I emailed my comments on this article to the mayor of Canton, Janet Creighton - email jwc@ci.canton.oh.us
She promptly responded with the following reply:
"Your comments should be directed to Law Director Joe Martuccio or Criminal Prosecutor
Frank Forchione. This is a legal problem and not one that the Executive branch of
city governments get involved with. The student, as I recall, is from a township. "
I think that response illustrates how this series of events was allowed to play out as it has.
From a guy that is more middle of the road, I feel quite comfortable saying that I believe you are absolutely right. Anyone who has had any real experience with the legal system ( civil or criminal ) has a gut understanding that it is not always justice that is on the table. The name of the game is to get a settlement that is good enough to clear the courts calendar and put a few brownie points in the city's column and then NEXT!
It doesn't appear that the city officials in question have any real experience or interest in raising children to be good citizens. They have fired off a canon to kill a fly. What ever happened to progressive disipline in schools ( detention, parent teacher meeting, suspension, expulsion, or maybe just a good verbal reprimand?) Why should it be necessary to call in the criminal justice system to handle what is at best a school discipline issue ( if it is any issue at all). I hope the city fathers of Canton step back and rethink their position on this one.
The point here is that a city official took this action because he could do it and cause this kid a lot of pain and suffering regardless of the outcome, not because it was just. If there is any justice here, the mayor, city council, citizens of canton and the judge will extract equil pain and suffering from the public officials that took this uninlightened course of action. Maybe an email from every reader of Slashdot to Mayor Creighton will help start the process in the motion ( I'd post the email address but the web site seems to be slooooow at the moment ).
Until the universal eternal format is developed ..
on
The Digital Dark Age
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Periodically rolling over data from its existing format/media to the latest new fromat/media before the media or format life expires (whichever comes first) is the only way to perpetually save data. The problem is not in having a reliable method to preserve data. It is an unwillingness on the part of the guardian of the data to spend the resources (operational overhead) necessary to do it. The perceived value of historical data is often viewed by how often it is accessed as opposed to what future insights might be derived from it or what commercial value it might have in markets that do not yet exist. In other words we lose data because operational management doesn't see its contribution to the bottom line on the profit and loss statement. The reality is that these judgements evintually do have to be made because we just don't have enouth bandwidth to store all of the data that ever existed even if we wanted to. Until everyone recognizes that maintaining your data is no different than maintaining any other valuable asset such as highways and city buildings the situation wont change.
So, if you want to have the map to the family fortune readable in 50 to 100 years, store it in the highest linear (uncompressed) resolution available to you and every time there is a paradigm shift in digital media or formats transfer the data again to the new format linearly at the same resolution is the original. If you compress the data and then transcode to a new compression format some data will be lost in each iteration and eventually the data will be unusable.
I think that all of this trademark enforcement is really a bad move.
I am sure that Microsoft and other commercial software companies would happily make the argument that it takes a lot of capital ( programmers, equipment, facilities, R&D) to develop, distribute and support quality software. Therefore you should expect to pay for it. This idea of charging users to for the purpose of enforcing the trademark rights just feeds into that argument (you have to charge for it to expect quality).
It has been pointed out in other posts that Linux is a play on someone elses trademark already. And, what does the user community gain from enforcing the Linux trademark anyway? It's not going to change how the kernel is developed and distributed ( unless charging for the name alienates its developers and contributers ). If Linux continues to enjoy success or ultimately ceases to exist, it won't be because of someone misusing or abusing the trademark. This all seems to have more to do with ego than the advancement of quality FOSS.
I suggest that all future reference to Linux be "*inux" or the "GNU Kernel". Just as the *inux community has referred to the Unix community as *nix since its inception. Then all of the trademark arguments are moot and the community can move on.
Slashdot Mirror
I emailed my comments on this article to the mayor of Canton, Janet Creighton - email jwc@ci.canton.oh.us
She promptly responded with the following reply:
"Your comments should be directed to Law Director Joe Martuccio or Criminal Prosecutor Frank Forchione. This is a legal problem and not one that the Executive branch of city governments get involved with. The student, as I recall, is from a township. "
I think that response illustrates how this series of events was allowed to play out as it has.
From a guy that is more middle of the road, I feel quite comfortable saying that I believe you are absolutely right. Anyone who has had any real experience with the legal system ( civil or criminal ) has a gut understanding that it is not always justice that is on the table. The name of the game is to get a settlement that is good enough to clear the courts calendar and put a few brownie points in the city's column and then NEXT!
It doesn't appear that the city officials in question have any real experience or interest in raising children to be good citizens. They have fired off a canon to kill a fly. What ever happened to progressive disipline in schools ( detention, parent teacher meeting, suspension, expulsion, or maybe just a good verbal reprimand?) Why should it be necessary to call in the criminal justice system to handle what is at best a school discipline issue ( if it is any issue at all). I hope the city fathers of Canton step back and rethink their position on this one.
The point here is that a city official took this action because he could do it and cause this kid a lot of pain and suffering regardless of the outcome, not because it was just. If there is any justice here, the mayor, city council, citizens of canton and the judge will extract equil pain and suffering from the public officials that took this uninlightened course of action. Maybe an email from every reader of Slashdot to Mayor Creighton will help start the process in the motion ( I'd post the email address but the web site seems to be slooooow at the moment ).
Periodically rolling over data from its existing format/media to the latest new fromat/media before the media or format life expires (whichever comes first) is the only way to perpetually save data. The problem is not in having a reliable method to preserve data. It is an unwillingness on the part of the guardian of the data to spend the resources (operational overhead) necessary to do it. The perceived value of historical data is often viewed by how often it is accessed as opposed to what future insights might be derived from it or what commercial value it might have in markets that do not yet exist. In other words we lose data because operational management doesn't see its contribution to the bottom line on the profit and loss statement. The reality is that these judgements evintually do have to be made because we just don't have enouth bandwidth to store all of the data that ever existed even if we wanted to. Until everyone recognizes that maintaining your data is no different than maintaining any other valuable asset such as highways and city buildings the situation wont change.
.......Just my 2 cents worth
So, if you want to have the map to the family fortune readable in 50 to 100 years, store it in the highest linear (uncompressed) resolution available to you and every time there is a paradigm shift in digital media or formats transfer the data again to the new format linearly at the same resolution is the original. If you compress the data and then transcode to a new compression format some data will be lost in each iteration and eventually the data will be unusable.
Check this link regarding the Electronic Records Archive http://www.archives.gov/era/index.html
I think that all of this trademark enforcement is really a bad move.
I am sure that Microsoft and other commercial software companies would happily make the argument that it takes a lot of capital ( programmers, equipment, facilities, R&D) to develop, distribute and support quality software. Therefore you should expect to pay for it. This idea of charging users to for the purpose of enforcing the trademark rights just feeds into that argument (you have to charge for it to expect quality).
It has been pointed out in other posts that Linux is a play on someone elses trademark already. And, what does the user community gain from enforcing the Linux trademark anyway? It's not going to change how the kernel is developed and distributed ( unless charging for the name alienates its developers and contributers ). If Linux continues to enjoy success or ultimately ceases to exist, it won't be because of someone misusing or abusing the trademark. This all seems to have more to do with ego than the advancement of quality FOSS.
I suggest that all future reference to Linux be "*inux" or the "GNU Kernel". Just as the *inux community has referred to the Unix community as *nix since its inception. Then all of the trademark arguments are moot and the community can move on.
Please Linus, tell us how this is good for FOSS.