I'm just finishing up my MBA at the University of Toronto, and we aren't even provided with a computer lab anymore. For the past 2 years every MBA student has been required to have their own wireless-enabled laptop.
The wireless network goes beyond just the business school as well. It's the same network all over campus, with the same username/password combo as well as other authentication tokens. Here's a map. [ It's a big campus, solidly-packed with buildings. I'm guessing that what's shown on the map here is a bit over 2 square miles. ]
Of course, the Intel-sponsored school rankings doesn't include "foreign schools", but I've got to say I'm pretty impressed with things here at U of T.
I have yet to hear a single techie say, "Well, I guess I'm obsolete -- better go find a new, profitable skill set."
What about the techies who decide to go back to school to "re-tool" themselves, on the thinking that hacking Perl code isn't going to take them clear through to retirement? (Yes, I would be one of those.)
I decided (or perhaps realized) that IT wasn't enough for me to accomplish what I wanted to in life, give me enough job/career stability, etc. That said, my IT background is serving me very well indeed here at B-school. And I'm still very happily Mongering on over here -- I know and love my hackish culture.:-)
I think the important part is to figure out what's coming down the pipe and to get out of the way a few years before it all goes to heck. The smart rats jump ship early, as it were.
Apart from this minor quibble, I very much agree with the general point of the parent posting.
Call me Mr. Conspiracy Theory, but this just looks so blantantly like Microsoft is calling the shots. Where is Microsoft worried most about losing out to Linux? Embedded systems OSes and governement servers. Who does SCO harrass next? TiVo and the feds. How much do they want to charge? Roughly the same amount as Microsoft licenses for their OSes on each device.
On first glace, the P6 syntax looks... scary. And I'm even someone who's been into P6 (at least marginally) for a few years now.
What I think though is important to remember is that if all you look at is the syntax, you won't appreciate the power -- and simplicity -- of the idioms. Taken out of context and put into cooked up examples meant to show off the new syntax, it looks bad... really bad. But once you actually start programming in it, you'll find that most of what you want and need to do will actually come quite simply.
That vast majority of all this new syntax will be applied in the vast minority of programming cases. Much of it will get sucked up into modules, classes, etc., that you'll use without worrying about what's actually going on under the hood. And "the rest of us" will just have an incredibly powerful language that is actually easier to program.
> Until O'Reilly argues on the same wavelength as
> RMS - which means either attacking the stated
> goals of RMS, or attacking the means RMS uses
> to achieve those goals - then O'Reilly won't
> have an essay worth reading. When you watch a
> debate you expect PRO and CON for the SAME
> argument, not PRO and PRO for DIFFERENT
> arguments.
Actually, no. In debating terminology, what Tim O'Reilly has done is offer us a "counterplan." The only requirement of a counterplan is that it be mutually exclusive to the plan offered by the government (or, "pro") side. Since "software should be the best software possible" is mutually exclusive with "software should be Free-as-in-what-RMS-likes" (at least in some possible cases, which is what it should be), then what Tim has done is a valid approach to the debate.
He offered this counterplan because he disagreed with the premise offered by RMS. This is valid, too. Were it not, then the government side would be free to offer a case which would put the opposition in the position of having to answer a question like, "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" and giving them only "yes" and "no" as potential replies. (I.e. You're damned with either possible answer.) Instead, answer "Mu."
I bought my Dell Inspiron 4000 almost exactly 1 year ago, and since then I've had 2 support incidences with it. Both times, Dell responded magnificently in some ways, but not in others. This doesn't mean that I'm a no-holds-barred Dell booster now, but perhaps there is another dimension to the situation that needs to be considered. Let's look at the incidences...
The first was (is) that my LCD screen decided that it likes to rest against my keyboard and nipple-mouse. This is an engineering defect. After 6 months, my panel looking like someone attacked it violently with steel wool, I finally got up the nerve to approach them with the issue. With essentially zero hassle, the tech support guy on the Dell support phone line told me that they'd send me a new screen (and a technician to install it.) The guy came 2 days later, and it was fixed in 90 minutes. Verdict: They did a great job in support, but I wish their engineering wasn't so sucky in the first place that it had to be looked after this way. The technician told me that he'd get in touch with "people on his end" to figure out how to make it so that the screen wouldn't rest on my keyboard anymore. I never heard back from him. (Since then I've done myself some minor case mods that seem to help.)
The second time, my floppy drive got crushed by good old United baggage handling. (They lost my luggage, too. But that's another story...) I told Dell, and they had a new floppy drive to me the next day. Verdict: Great work on getting the drive to me so fast, Dell, but you _told_ me that it would take 2-3 days for it to arrive. So I just lucked out that I was home when the UPS guy arrived.
So, it looks to me like they're good at doing things that involve product and fit within existing policies, but not so good with things that involve processes, or involve colouring outside of policy lines.
Cheers,
Richard
(As an aside, I had an 8 week game of run-around tag with Dell sales at around the same time that leaves me wondering exactly what's their major genetic damage. It'll be quite a while before I buy from them again.)
(As another aside, I spent about 30 of those 90 minutes with the tech support guy who gave me a new LCD panel explaining to him how to set up a dual-boot Linux system. He really wants to get into Linux.:-) )
I known what FUD means and have for years now. What I can't for the life of me figure out is what it has to do with this announcement.
FUD is a marketing tactic used by a big, established, encumbent company on behalf of its technology to cast doubt on the idea of switching to a new and competing company and technology. (e.g. Microsoft vs. Linux) Or, sometimes, for a big company to claim an emerging market away from a smaller but slightly-ahead newcomer. (e.g. IBM PC vs. Apple in the early 80s.)
Neither of these situations sounds much like what this announcement is talking about.
Cheers,
Richard
GPL != poor as a church mouse -- where the $$ is
on
Mundie Responds
·
· Score: 1
Why does it seem so hard for some people (Mr. Mundie, for instance) to see where the money will be made with Open Source software, GPL or otherwise?
It's called Systems Integration. You know... consulting, professional services. That whole jazz. We're talking Gemini, Anderson, EDS. They don't care where the software they use comes from. They just want to put it all together in a way that makes things work for their clients.
If anything, Open Source software would be a boon for this crew, as having ready access to the innards of the software makes the integration task that much easier. (Not to mention kick-ass integration tools and languages like Perl.)
Sure, these companies are all currently pretty tightly in bed with Microsoft, as a) being so means that they get "special treatment" from M$; better prices on licenses, quicker and better access to beta products, M$'s own tech support and knowledge base... and b) M$'s stuff turns over so quickly and is so broken that the Integrators have endless opportunities to resell services that should only have been sold once in the first place.
But it's an unstable relationship. Some day, somehow, there will be a schism, and at least one integrator will go its own way. And the clients will be so delighted with the results that the integration industry will all eventually end up in that direction.
And noone will give a flying fig what licenses the underlying commodity components were released under.
Should this worry Microsoft? Hell yes! Not only does it show that one day they'll lose control of their integrator-lapdogs, but M$ is the only big software company that makes the majority of its money providing "products" rather than services.
I got US$20/page for something I wrote back in '96. I was dumb (well, naive) and poor back then, and I was willing to listen to the acquisitions editor when he told me that "some of [his] better authors write 4 chapters a week!" That sounded pretty good to me... US$2400 a week, maybe. Wow!
I'm not sure who these people are that can do that (hacks? machines? hack-machines?), but it's sure as hell not me. I try to budget 3 hours or so per _page_ right now, if I want for there to be any quality in it at all. Even that, that's probably not even fully-allocated time. It doesn't include:
interacting with the editor/publisher in the first place
brainstorming
dedicated research
follow-up after you've submitted your rough to the editor/publisher
probably a bazillion other things I'm forgetting about right now (maybe I'd blocked those things out of my memory for the pain involved...)
The next book project I did, I was offered it at US$20/page again (enough though it was 2.5 years later, the market had changed, I had more experience, etc.). I asked for US$25/page, and was given it immediately. (Which can only make you wonder what the "true upper limit" on such a thing is.) Still, the money was garbage for the work I had to put into it.
Even then, don't just look at the money. The "standard contract" for a book that most tech publishers give you is... well, to call it one-sided doesn't even begin to describe it.:-) If you hope to have any kind of personal involvement or control over the project or what happens to it after publication, you're likely in for quite an uphill battle.
Love him or hate him, Philip Greenspun has some interesting things to say about the publishing business for tech books. To a greater or lesser degree, I agree with him. Check it out...
http://philip.greenspun.com/wtr/dead-trees/story.h tml
Does all this mean that I won't write again? No way! I love writing, and I keep going back to it time and time again. I might even be getting better at it over the years, and that puts me in a better position to negotiate contracts, pitch ideas, plan the book the way that I want the book to be, etc. It's hard work, and there's a lot of BS involved, and the pay isn't great, but it can be incredibly gratifying to do.
Please feel free to mail me if you'd like to talk any more about this.
I wrote a chapter regarding this for a book called "CGI Programming Unleashed" (Sams.Net publishing, a MacMillan division) back in early '96. It was published that fall.
(Please don't look at my code... oh god how my Perl sucked back then...)
I doubt that this makes any argument against the patent -- they turn out to be a lot more specific than the/. crowd originally takes them to be -- but still, it's not like it's a terribly novel or original idea in the first place.
"Basically, if you heard your brain surgeon
also had a tattoo parlor, you'd probably demur.
Right now we think of them as the same thing. We
think it's perfectly all right for people to go
back and forth. I don't think it is."
I agree that this was the most important single statement in the article. However, who is/are "we"? Perhaps I'm kidding myself, but I think that practitioners of the technology appreciate the differences quite well. Sure, I sysadmin my own few Linux boxes... badly. I have a lot of respect for professional sysadmins, who don't really aspire to coding apps (or much else for that matter), but they sure manage a heterogenous network...
Thisn't isn't to say that someone can't be multitalented as an individual, either. (For instance, just try to categorize Larry Wall.:-) ) But the disciplines within IT are certainly very identifiable.
Maybe the "rest of the world" has a tougher time figuring out that software-based IT is multi-faceted. Sure, we all know that doctors and lawyers and engineers each have specialties, and as soon as you need something else done, you have to go to a different one. So why isn't this realization out there in the publics' mind with IT as well? Maybe it's because the public doesn't deal directly with software people -- it deals directly with their software, but not with the people who create it. On the other hand, people do deal directly with lawyers and doctors. So there's a lack of opportunity for education in that sense.
Another possibility is that the legal structures that have built up around the other professions (assuming you can call software a profession) virtually mandate specialization, so that risks can be controlled and liability assigned: you're just not allowed to ask an electrical engineer to build a bridge. Until legal needs enforce structure upon software producers and their profession, software producers won't admit that there are professional categories that need to be maintained... at least, not when such an admission can lock you out of that next juicy contract or product you're aiming for...
Yet another possibility might have to do with the general nature of the people involved in software production: they're young, and likely introverted. They don't handle human-human confrontation well. So, when your boss cows you into being X for a day, then you try to be X, even when you're really Y. The bosses of the world, as all us Dilbert readers know, are thick as bricks and therefore a) come up with dumb requests, and b) don't know any better from their own personal experience. If the "software guy" can't point out the error in their thinking, then why should anyone expect them to figure it out on their own?
That's a good start, but it doesn't address the issue of copies of your email that may be made along the transmission path between you and your correspondant. Heck, it doesn't even address the issue of your correspondant _not_ 'shredding' his/her copy of the email.
This would get a little bit better if we started using peer-to-peer email-like technologies, just now starting to appear on the collective radar screen...
For any single person or organization to say that they started the Open Source Revolution makes as much sense to me as to say that any single person or organization started the Renaissance.
I have a degree of sympathy towards Tiemann. Even if RedHat didn't start the oSR, it was in the thick of it. It's difficult to get a perspective on something when you're in the thick of it.
If any type of personifies the absentminded professor, it will likely be the INTP. Their inner reflectiveness - Introversion - enables them to explore all the imaginative possibilities their iNtuition preferences provides. Ther objectivity (Thinking) demands the analysis of all that information, and their open-ended and flexible attitude (Perceiving) prompts them to be responsive to whatever new data presents themselves.
-- 1st paragraph of a 4 page write up of INTP, in "Type Talk" (Otto Kroeger and Janet M. Thuesen)
It's a good idea you've got there, but the problem with good ideas is that someone else often wants to muck with them.
With the way things have been going, I can imagine "shrink-wrap" licenses on your dishwasher, toaster, etc., saying that you haven't actually _bought_ the CPU inside, but are just leasing its use for its intended purpose. Moreover, The Company That Made It reserves (and requires) the right to run for-pay distributed services on "their" CPU your appliance in order to offset the cost of providing you with the appliance-in-question (or so the story will go).
> I think this is an issue of fair use and not of > muzzling a free press or free distribution of > information. It is acknowledged as law that some > information is owned- i.e movies and music.
No. It is legally granted that some information is copyrightable, and that the copyright can be owned. That's not the same as that the information itself is owned.
> Fair Use is not about the government telling you > what you can or cannot say, or what of your own > information can be made available- it determines > what you can do with information that is belong > to someone else.
No. The information doesn't belong to someone else. The copyright on that information is owned by someone else. The issue of fair use is not "trying to figure out what person X can do with person Y's rightfully-owned information". It is trying to determine what the powers are inherent in the instructment of the law, the copyright, that Y owns.
For instance...
If I own a contract that says I own person Z (aka slavery), or that person Z is indentured to me under some set of conditions (sharecropping?) then the law as of 2000 A.D. has determined (thank the gods!) that these legal instruments are worth nada, diddley, bupkus. Contracts can't be written that are inherently illegal, as is slavery, indenture, etc.
What these court cases are doing right now, bit by bit, is trying to figure out what a copyright contract/legal instrument actually is, what legally enforcable powers it grants, etc.
Btw, good discussion. Your points are very interesting and are prompting some valuable thinking on the issue.
> But comparing your ability to watch a movie to > someone's ability to make a living for > themselves, to attend a decent school- that is a > confusion of scale that I just don't understand.
You don't think that the interpretation of intellectual property (a legal fiction to begin with) influences how people make their livings, or how well they will be educated?
This case is about much more than watching movies. Apparently you aren't confused about what the specific civil rights cases were _really_ all about. So why your confusion on what this case is _really_ about?
Oh, and incase you think this is an economic sanction, I'll remind you that stock prices jumped up on news that Judge Jackson had ruled for the breakup. Even the baby-bills will be profitable.
Unlikely. Another interpretation is that everyone in the market was expecting this to happen anyhow (it wasn't exactly a secret what the judge would rule), and so this information was already price into the's stock's market value. The jump was probably due to the unexpected good news: that the judge wouldn't enact the breakup until after Appeals Courts ruled. While everyone expected that this would be the case in practice anyhow, that the judge didn't even try to enact his ruling was in M$'s favour.
Slashdot Mirror
The wireless network goes beyond just the business school as well. It's the same network all over campus, with the same username/password combo as well as other authentication tokens. Here's a map. [ It's a big campus, solidly-packed with buildings. I'm guessing that what's shown on the map here is a bit over 2 square miles. ]
Of course, the Intel-sponsored school rankings doesn't include "foreign schools", but I've got to say I'm pretty impressed with things here at U of T.
Cheers,
Richard
Someday he hopes to be The Russell Jones.
What about the techies who decide to go back to school to "re-tool" themselves, on the thinking that hacking Perl code isn't going to take them clear through to retirement? (Yes, I would be one of those.)
I decided (or perhaps realized) that IT wasn't enough for me to accomplish what I wanted to in life, give me enough job/career stability, etc. That said, my IT background is serving me very well indeed here at B-school. And I'm still very happily Mongering on over here -- I know and love my hackish culture. :-)
I think the important part is to figure out what's coming down the pipe and to get out of the way a few years before it all goes to heck. The smart rats jump ship early, as it were.
Apart from this minor quibble, I very much agree with the general point of the parent posting.
Cheers,
Richard
Call me Mr. Conspiracy Theory, but this just looks so blantantly like Microsoft is calling the shots. Where is Microsoft worried most about losing out to Linux? Embedded systems OSes and governement servers. Who does SCO harrass next? TiVo and the feds. How much do they want to charge? Roughly the same amount as Microsoft licenses for their OSes on each device.
Please, be a little less obvious, guys.
What I think though is important to remember is that if all you look at is the syntax, you won't appreciate the power -- and simplicity -- of the idioms. Taken out of context and put into cooked up examples meant to show off the new syntax, it looks bad... really bad. But once you actually start programming in it, you'll find that most of what you want and need to do will actually come quite simply.
That vast majority of all this new syntax will be applied in the vast minority of programming cases. Much of it will get sucked up into modules, classes, etc., that you'll use without worrying about what's actually going on under the hood. And "the rest of us" will just have an incredibly powerful language that is actually easier to program.
Cheers,
Richard
It gives whole new meaning to the term 'karma whoring.'
Cheers,
Richard
> Until O'Reilly argues on the same wavelength as
> RMS - which means either attacking the stated
> goals of RMS, or attacking the means RMS uses
> to achieve those goals - then O'Reilly won't
> have an essay worth reading. When you watch a
> debate you expect PRO and CON for the SAME
> argument, not PRO and PRO for DIFFERENT
> arguments.
Actually, no. In debating terminology, what Tim O'Reilly has done is offer us a "counterplan." The only requirement of a counterplan is that it be mutually exclusive to the plan offered by the government (or, "pro") side. Since "software should be the best software possible" is mutually exclusive with "software should be Free-as-in-what-RMS-likes" (at least in some possible cases, which is what it should be), then what Tim has done is a valid approach to the debate.
He offered this counterplan because he disagreed with the premise offered by RMS. This is valid, too. Were it not, then the government side would be free to offer a case which would put the opposition in the position of having to answer a question like, "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" and giving them only "yes" and "no" as potential replies. (I.e. You're damned with either possible answer.) Instead, answer "Mu."
Cheers,
Richard
I bought my Dell Inspiron 4000 almost exactly 1 year ago, and since then I've had 2 support incidences with it. Both times, Dell responded magnificently in some ways, but not in others. This doesn't mean that I'm a no-holds-barred Dell booster now, but perhaps there is another dimension to the situation that needs to be considered. Let's look at the incidences...
The first was (is) that my LCD screen decided that it likes to rest against my keyboard and nipple-mouse. This is an engineering defect. After 6 months, my panel looking like someone attacked it violently with steel wool, I finally got up the nerve to approach them with the issue. With essentially zero hassle, the tech support guy on the Dell support phone line told me that they'd send me a new screen (and a technician to install it.) The guy came 2 days later, and it was fixed in 90 minutes. Verdict: They did a great job in support, but I wish their engineering wasn't so sucky in the first place that it had to be looked after this way. The technician told me that he'd get in touch with "people on his end" to figure out how to make it so that the screen wouldn't rest on my keyboard anymore. I never heard back from him. (Since then I've done myself some minor case mods that seem to help.)
The second time, my floppy drive got crushed by good old United baggage handling. (They lost my luggage, too. But that's another story...) I told Dell, and they had a new floppy drive to me the next day. Verdict: Great work on getting the drive to me so fast, Dell, but you _told_ me that it would take 2-3 days for it to arrive. So I just lucked out that I was home when the UPS guy arrived.
So, it looks to me like they're good at doing things that involve product and fit within existing policies, but not so good with things that involve processes, or involve colouring outside of policy lines.
Cheers,
Richard
(As an aside, I had an 8 week game of run-around tag with Dell sales at around the same time that leaves me wondering exactly what's their major genetic damage. It'll be quite a while before I buy from them again.)
(As another aside, I spent about 30 of those 90 minutes with the tech support guy who gave me a new LCD panel explaining to him how to set up a dual-boot Linux system. He really wants to get into Linux. :-) )
FUD is a marketing tactic used by a big, established, encumbent company on behalf of its technology to cast doubt on the idea of switching to a new and competing company and technology. (e.g. Microsoft vs. Linux) Or, sometimes, for a big company to claim an emerging market away from a smaller but slightly-ahead newcomer. (e.g. IBM PC vs. Apple in the early 80s.)
Neither of these situations sounds much like what this announcement is talking about.
Cheers,
Richard
Why does it seem so hard for some people (Mr. Mundie, for instance) to see where the money will be made with Open Source software, GPL or otherwise?
It's called Systems Integration. You know... consulting, professional services. That whole jazz. We're talking Gemini, Anderson, EDS. They don't care where the software they use comes from. They just want to put it all together in a way that makes things work for their clients. If anything, Open Source software would be a boon for this crew, as having ready access to the innards of the software makes the integration task that much easier. (Not to mention kick-ass integration tools and languages like Perl.)
Sure, these companies are all currently pretty tightly in bed with Microsoft, as a) being so means that they get "special treatment" from M$; better prices on licenses, quicker and better access to beta products, M$'s own tech support and knowledge base... and b) M$'s stuff turns over so quickly and is so broken that the Integrators have endless opportunities to resell services that should only have been sold once in the first place.
But it's an unstable relationship. Some day, somehow, there will be a schism, and at least one integrator will go its own way. And the clients will be so delighted with the results that the integration industry will all eventually end up in that direction.
And noone will give a flying fig what licenses the underlying commodity components were released under.
Should this worry Microsoft? Hell yes! Not only does it show that one day they'll lose control of their integrator-lapdogs, but M$ is the only big software company that makes the majority of its money providing "products" rather than services.
Cheers,
Richard
I got US$20/page for something I wrote back in '96. I was dumb (well, naive) and poor back then, and I was willing to listen to the acquisitions editor when he told me that "some of [his] better authors write 4 chapters a week!" That sounded pretty good to me... US$2400 a week, maybe. Wow!
I'm not sure who these people are that can do that (hacks? machines? hack-machines?), but it's sure as hell not me. I try to budget 3 hours or so per _page_ right now, if I want for there to be any quality in it at all. Even that, that's probably not even fully-allocated time. It doesn't include:
The next book project I did, I was offered it at US$20/page again (enough though it was 2.5 years later, the market had changed, I had more experience, etc.). I asked for US$25/page, and was given it immediately. (Which can only make you wonder what the "true upper limit" on such a thing is.) Still, the money was garbage for the work I had to put into it.
Even then, don't just look at the money. The "standard contract" for a book that most tech publishers give you is... well, to call it one-sided doesn't even begin to describe it. :-) If you hope to have any kind of personal involvement or control over the project or what happens to it after publication, you're likely in for quite an uphill battle.
Love him or hate him, Philip Greenspun has some interesting things to say about the publishing business for tech books. To a greater or lesser degree, I agree with him. Check it out... http://philip.greenspun.com/wtr/dead-trees/story.h tml
Does all this mean that I won't write again? No way! I love writing, and I keep going back to it time and time again. I might even be getting better at it over the years, and that puts me in a better position to negotiate contracts, pitch ideas, plan the book the way that I want the book to be, etc. It's hard work, and there's a lot of BS involved, and the pay isn't great, but it can be incredibly gratifying to do.
Please feel free to mail me if you'd like to talk any more about this.
Cheers,
Richard
I wrote a chapter regarding this for a book called "CGI Programming Unleashed" (Sams.Net publishing, a MacMillan division) back in early '96. It was published that fall.
I even put the poll online, and it's still there...
(Please don't look at my code... oh god how my Perl sucked back then...)
I doubt that this makes any argument against the patent -- they turn out to be a lot more specific than the /. crowd originally takes them to be -- but still, it's not like it's a terribly novel or original idea in the first place.
Cheers,
Richard
I agree that this was the most important single statement in the article. However, who is/are "we"? Perhaps I'm kidding myself, but I think that practitioners of the technology appreciate the differences quite well. Sure, I sysadmin my own few Linux boxes... badly. I have a lot of respect for professional sysadmins, who don't really aspire to coding apps (or much else for that matter), but they sure manage a heterogenous network...
Thisn't isn't to say that someone can't be multitalented as an individual, either. (For instance, just try to categorize Larry Wall. :-) ) But the disciplines within IT are certainly very identifiable.
Maybe the "rest of the world" has a tougher time figuring out that software-based IT is multi-faceted. Sure, we all know that doctors and lawyers and engineers each have specialties, and as soon as you need something else done, you have to go to a different one. So why isn't this realization out there in the publics' mind with IT as well? Maybe it's because the public doesn't deal directly with software people -- it deals directly with their software, but not with the people who create it. On the other hand, people do deal directly with lawyers and doctors. So there's a lack of opportunity for education in that sense.
Another possibility is that the legal structures that have built up around the other professions (assuming you can call software a profession) virtually mandate specialization, so that risks can be controlled and liability assigned: you're just not allowed to ask an electrical engineer to build a bridge. Until legal needs enforce structure upon software producers and their profession, software producers won't admit that there are professional categories that need to be maintained... at least, not when such an admission can lock you out of that next juicy contract or product you're aiming for...
Yet another possibility might have to do with the general nature of the people involved in software production: they're young, and likely introverted. They don't handle human-human confrontation well. So, when your boss cows you into being X for a day, then you try to be X, even when you're really Y. The bosses of the world, as all us Dilbert readers know, are thick as bricks and therefore a) come up with dumb requests, and b) don't know any better from their own personal experience. If the "software guy" can't point out the error in their thinking, then why should anyone expect them to figure it out on their own?
Cheers,
Richard
Cheers,
Richard
Cheers,
Richard
That's a good start, but it doesn't address the issue of copies of your email that may be made along the transmission path between you and your correspondant. Heck, it doesn't even address the issue of your correspondant _not_ 'shredding' his/her copy of the email.
This would get a little bit better if we started using peer-to-peer email-like technologies, just now starting to appear on the collective radar screen...
Cheers,
Richard
For any single person or organization to say that they started the Open Source Revolution makes as much sense to me as to say that any single person or organization started the Renaissance.
I have a degree of sympathy towards Tiemann. Even if RedHat didn't start the oSR, it was in the thick of it. It's difficult to get a perspective on something when you're in the thick of it.
Cheers,
Richard
-- 1st paragraph of a 4 page write up of INTP, in "Type Talk" (Otto Kroeger and Janet M. Thuesen)
ENTP, here...
With the way things have been going, I can imagine "shrink-wrap" licenses on your dishwasher, toaster, etc., saying that you haven't actually _bought_ the CPU inside, but are just leasing its use for its intended purpose. Moreover, The Company That Made It reserves (and requires) the right to run for-pay distributed services on "their" CPU your appliance in order to offset the cost of providing you with the appliance-in-question (or so the story will go).
You heard it here first, folks...
Cheers,
Richard
This map details news traffic only, and it was dated 1993. Likely it's not very representative of the modern internet realities.
Cheers,
Richard
> I think this is an issue of fair use and not of
> muzzling a free press or free distribution of
> information. It is acknowledged as law that some
> information is owned- i.e movies and music.
No. It is legally granted that some information is copyrightable, and that the copyright can be owned. That's not the same as that the information itself is owned.
> Fair Use is not about the government telling you
> what you can or cannot say, or what of your own
> information can be made available- it determines
> what you can do with information that is belong
> to someone else.
No. The information doesn't belong to someone
else. The copyright on that information is owned
by someone else. The issue of fair use is not
"trying to figure out what person X can do with
person Y's rightfully-owned information". It
is trying to determine what the powers are
inherent in the instructment of the law, the
copyright, that Y owns.
For instance...
If I own a contract that says I own person Z
(aka slavery), or that person Z is indentured
to me under some set of conditions (sharecropping?)
then the law as of 2000 A.D. has determined (thank
the gods!) that these legal instruments are worth
nada, diddley, bupkus. Contracts can't be
written that are inherently illegal, as is
slavery, indenture, etc.
What these court cases are doing right now, bit
by bit, is trying to figure out what a copyright
contract/legal instrument actually is, what
legally enforcable powers it grants, etc.
Btw, good discussion. Your points are very
interesting and are prompting some valuable
thinking on the issue.
Cheers,
Richard
> But comparing your ability to watch a movie to
> someone's ability to make a living for
> themselves, to attend a decent school- that is a
> confusion of scale that I just don't understand.
You don't think that the interpretation of
intellectual property (a legal fiction to begin
with) influences how people make their livings, or
how well they will be educated?
This case is about much more than watching movies.
Apparently you aren't confused about what the
specific civil rights cases were _really_ all
about. So why your confusion on what this case
is _really_ about?
Cheers,
Richard
Unlikely. Another interpretation is that everyone in the market was expecting this to happen anyhow (it wasn't exactly a secret what the judge would rule), and so this information was already price into the's stock's market value. The jump was probably due to the unexpected good news: that the judge wouldn't enact the breakup until after Appeals Courts ruled. While everyone expected that this would be the case in practice anyhow, that the judge didn't even try to enact his ruling was in M$'s favour.
Cheers,
Richard
The inspiration for the "random sort" that you talk about _must_ be the "bogo-sort" entry in The Jargon File: http://www.tuxedo.org/~es r/jargon/html/entry/bogo-sort.html