Finally, we can put all those fired silicon valley geeks back into physical slavery... powering california's websites by rotating the handle. They'll finally be able to afford a meal and cardboard box again.
"people will never need more than 64k memory"
"cell phones dont cause tumors"
"the speed of e-business will make everyone inside the borders of the western world stinking rich"
"napster is the future of music"
I say we mandate that computer cases always be made with a block of wood to knock on, cause these prophecies are almost always wrong.
Everyone is discovering that the linux 'boom' only happened in the server/infrastructure arena. Zero Knowledge software is end user software. And so long as linux is not being used widely as a desktop platform at home (and I mean.. more than 1% of the windows home desktop user base), it doesn't make much sense for Zero Knowledge to support it. If anything, I think companies are discovering how it doesn't pay to 'jump on an OS bandwagon'. The overhead costs of supporting a particular OS are very high, so without a significant user base, I'm not surprised to see them go back to Windows only.
Hell, as someone pointed out, you can accomplish most of what Zero Knowledge software accomplishes with free tools anyhow, so whats all the kerfuffle about? We live in a capitalist world.. if it helps the folks working at Zero Knowledge keep their jobs, and keeps Zero Knowledge in business, then it was the right decision.
As for all the folks who think they are the cat's pajamas with all the 'zero knowledge' jokes... can't we have a real discussion here, instead of the same old repetative rhetoric?
It's definately the integration issues right now/w respect to encryption and the hooks into clients. IMHO, hotmail and yahoo and all the other free-mail services would have to offer encryption features before encryption becomes ubquitous with emailing.
I've read his book "Esplanade Street" and it was INCREDIBLE. I read the whole thing on the very day I got it. So, for Iain Banks' virgins, this is an author very worth getting into.
Well, if the libs are worthless, doesn't that make Konq worthless?
My feeling on all this is that IE took years to get good. Netscape 4.7 -> Moz/Nscape6 is the rebirth, and it will be a few years before we can judge them against the ubermature IE.
The relevance of the post is that the biggest Linux distro is abandoning the biggest *nix Browser. While that doesn't mean that you like either, it doesn't diminish the relevance of the post. While Mozilla may suck, at least this indicates a major push and/or reason to guide it towards unsuckiness in future versions.. the biggest distro is relying on this. Neccessity is the mother of invention and all that...
Totally valid points; I hadn't thought about the fact that market saturation is getting closer. Although we have a long ways to go, if the OS-on-every-device thing comes true?
Garret
People will use free software as a proof of concept for starting out before someone with money backs the idea (or where the free software in question really/is/ better than the commercial software; this is obviously judged on an app by app basis and obviously is true in many cases). Once the general public starts handing said person money for their concept, they can pay someone else money to buy commercial software. This earns them more sales people through third party sales, etc, a financial crutch should they need it (I'm sure we're aware of companies buying other companies just because that company was their best billboard and customer), and accountability for failure and fault (what I like to call the 'killer finger', in spirit of the term 'killer app'). Thusly, they never grow as big and rich as Microsoft, and consequently, not as evil either. Microsoft is the karma garberator for the technology age!;)
People always seem intent on prooving that the only grass worth standing on is the grass on their side of the fence.. personally, I see the balance of power as both integral to the pervasion and success of technology and inevitable. It's like jaywalking.. if we ALL did it, traffic would never go anywhere, but if no one did it.. well, see, that just never happens. =) The balance is struck due to the benifits society as a whole reaps from it. (Can you tell I buy into the whole ying/yang thing?)
Anyhow, this is a long winded way of saying that I do agree with your comment. I get tired of the blind supporters of either side.. software and technology has massive influence economic and social issues. It certainly ain't sports - you know what I'm saying?
And Eben Moglen.. makes me think of hemoglobin, which is funny 'cause Microsoft is the blood sucker, and RMS is with the Eben Moglen (okay, its a stretch, but say it fast:P)
Personally, I would prefer ports, since Wine, though not an emulator, does keep the Win32 API 'alive', at least in a development sense. I think most here would agree that Microsoft already has enough trouble cleaning its slate and ridding itself of old messy APIs.. imagine what would happen if the Win32 API became the standard cross platform gaming API? More market clout, more reasons to keep legacy outdated APIs around, and new innovative gaming APIs may never come around; at least until Microsoft gives it to us, and then Wine catches up to it. Yuck. At least if its ports, that keeps the possibility of the dominant gaming platform shifting to some other platform than Windows.:)
I've switched between Cable and DSL numerous times (4x), and in my experience, it totally depends on where you are; ie, location from CO and how many people you're sharing the Cable loop with. I suspect that in the end, Cable is easier for the providers to scale since more often than not I've ended up finding Cable is the best choice in most of the numerous locations in Toronto that I've lived.
Since MSs products do this that the other thing and the last thing you ever want to do but not the thing you need to buy the 3rd party software for, is it really any surprise MS always suffers from escaped code review buffers? When you bite off more than you SHOULD chew, this 'll always happen. =)
Its a good thing for the OS community.. more granular projects lead to better security...
Why Windows Media over Real Media? If you ask me, the Windows Media wins the quality argument hands down.
Why Windows Media over Quicktime? It would seem that Quicktime wins the platform argument; and I think the quality is better with Quicktime anyways (tho I suppose thats arguable?). I'd imagine its the same reason Windows 9x is everywhere. Marketing, corperate partnerships, advertising?
I think it'd be cool; bright flashes for explosions.. but you wonder if there comes a point where the game/application is so immersive, people start experiecing real life emotional consequences. At what point can we fool the mind, and do we really want to? Some games are already realistic and scary enough... =)
Not all the technological advancements that affect you have to sit on your desktop. If this helps reduce the cost for data storage providers and data-centric service providers (like mp3.com), then potentially we may see the trend for such companies now being forced into the reality of charging reversed; ie, where advertising could end up covering most of the costs again. So you may never be able to buy this at FutureShop, but if slashdot can buy it from Vendor XYZ, at a cost less than however many platter-based disks it would take to match storage requirements, they could show less banners. And you'd probably be happy. =) And yes, its probably years off, but that doesn't neccessarily negate my point.
I think its interesting how the avg user will probably not need larger and larger drives anyhow. As the power of your computer increases, and thus the ability to compress/decompress using more and more complex but space-efficient algorithms, so does its ability to 'recreate' on the fly things like music, computer graphics, etc. Remember when everyone said the CD-Rom was the future of gaming because of the size of the medium? For a few years, yes, we had all those 4 CD-Rom pre-rendered movies/scene games, but once the hardware caught up, practically every game now just renders on the fly; consequently, games are way smaller. Anyhow, it is very cool from a datawarehousing standpoint.. things like geographical analysis, centralized data stores (a la library of congress, I guess) will benifit. And the size of the read/write mechanism shouldn't matter as much, although clearly it will have to be reasonable.
a) enough employees stay out of work to fuel the neccessary employment boycott to get companies to even/consider/ anything less than 'we get first crack at anything you do, and even then you probably cant use it anywhere else'
or
b) companies say 'no', 95% of employees say 'oh well, I tried, but its better than being unemployed', and we all keep living this beautiful capitalist dream without a care in the world
It certainly won't when you're culture-jamming with fake info. I realize the inherent dangers of the convergance of all this personal data, etc, and the loss of privacy that accompanies it.. and with all due respect, jamming just makes life more expensive (through loss of effeciency and the fact that decisions are based on provided and tracked information) for those of us who either play the game or boycott it altogether. I'm not much of a privacy freak, but judging from the number of people who 'claim' to have problems with it, even a mildly successful full-boycott of the mediums of technology that you feel abuses your right to privacy could probably make believers out of advertisers/etc. And at any rate, every single one of us wants at least one, if not more, companies (like, for me: tc electronics, Emagic, Digidesign) to operate leaner and more informed to the needs of their consumers. Like one mans trash is anothers treasure, you may enjoy jamming, but you're not doing/everyone/ a favour.. no worse than the companies/governments/alien races themselves who you claim will abuse it.
And shit, I dont mind being known as a number; if it stops the 5 pounds of junk mail delivered to my house every week, stops the needless destruction of trees for blanket marketing, streamlines the amount of time you and I have to spend every week with the inevitable amount of corperate-supplied information we are bombarded with (ie, advertising) every week, what the hell is the problem with being a number, or stamp, or whatever? (which brings up another point.. words are dangerous.. being 'stamped' or 'indexed' sounds really scary! impersonal! yeah! orwellian! but seriously, you index your own friends in your head.. heck, we index all our customers using their names as the key. But if it was numbers, they'd never know, and I'd venture to say, they'd never care.) I'm my own unique person.. with my own special feelings, and emotions, and thoughts, but I certainly am not relying on company X to validate this! =) If you dont want to play the game, by all means, don't, but you're not doing anyone favours, and contrary to what you might think, that includes yourself.
> specifically prohibits downloaders from creating derived works, using the media in a public performance setting, placing it in a product, etc etc, without permission of the artist and mp3.com
Oh yeah, I knew that, but like you did with the (O) in the band info, I had info that just said you could steal whatever you wanted when you wanted so long as I had credit. I think if Napster taught us anything, its that no one gives a rats ass when it comes to a license, unless they think its simple and fair. In the case of mp3.com, I doubt 1 in 40 downloaders had read or even knew of the details of the mp3.com license; so I didn't have a problem with the fact that I had to explicitly articulate the terms of 'extended rights' for my music, figuring that they would probably be the only 'rights' any surfer would be aware of.
I suppose with respect to broadcasters, distributers, etc, some may have been scared away by the 'loseness' of the terms of use I layed down. But I wouldn't be surprised if Open Content gets the same sort of repuation as Open Source - namely that its valuable, good stuff, but there's no accountability in using it, so the players (broadcasters, distributers, etc) with money who can afford the audience to realize the benefits of royalty-free distribution will avoid it for accountability reasons.
Maybe I'm a cynic; don't get me wrong tho, I do think (O) is a good idea. Imagine a world where a label can collect and release a double disk 40 artist compilation of Open Content artists, risk free for all parties, with the label knowing they'll get enough feedback to sign the 4 most well recieved artists to paying contracts. I like.
While this is all nice and good, I'm not sure how much of an impact it'll have. I mean, for many, many of the mp3.com, besonic.com, et al groups, their music was always 'available free of charge, so long as credit is given'.. and in the situations where our music is ripped, the people who rip them arn't going to care much that your music is under (O). Since there will be no money, there's no big powerful (0) licesing watchdog to protect the interests of people under it. The problem with the industry right now is that business takes the 'all or none' approch, and the courts side with this. Either everyone pays fees for copywritten music (including Girl Scouts), or no one does. Far more useful would be to pursue better fair rights definitions, which define fair use as any situation where people listening to music are not customers of the broadcaster (like the Girl Scouts.) and where the group it is being boadcast to fits a certain minimum of ears per day (so, lets say places like funeral homes would be fine, but radio stations and malls would have to pay.) I mean, it really just comes down to some common sense that seems to have been abandoned in favour of law and precedence; should huge, rich, successful corperations get to charge you for cell phone ring tones? So long as we are not blocking these corperations' traditional path of making money (CD sales, radio broadcast), they should be made to accept that some forms of distribution without copyright payments are acceptable, and that being super-mega-rich instead of stupendously-stupidly-mega-rich will have to do.
how many slashdoters need wireless browsing? arn't we the geeks that are chained to our desks all day? and how much does it cost to browse the net on a Palm? Yes, I know, I'm PDA illiterate, but I've been assigned to give companionship to desktops my entire professional life...
From someone who works on the technology end for a major ad tech company, you are bang on. The ability to measure ROI is 'immediate' online, but also one big lie. Much like assuming that the guy who's slept with 50 girls is better looking than the one who's slept with 5. What did the girls look like? How many encounters did they all have, total? How good was the sex? When you ask a stupid question, you'll get a stupid answer; and if you're a stupid advertiser, you'll probably make a stupid judgement. Of course, the technology is still pretty new, so you cant expect a suit-industry like advertising to get it right away, but it/is/ pretty frustering to watch it from the sidelines, knowing what the average surfer is like and what truely constitutes a successful communicative session between a banner and a surfer.
Slashdot Mirror
For all those wondering why you'd buy a PDA if you were a poor student: To keep tabs on your student loan payment schedual!
... in which case, he'll be using it for 'reference' during exams. ;)
Or maybe he meant "poor" as in "bad"
Finally, we can put all those fired silicon valley geeks back into physical slavery ... powering california's websites by rotating the handle. They'll finally be able to afford a meal and cardboard box again.
"cds last forever"
People never forget:
"people will never need more than 64k memory"
"cell phones dont cause tumors"
"the speed of e-business will make everyone inside the borders of the western world stinking rich"
"napster is the future of music"
I say we mandate that computer cases always be made with a block of wood to knock on, cause these prophecies are almost always wrong.
garret
Everyone is discovering that the linux 'boom' only happened in the server/infrastructure arena. Zero Knowledge software is end user software. And so long as linux is not being used widely as a desktop platform at home (and I mean .. more than 1% of the windows home desktop user base), it doesn't make much sense for Zero Knowledge to support it. If anything, I think companies are discovering how it doesn't pay to 'jump on an OS bandwagon'. The overhead costs of supporting a particular OS are very high, so without a significant user base, I'm not surprised to see them go back to Windows only.
.. if it helps the folks working at Zero Knowledge keep their jobs, and keeps Zero Knowledge in business, then it was the right decision.
... can't we have a real discussion here, instead of the same old repetative rhetoric?
Hell, as someone pointed out, you can accomplish most of what Zero Knowledge software accomplishes with free tools anyhow, so whats all the kerfuffle about? We live in a capitalist world
As for all the folks who think they are the cat's pajamas with all the 'zero knowledge' jokes
It's definately the integration issues right now /w respect to encryption and the hooks into clients. IMHO, hotmail and yahoo and all the other free-mail services would have to offer encryption features before encryption becomes ubquitous with emailing.
doh, thanks for the correction :)
I've read his book "Esplanade Street" and it was INCREDIBLE. I read the whole thing on the very day I got it. So, for Iain Banks' virgins, this is an author very worth getting into.
slud
> worthless KDE libs only for Konq
.. the biggest distro is relying on this. Neccessity is the mother of invention and all that ...
Well, if the libs are worthless, doesn't that make Konq worthless?
My feeling on all this is that IE took years to get good. Netscape 4.7 -> Moz/Nscape6 is the rebirth, and it will be a few years before we can judge them against the ubermature IE.
The relevance of the post is that the biggest Linux distro is abandoning the biggest *nix Browser. While that doesn't mean that you like either, it doesn't diminish the relevance of the post. While Mozilla may suck, at least this indicates a major push and/or reason to guide it towards unsuckiness in future versions
Totally valid points; I hadn't thought about the fact that market saturation is getting closer. Although we have a long ways to go, if the OS-on-every-device thing comes true?
Garret
I like to think of it this way:
/is/ better than the commercial software; this is obviously judged on an app by app basis and obviously is true in many cases). Once the general public starts handing said person money for their concept, they can pay someone else money to buy commercial software. This earns them more sales people through third party sales, etc, a financial crutch should they need it (I'm sure we're aware of companies buying other companies just because that company was their best billboard and customer), and accountability for failure and fault (what I like to call the 'killer finger', in spirit of the term 'killer app'). Thusly, they never grow as big and rich as Microsoft, and consequently, not as evil either. Microsoft is the karma garberator for the technology age! ;)
.. personally, I see the balance of power as both integral to the pervasion and success of technology and inevitable. It's like jaywalking .. if we ALL did it, traffic would never go anywhere, but if no one did it .. well, see, that just never happens. =) The balance is struck due to the benifits society as a whole reaps from it. (Can you tell I buy into the whole ying/yang thing?)
.. software and technology has massive influence economic and social issues. It certainly ain't sports - you know what I'm saying?
.. makes me think of hemoglobin, which is funny 'cause Microsoft is the blood sucker, and RMS is with the Eben Moglen (okay, its a stretch, but say it fast :P)
People will use free software as a proof of concept for starting out before someone with money backs the idea (or where the free software in question really
People always seem intent on prooving that the only grass worth standing on is the grass on their side of the fence
Anyhow, this is a long winded way of saying that I do agree with your comment. I get tired of the blind supporters of either side
And Eben Moglen
Now Dance, Santa!
Personally, I would prefer ports, since Wine, though not an emulator, does keep the Win32 API 'alive', at least in a development sense. I think most here would agree that Microsoft already has enough trouble cleaning its slate and ridding itself of old messy APIs .. imagine what would happen if the Win32 API became the standard cross platform gaming API? More market clout, more reasons to keep legacy outdated APIs around, and new innovative gaming APIs may never come around; at least until Microsoft gives it to us, and then Wine catches up to it. Yuck. At least if its ports, that keeps the possibility of the dominant gaming platform shifting to some other platform than Windows. :)
I've switched between Cable and DSL numerous times (4x), and in my experience, it totally depends on where you are; ie, location from CO and how many people you're sharing the Cable loop with. I suspect that in the end, Cable is easier for the providers to scale since more often than not I've ended up finding Cable is the best choice in most of the numerous locations in Toronto that I've lived.
Since MSs products do this that the other thing and the last thing you ever want to do but not the thing you need to buy the 3rd party software for, is it really any surprise MS always suffers from escaped code review buffers? When you bite off more than you SHOULD chew, this 'll always happen. =)
.. more granular projects lead to better security ...
Its a good thing for the OS community
Garret
Why Windows Media over Real Media? If you ask me, the Windows Media wins the quality argument hands down.
Why Windows Media over Quicktime? It would seem that Quicktime wins the platform argument; and I think the quality is better with Quicktime anyways (tho I suppose thats arguable?). I'd imagine its the same reason Windows 9x is everywhere. Marketing, corperate partnerships, advertising?
I think it'd be cool; bright flashes for explosions .. but you wonder if there comes a point where the game/application is so immersive, people start experiecing real life emotional consequences. At what point can we fool the mind, and do we really want to? Some games are already realistic and scary enough ... =)
oh my, well, whether its slashdot, or xyz.com, it doesn't change the substance of my point
Not all the technological advancements that affect you have to sit on your desktop. If this helps reduce the cost for data storage providers and data-centric service providers (like mp3.com), then potentially we may see the trend for such companies now being forced into the reality of charging reversed; ie, where advertising could end up covering most of the costs again. So you may never be able to buy this at FutureShop, but if slashdot can buy it from Vendor XYZ, at a cost less than however many platter-based disks it would take to match storage requirements, they could show less banners. And you'd probably be happy. =) And yes, its probably years off, but that doesn't neccessarily negate my point.
:)
Just a thought
I think its interesting how the avg user will probably not need larger and larger drives anyhow. As the power of your computer increases, and thus the ability to compress/decompress using more and more complex but space-efficient algorithms, so does its ability to 'recreate' on the fly things like music, computer graphics, etc. Remember when everyone said the CD-Rom was the future of gaming because of the size of the medium? For a few years, yes, we had all those 4 CD-Rom pre-rendered movies/scene games, but once the hardware caught up, practically every game now just renders on the fly; consequently, games are way smaller. Anyhow, it is very cool from a datawarehousing standpoint .. things like geographical analysis, centralized data stores (a la library of congress, I guess) will benifit. And the size of the read/write mechanism shouldn't matter as much, although clearly it will have to be reasonable.
I'd agree if the idea of an organized body of programmers didn't scare me so much ;)
will:
/consider/ anything less than 'we get first crack at anything you do, and even then you probably cant use it anywhere else'
... =)
a) enough employees stay out of work to fuel the neccessary employment boycott to get companies to even
or
b) companies say 'no', 95% of employees say 'oh well, I tried, but its better than being unemployed', and we all keep living this beautiful capitalist dream without a care in the world
I think b. But, who knows
> So, where does it end?
.. and with all due respect, jamming just makes life more expensive (through loss of effeciency and the fact that decisions are based on provided and tracked information) for those of us who either play the game or boycott it altogether. I'm not much of a privacy freak, but judging from the number of people who 'claim' to have problems with it, even a mildly successful full-boycott of the mediums of technology that you feel abuses your right to privacy could probably make believers out of advertisers/etc. And at any rate, every single one of us wants at least one, if not more, companies (like, for me: tc electronics, Emagic, Digidesign) to operate leaner and more informed to the needs of their consumers. Like one mans trash is anothers treasure, you may enjoy jamming, but you're not doing /everyone/ a favour .. no worse than the companies/governments/alien races themselves who you claim will abuse it.
.. words are dangerous .. being 'stamped' or 'indexed' sounds really scary! impersonal! yeah! orwellian! but seriously, you index your own friends in your head .. heck, we index all our customers using their names as the key. But if it was numbers, they'd never know, and I'd venture to say, they'd never care.) I'm my own unique person .. with my own special feelings, and emotions, and thoughts, but I certainly am not relying on company X to validate this! =) If you dont want to play the game, by all means, don't, but you're not doing anyone favours, and contrary to what you might think, that includes yourself.
It certainly won't when you're culture-jamming with fake info. I realize the inherent dangers of the convergance of all this personal data, etc, and the loss of privacy that accompanies it
And shit, I dont mind being known as a number; if it stops the 5 pounds of junk mail delivered to my house every week, stops the needless destruction of trees for blanket marketing, streamlines the amount of time you and I have to spend every week with the inevitable amount of corperate-supplied information we are bombarded with (ie, advertising) every week, what the hell is the problem with being a number, or stamp, or whatever? (which brings up another point
> specifically prohibits downloaders from creating derived works, using the media in a public performance setting, placing it in a product, etc etc, without permission of the artist and mp3.com
Oh yeah, I knew that, but like you did with the (O) in the band info, I had info that just said you could steal whatever you wanted when you wanted so long as I had credit. I think if Napster taught us anything, its that no one gives a rats ass when it comes to a license, unless they think its simple and fair. In the case of mp3.com, I doubt 1 in 40 downloaders had read or even knew of the details of the mp3.com license; so I didn't have a problem with the fact that I had to explicitly articulate the terms of 'extended rights' for my music, figuring that they would probably be the only 'rights' any surfer would be aware of.
I suppose with respect to broadcasters, distributers, etc, some may have been scared away by the 'loseness' of the terms of use I layed down. But I wouldn't be surprised if Open Content gets the same sort of repuation as Open Source - namely that its valuable, good stuff, but there's no accountability in using it, so the players (broadcasters, distributers, etc) with money who can afford the audience to realize the benefits of royalty-free distribution will avoid it for accountability reasons.
Maybe I'm a cynic; don't get me wrong tho, I do think (O) is a good idea. Imagine a world where a label can collect and release a double disk 40 artist compilation of Open Content artists, risk free for all parties, with the label knowing they'll get enough feedback to sign the 4 most well recieved artists to paying contracts. I like.
Garret
While this is all nice and good, I'm not sure how much of an impact it'll have. I mean, for many, many of the mp3.com, besonic.com, et al groups, their music was always 'available free of charge, so long as credit is given' .. and in the situations where our music is ripped, the people who rip them arn't going to care much that your music is under (O). Since there will be no money, there's no big powerful (0) licesing watchdog to protect the interests of people under it. The problem with the industry right now is that business takes the 'all or none' approch, and the courts side with this. Either everyone pays fees for copywritten music (including Girl Scouts), or no one does. Far more useful would be to pursue better fair rights definitions, which define fair use as any situation where people listening to music are not customers of the broadcaster (like the Girl Scouts.) and where the group it is being boadcast to fits a certain minimum of ears per day (so, lets say places like funeral homes would be fine, but radio stations and malls would have to pay.) I mean, it really just comes down to some common sense that seems to have been abandoned in favour of law and precedence; should huge, rich, successful corperations get to charge you for cell phone ring tones? So long as we are not blocking these corperations' traditional path of making money (CD sales, radio broadcast), they should be made to accept that some forms of distribution without copyright payments are acceptable, and that being super-mega-rich instead of stupendously-stupidly-mega-rich will have to do.
how many slashdoters need wireless browsing? arn't we the geeks that are chained to our desks all day? and how much does it cost to browse the net on a Palm? Yes, I know, I'm PDA illiterate, but I've been assigned to give companionship to desktops my entire professional life ...
Garret
From someone who works on the technology end for a major ad tech company, you are bang on. The ability to measure ROI is 'immediate' online, but also one big lie. Much like assuming that the guy who's slept with 50 girls is better looking than the one who's slept with 5. What did the girls look like? How many encounters did they all have, total? How good was the sex? When you ask a stupid question, you'll get a stupid answer; and if you're a stupid advertiser, you'll probably make a stupid judgement. Of course, the technology is still pretty new, so you cant expect a suit-industry like advertising to get it right away, but it /is/ pretty frustering to watch it from the sidelines, knowing what the average surfer is like and what truely constitutes a successful communicative session between a banner and a surfer.