Supposedly for a patent to be granted, something has to be new, useable and non-obvious. But when the patent office gets into the game, "new" means "we don't have it in our files", and "unobvious" means unobvious to someone with an IQ of 50.
KDE and WindowMaker are both frameworks for running Apps. In the case of KDE the toolkit is QT.
See, this is the kind of misunderstanding I'm referring to.
Windowmaker doesn't provide any framework for running apps. Its only role in running apps is to do the fork/exec when the user selects the application to run from the Windowmaker menu. After that its only interaction with the application is through standard window management functions (moving, resizing, etc.), and even that isn't really "interaction" -- the X server simply notifies the application of its new size when the application is resized, and perhaps of its new location when the application is moved (but I don't recall seeing an X event for that), point being that the application itself doesn't interact with Windowmaker beyond telling Windowmaker what its min/max sizes are, whether it should be minimizable, etc.
KDE provides much more than that. It builds on top of Qt, providing services (such as file management), application interoperability (KParts), etc. The same thing is true of Gnome. Applications are built on top of KDE and Gnome. They are not built on top of Windowmaker.
KDE and Windowmaker are orthogonal. They each solve completely different problems (though KDE does come with a window manager, the window manager isn't all there is of KDE, not by a long shot). In fact, it's entirely possible to build a window manager on top of KDE (with some care, since one needs to avoid recursive dependencies) -- the window manager bundled with KDE is one such example -- but you cannot build KDE on top of a window manager! When you understand just how the architecture of an X desktop works, you'll understand that the notion of building a toolkit on top of a window manager doesn't even make sense. It's a non-sequitur.
Does this make sense? Does it help you to see the difference between Windowmaker and (say) KDE?
What's with you guys who extoll the virtues of Windowmaker and how it takes care of the bloatware problem, the user experience, etc.? Don't you people know anything about the X desktop architecture?
Windowmaker is a window manager. That means that its mission in life is to provide a workspace and to allow the user to move windows around, resize them, place them in different workspaces, etc. Aside from maybe allowing you to launch a few preconfigured applications, that's all it does. It doesn't help you manage your files. It doesn't help you write letters. It doesn't help you associate files and applications, or any of the other standard things that most people associate with a desktop.
If all users did was to do window management tasks, then Windowmaker would be all you'd ever need. Sorry, but that's not all users do. In fact, it's not the main thing users do.
Users run applications. Applications need a user interface. Guess what provides that user interface? Windowmaker? No! Gnome. KDE. Athena. And a bunch of other, more obscure toolkits that few people use anymore (including Motif!).
You can run Windowmaker all you want. It'll make window management tasks fast. But it won't do a whole lot for reducing the significant amount of memory that applications that are built on top of Gnome or KDE will require, because it's the toolkits which eat the space.
Nor will it make the user experience easier, except for perhaps helping users launch applications and move windows around.
To be honest, this business of having the toolkit on the client side is nonsense. It should be built into a separate server (or integrated into the X server as an extension), so that a change in the toolkit will be picked up by everything. It would do for user interfaces what the X server does for drawing graphics: provide a single point of control. The result would be that the user could change his theme and everything would follow suit. No matter what system it was running on at the time.
Subject: Re: confidentaility
To: hamza kalu <hamzakalu@yahoo.com>
From: Jonathan Land <jland@incomplete.net>
Date: 08/08/2001
Jonathan Land,
If you disturb me again i will use african
vodoo agaainst you. You will loose your manhood and may die infact i am looking
at you now from a calabash of water and wondering if i should strike you
dead but i see a girl an innocent girl, her spirit is strong i will let you
pass this time.
Hamza.
Hamza,
You're the funniest fucker in the world.
I'd like to see your African Voodoo against my American Technology. I'm a
top muckity-muck in the Department Of Defense. I'll have a Smart Bomb in
your lap faster than you can play Hot Potato with it. They'll be picking those
voodoo pins out of the remnants of your ass right up until the funeral.
So seriously, I'm not a cop or anything:
a) Are you even remotely near Nigeria? b) How many people do you send emails like this out to, and how
many actually fall for it? c) Why did you keep writing back to me when I was obviously yanking
you harder than a wood chipper? I could imagine that you deal with a lot
of humorless folks in this line of work, and I might be a breath of fresh
air.
Essentially, I'm really curious... how well
has this racket worked for you?
According to this site: http://home.rica.net/alphae/419coal/
the scam you're running is actually a major industry in Nigeria, so I guess
it's going well.
Jon
Katz is correct - what survived the initial crash (those without Elephants and Magical Dragons From China at their IPO parties) are surviving, and dare I say flourishing, in the valley of silicon.
You are correct that there are some companies that survived the tech crash. But that's not what Katz said. He said that Sillicon Valley is "quite alive and well" and, furthermore, that the tech economy itself is also "quite alive and well".
Well, the tech economy in Silicon Valley is not alive and well, and the unemployment rate around here (two or three percentage points above the national average if I'm not mistaken), combined with the fact that not only are most of the tech people I know out of a job, but most of the tech people they know are also out of a job, proves it enough for me (but go ahead and believe in Katz's fantasy that everything in Silicon Valley is hunky dory if it makes you feel better).
I wouldn't have a problem if Katz limited himself to only a few companies, but in his usual style he's taking sound bites from the media and applying them to everything.
Despite much hype to the contrary, Silicon Valley is quite alive and well
Bwahahahaha!! Damn, Katz, you've always been full of shit (particularly in your movie reviews) but this has got to be one of the most idiotic comments I've ever seen. I guess maybe it's "alive and well" in that there are still people living here, but that's about all you can say about it.
This place is "alive and well" only if you're looking at the healthcare industry here (hint: looking at healthcare won't tell you a thing, because the demand for healthcare services is largely independent of the economy).
Suppose that, OK, Gateway computers HAVE to have Windows, because Gateway must follow the Way of Gates. But what's to stop Gateway from spinning off a tiny company called "Freeway, a subsidiary of Gateway" or whatever, and have *that* company sell all the non-M$ OSes they want? So M$ strips Freeway of any license to bundle M$ software. Freeway thumbs its nose and says, "So what?" Meanwhile, Gateway mocks sympathy for M$ and says, "You know, I really do wish we could better control those rogues down at Freeway. But our organization just doesn't have that level of control over our subsidiaries."
Why couldn't this work?
Because MS would go back to Gateway and say (in its best Marlon Brandoesque voice) "We're very concerned about the management problems you're having. It is very unfortunate that we've had to raise our price. You're one of our favorite partners and we're deeply saddened that we can't give you a better price, But until you take care of your management problems there's nothing we can do to help you."
Wow...those screenshots at the top of the main page of JavaGaming.org are incredibly lifelike! They have a photorealistic quality I've rarely seen in any game, much less...
... er...
Oh, those aren't screenshots? Erm, never mind then.:-)
To the moderator who marked my posting "troll": I put the smiley in at the bottom because I wanted to make it obvious not to take the posting seriously. I guess I didn't do a good enough job. If there's anything else I could have done to make that clear, I'd certainly like to know about it...
The Solution Since we can't outlaw soft money altogether to get rid of the quid pro quo going on right now, we'll have to regulate it. I propose that all campaign contributions over $5 be forced to be anonymous. Claims can't be made for tax write-offs on campaign contributions.
Think it over. If all donations are anonymous, there can be no quid pro quo. That way, it doesn't matter how much Disney et al give. With no quid pro quo, Congressmen can't be bought as they can now. They will have to face the people who elected them and do their will.
You're forgetting one thing: these same corporations own the media. The media controls who gets exposure to the voters and who doesn't. So the politicians who want to be reelected are forced to play ball with the media corporations. Worse, those large corporations that don't own media outlets will of course have deals with those that do, so that the candidate(s) they support end up with some media exposure.
But it's worse than that. Do you really think that the money that's visibly contributed by these corporations (like Disney) is all there is? You can bank on there being at least $5 handed to these politicians under the table for every $1 contributed legitimately. And the large corporations which own the media can get away with it too -- how else are people going to find out about such things except through that same media? Additionally, once the politician takes the money, the corporation that gives him the money owns him, because that corporation will arrange to have that politician exposed in the media if he misbehaves.
So it doesn't matter if donations are anonymous, because the large corporations will still be in control.
Is there any reason to stick around if this bill passes and doesn't get struck down by the Supreme Court within the year?
I'd love to see what these idiots sponsoring this bill would think if suddenly there wasn't anyone left to hire to manage the IT infrastructure in the U.S. for them, or if all the engineering talent decided to leave the country for greener pastures (this pasture is turning browner by the minute). Or even if the large tech companies (like Intel and AMD) simply stopped selling any equipment within the U.S.
The content providers continously claim that they're losing Billions and Billions of dollars to "piracy".
But when you look at the quarterly report they send to their stockholders, do you see an entry showing a huge loss to "piracy"? Hell, no. In fact, you won't even find such an entry!
Oh, I won't deny that "piracy" happens. But when these companies continue to report increased earnings, it should be obvious that "piracy" isn't having the effect they claim -- their claim of huge losses is complete bullshit.
Oh, I think Google could make their point much more effectively than that.
Think about it: Google is the premier search engine of the net these days. They're the search engine behind a number of big sites, like Yahoo and Earthlink. That's quite a bit of power that they wield.
So when the CoS wants to play hardball with the DMCA as a club, the guys at Google could say "sure, we'll be happy to comply with your request to remove links and cache entries that point to that material. Of course, we'll also have to remove all of our links and cache entries for your sites and any pages that happen to refer to your organization in a positive light, just to be sure. Can't be too careful, you know". Of course, they'll leave the links and cache entries pointing to pages and sites that are anti-CoS up. And also put up the message that you mention as an explanation that the search isn't the completely objective thing that people are looking for, and why.
And suddenly, the CoS becomes a non-presence on the net.
And Google could give the same treatment to anyone who threatens them.
Unfair, you say? Well, Google is a privately owned company and the resources that are used to cache this stuff are theirs to manage as they see fit, right?
Lesson: don't screw with a powerful entity that wishes to remain objective. They might decide to not be objective about you anymore, and you might not like that at all.
Talk about how this bill with DECIMATE the tech/hardware industry and set us back years, which in the tech industry, is tantamount to complete economic collapse.
That's all well and good, but would it really have that effect? I'm betting it wouldn't, because most people are sheep and will simply do what they're told and buy what's available, no matter how bad (remember, this is industry-wide so competition from the outside isn't an issue).
If worded badly, this legislation will require DRM in everything down to microcontrollers, and such things will therefore become quite a lot more expensive. But that would destroy the tech industry only if tech customers had alternatives... but they won't.
So while I will certainly concede that this could have a devastating effect on the tech industry, it's not clear to me exactly how, except for one thing: it would completely destroy the ability of American tech companies to compete in the world market, unless the tech companies develop parallel product lines, which would have a large negative effect on the benefits of mass production.
It does say the final "encoding rules" should take into account fair-use rights, such as making backup copies or reproducing short excerpts from books, songs, or movies. Copies of TV broadcasts made for one-time personal use at home are also permitted.
Yeah, right. Just like the DMCA "takes into account fair-use rights" by limiting its scope to distribution of a "copyright circumvention device", right?
In California at least the employment contract does not trump the law on this matter.
That may be true, but the problem is that you have to go to court in order to use it. Which means that you have to pay a lot of money if an employer takes you to court. Most people don't have that kind of cash laying around dormant, so most people would be forced to cave. And so, the wording in the contract ends up having the force of law even if it contradicts actual law.
Some of you have occasionally argued that you should be able to negotiate anything at all on a contract, including your rights.
Are you still certain of that, in light of this bit about employment contracts? What exactly are you going to do when every employer insists on owning everything you create while in their employ?
It seems to me that a much more reasonable system would simply insist on enforcing the rights of the individual (the courts being there to arbitrate disputes between individuals whose rights conflict somehow). A "hierarchy of rights" would help enormously in reducing the number of such conflicts.
But as it is, many people seem to believe that individually negotiated contracts should override an individual's rights. I don't subscribe to that belief, especially in light of this most recent case with employment contracts.
Insurance - any genetic abnormalities and then try getting insurance. Even worse if diseases such as HIV/AIDs were included in your information.
Why should I, as a health non-AIDS getter be punished for living a healthy lifestyle? Smokers often have to pay higher insurance premiums because they're a greater risk. Why is AIDS any different?
Two comments:
AIDS is different because it's not self-induced. But even if it were,
The entire purpose of insurance of any kind, whether it be health, auto, or whatever, is to spread the risk. That means that it shouldn't matter if you have a condition that predisposes you to certain health problems -- there are (hopefully) a lot of other people out there who don't have such problems and who are also paying into the system.
Otherwise we may as well take your position to its logical conclusion and eliminate health insurance entirely, thus making you entirely responsible for paying for whatever medical problems you encounter, since that's ultimately what happens when you segregate people into enough distinct groups (the smallest possible group is a group of one). Viewed this way, I think it's actually wrong for health insurance providers to group people by risk (self-induced or otherwise), since it goes against the main working premise behind insurance.
Argh...you know you've been reading Slashdot too long when you see the word "loosed" and your first attempt at interpretation yields "lost", even though you never make the mistake of confusing "lose" and "loose" in your own writings...
Sigh...
Dear Congressperson:
on
SSSCA Editorials
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Can't read the above? That's because your SSSCA-compliant computer refuses to decode my SSSCA-compliant message, because you haven't paid Microsoft $1,000,000 for the right to legally decode messages sent to you by your constituents. That you got the above at all was only because I paid Microsoft $10,000 for a license to send messages to Congress.
----
Of course, the above hasn't happened yet. But it will, if the SSSCA passes. Because the SSSCA will give COMPLETE and ABSOLUTE control over what you are allowed to do and not do to only those corporations that are given the privilege to write the operating system and other software for SSSCA-compliant computers.
Some in Congress might actually regard it as a good thing that constituents are no longer able to communicate with Congress, especially by computer. If you are one of those, then I will make it my mission in life to make sure that you never get elected to any public office ever again.
But I won't believe a word any of those corporations that cry about "piracy" say about it until their "losses" from "piracy" appear on the balance sheet in their quarterly statements that are handed to their stockholders and projections of the effects of "piracy" are given to stock market analysts along with the rest of the projections that they make.
Until then, I'm going to consider any claim any of these idiots make with respect to "piracy" as complete and utter bullshit.
In particular biz journalists like to blame the young founders of these companies, as if their lack of seriousness and business experience caused the dot com crash.
It WAS in a lot of way their fault. It was this sheer arrogance, this slavish devotion to fads and unproven business plans that caused a lot of these companies to tank.
No. While most of the ideas in question were really idiotic ("hey, we'll make billions by doing X online instead of through a brick and mortar store!!"), in the vast majority of cases the founders only had enough money to get things set up initially and to find funding.
Where the real money was lost was in the funding. Where did that funding come from? Venture capitalists. Now, do you really think that the VCs let the founders run the show after giving them tens of millions of dollars?
No. When the VCs didn't put in their own CEO, they made damned sure that the founding CEO did what he was told. And what were the VCs after? A quick buck, of course. They wanted to make all of their money on a flashy IPO. This, more than any other reason, is why they encouraged these dot-com companies to "grow and worry about being profitable later". They were trying to groom the company for a flashy IPO. Never mind that in doing so the company in question could never become profitable, having spent far more money on growing than they could ever recover from their business plan. By that time, the VCs would be out of there and the company would be left to rot.
So what caused it to crash down around their ears? I think it was the actual stock market investors starting to wise up and realize that while the company might look like a good IPO candidate, it wasn't necessarily one. Or perhaps they simply got overloaded with all of the IPOs happening. Either way, I suspect the actual stock market investors stopped buying into the hype. Once that happened, IPOs started to become very disappointing from the point of view of the VCs. Once that happened, they started pulling out of the companies they had invested in, in order to save as much of their invested money as they could. The rest, as they say, is history.
So the bottom line is that if the VCs had bothered to concentrate on making the companies they were investing in profitable in the long run instead of trying to make a quick buck, two things would have happened:
They would have invested in far fewer companies (only in companies that truly had solid business plans, for starters). Which means that most of the dot-com startups would have died on the vine instead of growing like a cancer.
They would have done what they needed to do in order to maximize the long term prospects of their investments. While this wouldn't necessarily have paid off in the spectacular way that some of the dot-com IPOs did, they probably would have gotten a more consistent return on their investment. And many of the resulting companies would still be around. I dare say that had they done this, a lot of the startups that died would still be around today, because at least a few of them really did have solid business plans that would have worked had they concentrated on running the plan instead of growing at the expense of long term profitability, only to lose their funding when their VCs panicked.
Bottom line is that I think the VCs are primarily to blame, though there is plenty of blame to go around.
Slashdot Mirror
LOL!!
See, this is the kind of misunderstanding I'm referring to.
Windowmaker doesn't provide any framework for running apps. Its only role in running apps is to do the fork/exec when the user selects the application to run from the Windowmaker menu. After that its only interaction with the application is through standard window management functions (moving, resizing, etc.), and even that isn't really "interaction" -- the X server simply notifies the application of its new size when the application is resized, and perhaps of its new location when the application is moved (but I don't recall seeing an X event for that), point being that the application itself doesn't interact with Windowmaker beyond telling Windowmaker what its min/max sizes are, whether it should be minimizable, etc.
KDE provides much more than that. It builds on top of Qt, providing services (such as file management), application interoperability (KParts), etc. The same thing is true of Gnome. Applications are built on top of KDE and Gnome. They are not built on top of Windowmaker.
KDE and Windowmaker are orthogonal. They each solve completely different problems (though KDE does come with a window manager, the window manager isn't all there is of KDE, not by a long shot). In fact, it's entirely possible to build a window manager on top of KDE (with some care, since one needs to avoid recursive dependencies) -- the window manager bundled with KDE is one such example -- but you cannot build KDE on top of a window manager! When you understand just how the architecture of an X desktop works, you'll understand that the notion of building a toolkit on top of a window manager doesn't even make sense. It's a non-sequitur.
Does this make sense? Does it help you to see the difference between Windowmaker and (say) KDE?
Windowmaker is a window manager. That means that its mission in life is to provide a workspace and to allow the user to move windows around, resize them, place them in different workspaces, etc. Aside from maybe allowing you to launch a few preconfigured applications, that's all it does. It doesn't help you manage your files. It doesn't help you write letters. It doesn't help you associate files and applications, or any of the other standard things that most people associate with a desktop.
If all users did was to do window management tasks, then Windowmaker would be all you'd ever need. Sorry, but that's not all users do. In fact, it's not the main thing users do.
Users run applications. Applications need a user interface. Guess what provides that user interface? Windowmaker? No! Gnome. KDE. Athena. And a bunch of other, more obscure toolkits that few people use anymore (including Motif!).
You can run Windowmaker all you want. It'll make window management tasks fast. But it won't do a whole lot for reducing the significant amount of memory that applications that are built on top of Gnome or KDE will require, because it's the toolkits which eat the space.
Nor will it make the user experience easier, except for perhaps helping users launch applications and move windows around.
To be honest, this business of having the toolkit on the client side is nonsense. It should be built into a separate server (or integrated into the X server as an extension), so that a change in the toolkit will be picked up by everything. It would do for user interfaces what the X server does for drawing graphics: provide a single point of control. The result would be that the user could change his theme and everything would follow suit. No matter what system it was running on at the time.
Subject: Re: confidentaility
If you disturb me again i will use african vodoo agaainst you. You will loose your manhood and may die infact i am looking at you now from a calabash of water and wondering if i should strike you dead but i see a girl an innocent girl, her spirit is strong i will let you pass this time. Hamza.To: hamza kalu <hamzakalu@yahoo.com>
From: Jonathan Land <jland@incomplete.net>
Date: 08/08/2001
Jonathan Land,
You are correct that there are some companies that survived the tech crash. But that's not what Katz said. He said that Sillicon Valley is "quite alive and well" and, furthermore, that the tech economy itself is also "quite alive and well".
Well, the tech economy in Silicon Valley is not alive and well, and the unemployment rate around here (two or three percentage points above the national average if I'm not mistaken), combined with the fact that not only are most of the tech people I know out of a job, but most of the tech people they know are also out of a job, proves it enough for me (but go ahead and believe in Katz's fantasy that everything in Silicon Valley is hunky dory if it makes you feel better).
I wouldn't have a problem if Katz limited himself to only a few companies, but in his usual style he's taking sound bites from the media and applying them to everything.
Bwahahahaha!! Damn, Katz, you've always been full of shit (particularly in your movie reviews) but this has got to be one of the most idiotic comments I've ever seen. I guess maybe it's "alive and well" in that there are still people living here, but that's about all you can say about it.
This place is "alive and well" only if you're looking at the healthcare industry here (hint: looking at healthcare won't tell you a thing, because the demand for healthcare services is largely independent of the economy).
Because MS would go back to Gateway and say (in its best Marlon Brandoesque voice) "We're very concerned about the management problems you're having. It is very unfortunate that we've had to raise our price. You're one of our favorite partners and we're deeply saddened that we can't give you a better price, But until you take care of your management problems there's nothing we can do to help you."
Oh, those aren't screenshots? Erm, never mind then. :-)
To the moderator who marked my posting "troll": I put the smiley in at the bottom because I wanted to make it obvious not to take the posting seriously. I guess I didn't do a good enough job. If there's anything else I could have done to make that clear, I'd certainly like to know about it...
Oh, wait, this is Skipjack the distribution, not Skipjack the algorithm. Never mind...
Oh, my, in my paranoia I just don't know what to do!
that this crap bill passes with a voice vote, so that there's no record of who voted for it and who didn't?
You're forgetting one thing: these same corporations own the media. The media controls who gets exposure to the voters and who doesn't. So the politicians who want to be reelected are forced to play ball with the media corporations. Worse, those large corporations that don't own media outlets will of course have deals with those that do, so that the candidate(s) they support end up with some media exposure.
But it's worse than that. Do you really think that the money that's visibly contributed by these corporations (like Disney) is all there is? You can bank on there being at least $5 handed to these politicians under the table for every $1 contributed legitimately. And the large corporations which own the media can get away with it too -- how else are people going to find out about such things except through that same media? Additionally, once the politician takes the money, the corporation that gives him the money owns him, because that corporation will arrange to have that politician exposed in the media if he misbehaves.
So it doesn't matter if donations are anonymous, because the large corporations will still be in control.
I'd love to see what these idiots sponsoring this bill would think if suddenly there wasn't anyone left to hire to manage the IT infrastructure in the U.S. for them, or if all the engineering talent decided to leave the country for greener pastures (this pasture is turning browner by the minute). Or even if the large tech companies (like Intel and AMD) simply stopped selling any equipment within the U.S.
That's just wishful thinking, of course...sigh...
But when you look at the quarterly report they send to their stockholders, do you see an entry showing a huge loss to "piracy"? Hell, no. In fact, you won't even find such an entry!
Oh, I won't deny that "piracy" happens. But when these companies continue to report increased earnings, it should be obvious that "piracy" isn't having the effect they claim -- their claim of huge losses is complete bullshit.
Think about it: Google is the premier search engine of the net these days. They're the search engine behind a number of big sites, like Yahoo and Earthlink. That's quite a bit of power that they wield.
So when the CoS wants to play hardball with the DMCA as a club, the guys at Google could say "sure, we'll be happy to comply with your request to remove links and cache entries that point to that material. Of course, we'll also have to remove all of our links and cache entries for your sites and any pages that happen to refer to your organization in a positive light, just to be sure. Can't be too careful, you know". Of course, they'll leave the links and cache entries pointing to pages and sites that are anti-CoS up. And also put up the message that you mention as an explanation that the search isn't the completely objective thing that people are looking for, and why.
And suddenly, the CoS becomes a non-presence on the net.
And Google could give the same treatment to anyone who threatens them.
Unfair, you say? Well, Google is a privately owned company and the resources that are used to cache this stuff are theirs to manage as they see fit, right?
Lesson: don't screw with a powerful entity that wishes to remain objective. They might decide to not be objective about you anymore, and you might not like that at all.
That's all well and good, but would it really have that effect? I'm betting it wouldn't, because most people are sheep and will simply do what they're told and buy what's available, no matter how bad (remember, this is industry-wide so competition from the outside isn't an issue).
If worded badly, this legislation will require DRM in everything down to microcontrollers, and such things will therefore become quite a lot more expensive. But that would destroy the tech industry only if tech customers had alternatives ... but they won't.
So while I will certainly concede that this could have a devastating effect on the tech industry, it's not clear to me exactly how, except for one thing: it would completely destroy the ability of American tech companies to compete in the world market, unless the tech companies develop parallel product lines, which would have a large negative effect on the benefits of mass production.
Yeah, right. Just like the DMCA "takes into account fair-use rights" by limiting its scope to distribution of a "copyright circumvention device", right?
That may be true, but the problem is that you have to go to court in order to use it. Which means that you have to pay a lot of money if an employer takes you to court. Most people don't have that kind of cash laying around dormant, so most people would be forced to cave. And so, the wording in the contract ends up having the force of law even if it contradicts actual law.
Are you still certain of that, in light of this bit about employment contracts? What exactly are you going to do when every employer insists on owning everything you create while in their employ?
It seems to me that a much more reasonable system would simply insist on enforcing the rights of the individual (the courts being there to arbitrate disputes between individuals whose rights conflict somehow). A "hierarchy of rights" would help enormously in reducing the number of such conflicts.
But as it is, many people seem to believe that individually negotiated contracts should override an individual's rights. I don't subscribe to that belief, especially in light of this most recent case with employment contracts.
Two comments:
Otherwise we may as well take your position to its logical conclusion and eliminate health insurance entirely, thus making you entirely responsible for paying for whatever medical problems you encounter, since that's ultimately what happens when you segregate people into enough distinct groups (the smallest possible group is a group of one). Viewed this way, I think it's actually wrong for health insurance providers to group people by risk (self-induced or otherwise), since it goes against the main working premise behind insurance.
Sigh...
298UGH3892HOEWIGH98H2UIEWHG89HGEE
298UH3G92H392RSIDHGHU98UWHEFE9239
23HFUSHHFHOIWE90G9UGHUIHG98UFQOIE
UI2OHG290239URJJHSUIHGEUIHG90EUFH
----
Can't read the above? That's because your SSSCA-compliant computer refuses to decode my SSSCA-compliant message, because you haven't paid Microsoft $1,000,000 for the right to legally decode messages sent to you by your constituents. That you got the above at all was only because I paid Microsoft $10,000 for a license to send messages to Congress.
----
Of course, the above hasn't happened yet. But it will, if the SSSCA passes. Because the SSSCA will give COMPLETE and ABSOLUTE control over what you are allowed to do and not do to only those corporations that are given the privilege to write the operating system and other software for SSSCA-compliant computers.
Some in Congress might actually regard it as a good thing that constituents are no longer able to communicate with Congress, especially by computer. If you are one of those, then I will make it my mission in life to make sure that you never get elected to any public office ever again.
Thank you for your time.
Until then, I'm going to consider any claim any of these idiots make with respect to "piracy" as complete and utter bullshit.
No. While most of the ideas in question were really idiotic ("hey, we'll make billions by doing X online instead of through a brick and mortar store!!"), in the vast majority of cases the founders only had enough money to get things set up initially and to find funding.
Where the real money was lost was in the funding. Where did that funding come from? Venture capitalists. Now, do you really think that the VCs let the founders run the show after giving them tens of millions of dollars?
No. When the VCs didn't put in their own CEO, they made damned sure that the founding CEO did what he was told. And what were the VCs after? A quick buck, of course. They wanted to make all of their money on a flashy IPO. This, more than any other reason, is why they encouraged these dot-com companies to "grow and worry about being profitable later". They were trying to groom the company for a flashy IPO. Never mind that in doing so the company in question could never become profitable, having spent far more money on growing than they could ever recover from their business plan. By that time, the VCs would be out of there and the company would be left to rot.
So what caused it to crash down around their ears? I think it was the actual stock market investors starting to wise up and realize that while the company might look like a good IPO candidate, it wasn't necessarily one. Or perhaps they simply got overloaded with all of the IPOs happening. Either way, I suspect the actual stock market investors stopped buying into the hype. Once that happened, IPOs started to become very disappointing from the point of view of the VCs. Once that happened, they started pulling out of the companies they had invested in, in order to save as much of their invested money as they could. The rest, as they say, is history.
So the bottom line is that if the VCs had bothered to concentrate on making the companies they were investing in profitable in the long run instead of trying to make a quick buck, two things would have happened:
Bottom line is that I think the VCs are primarily to blame, though there is plenty of blame to go around.