It *is* a holdover from the DOS days. Remember when you could only execute a.com,.exe, or.bat file? Well, that set the stage for later use of file extensions as filetype metadata.
Also, when opening files from MS-Word, it looked for... well,.doc files, by default. The dot-three filetype extension became embedded in the Microsoft way of approaching computers. Even MS-Windows 3.1 had filetype associations. (It probably goes back further than that. I don't remember much from the pre-Win3.1 MS-Windows iterations.)
Just as drive letters are our legacy from the DOS days, so are the filetype extensions.
If this were true, then the wages for pretty much everything would be almost nothing. That clearly isn't happening, why not?
But it is becoming that way. In the '80s, the top 10% wage earners garnered 30% of the income; today, the top 10% get 50% of the income. This indicates that the lower end is getting payed less and less.
Well, you can use the magic file to determine file type. The Nueros MP3 player can identify songs based on a 30-second clip, using an on-line service. There are systems that can automatically identify a person in a photograph, though these are not yet generally available to the public, nor are they 100% accurate. (But, they would be more accurate for organizing photographs, as people tend to take pictures of a small subset of the population.)
Cameras often encode date and time.
Then, there are remembrance agents like Dashboard that can help, as well.
There are already a lot of relationships embedded in our email and other documents. There's no reason these relationships can't be automatically extracted and formalized by the filesystem for rapid access.
In general, there is a *lot* of metadata that *can* be automatically populated. A lot of it is only of general use. However, that is still a step in the right direction.
That being said, I would always be interested in interfaces that make that job easier for users, improving our 20+ year old designed filesystems.
That's simple. Use magic. No, seriously. The "file" command in Unix is a great utility-- it tries to classify the document based on the document itself. A good GUI would be able to automagically identify the filetype of a file, and launch the appropriate application, based on the type of file.
Extensions are the stupidest things in the world. It's a holdover from DOS that just really, really blows.
But then, my blood pressure rises when I see "*.htm" instead of "*.html", so there's some sort of dualism going on.
Gnome Storage is everything WinFS wants to be when it grows up. It's a real RDBMS storage system with complete metadata support, natural language support (with references), network transparency, etc.
It's still in the development stage, but it seems to be moving forward quite nicely.
Gnome Storage. Mr. Nickell is doing a brilliant job with it, too.
Not that this is a new idea or anything. Oracle has had an RDBMS-based filesystem for years. Plus, really all Microsoft is doing is taking a metadata system, adding relationships between files (with no real definition of how those relationships are defined and maintained, that I can find), a background search system, and other nifty features that have been explored in other filesystems (such as BeFS).
Nothing really that revolutionary, except that it's going into MS-Windows. Someday. Maybe before this decade is out, even.
Are you kidding? Hum... let's see. Enron leaps immediately to mind. Standard Oil follows closely behind, as do: Bank of America (their practices in charging late fees for bills payed on time), and WorldCom. Just to name the cases that have been proven, off the top of my somewhat-ignorant head.
This fact is indisputable: corporations fuck citizens *every day*. Enron got away with it for years, on a vast scale. Most others are more modest in their fucking-with-America activities, but they still do it.
Most people with fuck over their fellow people if it'll make them a buck, and they thought they could get away with it. I might, even. I like to think I have a bit more integrity than that, but I make no promises.
Show me a "thriving" socialistic country, moreso than the US and you can prove me wrong.
So socialism sucks. I think anyone with half a brain could have told you that, considering human nature. That doesn't necessarily mean that capitalism is the best method, either; it doesn't even prove it's a good one. In fact, I'd say it isn't, based on... well, human nature. There's a lot we haven't tried.
And the US government meddles with the market a lot more than you realize, I think. Most US foreign policy supports US corporations, moreso than US foreign interest. I'd even say the US domestic policy favors the corporation over the citizen; that'd be a tougher argument to win, though.
I have no sympathy for people who want government to distort economics.
This is a quote from your original post. It is to this that I am replying. My point is simple, and two-fold: the people who want the government to distort economics through protectionism want it in response to corporate distortion of economics. Corporations have the benefit of both superior power, and government protectionism.
Secondly, we don't even understand economics enough to know if outsourcing is going to be good or bad for the US economy. If the past is any indication, it's going to be bad, but not terrible.
Me, I don't care where corporations get their labor, as long as they pay their taxes (which many don't), treat their employees fairly (which many don't), and try not to make money by fucking over other people (most do make money by fucking over other people).
Most of your diatribe is beside the point.
I didn't really consider that a diatribe; mostly, I presented facts, with only a little bias showing. I could really turn on the rhetoric, if you like, though.
But, it was entirely on the point: anyone who claims to know that "outsourcing is (good/bad) for the US" is wrong, by default. We won't know the outcome for many years; and chances are, outsourcing will be just one factor among many to hurt or help the US economy.
I have no sympathy for people who want government to distort economics.
Well, considering that economics is poorly-understood to start with, I find it hard to imagine how governments can distort economics worse than corporations distort economics.
The "free market" concept which is so prevalent among libertarians and corporatists is based upon an ideal model, in which everyone in the model is a free agent. Unfortunately, that's not a true model.
In the corporate model, a select few in charge get to make up the wages paid. Now, this is somewhat constrained by the market availability, but as we discovered with outsourcing, there is no lack of people willing to work at pretty much anything, for almost nothing (comparatively speaking). Meanwhile, those who fix the game (upper management) ensure their own positions are not outsourced, while paying very little to everyone else.
Meanwhile, those with the money are able to influence government policy to a much greater degree than those without much money. This also shifts the balance of power just a little more to those running corporations. Whether the DMCA, the INDUCE act, or the consolidation of giant media, the individual loses out, while the corporations gain.
Economics in the US is warped. There is no such thing as a free market. Nor is there any indication that the free market is a good model to start with, let alone the best model. The only thing we've discovered so far is that empirically is better than fuedalism, socialism, monocracies (including monarchies, dictatorships, etc), hegemonies, and bozocracies (in which clowns run the show, like in the US).
Because the OSS community is apparently so hard up for any kind of crack in MS's armor that something like this is IMMEDIATELY and IRREFUTABLY evidence that MS is going under because only companies that are in trouble would ever back out of a standards group...
Or it could be that Microsoft has irrefutably done stuff like this in the past that we just take it for granted they are still doing this sort of thing?
I agree, though. Without evidence, we shouldn't make spurious and unfounded accusations.
We should follow SCO's shining example of only presenting truthful information to support our honest arguments.
See, I think we should move X entirely onto the GPU. Why screw around with X on the primary CPU? Make it all run off the video card. That'd make it *real* fast.
NOTE: This is satire. Not particularly great satire, but satire nonetheless.
The original poster was referring to the tendency in our current society to call pretty much everyone who isn't a sheep a "terrorist."
Doesn't it disturb you that a bunch of script kiddies who may or may not shut down portions of the net are classified with the same label as the folks who chop off heads?
Bah. At the beginning of the year, I picked up a 20GB Neuros for about half the price of an ipod. It's a USB hard drive, plays many different formats (Ogg!), is an FM radio, an FM *transmitter*, a voice recorder, and allows you to record from another device (analog only, sorry to say).
I looked at the iRiver, and liked it very much (they have some pretty cool designs), but ended up going with the Neuros. Personal choice and all, you know.
Plus, since it uses standard 2.5" drives, I put in a 40GB I got for cheap.
Since it looks like the only way to do the quashing is through the courts, doesn't that make it a government-managed economy?
There are many resources a company can use to quash competition. Look at Microsoft's history of owning the PC distribution chain through *very* restrictive, secretive licensing deals with the major PC manufacturers. The market itself can be used against... the market.
Often, long-term benefits are impossible to attain (due to short-term massive negative cash flow while "bucking the system," for instance). So, a computer manufacturer will stick with Microsoft's very restrictive deals (which essentially disallow selling other operating systems, for one thing) rather than try to sell alternate operating systems on their computers.
Indelible Blue did all right with OS/2, and Penguin Computing seems to be successful with Linux; but these are niche players, with little chance to go up against HP or Dell.
The point is, the government is almost impotent to control the market. Most market controls are put their by players big enough to enforce the controls. This is the problem with a "free market" concept: if a market is left unregulated, the big players will become the regulators.
It doesn't get much better even when you have two big players: talk to alternative soda manufacturers. They can't compete with the Coke/Pepsi duopoly, as both Coke and Pepsi take time out from their own fighting to keep the little guys from getting good display positions in major retail chains, for instance.
I laugh big sorrowful tears every time I see a post slobbering all over the concept of "Free Market." There's no such thing. In a world where (money == power), those with the money have the power to regulate those with less money.
The "worth nothing" expression condenses many ideas into a single flippant phrase. I am a programmer (sometimes): my labours are worth a hell of a lot.
But, if I were to produce a program that could make me much money, I have a choice: put it out on the market, where any sizable software shop could copy it, and market it with better distribution channels; or make it open, free. The former is too much of a hassle; the latter, makes me no money, but it allows others to use this tool I have created to create products of their own.
No, the code I release (and my labours) have much value. I just don't insist on measuring that value with a dollar sign in front.
Remember, "0wned" is leetspeek for a the security compromise of a computer. Go back and re-read the article with the idea that he is talking about the cost of taking over an MS-Windows computer vs. the cost of taking over a Linux computer.
But the patent system IS open source development, in the sense of free information, not in the sense of free beer.
Not entirely honest; when the patents involve essential infrastructure of information systems themselves, the "free information" is useless, since it cannot be used; in fact, it is worse than useless, as it means that concurrent "inventions" are disbarred from participation, as well.
One critical yet subtle problem with the patent system is this: many "inventions" are obvious only after a single point in time. That point is vital, though. For intance, we could not have made it to the moon without certain advances in chemistry, physics, and biology. But, once those advances had been made (in independent fields, mind you), it became obvious how to make it to the moon. After that, it was only a matter of money.
But, does that make the idea any less obvious after that point? No. Look at history, with calculus, the advances in quantum physics, the car industry, the flight industry. Most advances happen because they *are* obvious, not because of a genius, but because of a moderately intelligent and well-informed individual.
Our patent system is fucked from the basic premise. Advancement happens in spite of the offering of limited monopolies, not because of it.
Slashdot Mirror
Huge? Hardly. Sure, it's bigger than the iPod, but it has way more features, at a *much* cheaper price.
I'll suffer lugging around a few more grams for the price/performance increase.
It *is* a holdover from the DOS days. Remember when you could only execute a .com, .exe, or .bat file? Well, that set the stage for later use of file extensions as filetype metadata.
.doc files, by default. The dot-three filetype extension became embedded in the Microsoft way of approaching computers. Even MS-Windows 3.1 had filetype associations. (It probably goes back further than that. I don't remember much from the pre-Win3.1 MS-Windows iterations.)
Also, when opening files from MS-Word, it looked for... well,
Just as drive letters are our legacy from the DOS days, so are the filetype extensions.
If this were true, then the wages for pretty much everything would be almost nothing. That clearly isn't happening, why not?
But it is becoming that way. In the '80s, the top 10% wage earners garnered 30% of the income; today, the top 10% get 50% of the income. This indicates that the lower end is getting payed less and less.
So it *is* happening.
Well, you can use the magic file to determine file type. The Nueros MP3 player can identify songs based on a 30-second clip, using an on-line service. There are systems that can automatically identify a person in a photograph, though these are not yet generally available to the public, nor are they 100% accurate. (But, they would be more accurate for organizing photographs, as people tend to take pictures of a small subset of the population.)
Cameras often encode date and time.
Then, there are remembrance agents like Dashboard that can help, as well.
There are already a lot of relationships embedded in our email and other documents. There's no reason these relationships can't be automatically extracted and formalized by the filesystem for rapid access.
In general, there is a *lot* of metadata that *can* be automatically populated. A lot of it is only of general use. However, that is still a step in the right direction.
That being said, I would always be interested in interfaces that make that job easier for users, improving our 20+ year old designed filesystems.
That's simple. Use magic. No, seriously. The "file" command in Unix is a great utility-- it tries to classify the document based on the document itself. A good GUI would be able to automagically identify the filetype of a file, and launch the appropriate application, based on the type of file.
Extensions are the stupidest things in the world. It's a holdover from DOS that just really, really blows.
But then, my blood pressure rises when I see "*.htm" instead of "*.html", so there's some sort of dualism going on.
Stupid *.htm.
Gnome Storage is everything WinFS wants to be when it grows up. It's a real RDBMS storage system with complete metadata support, natural language support (with references), network transparency, etc.
It's still in the development stage, but it seems to be moving forward quite nicely.
Gnome Storage. Mr. Nickell is doing a brilliant job with it, too.
Not that this is a new idea or anything. Oracle has had an RDBMS-based filesystem for years. Plus, really all Microsoft is doing is taking a metadata system, adding relationships between files (with no real definition of how those relationships are defined and maintained, that I can find), a background search system, and other nifty features that have been explored in other filesystems (such as BeFS).
Nothing really that revolutionary, except that it's going into MS-Windows. Someday. Maybe before this decade is out, even.
Most people with fuck over their fellow people...
D'oh! That should read, "Most people will fuck over..." Sorry about that.
No corporation made a ton off screwing people.
Are you kidding? Hum... let's see. Enron leaps immediately to mind. Standard Oil follows closely behind, as do: Bank of America (their practices in charging late fees for bills payed on time), and WorldCom. Just to name the cases that have been proven, off the top of my somewhat-ignorant head.
This fact is indisputable: corporations fuck citizens *every day*. Enron got away with it for years, on a vast scale. Most others are more modest in their fucking-with-America activities, but they still do it.
Most people with fuck over their fellow people if it'll make them a buck, and they thought they could get away with it. I might, even. I like to think I have a bit more integrity than that, but I make no promises.
Show me a "thriving" socialistic country, moreso than the US and you can prove me wrong.
So socialism sucks. I think anyone with half a brain could have told you that, considering human nature. That doesn't necessarily mean that capitalism is the best method, either; it doesn't even prove it's a good one. In fact, I'd say it isn't, based on... well, human nature. There's a lot we haven't tried.
And the US government meddles with the market a lot more than you realize, I think. Most US foreign policy supports US corporations, moreso than US foreign interest. I'd even say the US domestic policy favors the corporation over the citizen; that'd be a tougher argument to win, though.
I have no sympathy for people who want government to distort economics.
This is a quote from your original post. It is to this that I am replying. My point is simple, and two-fold: the people who want the government to distort economics through protectionism want it in response to corporate distortion of economics. Corporations have the benefit of both superior power, and government protectionism.
Secondly, we don't even understand economics enough to know if outsourcing is going to be good or bad for the US economy. If the past is any indication, it's going to be bad, but not terrible.
Me, I don't care where corporations get their labor, as long as they pay their taxes (which many don't), treat their employees fairly (which many don't), and try not to make money by fucking over other people (most do make money by fucking over other people).
Most of your diatribe is beside the point.
I didn't really consider that a diatribe; mostly, I presented facts, with only a little bias showing. I could really turn on the rhetoric, if you like, though.
But, it was entirely on the point: anyone who claims to know that "outsourcing is (good/bad) for the US" is wrong, by default. We won't know the outcome for many years; and chances are, outsourcing will be just one factor among many to hurt or help the US economy.
I have no sympathy for people who want government to distort economics.
Well, considering that economics is poorly-understood to start with, I find it hard to imagine how governments can distort economics worse than corporations distort economics.
The "free market" concept which is so prevalent among libertarians and corporatists is based upon an ideal model, in which everyone in the model is a free agent. Unfortunately, that's not a true model.
In the corporate model, a select few in charge get to make up the wages paid. Now, this is somewhat constrained by the market availability, but as we discovered with outsourcing, there is no lack of people willing to work at pretty much anything, for almost nothing (comparatively speaking). Meanwhile, those who fix the game (upper management) ensure their own positions are not outsourced, while paying very little to everyone else.
Meanwhile, those with the money are able to influence government policy to a much greater degree than those without much money. This also shifts the balance of power just a little more to those running corporations. Whether the DMCA, the INDUCE act, or the consolidation of giant media, the individual loses out, while the corporations gain.
Economics in the US is warped. There is no such thing as a free market. Nor is there any indication that the free market is a good model to start with, let alone the best model. The only thing we've discovered so far is that empirically is better than fuedalism, socialism, monocracies (including monarchies, dictatorships, etc), hegemonies, and bozocracies (in which clowns run the show, like in the US).
Because the OSS community is apparently so hard up for any kind of crack in MS's armor that something like this is IMMEDIATELY and IRREFUTABLY evidence that MS is going under because only companies that are in trouble would ever back out of a standards group...
Or it could be that Microsoft has irrefutably done stuff like this in the past that we just take it for granted they are still doing this sort of thing?
I agree, though. Without evidence, we shouldn't make spurious and unfounded accusations.
We should follow SCO's shining example of only presenting truthful information to support our honest arguments.
The RIAA owes a lot to the community:
An apology.
"It took us 25 years to build our business . . ."
This is odd. The current SCO is, what, 7 years old? If you count its Caldera years, I mean, when it was a... um.... Linux company.
See, I think we should move X entirely onto the GPU. Why screw around with X on the primary CPU? Make it all run off the video card. That'd make it *real* fast.
NOTE: This is satire. Not particularly great satire, but satire nonetheless.
What do you think?
I think you miss the point.
The original poster was referring to the tendency in our current society to call pretty much everyone who isn't a sheep a "terrorist."
Doesn't it disturb you that a bunch of script kiddies who may or may not shut down portions of the net are classified with the same label as the folks who chop off heads?
Bah. At the beginning of the year, I picked up a 20GB Neuros for about half the price of an ipod. It's a USB hard drive, plays many different formats (Ogg!), is an FM radio, an FM *transmitter*, a voice recorder, and allows you to record from another device (analog only, sorry to say).
I looked at the iRiver, and liked it very much (they have some pretty cool designs), but ended up going with the Neuros. Personal choice and all, you know.
Plus, since it uses standard 2.5" drives, I put in a 40GB I got for cheap.
Besides, success is its own argument. If you can't understand why Java is so big these days, maybe that's your fault, and not the world's.
How true!
And the same goes for Budweiser, McDonalds, the Ford Escort, and reality TV, as well. Who cares if they are good or anything; they are popular.
Since it looks like the only way to do the quashing is through the courts, doesn't that make it a government-managed economy?
There are many resources a company can use to quash competition. Look at Microsoft's history of owning the PC distribution chain through *very* restrictive, secretive licensing deals with the major PC manufacturers. The market itself can be used against... the market.
Often, long-term benefits are impossible to attain (due to short-term massive negative cash flow while "bucking the system," for instance). So, a computer manufacturer will stick with Microsoft's very restrictive deals (which essentially disallow selling other operating systems, for one thing) rather than try to sell alternate operating systems on their computers.
Indelible Blue did all right with OS/2, and Penguin Computing seems to be successful with Linux; but these are niche players, with little chance to go up against HP or Dell.
The point is, the government is almost impotent to control the market. Most market controls are put their by players big enough to enforce the controls. This is the problem with a "free market" concept: if a market is left unregulated, the big players will become the regulators.
It doesn't get much better even when you have two big players: talk to alternative soda manufacturers. They can't compete with the Coke/Pepsi duopoly, as both Coke and Pepsi take time out from their own fighting to keep the little guys from getting good display positions in major retail chains, for instance.
I laugh big sorrowful tears every time I see a post slobbering all over the concept of "Free Market." There's no such thing. In a world where (money == power), those with the money have the power to regulate those with less money.
The "worth nothing" expression condenses many ideas into a single flippant phrase. I am a programmer (sometimes): my labours are worth a hell of a lot.
But, if I were to produce a program that could make me much money, I have a choice: put it out on the market, where any sizable software shop could copy it, and market it with better distribution channels; or make it open, free. The former is too much of a hassle; the latter, makes me no money, but it allows others to use this tool I have created to create products of their own.
No, the code I release (and my labours) have much value. I just don't insist on measuring that value with a dollar sign in front.
If I cannot be rewarded by my skills with CASH, why would I get into this stinking business?
The same way I did: by being good at what you do; and most importantly, by having skills worth rewarding.
No pinko-commie conspiracy here, Pops.
Remember, "0wned" is leetspeek for a the security compromise of a computer. Go back and re-read the article with the idea that he is talking about the cost of taking over an MS-Windows computer vs. the cost of taking over a Linux computer.
Then say, "Oh."
Seems they are formulating the wrong question.
Even if we are the only earth-like body in the universe (a laughable assumption), there may be life on those gas giants.
On the other hand, considering the vastness of space and the difficulty traversing it, we may be effectively alone in a universe teeming with life.
But the patent system IS open source development, in the sense of free information, not in the sense of free beer.
Not entirely honest; when the patents involve essential infrastructure of information systems themselves, the "free information" is useless, since it cannot be used; in fact, it is worse than useless, as it means that concurrent "inventions" are disbarred from participation, as well.
One critical yet subtle problem with the patent system is this: many "inventions" are obvious only after a single point in time. That point is vital, though. For intance, we could not have made it to the moon without certain advances in chemistry, physics, and biology. But, once those advances had been made (in independent fields, mind you), it became obvious how to make it to the moon. After that, it was only a matter of money.
But, does that make the idea any less obvious after that point? No. Look at history, with calculus, the advances in quantum physics, the car industry, the flight industry. Most advances happen because they *are* obvious, not because of a genius, but because of a moderately intelligent and well-informed individual.
Our patent system is fucked from the basic premise. Advancement happens in spite of the offering of limited monopolies, not because of it.
The war on drugs has only tripled our inmate population, not increased it a hundredfold.
But I'm on your side. Two of every three inmates has been convicted on laws that are unjust, laws that do not benefit society.