He's still relevant because out of all the engineers who've ever done anything, Woz is very arguably in the top 10, period, of all time, end of story
I'd definitely agree if we were talking about engineers of computer-related technologies, but in your statement he's up against Archimedes of Syracuse, Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Edison, Nicola Tesla, Wernher Von Braun and some other pretty exclusive company. As great as Woz's accomplishments are, I'm thinking the top 10 engineers of all time might be a pretty tough list to break in to.
I appreciate you taking the time to post an insider perspective on things, but your conclusion of "For all the malfeasance you can lay at the feet of cable companies, this is surprisingly not included" does not follow from the two reasons you gave. Your company entered into a contract involving viewer-hostile terms rather than negotiating a better deal, and somehow you expect viewers to only be upset with the network providers who proposed this crappy pricing structure, not the cable companies who agreed to it. The fact that agreeing to terms like the ones you describe would annoy viewers and limit their choices was considered by the cable companies an acceptable sacrifice to make.
The Constitution applies to the U.S. Federal government, and how it interacts with ALL people EVERYWHERE.
So can the U.S. federal government can "lay and collect Taxes" (Article I Section 8) from "ALL people EVERYWHERE"? They can enforce copyright all over the world (sorry, Pirate Bay)? They can "suppress insurrections" against anyone in the world (that solves the whole legality-of-the-Iraq-war debate)? Other activities that courts have upheld fall within the government's Constitutional powers, like conscription and eminent domain could also be thorny if they could be used against all people everywhere.
I think what you're actually trying to get at is that parts of the Constitution that grant the government power should be narrowly focused in scope, but the parts that specify limitations on the government be applied globally with anyone it interacts with. This could make for good practice, since it takes a sort of least common denominator approach to things. However, taking your assertion at face value, that U.S. laws apply whenever the U.S. federal government deals with all people everywhere, can be very dangerous.
The rights written in the Bill of Rights apply to all humans, and are not granted by the Constitution. The Constitution just reminds the Federal government that it can not revoke these rights, or change them. Habeas Corpus is an inherent right for all humans that we must demand to keep fully removed from any government's desire to remove it or restrain it.
Very true. As a pedantic point, however, Habeas Corpus is guaranteed by Article I Section 9 of the Constitution, not by the Bill of Rights (Amendments 1 - 10).
Intellectual property isn't a concept in the law in and of itself, the term is really more a way to spread nebulous FUD and also a convenience term to collectively speak about legal concepts that are separate but all deal with the notion that people can own ideas.
So what form of intellectual property exactly does the bookstore think the numbers fall under?/P>
They're not copyrighted. Even under modern, highly stretched definitions of creative works you can't copyright a number like that. What original expression of an idea does it represent? Not that someone wouldn't try it, people have even tried making claims as stupid as that the price of their merchandise is copyrighted.
They're not a trade secret. The numbers are printed right there on the book.
They're not a trademark. When someone sees "978-0-7356-1879-4" they don't think of this particular bookstore, which is good because that would make it really hard for other stores to sell the same book. Intel did try to trademark the number "486" and failed, which is why they started naming all their chips "Pentium" instead.
And, they're not patented. Even given the level of rubber-stamping the Patent Office does, I don't think "A system for designating a book with the number 978-0-7356-1879-4" would cut it. Maybe if you added "on the Internet" in there somewhere...
In the English language, words and phrases often have more than one meaning. In particular, "beg the question" in common parlance often carries the meaning of "raises the question", while in the context of logical fallacies it has a different one.
Put it this way, if a neighbour (who you hate and who hates you) down the street rigs up a gun in their yard and says it's a defense system against you, then sure it's a defense system against you. But if that neighbour puts the gun in the yard of your next door neighbour, then while it might still be a "defense system against you" and still not quite "gun to your head" "defense", it doesn't quite give you the same warm fuzzy feeling of "defense against you", hope you know what I mean;).
Your analogy is interesting, but somewhat flawed. A gun works as defense by making it possible to shoot your adversary or intimidate him with the prospect of being shot. A missile defense, however, does not shoot the country it is defending against, it shoots down the missiles they are firing. U.S. missile defense systems mostly use a kinetic-kill vehicle approach - rocket crashes into enemy rocket, destroying both. Good against a missile, not so good as an offensive weapon to blow stuff up, since it helps to have an explosive payload for that.
Consider a variant on your analogy where the neighbor builds a bullet-proof wall next door, saying it is there for "defense". You get mad and start whining, because now if you want to shoot at his house with your gun, you don't have a clear shot.
Of course it's a trap. Imagine you were walking along and you saw a bear trap on the ground, with a trip wire beside it leading to a gas canister. A cage is suspended over it by a rope, and there's a sentry gun mounted nearby. You might think, "this is a trap", unless you were a Novell executive, in which case you would step into the the apparatus try to find ways to "interoperate" with it.
You are kidding, right? This is absolutely no user error. It should be safe to assume that turning the thing off implies radio off.
It should be safe to assume that turning your computer's monitor off, or hitting "Lock Computer" implies ethernet and WiFi are off, so any BitTorrent activity afterwards can't be blamed on you, right?
The user has to know that just locking the screen does not imply radio off. How would you receive incoming calls if that were the case? Why would the user have explicitly changed their iPhone from manual email checking to automatic email checking if not for the fact that it checks their email for them at the interval they set it to, and notifies them of new mail even with the screen locked?
and that's totally acceptable. A user shouldn't be able to just glance at their phone to determine if it's off, or if it's "sleeping", but not sleeping so soundly
On my PowerBook, "sleeping" mode has a slowly blinking white light on the outside of the laptop case, which is off when the computer is actually "off". I'm kind of glad Apple didn't do that with the iPhone, because it's annoying, particularly in a dark room.
And you all know... we're eventually going to come to what some call "the mother of all 80's remakes"... G.I. Joe.
They are, in fact coming out with a GI Joe movie. The bad news, however, is it sounds like it is being screwed up even more than the normal Hollywood treatment. The whole "real American hero" thing is being removed in the name of political correctness, and "GIJOE" now stands for "Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity".
Really? Steve sat down and personally read hundreds of emails that all boiled down to "I paid $200 more than I could have so you suck."? Really? You don't think that after 35 or so he'd have gotten the idea?
They didn't just "cite" opposition to U.S. plans. George Bush nullified the treaty which ended the bomber patrols. The star wars net in eastern europe is only part of that nullification. But be sure that the treaty no longer exists.
The United States and Soviet Union had more than one treaty with one another. The 1991 treaty about bomber patrols is not the same as the 1973 anti-ballistic missile treaty (the one George Bush ended).
We do it everyday. Normally over the oceans, but we still do it. At any one time, they are on their way to whoever we consider the enemy.
While strategic bomber patrols were a common practice during the Cold War (particularly before ICBMs were available to deliver the nukes), Bush Sr. and Gorbachev agreed in 1991 to stop flying nukes on bombers, along with some other terms. Russia has recently backpedaled on this treaty, resuming the bomber patrols though supposedly without nukes on board. In doing so, they cited opposition to U.S. plans to build anti-missile defenses in eastern Europe. If the U.S. had been violating the agreement all along, that would have made for a much better justification for Russia's move, and they presumably would have mentioned it.
Do you have any source for your claim that the U.S. flies nuclear patrols on a daily basis, or even that they have done so at any time post-Cold War?
Whenever Apple announces an iPod with a capacity larger than previously available, Slashdot always gets these "N GB ought to be enough for anybody" posts. This ignores the considerations that A) you can never have too much storage space, and B) not everybody uses their iPod the same way you do.
Suppose someone is into classical music. They take the complete works of Bach and Mozart, make lossless rips of them (compression artifacts are particularly bad for classical), put them on their iPod. That fills up an 80GB iPod right there, just for the works of two guys. Now suppose this user wants to listen to other composers, or have performances of symphonies by multiple orchestras, or have music of other genres on there as well, or have room for some video... they go with a 160GB iPod, not because it's "O-VER-KILL", but because there isn't a Terabyte iPod available.
of the hundreds of journal articles on the subject, there was not a single one that disputed that global warming existed.
Saying that the climate is getting warmer is just a matter of comparing temperature readings to historic ones. What people argue over is why this is. Is human activity a factor in this trend? A major one? The predominant one? The sole thing driving temperature variations? This is the part you'll see theories being contested about.
I'm sorry, I don't see either where I said the author chooses nor how it is relevant: if the user chooses so, the software is GPL 3 and MS distributed GPL 3 software.
If someone wants to distribute a piece of GPL software with the "either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version" wording, they can comply with the terms of the GPL v2 and distribute it, comply with the terms of the GPL v3 and distribute it, or even comply with the terms of GPL v17 whenever it comes out and distribute it. It's their choice.
This is completely different than what you see in EULAs, where the author says, if you use (not just distribute) this software, you have to agree to such-and-such terms, which the author reserves the right to unilaterally change down the road, taking away whatever freedom you had under the old version.
Apple did take technological measures to assure their business agreement with AT&T was fulfilled and they do have technological measures to assure their device is not tampered with so there is actually quite a bit of room on Apple and AT&T's side for debate.
The DMCA prohibits circumventing technological measures that protect a copyrighted work from unauthorized duplication, not measures that protect a business agreement from becoming unprofitable.
If you are going to present an argument against the idea that school shootings can be defended against by the would-be victims having guns of their own, the Charles Whitman case might not be the best example to use. He began his attack with slow, methodical fire from a scoped 6mm rifle that killed a lot of people, and later switched to weapons that were less accurate but quicker to snap off shots from such as an M1 carbine, as civilians below began returning fire. Armed civilians not only make the "walk in and shoot the sitting ducks" approach impractical, but can also force someone using the sniper approach to employ suboptimal tactics, reducing the loss of life.
Having attribution for quotes makes them able to be verified. Disclosing journalistic sources doesn't quite enable the same degree of many-eyeballs as disclosing software source does, since every reader can't just call George Bush up and personally ask him if he said such-and-such, but it does at least assure that if a quote becomes a point of contention and controversy, someone will check it out. Also, if a quote is attributed to a specific individual, there's a reasonable chance of determining whether they said that. If it is just attributed to "sources close to so-and-so" there's really no way to know if someone among this unspecified group of individuals may or may not have said it. In all, "sources speaking on the condition of anonymity say..." is just journalist talk for "rumor has it that..."
While the use of bribery to prevent competition in a marketplace is an all-too-common occurrence as in the examples you mention, there are plenty of rational reasons not to like it. Let's say Coke gives kickbacks to a school not to let Pepsi sell there. Of course the parties are willing to sign. Coke gets their market share at that location to shoot up to 100%. The dean gets some money to buy a new BMW. What's not to like?
The market itself, however is being damaged. Coke is basically doing an end run around pesky things like competition and the free market. Pepsi is screwed, though you might argue it's their fault for not cutting a deal first. Ultimately however, it's the consumer who is screwed. The market has degenerated into a monopoly for Coke. Rather than Coke asking, "How much can we sell Coke for and not have Pepsi out-compete us?" they are asking "Now that we're the only game in town, how high can we jack the price before people will just do without something to drink?"
Analysis of Web traffic shows that not only are there miscreants who look at Web sites without viewing the ads, there are also thieves out there who will actually view the ads, but then turn around and not purchase the product being advertised, as they are morally obligated to! Have these people no shame? Surely every Web site visitor should 1:1 to an ad impression, an ad click, and a sale for the site's advertisers. But, with all the rampant thievery going on, this isn't the case. Where will this repugnant behavior stop? Not only do these people defraud honest and hardworking Web site owners, but they probably also do morally equivalent acts like flipping TV channels during commercials, failing to study each billboard they drive past, or carrying out armed bank heists.
Reporting that Vista respects what is required to play these DRM laden formats "legally" is just pointless. What did you think they would do?
Well, considering Microsoft's track record on correctly implementing standards (CSS, PNG, HTML, Java, TCP/IP, etc.) they picked a pretty annoying one to finally write a to-the-letter implementation of.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd definitely agree if we were talking about engineers of computer-related technologies, but in your statement he's up against Archimedes of Syracuse, Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Edison, Nicola Tesla, Wernher Von Braun and some other pretty exclusive company. As great as Woz's accomplishments are, I'm thinking the top 10 engineers of all time might be a pretty tough list to break in to.
Illegal. See FCC regulations on this.
I appreciate you taking the time to post an insider perspective on things, but your conclusion of "For all the malfeasance you can lay at the feet of cable companies, this is surprisingly not included" does not follow from the two reasons you gave. Your company entered into a contract involving viewer-hostile terms rather than negotiating a better deal, and somehow you expect viewers to only be upset with the network providers who proposed this crappy pricing structure, not the cable companies who agreed to it. The fact that agreeing to terms like the ones you describe would annoy viewers and limit their choices was considered by the cable companies an acceptable sacrifice to make.
So can the U.S. federal government can "lay and collect Taxes" (Article I Section 8) from "ALL people EVERYWHERE"? They can enforce copyright all over the world (sorry, Pirate Bay)? They can "suppress insurrections" against anyone in the world (that solves the whole legality-of-the-Iraq-war debate)? Other activities that courts have upheld fall within the government's Constitutional powers, like conscription and eminent domain could also be thorny if they could be used against all people everywhere.
I think what you're actually trying to get at is that parts of the Constitution that grant the government power should be narrowly focused in scope, but the parts that specify limitations on the government be applied globally with anyone it interacts with. This could make for good practice, since it takes a sort of least common denominator approach to things. However, taking your assertion at face value, that U.S. laws apply whenever the U.S. federal government deals with all people everywhere, can be very dangerous.
The rights written in the Bill of Rights apply to all humans, and are not granted by the Constitution. The Constitution just reminds the Federal government that it can not revoke these rights, or change them. Habeas Corpus is an inherent right for all humans that we must demand to keep fully removed from any government's desire to remove it or restrain it.Very true. As a pedantic point, however, Habeas Corpus is guaranteed by Article I Section 9 of the Constitution, not by the Bill of Rights (Amendments 1 - 10).
Intellectual property isn't a concept in the law in and of itself, the term is really more a way to spread nebulous FUD and also a convenience term to collectively speak about legal concepts that are separate but all deal with the notion that people can own ideas.
So what form of intellectual property exactly does the bookstore think the numbers fall under?/P>
They're not copyrighted. Even under modern, highly stretched definitions of creative works you can't copyright a number like that. What original expression of an idea does it represent? Not that someone wouldn't try it, people have even tried making claims as stupid as that the price of their merchandise is copyrighted.
They're not a trade secret. The numbers are printed right there on the book.
They're not a trademark. When someone sees "978-0-7356-1879-4" they don't think of this particular bookstore, which is good because that would make it really hard for other stores to sell the same book. Intel did try to trademark the number "486" and failed, which is why they started naming all their chips "Pentium" instead.
And, they're not patented. Even given the level of rubber-stamping the Patent Office does, I don't think "A system for designating a book with the number 978-0-7356-1879-4" would cut it. Maybe if you added "on the Internet" in there somewhere...
http://mw1.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/beg%20the%20question
Please read.
In the English language, words and phrases often have more than one meaning. In particular, "beg the question" in common parlance often carries the meaning of "raises the question", while in the context of logical fallacies it has a different one.
Your analogy is interesting, but somewhat flawed. A gun works as defense by making it possible to shoot your adversary or intimidate him with the prospect of being shot. A missile defense, however, does not shoot the country it is defending against, it shoots down the missiles they are firing. U.S. missile defense systems mostly use a kinetic-kill vehicle approach - rocket crashes into enemy rocket, destroying both. Good against a missile, not so good as an offensive weapon to blow stuff up, since it helps to have an explosive payload for that.
Consider a variant on your analogy where the neighbor builds a bullet-proof wall next door, saying it is there for "defense". You get mad and start whining, because now if you want to shoot at his house with your gun, you don't have a clear shot.
Of course it's a trap. Imagine you were walking along and you saw a bear trap on the ground, with a trip wire beside it leading to a gas canister. A cage is suspended over it by a rope, and there's a sentry gun mounted nearby. You might think, "this is a trap", unless you were a Novell executive, in which case you would step into the the apparatus try to find ways to "interoperate" with it.
It should be safe to assume that turning your computer's monitor off, or hitting "Lock Computer" implies ethernet and WiFi are off, so any BitTorrent activity afterwards can't be blamed on you, right?
The user has to know that just locking the screen does not imply radio off. How would you receive incoming calls if that were the case? Why would the user have explicitly changed their iPhone from manual email checking to automatic email checking if not for the fact that it checks their email for them at the interval they set it to, and notifies them of new mail even with the screen locked?
On my PowerBook, "sleeping" mode has a slowly blinking white light on the outside of the laptop case, which is off when the computer is actually "off". I'm kind of glad Apple didn't do that with the iPhone, because it's annoying, particularly in a dark room.
They are, in fact coming out with a GI Joe movie. The bad news, however, is it sounds like it is being screwed up even more than the normal Hollywood treatment. The whole "real American hero" thing is being removed in the name of political correctness, and "GIJOE" now stands for "Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity".
Really? Steve sat down and personally read hundreds of emails that all boiled down to "I paid $200 more than I could have so you suck."? Really? You don't think that after 35 or so he'd have gotten the idea?
(My GF's response when I showed her the article)
The United States and Soviet Union had more than one treaty with one another. The 1991 treaty about bomber patrols is not the same as the 1973 anti-ballistic missile treaty (the one George Bush ended).
While strategic bomber patrols were a common practice during the Cold War (particularly before ICBMs were available to deliver the nukes), Bush Sr. and Gorbachev agreed in 1991 to stop flying nukes on bombers, along with some other terms. Russia has recently backpedaled on this treaty, resuming the bomber patrols though supposedly without nukes on board. In doing so, they cited opposition to U.S. plans to build anti-missile defenses in eastern Europe. If the U.S. had been violating the agreement all along, that would have made for a much better justification for Russia's move, and they presumably would have mentioned it.
Do you have any source for your claim that the U.S. flies nuclear patrols on a daily basis, or even that they have done so at any time post-Cold War?
Whenever Apple announces an iPod with a capacity larger than previously available, Slashdot always gets these "N GB ought to be enough for anybody" posts. This ignores the considerations that A) you can never have too much storage space, and B) not everybody uses their iPod the same way you do.
Suppose someone is into classical music. They take the complete works of Bach and Mozart, make lossless rips of them (compression artifacts are particularly bad for classical), put them on their iPod. That fills up an 80GB iPod right there, just for the works of two guys. Now suppose this user wants to listen to other composers, or have performances of symphonies by multiple orchestras, or have music of other genres on there as well, or have room for some video... they go with a 160GB iPod, not because it's "O-VER-KILL", but because there isn't a Terabyte iPod available.
Saying that the climate is getting warmer is just a matter of comparing temperature readings to historic ones. What people argue over is why this is. Is human activity a factor in this trend? A major one? The predominant one? The sole thing driving temperature variations? This is the part you'll see theories being contested about.
If someone wants to distribute a piece of GPL software with the "either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version" wording, they can comply with the terms of the GPL v2 and distribute it, comply with the terms of the GPL v3 and distribute it, or even comply with the terms of GPL v17 whenever it comes out and distribute it. It's their choice.
This is completely different than what you see in EULAs, where the author says, if you use (not just distribute) this software, you have to agree to such-and-such terms, which the author reserves the right to unilaterally change down the road, taking away whatever freedom you had under the old version.
The DMCA prohibits circumventing technological measures that protect a copyrighted work from unauthorized duplication, not measures that protect a business agreement from becoming unprofitable.
If you are going to present an argument against the idea that school shootings can be defended against by the would-be victims having guns of their own, the Charles Whitman case might not be the best example to use. He began his attack with slow, methodical fire from a scoped 6mm rifle that killed a lot of people, and later switched to weapons that were less accurate but quicker to snap off shots from such as an M1 carbine, as civilians below began returning fire. Armed civilians not only make the "walk in and shoot the sitting ducks" approach impractical, but can also force someone using the sniper approach to employ suboptimal tactics, reducing the loss of life.
What, you haven't found the severed horse head I left in your bed yet?
Having attribution for quotes makes them able to be verified. Disclosing journalistic sources doesn't quite enable the same degree of many-eyeballs as disclosing software source does, since every reader can't just call George Bush up and personally ask him if he said such-and-such, but it does at least assure that if a quote becomes a point of contention and controversy, someone will check it out. Also, if a quote is attributed to a specific individual, there's a reasonable chance of determining whether they said that. If it is just attributed to "sources close to so-and-so" there's really no way to know if someone among this unspecified group of individuals may or may not have said it. In all, "sources speaking on the condition of anonymity say..." is just journalist talk for "rumor has it that..."
While the use of bribery to prevent competition in a marketplace is an all-too-common occurrence as in the examples you mention, there are plenty of rational reasons not to like it. Let's say Coke gives kickbacks to a school not to let Pepsi sell there. Of course the parties are willing to sign. Coke gets their market share at that location to shoot up to 100%. The dean gets some money to buy a new BMW. What's not to like?
The market itself, however is being damaged. Coke is basically doing an end run around pesky things like competition and the free market. Pepsi is screwed, though you might argue it's their fault for not cutting a deal first. Ultimately however, it's the consumer who is screwed. The market has degenerated into a monopoly for Coke. Rather than Coke asking, "How much can we sell Coke for and not have Pepsi out-compete us?" they are asking "Now that we're the only game in town, how high can we jack the price before people will just do without something to drink?"
Why are they setting a minimum bid? They should just start it at $0.01 and keep saying "reserve not met" until it passes the $4,600,000,000.00 point.
Analysis of Web traffic shows that not only are there miscreants who look at Web sites without viewing the ads, there are also thieves out there who will actually view the ads, but then turn around and not purchase the product being advertised, as they are morally obligated to! Have these people no shame? Surely every Web site visitor should 1:1 to an ad impression, an ad click, and a sale for the site's advertisers. But, with all the rampant thievery going on, this isn't the case. Where will this repugnant behavior stop? Not only do these people defraud honest and hardworking Web site owners, but they probably also do morally equivalent acts like flipping TV channels during commercials, failing to study each billboard they drive past, or carrying out armed bank heists.
Well, considering Microsoft's track record on correctly implementing standards (CSS, PNG, HTML, Java, TCP/IP, etc.) they picked a pretty annoying one to finally write a to-the-letter implementation of.