This reminds me of a story. I was born in 1978, and I'm guessing I was around 8 or so when I did this, making it somewhere around 1986, give or take a year or so.
I went with my step-father into a computer store, looking at C64 games. While browsing, I came across a black & white macintosh computer on display. It had a mouse, a component I'd never seen before. I placed my hand on the mouse because it looked inviting, and I watched the screen. There, I saw an arrow pointer, and by golly, it moved! But...just a smidge! So, naturally, I concentrated harder! Uggghhhh...! Unfortunately, I could never concentrate hard enough to get it to move more than a hair or two every few seconds (I guess I wasn't holding as still as I thought).
I always wondered why a mega company like Microsoft doesn't do the mature thing by at least giving "new" ideas an honest try.
What do I mean?
Why can't Microsoft take one of its pet projects, like Media Player, or Outlook Express, or any other, and turn it into an OSS project. Let the community have at it. There's only so many outcomes:
The community reviews the project's code and either:
--a) Improves it, makes it more efficient, fixes bugs/security holes
--b) Makes suggestions that Microsoft thinks are utter crap
What other outcomes are there? Sure, people might laugh at some of their code, especially if it's really really ugly. What software project's code doesn't become ugly after a bajillion revisions?
Does Microsoft see such an endeavor as stooping to some kind of a new low? C'mon! Or maybe they know that it's not such a bad idea, but they're so afraid of giving up their "trade secrets" that if they went with an OSS attempt that they'd have even less reasons to support their CSS methods?
Sometimes I wonder how those judges act around each other, in private. I mean, surely these people drink beer, scratch their crotch, and cuss at least once in a while.
When they turn down cases like this, they give these judicial briefs sometimes explaining their reasoning. But prior to any public announcement, I wonder what their conversations are like amongst each other behind closed doors.
"Okay, so we have this obscenity case on our hands...," says Sandra Day O'Conner.
"F*ck that..," says Clearance Thomas, tiredly wiping his hand across his face.
"Right," she says, tossing the papers aside and moving on to the next stack of papers.
Hmm...nevermind about the crotch scratching. I'd be horrified to know that Sandra scratches herself. Talk about a case of obscenity!
I'm reminded of Star Trek. We all know that Star Trek is the way of the future. Talk about beating a dead horse.
But this story made me think back on the episode where Cmdr. Data is swapping all of those USB flash drives into a different order to overcome some technical problem. USB and Flash memory are therefor, conclusively, here to stay for good.
My only question is, aside from application of the DMCA in the U.S., how is this kind of information any different from say, Consumer Reports? Those guys go out of their way to break cars, appliances, and other consumer products.
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No, but being in their shoes helps. It's always easiest to be critical of those we can observe from a safe vantage point.
What is it you're saying?
This reminds me of a story. I was born in 1978, and I'm guessing I was around 8 or so when I did this, making it somewhere around 1986, give or take a year or so. I went with my step-father into a computer store, looking at C64 games. While browsing, I came across a black & white macintosh computer on display. It had a mouse, a component I'd never seen before. I placed my hand on the mouse because it looked inviting, and I watched the screen. There, I saw an arrow pointer, and by golly, it moved! But...just a smidge! So, naturally, I concentrated harder! Uggghhhh...! Unfortunately, I could never concentrate hard enough to get it to move more than a hair or two every few seconds (I guess I wasn't holding as still as I thought).
What do I mean?
Why can't Microsoft take one of its pet projects, like Media Player, or Outlook Express, or any other, and turn it into an OSS project. Let the community have at it. There's only so many outcomes:
The community reviews the project's code and either:
--a) Improves it, makes it more efficient, fixes bugs/security holes
--b) Makes suggestions that Microsoft thinks are utter crap
What other outcomes are there? Sure, people might laugh at some of their code, especially if it's really really ugly. What software project's code doesn't become ugly after a bajillion revisions?
Does Microsoft see such an endeavor as stooping to some kind of a new low? C'mon! Or maybe they know that it's not such a bad idea, but they're so afraid of giving up their "trade secrets" that if they went with an OSS attempt that they'd have even less reasons to support their CSS methods?
Sometimes I wonder how those judges act around each other, in private. I mean, surely these people drink beer, scratch their crotch, and cuss at least once in a while.
When they turn down cases like this, they give these judicial briefs sometimes explaining their reasoning. But prior to any public announcement, I wonder what their conversations are like amongst each other behind closed doors.
"Okay, so we have this obscenity case on our hands...," says Sandra Day O'Conner.
"F*ck that..," says Clearance Thomas, tiredly wiping his hand across his face.
"Right," she says, tossing the papers aside and moving on to the next stack of papers.
Hmm...nevermind about the crotch scratching. I'd be horrified to know that Sandra scratches herself. Talk about a case of obscenity!
I'm reminded of Star Trek. We all know that Star Trek is the way of the future. Talk about beating a dead horse. But this story made me think back on the episode where Cmdr. Data is swapping all of those USB flash drives into a different order to overcome some technical problem. USB and Flash memory are therefor, conclusively, here to stay for good.
My only question is, aside from application of the DMCA in the U.S., how is this kind of information any different from say, Consumer Reports? Those guys go out of their way to break cars, appliances, and other consumer products.
This is very similar to the SETI@Home project. I'd like to try it out and run it for a while. How and where do I sign up?