unfair. I think this is injust. I think this is immoral.
And I think it is worse.
Instead of helping me manage my different identities, MS is actually doing the opposite. MS is driving me to multiple personalities. MS is driving me to schizophrenia. This, I think is just, so, wrong.
Game vision personal enough to be universal ....
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Masters of Doom
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I don't think that it is surprising that beloved games like DOOM are the product of the vision of a small group of people.
Games that really do engage us, do so at a very primal level. There is something about the game that has to click, and release your anandamides... This syncronization of what you feel when you play the game and what the developer wanted you to feel is more pure, like it is in art, when this vicarious "anandamide" is personal... so personal that it becomes universal....
Corporations with big departments will create a lot of good games, but I believe the purity of the intensely personal experience can come only when the vision is personal, and concentrated in a few people rather than diffused...
AOL Justification is weak weak weak ...
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FCC Lifts AOL IM Limits
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I don't buy this argument -
"Sorry dude I put the gun on you, and it misfired... so lets just forget about everything because you are lucky to be alive"
.. how many businesses died because the this behemoth's intransigent attitude... And they are STILL THREE times bigger than the nearest competitor...
Reality Check But, hey who am I to say anything. Our Good old friend MS destroyed Netscape - so what are you going to do about it....
So, to make this work, what you need to do is "Save As..." this page to your local machine, and just run it from there. Last I checked, that works fine.
i think extending the range is the critical bit that would make or break many business plans, compared to the less important higher data speeds.. The leverage that you get from the increased data speeds is not as much as it is in the gains of distance.
2 to six times increased range in radius means, 4 to 36 times in area coverage.. which is big enough to make currently dead plans alive and healthy. If I could get these sort of gains i.e. 4 to 36, in the potential of revenue generation with the same cost of initial deployment, I think the technology will be of very much interest to me... just need to go back and crunch my numbers again
I am not trying to make a big statement or something, but just a personal statement.... which is... as long as Mr. Dean agrees to stay of my KazaaLite sharing, I agree to stay out of his spamming...
Mr. Bush will have $170 million to fight his campaign.... and as most of his Rangers and Pioneers get him $100,000 and $200,000, he doesn't need to spam them - he just invites them over for barbeque...
Mr. Dean needs all those other folks who ain't got a couple hundred grand to give away to the Chief Thief... as long as his campaign respects the opt-out of his emailing list, I think he should do what it takes....
If after Sept 11 we have woken up in Mr. Bush's "New" world where liberties can be screwed at the drop of a hat, maybe we have also woken up in this political world of spamming... phew; maybe I am going a little too far...
ok... I am just playing the spoiler... but sometimes my intense hatred of all the members of the Lunatics Club of Donald Rumsfeld gets the better of me.. . and almost makes me wanna say - Dean, hit me with an another spam. Doh.
Identify the truths ... Re:Goedel says benchmarks
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Examining Benchmarking
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· Score: 1
One of the key things in Godel's conception is that there are certain truths, i.e. for example that the math on earth and the math on mars will have something similar to prime numbers, etc.. That is why the two maths created on earth and mars, where certain common symbols are used in both the earth-maths and mars-math, have some similarities. The similarity is not that they are using some of the same symbols, but that they using math to describe the same reality...
the equivalent of the benchmarks definition is to split it in two views.... one is that of the benchmarks writer, and the second of the benchmark consumer. If the "realities" of both of them are same, then the benchmark consumer will be able to extract the "correct" meaning from that what has been put in the benchmark by the writer....
If the realites are not the same, the transmission of meaning from the writer to the consumer will not take place correctly...
So, the point is not to compare the card with another external device for anchoring, but to compare the "report required by the consumer" to the "report prepared by the writer."
Because of so many different requirements and writers, the task of writing benchmarks is like 'mass customization." The ultimate answer is to take some input from the benchmark consumer, and use that in creating a "number" for that benchmark.... or simply, as someone said... to each his/her own...
Identify the need of person looking at benchmarks
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Examining Benchmarking
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I think the writer made very relevant points. Generally the universe expands faster than our own speed, and so we never get to the edge of the universe. But in the world of technology, sometimes technology grows faster than the real world it is supposed to inhabit, and so the real world gets left behind... The writer has identified just such a crossover, and hence his call to update benchmarks is very valid...
But I would like to add another dimension and that is the eye of the beholder... If all the person is looking at the benchmarks for, is to quickly sell it to his unsophisticated boss, or another unsophisticated boss who will get his employees to use it, then what he needs are simple and clear cut benchmarks - and more important, time tested benchmarks. Generally the powers-to-be with the moolah do not like the messiness that inherently comes with trying to "realify" the models.... From my experience this is not how it should be, but I have found this is how it is....
I am not saying that the writer was in anyway wrong.. just that he must also look at the consumer of his benchamrks... is it someone who is going to use the technology him/her self or is someone who is going to sell a technology to someone who will have someone else use the technology....
Is it just me, for in this "New" world, everytime I see a coincidence, me thinks conspiracy....
If Pigs in Orwell's Animal Farm could start walking on two legs, and a war could be staged for Halliburton to get billions in contracts.... could a power outage have been staged...
please spare me the flames; I am already close to dying laughing at my own stupidity....
I just noticed that they have a homegrown version for the Office Software...
No comments on whether that is Open Source or Open Formats or not.... And no idea of whether it is going to be compatible with Open Office and MS Office....
Unless the chinese are adopting the "Linux Mindset" I don't think that this is necessarily a good thing.... If they are forcing an almost failed software on more than a billion people just by regulatory fiat, how could it be good ??....
What they should be adopting is not something that is NOT Microsoft, but something that is "effectively" BETTER than MS Products.... I don't know that WPS Office even approaches there...
and the chinese can't get there by rejecting the linux mindset and copying the Microsoft strategy of denying free choice....
Slashdot Mirror
If you did use it for customers in the disputed time frame, then your use has satisfied the commercially valuable part.
Basically patents are instruments in commerce. Something was allowed to be patented, i.e. denied to rest of society, if it was shown to have a commercial value, and hence an incentive for the patent holder or agents thereof. It was believed that the benefits from an inventor implementing a patent dwarfed the negatives of denying the rest of the society from being able to freely build upon it.
Your using it for cutomers means that the patent cannot be claimed under new-use as there is nothing "new" about it, and Ray's whole article shows that the patent can't be claimed under "new" method as neither is the method new.
Guess, it means that the patent should be busted.
One of the components of patenting something is that it should have a commercially valuable application or manifestation.
If Lotus had the capability to do this, but had no commercial app or app that could be used commercially, then it just existed as a theoretical possibility. The prior art doesn't nullify the patent, but the classification of the patent changes from something equivalent of new-method to something equivalent of new-use. But, the thing is still patentable.
Now, if an invento sees that theoretical possibility, and identifies it with a commercially valuable functionality, that manifestation of method or machine is patentable. I believe it should be, and believe that the Patent Office follows that guideline too.
So,if my understanding of the method and use patents is not flawed, Ozzie's work, if it holds up, merely says the concept is unpatentable under one classification - but, it can still be patented under another classification.
It is like the allegation of the RIAA that if the artists cannot derive their income from these 5 major record companies, they might be less "willing" to create new music. B.S. Here too a similar wishy-washy justifcation is used to convince the state to become the whores of these "middlemen" between the data and the consumers of the data.
If they can comandeer the law apparatus of the state, and the consequent police infrastructure that comes along as a part of the deal to implement the law, they are saying that they might be "willing" to offer the information for free. Though I think the reality will be that once you can "protect your data" then you will start charging for it. Can I compile another telephone directory ? And even if I can compile it again how does this "output" benefit society as well because it is just unnecessary duplication ?
And worse, the actions in this case and those of RIAA kill off a class of products and stiffles innovation. I would lke the same data not only to be available in different formats, but also in different context - and sometimes in unexpected context. And these different formats are born when companies use the same data, and provide the ability to manage data with their software tools and websites. They are now helping string together this data into information by allowing you differnt options of viewing, and also placing it in a unique context based on the data and information that surrounds this display.
Thus, in the shortsighted vision we will be willing to sacrifice a host of information-building tools, and a host of knowledge-enabling tools - all to satisfy the people who are making these data-collections tools. Data passes thru a tool to become information, information passes thru a person to become knowledge, and knowledge passes thru the system to become action. All this is being blocked, because the people with the data - are now wanting to hoard it and thus preventing everything built upon it.
I agree with you. Electronic networks are mostly the persistent forms of social or logical networks. The things that happen quite often in reality are the best candidates for us trying to duplicate them in the electronic world.
Thus, broadly I do believe, that the utlimately the real world, with its physical and logical flaws, and goedelian contradictions, will be recreated in the electronic world.
But there is a wild element, and that is something could be created during this process that shall be influential enough to change the patterns of current reality. And thus, there shall be the persistent networks in electronic space that will have have no analogue in the real world.
This "something" was what the dot-coms were all about. And notice that though the dot-coms are gone because they could not make enough money, the ideas that they were chasing are still being pursued. The validity of the ideas is not in doubt - their commercial value was and is in doubt.
So, I guess what I am trying to say is that yes you may be right that all the "X factors" cannot be ignored. But, then, it is possible too, that they can be ignored. Nothing in our collective experience can discount that.
The situation seems to be that RIAA is hurting and so are the consumers. But, RIAA is hurting more ... and so the consumer seems to have an edge over the RIAA. But, is this edge sustainable, and is the interface of conflict between the the RIAA and consumers as simple as it seems ...
I think the key to visualizing this situation is to understand that the number of consumers are orders of magnitude higher than the number of RIAA participants. It is this imbalance in numbers of the two foes that makes this battle complicated.
On one side of this drop of 26 million units are the small number of RIAA participants. On the other side are the large number of consumers who are inflicting the pain. And on the third side of this triangle is this the linkage that the RIAA has alleged between the CD buying market, and the file downloading market, and the result of this "allegation" by the RIAA is their ability to inflict pain upon the consumers. Thus we have this trinity in action-reacion, in parry-thrust; the consumer can hit the RIAA along one path, and the RIAA hits the consumer along another path. Call these the paths A and B.
The RIAA is hoping to do to the consumers what the farmers do to the monkeys. They know that if the battle goes on long enough they will fail, so they are trying to inflict so much of pain on few of the consumers, hoping that they consumer will give up and walk away ...
So, the question really is, who is going to be able to sustain more pain. A bunch of RIAA participant feeling a little pain over a long period of time, or a few consumers feeling a lot of pain over a short period of time ....
The trend is clear that the RIAA is destined for extinction, but the question is whether the intensity of the experience will be a factor strong enough to change the direction of this trend ... will the strategy of RIAA inflicitng maximum damage overcome their disadvantage of suffering a higher rate of loss ...in other words, is this victory true victory or pyrrhic victory ... and whom is it pyrrhic for - the consumer or the RIAA
A framework for developing the system would be set up during meetings by government ministers in mid- September, followed by committee meetings involving private-sector specialists from each of the three nations in November.
It looks like a good plan, but I hope the execution is not flawed.
Besides the chance of winning one of fifteen monetary prizes totalling US$ 4500
Though it is good start that there is some money, but what comes to my mind is why so little ... 15 prizes averaging $ 300 each
I wonder why doesn't some philanthropist wanting to donate to charity or some rich guy wanting to support Linux just give a couple of hundred thousand dollars, or may be a few millions, in prize money - so that it can support a critical mass of programmers that can devote a decent amount of time ..... rather than the tens of hours that are "economically feasible" now ....
I know ... linux is not about money and all .... but still ... why couldn't it be ... everyone does not have to pay - just those people wanting it very badly have to pay while the rest get a free ride so that society as a whole benefits ...
and seriously - this is not meant to be flamebait ...
Because this is about the RIAA, and it brings out the worst in me, I couldn't help but bring your attention in this analogy of the diamond trade and the music trade - the "Blood Diamond." Does the RIAA have blood on its hands ... (of course this is meant only in the sense of extending the analogy ... so RIAA please don't try to sue me ... ha ha.)
Blood Diamonds
http://www.amnestyusa.org/amnestynow/diamonds.html
Greg Campbell is the author of the forthcoming Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World?s Most Precious Stones (Westview Press), to be released in September 2002.
Illicit diamonds make fabulous profits for terrorists and corporations alike. The trade illustrates with the hard clarity of the gem itself that no matter where human rights violations occur, the world ignores them at its peril.
Thanks for your posts, esp the AC one which is very helpful ... the problem has to do with the cable guy authenticating the m/c by the MAC addresss ... so the 2nd one wouldn't go thru ...
When I look at the mass of audiences that these "blockbusters" want to attract, I wonder how many of these masses can distinguish between "good" science and "bad" science - esp if most of them know very little science to begin with ....
My point is that if most people don't know much of science to begin with, how can "good" science or "bad" science have an effect on their experience ....
For people who are too discerning, or cannot suspend their beliefs, or cannot appreciate magic .... there is a bunch of "realistic" indy movies to watch ....
Not only are the security implications horrendous in the MS products, but servicing them is a nightmare ....
This story just caught me at a bad time ... I have been trying to do a file/printer sharing between 2 computers running Win 2000 Prof and Win XP Prof using a hub. You would think it would be plug and play, and a little bit of configuration - and that is how I set out my cost estimates for a small business that wanted me to do it for them ... big mistake ...
It is 3 days past now. I have read probably 100 + articles to understand the security implications for these windows products .... Used all sorts of keywords in google to get many articles to see how the damn networking is done in the first place. And I am now thoroughly confused, tired, and am spending a lot of unpaid hours getting this damn networking done. FOR GOD's sake I am trying to network two products from the same company ... How could MS screw it up and make it such a nightmare .... and do such dumb stuff as not turning the security features on by default so that I don't even know what I am exposing, all the patches that are being issued faster than I can download ...
It seems interesting to me that to really tap into the market, different companies are uniting in Wi-Fi. But, on the other hand in the "Instant Messaging" market, it seems that the companies have thrived by dividing the market amongst themselves ... why does "uniting" work in the Wi-Fi market, while "dividing" work in the IM market ...
Looking at the quote from the article (on top of this comment) it seems that the driving force to common standards in Wi-Fi is to eliminate the development of redundant authentication and billing methods viz. that it is about money.
It makes me wonder if the IM packages became "pay only" would it lead to a set of open and common standards in the Instant Messaging market to eliminate the development of redundant authentication and billing methods. I don't think that many people would relish having to pay for five different IM's .... Personally, I think free is better than not free - but I couldn't help noticing this relationship of money and dividing/uniting ..
I clicked thru all the pages. Here is my journalistic report on "gaming journalism" in ELEVEN steps.
I think one of the most interesting things to me in the games, esp. set in virtual worlds is the relationship of cause and effect.
In real life, we get to "learn" some cause-effects, and use them in making future decisions. But, I personally believe, that there are no hard and fast cause-effects that do not alter when the frame of the system in question is either reduced or enlarged.
I play the games so that I can understand the cause-effect equation. I can sometimes try something in the virtual world and see a real world physical or psychological effect. At other times I can try something in the real-world and see its effect in the virtual world.
The round trip i.e. real-virtual-real is very much possible and observable by me. But the other round trip i.e. virtual-real-virtual is not possible for me, and the only way that I can imagine that is to consider it to be loosely a "mirror" form of the real-virtual-real string.
These cause and effect in the real-virtual-real and virtual-real-virtual strings, and how they in some way help me make sense of my body-mind duality is why the virtual worlds are very real for me .... That is why I am drawn to these "virtual" worlds that very "real" for me ...
I have for the past few months being trying to consolidate my personality into a few well defined slivers ...
- handling different email identities with a single email package has helped a lot, and the fact that I can receive messages from different boxes, and send messages from different boxes - all from a single application is godsent
... MS has a product called Outlook which dominates the market ..
- I also am warming up to password management programs so that I have fewer passwords to forget
... MS came up with something that was supposed to help me - PASSPORT
- I am trying to consolidate my "buddy" personalities into a manageable interface, and Trillian helps me. Now, wouldn't it be nice if MS came up with a product like they have done for earlier needs. But, no sir, they got nothing in this category. So, what do they do. They try to destroy the entire category.
I think this is unfair. I think this is injust. I think this is immoral.And I think it is worse.
Instead of helping me manage my different identities, MS is actually doing the opposite. MS is driving me to multiple personalities. MS is driving me to schizophrenia. This, I think is just, so, wrong.
I don't think that it is surprising that beloved games like DOOM are the product of the vision of a small group of people.
Games that really do engage us, do so at a very primal level. There is something about the game that has to click, and release your anandamides ... This syncronization of what you feel when you play the game and what the developer wanted you to feel is more pure, like it is in art, when this vicarious "anandamide" is personal ... so personal that it becomes universal ....
Corporations with big departments will create a lot of good games, but I believe the purity of the intensely personal experience can come only when the vision is personal, and concentrated in a few people rather than diffused ...
I don't buy this argument -
Reality Check But, hey who am I to say anything. Our Good old friend MS destroyed Netscape - so what are you going to do about it ....
I personally believe the conspiracy angle more .. after all this is the same FCC that adopted new rules that will permit broadcasters to expand their control of media properties. Michael Powell is not fooling anyone. From the same article "With even greater power, big broadcasters such as News Corp., Disney and AOL Time Warner Hey, look who's here ... will amass even more cash.", a lot of which will go to the Bush Relection coffers - so now you understand why Dean has to spam but Bush doesn't.
God help me ... I am so paranoid these days of this "New" world ... lol ...
So, to make this work, what you need to do is "Save As..." this page to your local machine, and just run it from there. Last I checked, that works fine.
Use the following link to generate random registrations ...
http://www.majcher.com/nytview.html
i think extending the range is the critical bit that would make or break many business plans, compared to the less important higher data speeds .. The leverage that you get from the increased data speeds is not as much as it is in the gains of distance.
2 to six times increased range in radius means, 4 to 36 times in area coverage .. which is big enough to make currently dead plans alive and healthy. If I could get these sort of gains i.e. 4 to 36, in the potential of revenue generation with the same cost of initial deployment, I think the technology will be of very much interest to me ... just need to go back and crunch my numbers again
I am not trying to make a big statement or something, but just a personal statement .... which is ... as long as Mr. Dean agrees to stay of my KazaaLite sharing, I agree to stay out of his spamming ...
Mr. Bush will have $170 million to fight his campaign .... and as most of his Rangers and Pioneers get him $100,000 and $200,000, he doesn't need to spam them - he just invites them over for barbeque ...
Mr. Dean needs all those other folks who ain't got a couple hundred grand to give away to the Chief Thief ... as long as his campaign respects the opt-out of his emailing list, I think he should do what it takes ....
If after Sept 11 we have woken up in Mr. Bush's "New" world where liberties can be screwed at the drop of a hat, maybe we have also woken up in this political world of spamming ... phew; maybe I am going a little too far ...
ok ... I am just playing the spoiler ... but sometimes my intense hatred of all the members of the Lunatics Club of Donald Rumsfeld gets the better of me .. . and almost makes me wanna say - Dean, hit me with an another spam. Doh.
One of the key things in Godel's conception is that there are certain truths, i.e. for example that the math on earth and the math on mars will have something similar to prime numbers, etc.. That is why the two maths created on earth and mars, where certain common symbols are used in both the earth-maths and mars-math, have some similarities. The similarity is not that they are using some of the same symbols, but that they using math to describe the same reality ...
the equivalent of the benchmarks definition is to split it in two views .... one is that of the benchmarks writer, and the second of the benchmark consumer. If the "realities" of both of them are same, then the benchmark consumer will be able to extract the "correct" meaning from that what has been put in the benchmark by the writer ....
If the realites are not the same, the transmission of meaning from the writer to the consumer will not take place correctly ...
So, the point is not to compare the card with another external device for anchoring, but to compare the "report required by the consumer" to the "report prepared by the writer."
Because of so many different requirements and writers, the task of writing benchmarks is like 'mass customization." The ultimate answer is to take some input from the benchmark consumer, and use that in creating a "number" for that benchmark .... or simply, as someone said ... to each his/her own ...
I think the writer made very relevant points. Generally the universe expands faster than our own speed, and so we never get to the edge of the universe. But in the world of technology, sometimes technology grows faster than the real world it is supposed to inhabit, and so the real world gets left behind ... The writer has identified just such a crossover, and hence his call to update benchmarks is very valid ...
But I would like to add another dimension and that is the eye of the beholder ... If all the person is looking at the benchmarks for, is to quickly sell it to his unsophisticated boss, or another unsophisticated boss who will get his employees to use it, then what he needs are simple and clear cut benchmarks - and more important, time tested benchmarks. Generally the powers-to-be with the moolah do not like the messiness that inherently comes with trying to "realify" the models .... From my experience this is not how it should be, but I have found this is how it is ....
I am not saying that the writer was in anyway wrong .. just that he must also look at the consumer of his benchamrks ... is it someone who is going to use the technology him/her self or is someone who is going to sell a technology to someone who will have someone else use the technology ....
Is it just me, for in this "New" world, everytime I see a coincidence, me thinks conspiracy ....
If Pigs in Orwell's Animal Farm could start walking on two legs, and a war could be staged for Halliburton to get billions in contracts .... could a power outage have been staged ...
please spare me the flames; I am already close to dying laughing at my own stupidity ....
I just noticed that they have a homegrown version for the Office Software ...
No comments on whether that is Open Source or Open Formats or not .... And no idea of whether it is going to be compatible with Open Office and MS Office ....
Unless the chinese are adopting the "Linux Mindset" I don't think that this is necessarily a good thing .... If they are forcing an almost failed software on more than a billion people just by regulatory fiat, how could it be good ?? ....
What they should be adopting is not something that is NOT Microsoft, but something that is "effectively" BETTER than MS Products .... I don't know that WPS Office even approaches there ...
and the chinese can't get there by rejecting the linux mindset and copying the Microsoft strategy of denying free choice ....
just my two cents worth ...