Re:This is why I prefer the iPad:
on
The eBook Backlash
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· Score: 3, Insightful
For those who are [easily distracted], and who simply want to read more, a dedicated e-ink reader is probably a much wiser purchase than an iPad or Android tablet.
I don't think so. The power of a tablet is amazing; the flexibility is better -- and all you have to do to not be distracted is either turn off the connectivity (trivial) or learn to focus (perhaps not trivial, but eminently worthwhile.) A dedicated e-reader can't be held up to the sky and instantly tell you what you're looking at. it can't serve as a planetarium. It won't do a ton of things... and for the price, to me, it's simply not worth it. I'm not carrying both, and I'm also not going to forgo the power of a tablet. To do so would be shooting myself in the foot.
The best thing for people to do is to learn to focus. Concentration is a worthy and powerful tool. An inability to concentrate is not worthy of coddling; it seems similar to me of some fellow complaining that he's nervous around women, and being advised that a good solution is to only hang with men. No, the good solution is to get over it, because it's not a good thing. Same thing if you're easily distracted. Solve the problem -- don't coddle it.
Agreed, Baen Books is a relatively bright star in a decidedly dim sky. Although they, too, could do better with new authors. Believe me... a lot of cr*p gets out there while some really fantabulous new stuff languishes.
Look, if you get distracted, that's a not a problem with the tablet: That's a problem with you. Notifications bothering you? Turn off the wifi, cellular... in the case of the iPad, just flip it into "airplane" mode. Can't stay off Facebook? Not an iPad problem. A "you" problem. Have to see tweets? That's 140 characters of you-fail. Don't go blaming technology because you fail to use it well. And don't clamor for it to change because you suck at coping. You change. Then you can benefit from judicious use of technology instead of letting it knock you around.
Hmmmm... this reminds of the old canard "There are no atheists in foxholes." That's not a flaw in atheism. That just demonstrates that foxholes are really fucked up. You dig? lol...
Re:This is why I prefer the iPad:
on
The eBook Backlash
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I wonder in what shape your iPad will be in, say, 10 years time:) Spill some spaghetti sauce on it as well, in the name of science.
See, on the face of it, that seems like a good question, but it's actually very misleading. My iPad will have been replaced with an iPad3, coming out next week. And that, likely with an iPad X, when they tempt me again. And of course we still have the books in the cloud, and they're on the Mac Kindle reader, on my SO's two kindles, and my iPod (yeah, I actually read on an iPod... large fonts FTW.)
So the longevity of the reader (beyond a reasonable lifespan, which I have confidence they will generally reach, my current iPad is a v1 from day one and it's doing fine, as are all my other Apple products) isn't the issue, because the books aren't tied to the hardware.
If in fact something happens, I can have a new reader for $79+$4 overnight (Amazon prime!) Who knows how low that will go in the next few years, or how much more powerful they'll be. Or both. Perhaps I'll be grateful if someone spills spaghetti sauce on it. Maybe I'll even do it on purpose.:)
This is why I prefer the iPad:
on
The eBook Backlash
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Because this whole "distraction" thing is complete and utter nonsense. If I want to read, I read. If I want to do something else, I do it. Nothing "distracts" me. The tablet is not a "temptress", lol. It's a machine, and it does what *I* tell it to, not the other way around.
And then there's that poignant call: "a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience" As an owner of thousands of books, let me tell you what that "permanence" is... it's a spine that will crack when you open the book years later. It's the incredibly lousy, acid infused paper that has yellowed, and smelled-up, and eventually caused to crumble, the pages of many of my otherwise treasured reads. It's being unable to find the title because someone has put it back funny, or not put it back at all. Or folded the pages. Or spilled spaghetti sauce on it. Or their lovely child has ripped out the conclusion to chapter three. Or ask a college kid or graduate about the "sense of permanence" that is the reality of a backpack filled with heavy texts. Not exactly a pleasant experience, or a lovely fashion accessory. And it cuts down the amount of actual cool stuff you can carry.
Whereas the e-book experience... the litany is long and distinguished: You don't lose 'em; you don't misplace them; they don't age; you can read them in the dark (well, unless you went with e-ink, but then you can read in the sun if you're so inclined... me, I think reading in the sun is insane, but that's just me.) There are hot dictionaries, hot notes, hot highlights, sharing of same so you can see if what you think is interesting is what everyone else thinks is interesting. There is linkage to summary and statistical info on the book; YOU control the font size, and trust me, as an older guy compared to most of the rest of you puppies, that's a big deal; you can dim the thing and read late at night without disturbing your SO (you'll get girlfriends... really, you will. Patience.) You can read silently, page turns are noiseless. You can read with music, if that's pleasing to you. You can't lose your place -- an e-reader keeps track of what page you were on for every book you're reading, no matter how many that might be. As of recently, they've come up with a way to lend the book and you can't lose it, it simply "snaps" back into your library after the lend is up... you can self-publish without having to have an agent (that's me!), an editor, a publishing house, a marketing plan, and years of fruitless trying; you can carry your whole library with you, and I'm talking a LOT of books, so not only is all your fun reading with you, now you can always have your programming references and textbooks and so forth with you too... that part is just getting off the ground, but it was of direct help to me when I began to learn infrared photography and Apple's Cocoa so I'm personally sensitized to how great it is; and now, with the whole "its backed up in the cloud", you can't even lose your books if you drop your reader down the face of the Hoover dam. From the space shuttle. And the actual reality of that "distraction" is that your reader, if you so choose, can do a myriad of other useful and fun things for you.
But that was a funny article from a luddite.:)
Again speaking as someone involved with the publishing industry (I own a literary agency and I'm a published author, also the offspring of same), let me tell you why the publishers aren't so hot on e-books. The writer has ideas and stories, but surprisingly often, isn't all that great at telling them. The agency has agents on staff who can help -- a lot -- with that, and also (historically speaking) know which publishers are looking, and what they are looking for. An old boys network in the classic sense. Publishers can get the writer into print. And, if the writer is a GREAT writer, they might even throw in a little publicity work. But great writers don't really need publicity. If there's a new Ursula Le Guin or Michael Moorcock or Alan Dean Foster novel and you li
Sure he does. Not only for investing, but for providing solid competition with a different angle to it -- a very successful angle -- that required Apple to innovate one way or another to succeed.
And even today, I still run Windows... under OS X, in a VM, sandboxed safely away from the Internet.:o)
So that no commercial interest can benefit from your source code, thereby intentionally pushing the freeware / non-commercial approach, yes?
And all university research should always be permissive, so that it can be incorporated into either GPLed, proprietary or whatever else.
Thereby enabling all approaches equally, and may the best approach succeed. Well, that seems much more even handed, fair, and so forth.
So... if you want to do that with source code that comes from a university, why not with source code that comes from elsewhere, given that you're handing out the source code anyway? Did I miss a philosophical point here, or is your approach as contradictory as it looks?
Isn't it easy enough to see that all the licenses solve different problems?
Well, no, not really. Seems to me that the GPL causes a problem -- it creates a reserve of software that can't make it to the broader marketplace because it can't go commercial (because it can very easily convert what was private IP into public IP.) That's why when I write software that I intend to share, I never use the GPL.
The GPL poisons commercial code -- intentionally -- and that keeps GPL'd software from ever bringing mainstream software developers into the fold. This is why the "year of the linux desktop" never comes. Those big packages everyone wants, from Photoshop to Office etc., the companies that create them simply can't afford to mix in with that kind of licensing. Well, that and the hugely fragmented nature of the various linux distributions. And the lack of a standard, royalty-free and non-poisonous-license GUI (other than x, but x... ugh)
I'm very happy with linux as a server platform, with pretty much all that implies, and I often write freeware for it (non-GPL, of course) but I'd never attempt to put commercial software out under it. IMHO, the GPL was the very worst thing that ever happened to linux -- it isolated and emasculated the platform in one easy step.
No, thats not why you need health insurance. You need health insurance because you cannot afford the out of pocket expenses of some illnesses.
This is just one consequence down the road. If I *don't* get ill, I won't need to be able to afford the healthcare.
Do you have $5000 in the bank? If so, then why do you need coverage for anything that will cost under $5000?
Sure, I've got 5k available. That's enough for one good ER visit, maybe a cast and an ambulance ride, or just a few minutes in the OR. $5000 isn't even a drop in the bucket in terms of potential financial liability for healthcare. The only way to make sure that a health problem doesn't rain utter financial destruction on my family is to pool the risk in a sane way.
You know what the United States health insurance reform mainly did? It made catastrophic coverage "not enough".. its going to be illegal to play it smart.
FTFY: "You know what the United States health insurance reform mainly did? It made catastrophic coverage "not enough".. its going to be illegal to play it cluelessand assume you know what tomorrow will bring."
So the outliers aren't significant on the skinny side, but they are devastating on the fat side.
Look, here's the thing. At the one extreme, we can completely control your diet so that you eat what we think to be the best diet possible, the exact number of calories, the one glass of wine every 2.3 days, we can strap you to your chair so your posture is always perfect, we can make you breathe through a mask, forbid smoking anything, shut down all industry and vehicular pollution generation, pad every sharp surface, force you to go to group calisthenics for your block every morning... etc. Obviously, this would be awful. It's a bad idea to even LOOK down that road, much less travel it.
At the other extreme, we can *educate* people as to what the optimum choices are thought to be with our best research at the moment, and some people will do some of the things indicated to protect their health.
I am far more inclined towards the latter than the former. And, observing that society paid for roads, but they are used quite unevenly, yet the benefit is huge... also police... also fire departments... I rather think that the same thing will apply to health care. I simply am not concerned if this group or that group uses more or less -- I want them all to have it so that the benefits, whatever they are, may accrue to us all in general.
No. It is *ridiculous* to hold person A responsible for what person B thinks.
What society needs to do is imbue its members with a healthy sense of self that doesn't go gibbering into a corner when someone expresses a contrary opinion or otherwise says something that isn't a "good" thing in someone else's personal opinion.
When some child (or adult, for that matter) goes off the rails and pulls a Columbine, and we are sure they are the party that did the deed, we should hang them high and give them zero publicity. That kind of acting out is the province of the subhuman.
Yes, remind them of the guy that only needs catastrophic coverage
No. Look, the only way you can KNOW you "only" need catastrophic coverage is on the day you die and you can sum up your ENTIRE medical history. And then it's too late. I *need* medical insurance because I *may* get ill. Just because I've not *been* ill, doesn't mean that I won't *get* ill. That's what insurance is: trading some wealth today against the possibility something goes awry tomorrow. People who only get catastrophic coverage don't understand probability. But overall, across the pool, there WILL be people who are very healthy overall. The problem the individual faces is that you can't know if that's you or not until it's too late.
Look, we're all better off if the fewest number of people are sick and/or suffering. Just bite the bullet and admit it. Just as an educated populace moves society forward, just as a good road system benefits everyone, including those who don't drive on it, so does a healthy society benefit us all. It's one of those things that is really pretty obvious when you really think about it.
You know, the thing about insurance of groups, which is essentially a statistical undertaking, is that there are always outliers in both directions, and they are accounted for. There are insured people who never go to the doctor or need medical treatment. And there are insured people who go every time someone *else* sniffles. Over a large population, it'll balance out just fine.
Whenever someone starts sniveling about the over-users, take a moment to remind them of me, someone who has been well insured for decades and hasn't *ever* made a health insurance claim -- I seem to have an immune system like a Sherman tank. So far, lol. 55 and counting, though, not too bad.
...all of that is just part of why we should be making a national-level effort comparable to the Manhattan project or the original Apollo program that is designed to do one thing, and one thing only: Get us off the oil teat.
In our case, funding for this kind of thing, however clumsy, has been unavailable basically due to fear. Congress has looked at funding several proposals over the years and has come down pretty solidly on the side of "seems like a risky idea. If it doesn't work, it's a waste, and if it DOES work, we could be in huge trouble." Listening for aliens is one thing... yelling "here we are!" is quite another.
I doubt a relatively small array of mirrors, encircling a sun (you would want omnidirectional) would be even close to visible
Planets are very poor reflectors. Not comparable. You've not got your head wrapped around the thing. RF isn't that different from light in terms of visibility, focus, etc... except you have to *make* it, therefore need a power plant, etc. whereas the light has already been made for you, for free, quite reliably, and at quite significant energies. Light also concentrates wonderfully, and with smaller gear, because it is of (considerably) shorter wavelength than most RF.
BTW, omnidirectional is a really, really bad idea: it ups the energy required by many orders of magnitude. What you do is point at a target, let fly, then point at the next target, let fly, etc. Repeat and loop. You might have several installations doing this at various points, but not all directions at once.
They are wasting their time if the (presumed) radio signals signals are like ours -- planet bound and not intended for other ears. If, however, someone is sending something this way intentionally, then it's well within the bounds of reason that we could hear it. With the relatively simple creation of an antenna and transmitter system in space, there's no reason a signal we could hear couldn't be produced. In fact, this is likely the only way, because the portion of the spectrum SETI is listening in isn't likely to be used for communications on a planetary surface, or if so, certainly not at the radiated power levels and steady aim required to light up any sort of detection at this end.
However, I would ask, why not light? You have a handy sun nearby, radiating all manner of otherwise unused visible energy... all you need to aim, focus and modulate that -- are mirrors. Seems like an altogether easier project, and certainly less expensive, plus less likely to have technical problems.
Why should I have to pay for your inability to drive???
My "inability" to drive? Based on the fact that I support vehicles with high tech driver aids? lol!
Now, let's get to the real question: Why should I have to wait for you to back over someone's kid before it occurs to you that it would actually be better if you could see what is behind you? Further, why would you resist an inexpensive technical innovation that empowers you?
If you are so stupid that you can't look behind you and make sure where your kids are
Oh, I see what your problem is. Comprehension. Let me spell it out for you: Even if we were to stipulate that a driver might know where their kids are; that doesn't mean they know where all kids are, or where all pets are, or where all old ladies that have fallen on the ground behind the vehicle are, etc..
So here's my answer for you: You need to be made to pay for this because you have publicly demonstrated that you fail to make correct decisions on your own -- not just any old decision, but decisions that affect the safety of others. Thanks. You've single-handedly justified why safety equipment is often mandated, and not optional.
I'll put up with the pollution stuff, since there is an effect on everyone. But seat belts, safety mirrors, and the rest??
Seat belts have an effect on everyone -- society ends up paying for your injuries in various forms and by various means, so the more severe they are, the more everyone else pays. They also serve to keep others in the car safer, even if you choose not to wear them.
If a parent is so stupid they let their kids run around parking lots or down streets without watching them, maybe evolution does work.
Mmmm-hmmm, because all kids are dependably watched 24/7 by their parents, and always obey them, and always do the right thing, yes? When has that ever been true in human history? If it's true at your house, all I can say is I pity your children, but hey, at least you're already invested in cameras, right?.
And by the way, evolution works, all right, but the truth is that evolution is a very crude process that optimizes for survival, not for good. Einstein was a mind-somewhere-else, self-involved human being. Evolution is very unkind to such folks. It does not follow that it would be a good thing if he, or any other daydreaming or distracted kid, were run over by the likes of you.
They should absolutely mandate backup cameras -- so cheap for what you get -- and they should ALSO add FLIR to every vehicle -- it would save HUGE numbers of lives and tons of crash expenses too. Imagine being able to see a deer or a pedestrian or a pet hundreds of feet ahead of the area illuminated by your headlights. FLIR works in the deep infrared, and doesn't require an illuminator; FLIR makes an image out of the heat given off by living and otherwise warm things. I've had it for a while, but right now, because of low volume, it's expensive. Best thing they could do for driving right now is get after that, drop the price and make us all safer.
So you have a bubble economy built on false value.
No, we have a real economy built on a difficult, but not impossible, to defend concept of demonstrated huge worth. Now: guess what happens when you get in the way of the extremely rich and powerful people trying to defend it. First they ignore you until you affect the bottom line. That's already long over. Then they begin to warn you. We see these on almost every DVD, bluray, software license, stream, etc. Then they begin to act. We get CP, encryption, dongles, HDCP-infected HDMI designs, software that phones home, etc. When this doesn't work, we get legal action, court dates, fines. People like you begin to scream in surprise when they take your shit. But most think they can get away with it anyway. So when that doesn't work, they provide for, and begin to enforce, jail sentences. That's where we're at now. Most of this crap has escalated to a felony. Do you have ANY idea what it's like to be a felon in modern society? I don't think you do, or you would have worked all this out by now and put your effort into something legitimate that would help you instead of continuing to try to shoot yourself in both feet at once.
First, on the definition of harm: Just what is a "financial injury"?
Joe invents X. There's a legitimate need, and therefore a market, for Y copies of X. Joe prices X at hiscost/Y, which is affordable to the market and therefore not a barrier to purchase, so we can assume these would sell. Larry copies X without paying. Larry further directly or indirectly distributes X to the Y market points. Joe ends up selling nothing. Joe's invention went from worth doing because it was potentially able to earn to repay him for his invention work, to not being able to earn, and so worthless to him financially.
This is the initial nature of the financial injury. In actual practice, it tends to vary; neither the entire market falls prey to the childish notion that an invention is reasonable to take without recompense, or manages to go the honorable way, either. However, as we know, many people do copy, then use, various inventions without recompense to the inventor, and so some -- admittedly difficult to quantify -- damage is done.
At this point, society has an inventor that is sitting there going, well, gee, I put in the time, and those rat bastards made the value of my time equal to zero. Guess I won't do THAT again. Society loses an inventor. Larry, in fact, now doesn't even have an opportunity to steal Joe's next invention, because Joe has decided that working at McDonald's is more likely to feed his kid. This is the second level of injury, and it is much broader, though even more difficult to quantify.
Next, other inventors observe what happened to Joe. They try to get around it; they invent dongles; they copy protect; they encrypt; audio and video connections require "trusted" hardware -- legitimate consumers, paying folk who respect intellectual property rights, are now inconvenienced and worse. This is the third level of injury. We see this in HDMI/HDCP, innumerable dongle- phonehome- and otherwise-protected software, and so on. This is the third level of injury.
Much extra time and energy goes into these attempts at protection -- time and energy that could have gone into the product, or another product. This is the fourth and most general level of injury.
But if a business creates value and is unable to generate income because there are free alternatives to their preferred mechanism
I have no argument with this; it is not in the least relevant to the discussion (unless you're saying that "free alternatives" consist of stealing and implementing ideas where rights have already been assigned by law, in which case, you have no legitimate point to make.)
It's a huge harm to keep us from realizing the full power of the Information Age.
What makes you think that you are somehow entitled to "the full power" of the information age where you get to have all the information simply because it has become transportable? What did you do to deserve it? Seems to me you've completely made up a ridiculous idea and then commenced to whining about it. As for the MAFFIA, etc., Don't violate other's IP rights and why would they even care if you exist. I've never heard from them or anyone like them and my media library is probably considerably larger than yours (both physically and in bytes.) But then again, I've purchased every commercial book, CD, DVD, BD, LP, MD, disk, paper tape, download, stream and game we have in the house or at my businesses. I've returned every library book I've borrowed, and when I see "GPL" on code I run the other way with great determination. If I can't afford a commercial work personally or can't justify its purchase as a business expense, I don't get to have it. Coincidence?...no.
Lot of people so unthinkingly feel that ideas, styles, stories and other art cannot be independently duplicated. Not true.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think so. The power of a tablet is amazing; the flexibility is better -- and all you have to do to not be distracted is either turn off the connectivity (trivial) or learn to focus (perhaps not trivial, but eminently worthwhile.) A dedicated e-reader can't be held up to the sky and instantly tell you what you're looking at. it can't serve as a planetarium. It won't do a ton of things... and for the price, to me, it's simply not worth it. I'm not carrying both, and I'm also not going to forgo the power of a tablet. To do so would be shooting myself in the foot.
The best thing for people to do is to learn to focus. Concentration is a worthy and powerful tool. An inability to concentrate is not worthy of coddling; it seems similar to me of some fellow complaining that he's nervous around women, and being advised that a good solution is to only hang with men. No, the good solution is to get over it, because it's not a good thing. Same thing if you're easily distracted. Solve the problem -- don't coddle it.
Agreed, Baen Books is a relatively bright star in a decidedly dim sky. Although they, too, could do better with new authors. Believe me... a lot of cr*p gets out there while some really fantabulous new stuff languishes.
Look, if you get distracted, that's a not a problem with the tablet: That's a problem with you. Notifications bothering you? Turn off the wifi, cellular... in the case of the iPad, just flip it into "airplane" mode. Can't stay off Facebook? Not an iPad problem. A "you" problem. Have to see tweets? That's 140 characters of you-fail. Don't go blaming technology because you fail to use it well. And don't clamor for it to change because you suck at coping. You change. Then you can benefit from judicious use of technology instead of letting it knock you around.
Hmmmm... this reminds of the old canard "There are no atheists in foxholes." That's not a flaw in atheism. That just demonstrates that foxholes are really fucked up. You dig? lol...
See, on the face of it, that seems like a good question, but it's actually very misleading. My iPad will have been replaced with an iPad3, coming out next week. And that, likely with an iPad X, when they tempt me again. And of course we still have the books in the cloud, and they're on the Mac Kindle reader, on my SO's two kindles, and my iPod (yeah, I actually read on an iPod... large fonts FTW.)
So the longevity of the reader (beyond a reasonable lifespan, which I have confidence they will generally reach, my current iPad is a v1 from day one and it's doing fine, as are all my other Apple products) isn't the issue, because the books aren't tied to the hardware.
If in fact something happens, I can have a new reader for $79+$4 overnight (Amazon prime!) Who knows how low that will go in the next few years, or how much more powerful they'll be. Or both. Perhaps I'll be grateful if someone spills spaghetti sauce on it. Maybe I'll even do it on purpose. :)
Because this whole "distraction" thing is complete and utter nonsense. If I want to read, I read. If I want to do something else, I do it. Nothing "distracts" me. The tablet is not a "temptress", lol. It's a machine, and it does what *I* tell it to, not the other way around.
And then there's that poignant call: "a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience" As an owner of thousands of books, let me tell you what that "permanence" is... it's a spine that will crack when you open the book years later. It's the incredibly lousy, acid infused paper that has yellowed, and smelled-up, and eventually caused to crumble, the pages of many of my otherwise treasured reads. It's being unable to find the title because someone has put it back funny, or not put it back at all. Or folded the pages. Or spilled spaghetti sauce on it. Or their lovely child has ripped out the conclusion to chapter three. Or ask a college kid or graduate about the "sense of permanence" that is the reality of a backpack filled with heavy texts. Not exactly a pleasant experience, or a lovely fashion accessory. And it cuts down the amount of actual cool stuff you can carry.
Whereas the e-book experience... the litany is long and distinguished: You don't lose 'em; you don't misplace them; they don't age; you can read them in the dark (well, unless you went with e-ink, but then you can read in the sun if you're so inclined... me, I think reading in the sun is insane, but that's just me.) There are hot dictionaries, hot notes, hot highlights, sharing of same so you can see if what you think is interesting is what everyone else thinks is interesting. There is linkage to summary and statistical info on the book; YOU control the font size, and trust me, as an older guy compared to most of the rest of you puppies, that's a big deal; you can dim the thing and read late at night without disturbing your SO (you'll get girlfriends... really, you will. Patience.) You can read silently, page turns are noiseless. You can read with music, if that's pleasing to you. You can't lose your place -- an e-reader keeps track of what page you were on for every book you're reading, no matter how many that might be. As of recently, they've come up with a way to lend the book and you can't lose it, it simply "snaps" back into your library after the lend is up... you can self-publish without having to have an agent (that's me!), an editor, a publishing house, a marketing plan, and years of fruitless trying; you can carry your whole library with you, and I'm talking a LOT of books, so not only is all your fun reading with you, now you can always have your programming references and textbooks and so forth with you too... that part is just getting off the ground, but it was of direct help to me when I began to learn infrared photography and Apple's Cocoa so I'm personally sensitized to how great it is; and now, with the whole "its backed up in the cloud", you can't even lose your books if you drop your reader down the face of the Hoover dam. From the space shuttle. And the actual reality of that "distraction" is that your reader, if you so choose, can do a myriad of other useful and fun things for you.
But that was a funny article from a luddite. :)
Again speaking as someone involved with the publishing industry (I own a literary agency and I'm a published author, also the offspring of same), let me tell you why the publishers aren't so hot on e-books. The writer has ideas and stories, but surprisingly often, isn't all that great at telling them. The agency has agents on staff who can help -- a lot -- with that, and also (historically speaking) know which publishers are looking, and what they are looking for. An old boys network in the classic sense. Publishers can get the writer into print. And, if the writer is a GREAT writer, they might even throw in a little publicity work. But great writers don't really need publicity. If there's a new Ursula Le Guin or Michael Moorcock or Alan Dean Foster novel and you li
When we get to look more closely, we'll see it's a convention of elephants and tortoises.
Sure he does. Not only for investing, but for providing solid competition with a different angle to it -- a very successful angle -- that required Apple to innovate one way or another to succeed.
And even today, I still run Windows... under OS X, in a VM, sandboxed safely away from the Internet. :o)
So that no commercial interest can benefit from your source code, thereby intentionally pushing the freeware / non-commercial approach, yes?
Thereby enabling all approaches equally, and may the best approach succeed. Well, that seems much more even handed, fair, and so forth.
So... if you want to do that with source code that comes from a university, why not with source code that comes from elsewhere, given that you're handing out the source code anyway? Did I miss a philosophical point here, or is your approach as contradictory as it looks?
Well, no, not really. Seems to me that the GPL causes a problem -- it creates a reserve of software that can't make it to the broader marketplace because it can't go commercial (because it can very easily convert what was private IP into public IP.) That's why when I write software that I intend to share, I never use the GPL.
Let me google that for you
The GPL poisons commercial code -- intentionally -- and that keeps GPL'd software from ever bringing mainstream software developers into the fold. This is why the "year of the linux desktop" never comes. Those big packages everyone wants, from Photoshop to Office etc., the companies that create them simply can't afford to mix in with that kind of licensing. Well, that and the hugely fragmented nature of the various linux distributions. And the lack of a standard, royalty-free and non-poisonous-license GUI (other than x, but x... ugh)
I'm very happy with linux as a server platform, with pretty much all that implies, and I often write freeware for it (non-GPL, of course) but I'd never attempt to put commercial software out under it. IMHO, the GPL was the very worst thing that ever happened to linux -- it isolated and emasculated the platform in one easy step.
Ok, I know, here comes the mod-bombing, lol. :)
This is just one consequence down the road. If I *don't* get ill, I won't need to be able to afford the healthcare.
Sure, I've got 5k available. That's enough for one good ER visit, maybe a cast and an ambulance ride, or just a few minutes in the OR. $5000 isn't even a drop in the bucket in terms of potential financial liability for healthcare. The only way to make sure that a health problem doesn't rain utter financial destruction on my family is to pool the risk in a sane way.
FTFY: "You know what the United States health insurance reform mainly did? It made catastrophic coverage "not enough" .. its going to be illegal to play it clueless and assume you know what tomorrow will bring."
Look, here's the thing. At the one extreme, we can completely control your diet so that you eat what we think to be the best diet possible, the exact number of calories, the one glass of wine every 2.3 days, we can strap you to your chair so your posture is always perfect, we can make you breathe through a mask, forbid smoking anything, shut down all industry and vehicular pollution generation, pad every sharp surface, force you to go to group calisthenics for your block every morning... etc. Obviously, this would be awful. It's a bad idea to even LOOK down that road, much less travel it.
At the other extreme, we can *educate* people as to what the optimum choices are thought to be with our best research at the moment, and some people will do some of the things indicated to protect their health.
I am far more inclined towards the latter than the former. And, observing that society paid for roads, but they are used quite unevenly, yet the benefit is huge... also police... also fire departments... I rather think that the same thing will apply to health care. I simply am not concerned if this group or that group uses more or less -- I want them all to have it so that the benefits, whatever they are, may accrue to us all in general.
No. It is *ridiculous* to hold person A responsible for what person B thinks.
What society needs to do is imbue its members with a healthy sense of self that doesn't go gibbering into a corner when someone expresses a contrary opinion or otherwise says something that isn't a "good" thing in someone else's personal opinion.
When some child (or adult, for that matter) goes off the rails and pulls a Columbine, and we are sure they are the party that did the deed, we should hang them high and give them zero publicity. That kind of acting out is the province of the subhuman.
No. Look, the only way you can KNOW you "only" need catastrophic coverage is on the day you die and you can sum up your ENTIRE medical history. And then it's too late. I *need* medical insurance because I *may* get ill. Just because I've not *been* ill, doesn't mean that I won't *get* ill. That's what insurance is: trading some wealth today against the possibility something goes awry tomorrow. People who only get catastrophic coverage don't understand probability. But overall, across the pool, there WILL be people who are very healthy overall. The problem the individual faces is that you can't know if that's you or not until it's too late.
Look, we're all better off if the fewest number of people are sick and/or suffering. Just bite the bullet and admit it. Just as an educated populace moves society forward, just as a good road system benefits everyone, including those who don't drive on it, so does a healthy society benefit us all. It's one of those things that is really pretty obvious when you really think about it.
You know, the thing about insurance of groups, which is essentially a statistical undertaking, is that there are always outliers in both directions, and they are accounted for. There are insured people who never go to the doctor or need medical treatment. And there are insured people who go every time someone *else* sniffles. Over a large population, it'll balance out just fine.
Whenever someone starts sniveling about the over-users, take a moment to remind them of me, someone who has been well insured for decades and hasn't *ever* made a health insurance claim -- I seem to have an immune system like a Sherman tank. So far, lol. 55 and counting, though, not too bad.
So there are going to be a lot of people who will throw everyone and everything else under the bus.
You just generally have to hit 'em about center-mass. Not a lot different from most other engineers. I usually shoot when they mention "unit testing."
In our case, funding for this kind of thing, however clumsy, has been unavailable basically due to fear. Congress has looked at funding several proposals over the years and has come down pretty solidly on the side of "seems like a risky idea. If it doesn't work, it's a waste, and if it DOES work, we could be in huge trouble." Listening for aliens is one thing... yelling "here we are!" is quite another.
Planets are very poor reflectors. Not comparable. You've not got your head wrapped around the thing. RF isn't that different from light in terms of visibility, focus, etc... except you have to *make* it, therefore need a power plant, etc. whereas the light has already been made for you, for free, quite reliably, and at quite significant energies. Light also concentrates wonderfully, and with smaller gear, because it is of (considerably) shorter wavelength than most RF.
BTW, omnidirectional is a really, really bad idea: it ups the energy required by many orders of magnitude. What you do is point at a target, let fly, then point at the next target, let fly, etc. Repeat and loop. You might have several installations doing this at various points, but not all directions at once.
They are wasting their time if the (presumed) radio signals signals are like ours -- planet bound and not intended for other ears. If, however, someone is sending something this way intentionally, then it's well within the bounds of reason that we could hear it. With the relatively simple creation of an antenna and transmitter system in space, there's no reason a signal we could hear couldn't be produced. In fact, this is likely the only way, because the portion of the spectrum SETI is listening in isn't likely to be used for communications on a planetary surface, or if so, certainly not at the radiated power levels and steady aim required to light up any sort of detection at this end.
However, I would ask, why not light? You have a handy sun nearby, radiating all manner of otherwise unused visible energy... all you need to aim, focus and modulate that -- are mirrors. Seems like an altogether easier project, and certainly less expensive, plus less likely to have technical problems.
My "inability" to drive? Based on the fact that I support vehicles with high tech driver aids? lol!
Now, let's get to the real question: Why should I have to wait for you to back over someone's kid before it occurs to you that it would actually be better if you could see what is behind you? Further, why would you resist an inexpensive technical innovation that empowers you?
Oh, I see what your problem is. Comprehension. Let me spell it out for you: Even if we were to stipulate that a driver might know where their kids are; that doesn't mean they know where all kids are, or where all pets are, or where all old ladies that have fallen on the ground behind the vehicle are, etc..
So here's my answer for you: You need to be made to pay for this because you have publicly demonstrated that you fail to make correct decisions on your own -- not just any old decision, but decisions that affect the safety of others. Thanks. You've single-handedly justified why safety equipment is often mandated, and not optional.
Seat belts have an effect on everyone -- society ends up paying for your injuries in various forms and by various means, so the more severe they are, the more everyone else pays. They also serve to keep others in the car safer, even if you choose not to wear them.
Mmmm-hmmm, because all kids are dependably watched 24/7 by their parents, and always obey them, and always do the right thing, yes? When has that ever been true in human history? If it's true at your house, all I can say is I pity your children, but hey, at least you're already invested in cameras, right?.
And by the way, evolution works, all right, but the truth is that evolution is a very crude process that optimizes for survival, not for good. Einstein was a mind-somewhere-else, self-involved human being. Evolution is very unkind to such folks. It does not follow that it would be a good thing if he, or any other daydreaming or distracted kid, were run over by the likes of you.
They should absolutely mandate backup cameras -- so cheap for what you get -- and they should ALSO add FLIR to every vehicle -- it would save HUGE numbers of lives and tons of crash expenses too. Imagine being able to see a deer or a pedestrian or a pet hundreds of feet ahead of the area illuminated by your headlights. FLIR works in the deep infrared, and doesn't require an illuminator; FLIR makes an image out of the heat given off by living and otherwise warm things. I've had it for a while, but right now, because of low volume, it's expensive. Best thing they could do for driving right now is get after that, drop the price and make us all safer.
No, we have a real economy built on a difficult, but not impossible, to defend concept of demonstrated huge worth. Now: guess what happens when you get in the way of the extremely rich and powerful people trying to defend it. First they ignore you until you affect the bottom line. That's already long over. Then they begin to warn you. We see these on almost every DVD, bluray, software license, stream, etc. Then they begin to act. We get CP, encryption, dongles, HDCP-infected HDMI designs, software that phones home, etc. When this doesn't work, we get legal action, court dates, fines. People like you begin to scream in surprise when they take your shit. But most think they can get away with it anyway. So when that doesn't work, they provide for, and begin to enforce, jail sentences. That's where we're at now. Most of this crap has escalated to a felony. Do you have ANY idea what it's like to be a felon in modern society? I don't think you do, or you would have worked all this out by now and put your effort into something legitimate that would help you instead of continuing to try to shoot yourself in both feet at once.
Joe invents X. There's a legitimate need, and therefore a market, for Y copies of X. Joe prices X at hiscost/Y, which is affordable to the market and therefore not a barrier to purchase, so we can assume these would sell. Larry copies X without paying. Larry further directly or indirectly distributes X to the Y market points. Joe ends up selling nothing. Joe's invention went from worth doing because it was potentially able to earn to repay him for his invention work, to not being able to earn, and so worthless to him financially.
This is the initial nature of the financial injury. In actual practice, it tends to vary; neither the entire market falls prey to the childish notion that an invention is reasonable to take without recompense, or manages to go the honorable way, either. However, as we know, many people do copy, then use, various inventions without recompense to the inventor, and so some -- admittedly difficult to quantify -- damage is done.
At this point, society has an inventor that is sitting there going, well, gee, I put in the time, and those rat bastards made the value of my time equal to zero. Guess I won't do THAT again. Society loses an inventor. Larry, in fact, now doesn't even have an opportunity to steal Joe's next invention, because Joe has decided that working at McDonald's is more likely to feed his kid. This is the second level of injury, and it is much broader, though even more difficult to quantify.
Next, other inventors observe what happened to Joe. They try to get around it; they invent dongles; they copy protect; they encrypt; audio and video connections require "trusted" hardware -- legitimate consumers, paying folk who respect intellectual property rights, are now inconvenienced and worse. This is the third level of injury. We see this in HDMI/HDCP, innumerable dongle- phonehome- and otherwise-protected software, and so on. This is the third level of injury.
Much extra time and energy goes into these attempts at protection -- time and energy that could have gone into the product, or another product. This is the fourth and most general level of injury.
I have no argument with this; it is not in the least relevant to the discussion (unless you're saying that "free alternatives" consist of stealing and implementing ideas where rights have already been assigned by law, in which case, you have no legitimate point to make.)
What makes you think that you are somehow entitled to "the full power" of the information age where you get to have all the information simply because it has become transportable? What did you do to deserve it? Seems to me you've completely made up a ridiculous idea and then commenced to whining about it. As for the MAFFIA, etc., Don't violate other's IP rights and why would they even care if you exist. I've never heard from them or anyone like them and my media library is probably considerably larger than yours (both physically and in bytes.) But then again, I've purchased every commercial book, CD, DVD, BD, LP, MD, disk, paper tape, download, stream and game we have in the house or at my businesses. I've returned every library book I've borrowed, and when I see "GPL" on code I run the other way with great determination. If I can't afford a commercial work personally or can't justify its purchase as a business expense, I don't get to have it. Coincidence? ...no.
Agree completely. This, however, doesn't obv