This is absolutely true. IMs are like the phone system. The more people on the system, the better it is for the user, because by far the strongest aspect of any IM system is how able to find your friends on it you are. This is why the instant messanger business has been historically extremely hard to penetrate (with new networks) and the dominant player (aim) shows no signs of being dislodged. I like the "my sister" test. My sister is not a techie, she doesnt work for a corporation that uses its own instant messaging system, as a result, whenever a new instant messaging network is created (most recently google talk) i ask myself "Could i get my sister to use this." The answer, like with just about every other network, was no. Of course, there is some regionality to clients. MSN is pretty big in other parts of the world. But these networks are usually separated by a language barrier (or, in the case of AIM, the 'AOL' part, which has 'America' in it) and so they essentially function as though they served completely differnt customers.
Yeah, I'd have to agree with that. Writting large ammounts of code is easier if you dont have to comment, and if you're a decent programmer your code should be clear enough to get from reading it. But at the same time, if you're trying to debug or add a feature, it really helps to know what parts of a function do what without having to read the code to find out.
If only we could all rip on the games industry as well as this guy does. There was a time when i would have agreed with him, and so would penny arcade (those were good days, good days...) But anyway, I've come to see the games industry the same way i see every creative industry. It's gotten to be large, and innovative. There are many differnt people trying to differnt things differnt ways. Of course, there will be better years, and worse years, knock-offs, blockbusters, trend games, and endless merchandising. But, in the end, these things are natural for this type of industry.
So, buy an extremely expensive piece of propreitary hardware, an extra pc case, a bunch of modding tools, spend hours of your time moving the pieces from one to the other and getting the OS tweaked just right... to not waste money on overpriced games.... dude, just go out and buy a computer, seriously.
Lol MUDs! What i find funny is that because MMORPGs have become mainstream, people are trying to deal with their addicting affects now as though they were new news. Ask anyone who played a good mud back in the day, and they will tell you, it was damn hard to type quit sometimes! In a good IVE (interactive virtual environment) you always feel like you're going from somewhere to somewhere to do something or meet someone. I think that "hearts clubs diamonds spades" clearly enough expresses that successful MUDS are successful because they leverage critical aspects of human society in a fun virtual environment without the same type of personal risk to reputation, fear or death, or reprisal... ahh, good stuff.
And so Java3d takes yet another hit. It's always interesting and amazing to me that games in web browsers using things like java3d never really took off. It's probably all due to the loading times, and the ammount of content you'd have to send via http. I mean, look at modern games, one of the huge differneces is the ammount of memory modern video cards have for textures, hundreds of megabytes of textures. Could you imagine having to put that kind of strain on a webserver? It would simply be imposssible! While certainly neat, this will likely become an novelty. Even for things like demonstrations on websites of products, there's flash out there. But, i digress, yet another thing you can do via javascript hacks. Bravo! let the interoperability headaches abound....
Actually, outsourcing is exactly why heads down programmers are bad. If you run an outsourcing firm, you dont want a heads down programmer, you want people who can work with customers, because they you get much more bang for each employee. Programmers who are good with code but bad with negotiating requirements and eliciting what the customer wants and needs are practically worthless if you run a lean mean efficient outsourcing shop. Head down programmers are good for companies that produce their own products and dont need to work with "customers" outside the company. Needless to say, there are less of these monoliths now than there have been before. It no longer makes sense to nurture an entire software development branch for companies whose core business is far from software just to produce custom products to be used by the firm exclusively. Obviously there are some rare exceptions to this (embedded systems especially) but they're rare, and extremely expensive wherever they exist. But, let's also not forget that IT can be very differnt from "heads down programmers" who you will almost never find in IT departments. IT is outsourced because it's far better to have a team of experts who deal with IT crises on a day to day basis than a small internal team who may or may not be able to handle the next one that comes along.
I'm afraid it's just much easier to prosecute people who do DMCAish things (facilitate infringment via mechanism stripping) than it is to prosecute people who infringe on a thing by thing basis. I mean, there are hundreds of millions who do the latter, and they're hard to find. Whereas people who do the former usually brag about their successes.
That being said, i think the DMCA sucks and puts in geoprady the legality of all sorts of differnt types of security research while not doing much to protect people's copyrights at all. At this point i feel that some people infringe (when they could just as easily buy) because they feel some kind of injustice has been done upon them via the record industry's tactics.
I think that if something's a product designed to make money it's much harder to make a case for it being free speech. You're not trying to express your opinion, or even necessarily yourself, you're trying to make money. Freedom of speech protects your right to say things, it does not entitle you to do things which can be seen as harmful to others. If I hand crafted a bear trap, then set it up on the capital steps, the some poor senator stepped in it, and I got arrested, i dont think a "freedom of speech" argument would get me off. While games are no bear traps, i think it is at least fair to say that the nature of their influence on kids is a question still open to debate. As long as that's true, i'd rather see an "err on the side of caution" policy for these kinds of things.
Now, dont get me wrong i love games. I am myself and avid gamer and i work for a company that produces products for the game industry. That being said, it does bother me a little when i see a crowd of elementry school kids running people down and doing drivebys in GTA.
Good point! It seems that in the tech community anti *nix FUD gets tons of coverage, and then anti-ms FUD gets propegated... Now, dont get me wrong, i'm not an ms fanboy (i'm nobody's fanboy) but i can safely say that this one is as obvious as the parent makes it out to be. cmon slashdot!
Whatever the problem is you can be sure that microsoft is going to make it right for those who have expierienced a defect. Dont forget, they lose money on every xbox. They want you to buy the games, and they want you to get your friends to buy xboxes. Allowing defective units to remain in the world is not something microsoft will do. They will either offer a software patch (if it's a software glitch), a replacement part via mailin (if it's the brick) or they will just replace the unit. At the very least i'm sure they're all under warrenty.
Microsoft's objective with this console is to snatch up as much market share as possible from its rivals (one of the reasons it will be priced lower in japan). The console market is like the car market. Getting market share is the most important aspect of the business, and it's also one of the hardest. Sony hasent made it easy for microsoft either, but with the second gen consoles (now that people know the xbox 1 wasnt a flop, like so many other "recent" consoles have been) Microsoft has a real opportunity to sieze an even larger share and you can bet your breakfast that they're doing their best to take advantage of it.
I'd agree completely, and also add that outsourcing in the case of IT isnt to other countires as much as it's to other firms on the area who can handle many IT tasks that would otherwise be very expensive to build from the ground up. There are many small businesses in my area who dont hire IT guys, they hire small firms that they can call and have someone at their door in 15 mins. For many of these businesses, there simply isnt a need, and the very large firms... well, they go about things in their own way. Large firms' IT departments are more like beehives where there are queen bees, and then many many many worker bees. Nothing can be as boring as being an IT worker bee, a lot of people recognize this, and thus, try to avoid it.
Designing complex systems sounds a lot like a mastercard commercial...
Years of architectual design - hundreds of millions of dollars
Months of maticulous coding - tens of millions of dollars
Less months of testing (because it has to get to market!) - tens of millions of dollars
Fans discovering fatal flaws one day after launch? very very expensive....
I think that the breakdown is supposed to be something like
40-50ish % design
20ish % coding
30-40ish % testing...
Yeah, but somehow that doesnt seem like justice. Here we all complain about many of the injustices done by these large organizations through copyright law, it feels wrong to use our love of freedom to hurt them using their own traditional weapons. How can we continue to take the higher moral ground if we do go after them like that? Are we not just saying they are right do to the same to us?
In general, the DNS system really benefits from its scale, like the phone system. The bigger it is, and the more people use it, the better, because there will be less loss of welfare due to simple confusion. Even if another country set up their own DNS root which placed lets say all the.coms under.com.us, without some really fancy tricks, virtual hosting on the.coms would be broken for everyone in that country. (just an example)
Finally, someone who properly understands the LGPL! Nobody else seems to realize in this thread that the point of providing the object files is so you can swap in differnt versions of the free software. Object files are specified specifically because when teh LGPL was written their intension was to allow for proprietary programs to link free libraries. If sony did their job right, all they need to do is provide a single text file to solve the problem, and have an obscure section of their website with the object files. They dont have to give anything up at all, they probably wont even go to court or anything stupid like that.
I'd call what they did the equivalent of J-walking on a dirt road.
Why should the companies care? I maintain that open source doesnt not have to be anti-capitalist... If you have a well run company, with an innovative product that you market correctly, open source software is of no threat, in fact, it's probably a benefit to your business if used properly. If anything, a free and open source software world would probably make most companies better off and more profitable since it would dramatically reduce their costs and increase their productivities.
Yes. And i'm sure he also has the time/money/resources to first, discover that you're misusing his software and second, take the time and the cash to sue you over it. It's fairly easy to assume that by far the vast majority of individuals who distribute software under the GPL are not this passionate about it, making much of this high minded debate pointless.
If someone wants to steal your software, and you dont have the balls, the time, and the money to defend it, then what's the point on citing passages of the GPL all the time. It's only worth your willingness to go to war over it.
see, this is why i have trouble understanding why the eu/un are so upset about this. there is really nothing to control. the US doesnt "control" anything, it just so happens that the commonly used root file is administered by a company located in the US.
The only way this proposed solution would work effectively is if you denied the users the ability to willfully duplicate or otherwise represent enough personal information to perform a financial transaction. Sure, with really overkill smart cards you can make ATMs and retailers secure (good luck on getting them to pay lots of $$$ for something they dont neet, ie, new scanners), you would also render it nearly impossible for people to buy things, for example, over the phone, or from merchants without cc processing equipment on hand. This level of paranoia will only lead to one place, really frustrated old people who just want to bank, and a whole lot of money down the tubes. Now what banks like ING do is prudent to be sure, but people have been falling for cleaver scams since the beginning of time. All of them have been easy to spot (from the outside) and all of them have attracted people. It's nice enough that some banks offer online froad protection. I'd just suggest signing up with one of them, because insurance is really the best, and as I see it, the only practical way to deal with this problem.
Yeah, but dont forget, you cant patent something that already exists. (novel) thus, all that this license would ensure would be that researchers killing themselves over algorythms, which, without patents will never make them any money making their effort worthless, will be put out in the cold by GPL'd software.... is that what we want>?
Your use of the word "loyalty" is incorrect here. Intrestingly enough, you are already obligated to be loyal to your employer even if it isnt in your contract, and you need to follow any reasonable request they make while paying you. In many instances, you can infact violate Duty of loyalty to your employer doing things that non-competes usually also seek to cover. i.e., you cant compete, attempt to compete, or prepare to compete while working for your employer.
My point isnt to do with the telcos, but contract law. In canada, how can you get a contract voided without going to court? If the contract is illegal, all that means is that it's a void contract, but it cant be a void contract unless it is ruled to be void, or voided by both parties.
Slashdot Mirror
This is absolutely true. IMs are like the phone system. The more people on the system, the better it is for the user, because by far the strongest aspect of any IM system is how able to find your friends on it you are. This is why the instant messanger business has been historically extremely hard to penetrate (with new networks) and the dominant player (aim) shows no signs of being dislodged. I like the "my sister" test. My sister is not a techie, she doesnt work for a corporation that uses its own instant messaging system, as a result, whenever a new instant messaging network is created (most recently google talk) i ask myself "Could i get my sister to use this." The answer, like with just about every other network, was no. Of course, there is some regionality to clients. MSN is pretty big in other parts of the world. But these networks are usually separated by a language barrier (or, in the case of AIM, the 'AOL' part, which has 'America' in it) and so they essentially function as though they served completely differnt customers.
Yeah, I'd have to agree with that. Writting large ammounts of code is easier if you dont have to comment, and if you're a decent programmer your code should be clear enough to get from reading it. But at the same time, if you're trying to debug or add a feature, it really helps to know what parts of a function do what without having to read the code to find out.
If only we could all rip on the games industry as well as this guy does. There was a time when i would have agreed with him, and so would penny arcade (those were good days, good days...) But anyway, I've come to see the games industry the same way i see every creative industry. It's gotten to be large, and innovative. There are many differnt people trying to differnt things differnt ways. Of course, there will be better years, and worse years, knock-offs, blockbusters, trend games, and endless merchandising. But, in the end, these things are natural for this type of industry.
So, buy an extremely expensive piece of propreitary hardware, an extra pc case, a bunch of modding tools, spend hours of your time moving the pieces from one to the other and getting the OS tweaked just right... to not waste money on overpriced games.... dude, just go out and buy a computer, seriously.
Lol MUDs! What i find funny is that because MMORPGs have become mainstream, people are trying to deal with their addicting affects now as though they were new news. Ask anyone who played a good mud back in the day, and they will tell you, it was damn hard to type quit sometimes! In a good IVE (interactive virtual environment) you always feel like you're going from somewhere to somewhere to do something or meet someone. I think that "hearts clubs diamonds spades" clearly enough expresses that successful MUDS are successful because they leverage critical aspects of human society in a fun virtual environment without the same type of personal risk to reputation, fear or death, or reprisal... ahh, good stuff.
And so Java3d takes yet another hit. It's always interesting and amazing to me that games in web browsers using things like java3d never really took off. It's probably all due to the loading times, and the ammount of content you'd have to send via http. I mean, look at modern games, one of the huge differneces is the ammount of memory modern video cards have for textures, hundreds of megabytes of textures. Could you imagine having to put that kind of strain on a webserver? It would simply be imposssible! While certainly neat, this will likely become an novelty. Even for things like demonstrations on websites of products, there's flash out there. But, i digress, yet another thing you can do via javascript hacks. Bravo! let the interoperability headaches abound....
Actually, outsourcing is exactly why heads down programmers are bad. If you run an outsourcing firm, you dont want a heads down programmer, you want people who can work with customers, because they you get much more bang for each employee. Programmers who are good with code but bad with negotiating requirements and eliciting what the customer wants and needs are practically worthless if you run a lean mean efficient outsourcing shop. Head down programmers are good for companies that produce their own products and dont need to work with "customers" outside the company. Needless to say, there are less of these monoliths now than there have been before. It no longer makes sense to nurture an entire software development branch for companies whose core business is far from software just to produce custom products to be used by the firm exclusively. Obviously there are some rare exceptions to this (embedded systems especially) but they're rare, and extremely expensive wherever they exist. But, let's also not forget that IT can be very differnt from "heads down programmers" who you will almost never find in IT departments. IT is outsourced because it's far better to have a team of experts who deal with IT crises on a day to day basis than a small internal team who may or may not be able to handle the next one that comes along.
I'm afraid it's just much easier to prosecute people who do DMCAish things (facilitate infringment via mechanism stripping) than it is to prosecute people who infringe on a thing by thing basis. I mean, there are hundreds of millions who do the latter, and they're hard to find. Whereas people who do the former usually brag about their successes.
That being said, i think the DMCA sucks and puts in geoprady the legality of all sorts of differnt types of security research while not doing much to protect people's copyrights at all. At this point i feel that some people infringe (when they could just as easily buy) because they feel some kind of injustice has been done upon them via the record industry's tactics.
I think that if something's a product designed to make money it's much harder to make a case for it being free speech. You're not trying to express your opinion, or even necessarily yourself, you're trying to make money. Freedom of speech protects your right to say things, it does not entitle you to do things which can be seen as harmful to others. If I hand crafted a bear trap, then set it up on the capital steps, the some poor senator stepped in it, and I got arrested, i dont think a "freedom of speech" argument would get me off. While games are no bear traps, i think it is at least fair to say that the nature of their influence on kids is a question still open to debate. As long as that's true, i'd rather see an "err on the side of caution" policy for these kinds of things.
Now, dont get me wrong i love games. I am myself and avid gamer and i work for a company that produces products for the game industry. That being said, it does bother me a little when i see a crowd of elementry school kids running people down and doing drivebys in GTA.
Good point! It seems that in the tech community anti *nix FUD gets tons of coverage, and then anti-ms FUD gets propegated... Now, dont get me wrong, i'm not an ms fanboy (i'm nobody's fanboy) but i can safely say that this one is as obvious as the parent makes it out to be. cmon slashdot!
"Do you have evidence to support your claim?"
"The best kind, it's called, anecdotal"
Whatever the problem is you can be sure that microsoft is going to make it right for those who have expierienced a defect. Dont forget, they lose money on every xbox. They want you to buy the games, and they want you to get your friends to buy xboxes. Allowing defective units to remain in the world is not something microsoft will do. They will either offer a software patch (if it's a software glitch), a replacement part via mailin (if it's the brick) or they will just replace the unit. At the very least i'm sure they're all under warrenty.
Microsoft's objective with this console is to snatch up as much market share as possible from its rivals (one of the reasons it will be priced lower in japan). The console market is like the car market. Getting market share is the most important aspect of the business, and it's also one of the hardest. Sony hasent made it easy for microsoft either, but with the second gen consoles (now that people know the xbox 1 wasnt a flop, like so many other "recent" consoles have been) Microsoft has a real opportunity to sieze an even larger share and you can bet your breakfast that they're doing their best to take advantage of it.
I'd agree completely, and also add that outsourcing in the case of IT isnt to other countires as much as it's to other firms on the area who can handle many IT tasks that would otherwise be very expensive to build from the ground up. There are many small businesses in my area who dont hire IT guys, they hire small firms that they can call and have someone at their door in 15 mins. For many of these businesses, there simply isnt a need, and the very large firms... well, they go about things in their own way. Large firms' IT departments are more like beehives where there are queen bees, and then many many many worker bees. Nothing can be as boring as being an IT worker bee, a lot of people recognize this, and thus, try to avoid it.
Designing complex systems sounds a lot like a mastercard commercial... Years of architectual design - hundreds of millions of dollars Months of maticulous coding - tens of millions of dollars Less months of testing (because it has to get to market!) - tens of millions of dollars Fans discovering fatal flaws one day after launch? very very expensive.... I think that the breakdown is supposed to be something like 40-50ish % design 20ish % coding 30-40ish % testing...
Yeah, but somehow that doesnt seem like justice. Here we all complain about many of the injustices done by these large organizations through copyright law, it feels wrong to use our love of freedom to hurt them using their own traditional weapons. How can we continue to take the higher moral ground if we do go after them like that? Are we not just saying they are right do to the same to us?
In general, the DNS system really benefits from its scale, like the phone system. The bigger it is, and the more people use it, the better, because there will be less loss of welfare due to simple confusion. Even if another country set up their own DNS root which placed lets say all the .coms under .com.us, without some really fancy tricks, virtual hosting on the .coms would be broken for everyone in that country. (just an example)
Finally, someone who properly understands the LGPL! Nobody else seems to realize in this thread that the point of providing the object files is so you can swap in differnt versions of the free software. Object files are specified specifically because when teh LGPL was written their intension was to allow for proprietary programs to link free libraries. If sony did their job right, all they need to do is provide a single text file to solve the problem, and have an obscure section of their website with the object files. They dont have to give anything up at all, they probably wont even go to court or anything stupid like that. I'd call what they did the equivalent of J-walking on a dirt road.
Why should the companies care? I maintain that open source doesnt not have to be anti-capitalist... If you have a well run company, with an innovative product that you market correctly, open source software is of no threat, in fact, it's probably a benefit to your business if used properly. If anything, a free and open source software world would probably make most companies better off and more profitable since it would dramatically reduce their costs and increase their productivities.
Yes. And i'm sure he also has the time/money/resources to first, discover that you're misusing his software and second, take the time and the cash to sue you over it. It's fairly easy to assume that by far the vast majority of individuals who distribute software under the GPL are not this passionate about it, making much of this high minded debate pointless.
If someone wants to steal your software, and you dont have the balls, the time, and the money to defend it, then what's the point on citing passages of the GPL all the time. It's only worth your willingness to go to war over it.
see, this is why i have trouble understanding why the eu/un are so upset about this. there is really nothing to control. the US doesnt "control" anything, it just so happens that the commonly used root file is administered by a company located in the US.
The only way this proposed solution would work effectively is if you denied the users the ability to willfully duplicate or otherwise represent enough personal information to perform a financial transaction. Sure, with really overkill smart cards you can make ATMs and retailers secure (good luck on getting them to pay lots of $$$ for something they dont neet, ie, new scanners), you would also render it nearly impossible for people to buy things, for example, over the phone, or from merchants without cc processing equipment on hand. This level of paranoia will only lead to one place, really frustrated old people who just want to bank, and a whole lot of money down the tubes. Now what banks like ING do is prudent to be sure, but people have been falling for cleaver scams since the beginning of time. All of them have been easy to spot (from the outside) and all of them have attracted people. It's nice enough that some banks offer online froad protection. I'd just suggest signing up with one of them, because insurance is really the best, and as I see it, the only practical way to deal with this problem.
Yeah, but dont forget, you cant patent something that already exists. (novel) thus, all that this license would ensure would be that researchers killing themselves over algorythms, which, without patents will never make them any money making their effort worthless, will be put out in the cold by GPL'd software.... is that what we want>?
Your use of the word "loyalty" is incorrect here. Intrestingly enough, you are already obligated to be loyal to your employer even if it isnt in your contract, and you need to follow any reasonable request they make while paying you. In many instances, you can infact violate Duty of loyalty to your employer doing things that non-competes usually also seek to cover. i.e., you cant compete, attempt to compete, or prepare to compete while working for your employer.
yeah, in the US the government cant invalidate contracts line that.
My point isnt to do with the telcos, but contract law. In canada, how can you get a contract voided without going to court? If the contract is illegal, all that means is that it's a void contract, but it cant be a void contract unless it is ruled to be void, or voided by both parties.