Eckert and Mauchly not only created the first commercial computer, they created the technology industry business plan.
They built the ENIAC (the first electronic computer, whith the possible exception of Turing's Colossus) on a contract with the Defense Department at the University of Pennsylvania. They then took the patents from that project and tried to parlay them into a successful company. They attracted some initial investors, but they tried to keep as much control of the company as they could. They got bogged down with side projects and delivered the UNIVAC late. Meanwhile, larger companies with more capital for R&D, and more business and marketing know-how, put Eckert-Mauchly Computer company out of business.
Not much has changed in the technology industry in the last 50 years.
But the thing is, aren't they already selling the db to spammers in a mass-email-friendly format? Or do spammers just get those adresses from spiders and bots searching the online db?
I suspect it's the former, and if they stopped doing that but left the online db, it's not exactly restricting the info.
It's not just programmers that are defining rights, its also the corporations that employ the programmers.
Open Source Software is vitally important because it keeps Microsoft from defining the software architecture of the world. If they were able to do this, they would be able to define privacy rights, intellectual property rights, and even free speech rights as they pertain to the internet. Open Source allows anyone to have a voice in shaping those rights.
I understand that "breach of fiduciary duties" exists. I just don't think it is germaine to this particular discussion. It is my understanding that that particular law is more applicable to, say, a company that IPO's with no intent of ever making a product, with the sole intention of grabbing some quick cash for the corporate officers before they file for bancruptcy.
My point is that I don't think that the MPAA, RIAA, or rather, the record and movie companies that they represent, could be sued for not doing the things the original Suck article discussed. It could be argued persuasively that, for example, the damgae caused to your company's image brought about by suing your own customers would be much greater than the benefit of any settlement from such lawsuits. As another poster mentioned, there is something called the "business judgement rule", which protects the corporate executives from having their day to day decisions constantly second guessed in court.
So my point is that Metallica's record label doesn't legally have to sue Napster-using Metallica fans, Disney isn't somehow obligated to lobby congress to change copyright laws, and Jack Vilanti doesn't risk jail if he fails to sue 2600. The main impetus for the media conglomerates' behaviour is money. They want to keep making money, so their companies' stock stays high, so the shareholders are happy, so they keep their well-paying jobs and get their big performanced-based bonuses. It's misguided to think that their hands are somehow tied, and they are forced by the legal system to become big jerks.
Dude, did you get your legal info from Cryptonomicon? I have never heard of a shareholder lawsuit against a big company for failing to be greedy enough. The incentive for a coporate board is their salaries, jobs, and bonuses, which are all tied to stock price, which is ostensibly tied to company performance. If the companies don't make lots of money, their stock price stagnates or drops, and the board is fired. They are a bunch of greedheads, and that is their job.
Code can be expressive, or simply utilitarian. Look at the grey box that most computers come in. Compare that with an iMac or G4. Code is the same. It can be a tool that gets the job done, or it can elegantly solve a problem with a simplicity or cleverness that is beautiful.
This isn't even "non-damaging probes on networks". This is networks broadcasting information to anyone in the vicinity with a laptop and a wireless network card. If you are shouting on a street corner, is it a crime for me to hear you?
Re:Was there actually a ZELDA game for N64?
on
Gamecube In Danger?
·
· Score: 2
Yeah, it's like that Rambo thing. The first movie was called First Blood, the second movie was called Rambo, First Blood Part II and the third movie was called Rambo III, even though it didn't mention "first blood" at all! What is up with these wacked marketing schemes?
I heard an interview with Dr. Sunstein on the radio recently, and most callers expressed the same skepticism. The 'net makes it possible to get more detailed and diverse information, not less, they argued.
Sunstein argued back, I think convincingly, that a certain segment of the population will seek out like minds and ignore everything else. This seems to be especially true of white supremecists, conspiracy theorists, and other close-minded fringe dwellers. I agree that the/. community is very good about tracking down the whole story. Most stories have very helpful links to the other side's view included in posts. But I think there is a certain kind of person who wants to hear people agree with him, and doesn't want to hear information that contradicts his opinions.
Sunstein argued that there are two points to consider: is this a problem, and if it is, should we or can we do anything about it. He thinks the answers are yes and yes. I'm more inclined to yes and no. His solution involves mandatory linking to opposing viewpoints on news websites. This solution seems to me to have a host of problems, such as who decides what is an opposing view, and who decides what is a "news" website. It is an interesting idea at least.
The Medici project has experts working with fragile, hundreds-of-years-old paper documents. It is conceivable that in the future, there will be similiar experts who have special tools and procedures for reading ancient media like CD's. However, IIRC, the lifespan of optical media like CD's is about 100 years. Perhaps future technology will be able to extract data from partially degraded CD's. Historians have always faced challenges in finding data that have been worn away by time. Future historians will be no different.
I would disagree with the implied condition that your argument is based on, namely, that providing internet access==transmitting everything on the web. The concept of common carrier status, where the ISP is only providing access to the internet, not providing the content, is applicable here.
Should the phone company be responsible for every phone conversation that involves criminal activity? If a terrorist filled a backpack with explosives, took a bus to a government building, and blew it up, is the bus company guilty of terrorism? Providing a service that can be used for good or evil is not inherently evil. It's the people that use the service for evil that are the problem.
It seems that this ISP was making efforts to curb the porn being accessed through them. If that is not good enough, I don't see any other option than to close down internet access in Norway. And close down any phone service going outside of Norway, because it could be used to access an international ISP and "transmit" porn.
I did get an email saying that the privacy policy had changed. I immediately thought that they wanted to sell my data. However, I went to the FAQ about the changes, and couldn't find anything about selling data. Looking over the FAQ, I figured the most significant chage was this:
eBay is Only a Venue. We have clarified what an "Online Auction" is by adding a definition. We have not changed our stance, we are still just a venue.
I thought this was some sort of CYA thing by ebay to protect them from liability. However, after reading the Wired article, then going back, I see that the important part is this:
General. We added an assignment provision, which means we could assign this relationship to another party.
The "relationship" they talk about is your private data. So basically, you have to be a lawyer to know if you are getting screwed or not. Even when they tell you, they don't tell you! I guess you should just assume that any change in privacy policy means that they are selling your data, unless it is explicitly stated otherwise.
While it's true everyone loves porn, everyone says they don't. That's the benefit of online porn - the anonymity. Getting your pro-porn laws passed would mean standing up at a city hall meeting and saying "I'm a pervert."
Sounds like a good idea at first. But then, what happens when somebody puts up a porn server. Your tax dollars are subsidising the bandwidth of the porn site! Think of the children! And since the government owns the cable, they have all the control.
The solution may not be a government monopoly replacing a telco monopoly, but maybe no monopoly at all. The trouble with this option is now you have 10 companies tearing up the street to bury their cable, instead of one. The redundancy would probably increase the cost. Also, you have ten boxes on the side of your house and that's just bad feng shui.
An 8-cent postcard sent to anywhere in the country in a couple days is a great deal. Seriously. You couldn't physically transport a piece of paper anywhere in the country by yourself for 8-cents. Even taking it across town would cost you more. And the first monopoly you mention is also responsible for safe workplaces, a cleaner environment, social safety nets that prevent the least fortunate of society from starving to death or dying from preventable disease, and a world-leading literacy rate, among other things. The second was also responsible for long distance rates in excess of $1.00 per minute, phones that you kept in your house but couldn't own, and couldn't get with your choice of colors or features.
In the absence of the regulation of the marketplace and competition, which phone companies don't have because they are government granted monopolies, some other sort of regulation is necessary. If not the government, what do you suggest?
You are right that the lack of solid business plans killed dot-coms. But I think Kushnick's point is that if almost every small business in the country had high bandwidth access, you would have seen a better and more creative integration of the web with established successful small businesses. Instead, we got a bunch of venture capitalists trying to score big on an IPO, or egomaniacal CEO's trying to own an entire "space" on the web (ie, be the only online pet store).
One example: if it had the bandwidth, maybe the corner grocery store would let you order online, and have your groceries ready for you when you got to the store, saving you time. Instead we have WebVan and HomeGrocer.com, fighting to become the only source for online grocery shopping. High bandwidth on the last mile could really democratize the dot-com business model, take it out of the VC's hands and put it into the hands of local, already successful, small businesses.
Salon had an article on astro-turf fan sites, with a particular focus on Blair Witch. It was here. It talks about web buzz and Ain't it Cool News and how that stuff impacts movies.
In part it reads:
"The "Blair Witch Project" fan sites deploy similarly suspicious language. The creators of The Blair Witch Project Fanatic's Guide, for example, tell site visitors, "We're just very dedicated fans," and until recently offered suggestions on how other fans might help promote the movie: "Buy TBWP Stock at the Hollywood Stock Exchange! Rank TBWP at the Internet Movie Database! Rank TBWP at Ain't It Cool News!"
But the creators of the site, Abigail Marceluk and Eric Alan Ivins, seem to be more than average fans. They appeared in the Sci-Fi Channel special "Curse of the Blair Witch," and the Rough Cut site links them to the film's back story: "A bit of trivia: Abigail and Eric are the two anthropology students who discover the three film students' 'lost' footage."
I like this quote from the article:"lawyers for the anonymous plaintiff asserted that the Virginia Supreme Court should have deferred as a matter of judicial courtesy to the ruling of the Indiana trial court."
I for one, am glad that high courts don't blindly accept lower court rulings out of courtesy. I wonder if the lawyers would have felt the same if the situation was reversed, and the high court was overturning a lower court ruling against them. Are these guys lawyers or politicians?
Currently, DoubleClick is not enforcing its patent. In November of last year, it reached a settlment with its competitors, 24/7 and L90, and the suit cannot be brought again, at least against those guys. The BountyQuest site says that this settlement and the prior art of XPics' Mr. Shuster will make it very difficult for DoubleClick to enforce its patent in the future.
Network Solutions and Verisign GRS are both owned by Verisign Inc, so when you talk about NetSol, you are talking about Verisign Inc. I am unclear on the relationship between GRS and NetSol, but at the very least, they are owned by the same parent company. In the data on the linked ICAAN document, it appears that Network Solutions and Verisign GRS are lumped together in the statistics. So there is a strong relationship there.
These guys are probably doing more than just parroting the Jack Valenti. The NFL was a big player in the lawsuit that shut down iCrave. The Canadian website was webcasting TV shows, including football games, that it received from US TV station broadcasts.
I don't know that the NFL or MLB release any DVD's yet (though they do put out greatest highlights and season retrospectives on VHS), but I'm sure they are very aware of the potential damage to their traditional revenue stream that new technology poses. It's unfortunate that they, like the RIAA and the MPAA, choose to fight progress with legal action, rather than try to embrace technology and fing new ways to make money that take advantage of it. But sports fans have long ago learned to live with the annoying, misguided, and down-right evil actions of sports team owners.
Because some, or even most, Napster users are breaking the law, that doesn't mean you can punish them without some sort of proof or due process. (Well, actually you can because of the DMCA, but that doesn't make it right.)
Copyright.net has not witnessed any mp3 file of copyrighted material being downloaded. They have only seen mp3 files with names similiar to copyrighted material available for sharing. The only other evidence they have is that those files are available on Napster, which everyone knows is a hotbed of piracy, just ask the RIAA. It seems to me that this is a frightening reduction in the standard used to convict and punish people of crimes.
Is it okay to do this because most people are violating copyright laws on Napster? We don't arrest people for walking through neighborhoods where drugs deals take place, even if "99.9%" of the people in the neighborhood are there for the drugs. They have to be seen exchanging money for drugs, the drugs have to be tested to determine that they are drugs and not something that looks similiar. The accused are entitled to a trial, etc. etc. Why is it different on the internet? Because this crime hurts an industry's bottom line more than drug deals do? Is that worth suspending constitutional protections?
not everything should be turned into a mud
on
MUD Shell
·
· Score: 4
Slashdot Mirror
Eckert and Mauchly not only created the first commercial computer, they created the technology industry business plan.
They built the ENIAC (the first electronic computer, whith the possible exception of Turing's Colossus) on a contract with the Defense Department at the University of Pennsylvania. They then took the patents from that project and tried to parlay them into a successful company. They attracted some initial investors, but they tried to keep as much control of the company as they could. They got bogged down with side projects and delivered the UNIVAC late. Meanwhile, larger companies with more capital for R&D, and more business and marketing know-how, put Eckert-Mauchly Computer company out of business.
Not much has changed in the technology industry in the last 50 years.
But the thing is, aren't they already selling the db to spammers in a mass-email-friendly format? Or do spammers just get those adresses from spiders and bots searching the online db?
I suspect it's the former, and if they stopped doing that but left the online db, it's not exactly restricting the info.
It's not just programmers that are defining rights, its also the corporations that employ the programmers.
Open Source Software is vitally important because it keeps Microsoft from defining the software architecture of the world. If they were able to do this, they would be able to define privacy rights, intellectual property rights, and even free speech rights as they pertain to the internet. Open Source allows anyone to have a voice in shaping those rights.
Seeing the GOD games lot at E3, the lone woman in our group remarked, "I am so not the game makers target demographic."
I understand that "breach of fiduciary duties" exists. I just don't think it is germaine to this particular discussion. It is my understanding that that particular law is more applicable to, say, a company that IPO's with no intent of ever making a product, with the sole intention of grabbing some quick cash for the corporate officers before they file for bancruptcy.
My point is that I don't think that the MPAA, RIAA, or rather, the record and movie companies that they represent, could be sued for not doing the things the original Suck article discussed. It could be argued persuasively that, for example, the damgae caused to your company's image brought about by suing your own customers would be much greater than the benefit of any settlement from such lawsuits. As another poster mentioned, there is something called the "business judgement rule", which protects the corporate executives from having their day to day decisions constantly second guessed in court.
So my point is that Metallica's record label doesn't legally have to sue Napster-using Metallica fans, Disney isn't somehow obligated to lobby congress to change copyright laws, and Jack Vilanti doesn't risk jail if he fails to sue 2600. The main impetus for the media conglomerates' behaviour is money. They want to keep making money, so their companies' stock stays high, so the shareholders are happy, so they keep their well-paying jobs and get their big performanced-based bonuses. It's misguided to think that their hands are somehow tied, and they are forced by the legal system to become big jerks.
Dude, did you get your legal info from Cryptonomicon? I have never heard of a shareholder lawsuit against a big company for failing to be greedy enough. The incentive for a coporate board is their salaries, jobs, and bonuses, which are all tied to stock price, which is ostensibly tied to company performance. If the companies don't make lots of money, their stock price stagnates or drops, and the board is fired. They are a bunch of greedheads, and that is their job.
Code can be expressive, or simply utilitarian. Look at the grey box that most computers come in. Compare that with an iMac or G4. Code is the same. It can be a tool that gets the job done, or it can elegantly solve a problem with a simplicity or cleverness that is beautiful.
This isn't even "non-damaging probes on networks". This is networks broadcasting information to anyone in the vicinity with a laptop and a wireless network card. If you are shouting on a street corner, is it a crime for me to hear you?
Yeah, it's like that Rambo thing. The first movie was called First Blood, the second movie was called Rambo, First Blood Part II and the third movie was called Rambo III, even though it didn't mention "first blood" at all! What is up with these wacked marketing schemes?
I heard an interview with Dr. Sunstein on the radio recently, and most callers expressed the same skepticism. The 'net makes it possible to get more detailed and diverse information, not less, they argued.
/. community is very good about tracking down the whole story. Most stories have very helpful links to the other side's view included in posts. But I think there is a certain kind of person who wants to hear people agree with him, and doesn't want to hear information that contradicts his opinions.
Sunstein argued back, I think convincingly, that a certain segment of the population will seek out like minds and ignore everything else. This seems to be especially true of white supremecists, conspiracy theorists, and other close-minded fringe dwellers. I agree that the
Sunstein argued that there are two points to consider: is this a problem, and if it is, should we or can we do anything about it. He thinks the answers are yes and yes. I'm more inclined to yes and no. His solution involves mandatory linking to opposing viewpoints on news websites. This solution seems to me to have a host of problems, such as who decides what is an opposing view, and who decides what is a "news" website. It is an interesting idea at least.
The Medici project has experts working with fragile, hundreds-of-years-old paper documents. It is conceivable that in the future, there will be similiar experts who have special tools and procedures for reading ancient media like CD's. However, IIRC, the lifespan of optical media like CD's is about 100 years. Perhaps future technology will be able to extract data from partially degraded CD's. Historians have always faced challenges in finding data that have been worn away by time. Future historians will be no different.
I would disagree with the implied condition that your argument is based on, namely, that providing internet access==transmitting everything on the web. The concept of common carrier status, where the ISP is only providing access to the internet, not providing the content, is applicable here.
Should the phone company be responsible for every phone conversation that involves criminal activity? If a terrorist filled a backpack with explosives, took a bus to a government building, and blew it up, is the bus company guilty of terrorism? Providing a service that can be used for good or evil is not inherently evil. It's the people that use the service for evil that are the problem.
It seems that this ISP was making efforts to curb the porn being accessed through them. If that is not good enough, I don't see any other option than to close down internet access in Norway. And close down any phone service going outside of Norway, because it could be used to access an international ISP and "transmit" porn.
I did get an email saying that the privacy policy had changed. I immediately thought that they wanted to sell my data. However, I went to the FAQ about the changes, and couldn't find anything about selling data. Looking over the FAQ, I figured the most significant chage was this:
eBay is Only a Venue. We have clarified what an "Online Auction" is by adding a definition. We have not changed our stance, we are still just a venue.
I thought this was some sort of CYA thing by ebay to protect them from liability. However, after reading the Wired article, then going back, I see that the important part is this:
General. We added an assignment provision, which means we could assign this relationship to another party.
The "relationship" they talk about is your private data. So basically, you have to be a lawyer to know if you are getting screwed or not. Even when they tell you, they don't tell you! I guess you should just assume that any change in privacy policy means that they are selling your data, unless it is explicitly stated otherwise.
While it's true everyone loves porn, everyone says they don't. That's the benefit of online porn - the anonymity. Getting your pro-porn laws passed would mean standing up at a city hall meeting and saying "I'm a pervert."
Sounds like a good idea at first. But then, what happens when somebody puts up a porn server. Your tax dollars are subsidising the bandwidth of the porn site! Think of the children! And since the government owns the cable, they have all the control.
The solution may not be a government monopoly replacing a telco monopoly, but maybe no monopoly at all. The trouble with this option is now you have 10 companies tearing up the street to bury their cable, instead of one. The redundancy would probably increase the cost. Also, you have ten boxes on the side of your house and that's just bad feng shui.
An 8-cent postcard sent to anywhere in the country in a couple days is a great deal. Seriously. You couldn't physically transport a piece of paper anywhere in the country by yourself for 8-cents. Even taking it across town would cost you more. And the first monopoly you mention is also responsible for safe workplaces, a cleaner environment, social safety nets that prevent the least fortunate of society from starving to death or dying from preventable disease, and a world-leading literacy rate, among other things. The second was also responsible for long distance rates in excess of $1.00 per minute, phones that you kept in your house but couldn't own, and couldn't get with your choice of colors or features.
In the absence of the regulation of the marketplace and competition, which phone companies don't have because they are government granted monopolies, some other sort of regulation is necessary. If not the government, what do you suggest?
You are right that the lack of solid business plans killed dot-coms. But I think Kushnick's point is that if almost every small business in the country had high bandwidth access, you would have seen a better and more creative integration of the web with established successful small businesses. Instead, we got a bunch of venture capitalists trying to score big on an IPO, or egomaniacal CEO's trying to own an entire "space" on the web (ie, be the only online pet store).
One example: if it had the bandwidth, maybe the corner grocery store would let you order online, and have your groceries ready for you when you got to the store, saving you time. Instead we have WebVan and HomeGrocer.com, fighting to become the only source for online grocery shopping. High bandwidth on the last mile could really democratize the dot-com business model, take it out of the VC's hands and put it into the hands of local, already successful, small businesses.
Salon had an article on astro-turf fan sites, with a particular focus on Blair Witch. It was here. It talks about web buzz and Ain't it Cool News and how that stuff impacts movies.
In part it reads:
"The "Blair Witch Project" fan sites deploy similarly suspicious language. The creators of The Blair Witch Project Fanatic's Guide, for example, tell site visitors, "We're just very dedicated fans," and until recently offered suggestions on how other fans might help promote the movie: "Buy TBWP Stock at the Hollywood Stock Exchange! Rank TBWP at the Internet Movie Database! Rank TBWP at Ain't It Cool News!"
But the creators of the site, Abigail Marceluk and Eric Alan Ivins, seem to be more than average fans. They appeared in the Sci-Fi Channel special "Curse of the Blair Witch," and the Rough Cut site links them to the film's back story: "A bit of trivia: Abigail and Eric are the two anthropology students who discover the three film students' 'lost' footage."
"Looks like the Beeb doesn't want anything objectionable on it's domain ..."
I thought he meant Beeblebrox, but I guess he means the BBC...
I like this quote from the article:"lawyers for the anonymous plaintiff asserted that the Virginia Supreme Court should have deferred as a matter of judicial courtesy to the ruling of the Indiana trial court."
I for one, am glad that high courts don't blindly accept lower court rulings out of courtesy. I wonder if the lawyers would have felt the same if the situation was reversed, and the high court was overturning a lower court ruling against them. Are these guys lawyers or politicians?
Currently, DoubleClick is not enforcing its patent. In November of last year, it reached a settlment with its competitors, 24/7 and L90, and the suit cannot be brought again, at least against those guys. The BountyQuest site says that this settlement and the prior art of XPics' Mr. Shuster will make it very difficult for DoubleClick to enforce its patent in the future.
Network Solutions and Verisign GRS are both owned by Verisign Inc, so when you talk about NetSol, you are talking about Verisign Inc. I am unclear on the relationship between GRS and NetSol, but at the very least, they are owned by the same parent company. In the data on the linked ICAAN document, it appears that Network Solutions and Verisign GRS are lumped together in the statistics. So there is a strong relationship there.
These guys are probably doing more than just parroting the Jack Valenti. The NFL was a big player in the lawsuit that shut down iCrave. The Canadian website was webcasting TV shows, including football games, that it received from US TV station broadcasts.
I don't know that the NFL or MLB release any DVD's yet (though they do put out greatest highlights and season retrospectives on VHS), but I'm sure they are very aware of the potential damage to their traditional revenue stream that new technology poses. It's unfortunate that they, like the RIAA and the MPAA, choose to fight progress with legal action, rather than try to embrace technology and fing new ways to make money that take advantage of it. But sports fans have long ago learned to live with the annoying, misguided, and down-right evil actions of sports team owners.
Because some, or even most, Napster users are breaking the law, that doesn't mean you can punish them without some sort of proof or due process. (Well, actually you can because of the DMCA, but that doesn't make it right.)
Copyright.net has not witnessed any mp3 file of copyrighted material being downloaded. They have only seen mp3 files with names similiar to copyrighted material available for sharing. The only other evidence they have is that those files are available on Napster, which everyone knows is a hotbed of piracy, just ask the RIAA. It seems to me that this is a frightening reduction in the standard used to convict and punish people of crimes.
Is it okay to do this because most people are violating copyright laws on Napster? We don't arrest people for walking through neighborhoods where drugs deals take place, even if "99.9%" of the people in the neighborhood are there for the drugs. They have to be seen exchanging money for drugs, the drugs have to be tested to determine that they are drugs and not something that looks similiar. The accused are entitled to a trial, etc. etc. Why is it different on the internet? Because this crime hurts an industry's bottom line more than drug deals do? Is that worth suspending constitutional protections?
For example, the Super Nintendo classic, Metroid.