I was thinking something like the "hillarystwatwarts" virus, but even more subtle. Something that would get repeated for a few hours or days before people realized what they were saying. It would probably have to be something like, i dunno, remember the "dole means penis in iranian" rumor?
"I have long dreamed now of, once (and if) I have sufficient money, buying (or better yet, building) a house somewhere on the seashore a few hundred miles to the north of Cisco"
I think you're missing my point. Where your dream house would be located is in one of the desirable places. Everybody can't have a house on the cliffs overlooking the pacific! Or next to a waterfall! The problem with being able to telecommute with ease will be that your house will just as well be in Nebraska or Iowa, as on the West Coast, or anywhere glamorous.
You totally misunderstood what I meant by "rural lifestyle".
I would consider a cottage near Florence OR and a telecommuting job in Eugene, to qualify as "Glamorous". Think, "oklahoma panhandle", to get an idea of what I meant. Cisco has reasons to pay you enough to live reasonably well. But another company might not have the same motivations. If they can get somebody for $30K which makes them among the wealthiest people in their town, they might get more motivation and productivity out of them than they would for $300K for someone living in the bay area!
The thing is, if they can support the glamorous lifestyle among their employees, that might be a selling point with which they can attract good talent, and therefore worthwhile.
"didn't Windows and Office each hold monopoly positions for their products? Do we not now have two companies, each with a monopoly in their realm? "
If they do, one is now prevented from using its monopoly power in its own market to influence the marketplace of the other. That was the point of the trial, and that is why the remedy is appropriate.
It's perfectly acceptable to have a monopoly in a given market (Oil production). It is entirely unacceptable to leverage that monopoly power to the dominance of another market (Oil transportation). QED.
"And Microsoft agrees. It must be so depressing to work in an office where your code is presumed to be so bad by your own coworkers that they'd go so far as to revoke Compaq's write to sell Windows just because they couldn't imagine that the product was good enough to eventually dominate a market on its own merits. "
I don't know what you're referring to here.
And Dan, are you using a speech-to-text thingy, or do you just need coffee? (Not sure I've ever seen you post a type before!)
" So what's to prevent the two new companies from poking holes in their firewalls for each other and sharing information informally? "
The original trial was a civil matter. Something like what you describe would be a violation of a court order, the type of crime that people can go to jail for.
One of the things that enforces environmental and workplace safety laws, is the threat that when they are violated, suits can and do go to prison.
The wording is usually something like "the person at the highest level of authority who knew or should have known about the violation".
If the scenario that you describe were to happen, the person up the chain who *should* have known about it but *didn't*, can go to jail.
If you really believe that there are jails with golf courses, shopping centers, and hookers, your head is in the sand, by the way.
What we had before was a trial over company's business practices. What we will have if this decision takes full force is a situation where a court has ordered specific practices on a company.
*NOW* it becomes a criminial matter to obstruct justice or even fail to comply with the order through ignorance and incompetence.
Whether it would be enforced that way is open to conjecture, but the fact is the possibility exists for ballmergates to find themselves locked up for noncompliance. At least locked up long enough for someone to pay their bail:-)
It'll never happen I know. But, this ruling has the same force as a court order on a company that had been found guilty of, say, violating a lot of OSHA or EPA rules... If you get caught doing it again, somebody responsible might do time... It does happen to factory bosses and oil company suits...
"well why isn't there a huge push from the geek community to submit to the patent office"
Have you researched the costs and effort involved in doing this?
"Image hundreds of geeks with patents that they filed specifically to show the patent office is handing out crap, and actually getting it."
Maybe that's what's really going on. The geeks with the money are patenting the stupid one-clicks and banner-methods to show how stupid everyone is, including the patent office. They're even taking the joke to the next level and profiting from it.
" I usually don't bother reading license agreements. What's the point? "
Awareness. If masses of people were *aware* that they were being "done" to an extent they hadn't expected, they would become *angry*.
"I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
" The civil court system is reserved for rich people"
That is one way of looking at it. So in those masses of people who would become aware by reading what they are agreeing to, perhaps there are one or two rich people, or even the odd person who is industrious enough to realize that it's not literally true that only the rich can use the court system to their advantage. Or perhaps they do vote and write their congressional representative, which I susped you do not do.
" Lawyers will not take contingency cases that don't offer the prospect of large judgements. "
Some lawyers will work for a reasonable hourly rate. Mine will, and does. I don't want to take on a software licensor, but then, I have no quarrel with any such entity.
What was this topic about? Oh, the EULA's are unnecessarily binding. If you say so. Write an office suite and publish it under a less restrictive license, if it bothers you.
Re:you left out an important one...
on
The Leased Life?
·
· Score: 2
"You have a girlfriend or boyfriend, and it can be semi-permanent. It's serious, but non-binding. "
Spoken by somebody who has never "oopsed" himself into child support.
"Manager retains the right to remove any vehicle for any reason they deem appropriate."
The local statutes might protect you here. You can't put something in a contract that supercedes the laws of your city or state. I'd be filing a complaint with the attorney general, not with slashdot.
However, I would have never signed this lease as written. At the VERY least, I would have had a specific list of what those "reasons" do and do not include. You have to negotiate these things. It is *VERY* important to not be homeless while you are shopping for your next apartment. When you have the luxury of using your feet to negotiate, you have power over them.
>people understand that they don't own the video > that they rent. Do they understand that they > don't own the video they "purchase"
They have an underlying framework by which they are allowed the complacency of knowing that any means of TAKING the video from them will be a violation of something more fundamental. So in a broader sense, they "DO" own the video, so long as they keep it.
When the police start breaking down doors and waving their bulk erasers over the tapes, we have a mechanism that deals with that. Until it gets to that point, we have complacency.
Complacency is what people think they pay taxes for. It's what we got when we were promised leisure time, back in the 30's and 50's.
Until you do something that takes the Cable TV away from the rednecks, I'm afraid none of these issues are going to be significant enough to engender change.
"My grandfather can't for the life of him figure out how I can't afford a house"
Oh but you probably can afford "a house"
Not one overlooking San Diego, perhaps, or one in Downtown San Jose.
There is plenty of available real estate in America. I could have bought the last house I lived in near Dallas Texas, for under $30,000, nice big yard, two bedroom house. For under $200,000 you can still find 4/5 bedroom houses on a couple of ACRES around there. But that's around Dallas. The same places in Austin will be either impossible or millions of dollars already.
But I'd MUCH rather rent in a place with some excitement than own in a boring place. I'll bet you could pick up a farm or two in Oklahoma or Kansas on your income.
I'm guessing that your lifestyle doesn't consider isolation to be a plus however, and you want to live someplace that is more "desirable".
I agree, by the way. I'd go absolutely bananas if I had to deal with a rural lifestyle right now.
When your grandfather bought his first house, it was in a relatively small town, where less than 1000 people a day were moving there, I'd hazard a guess.
If you picked such a spot, I'll bet you could afford to live there tool
If your grandfather was trying to get into downtown Manhattan, even in his day, I'll bet he would understand.
If I had moderator points, I'd deal you down accordingly. Since I don't, I'll mention this:
I think that "fucken" is becoming a word. I'm glad it is, because it rhymes with "Turducken". I also think it would work in a subjunctive mood usage context.
"The fact that you may own the CD, and hence, have the right to make a copy of that CD does *NOT* imply (though it sounds bizarre) that you have the right to copy it from another source (ie: napster). "
Yes, it does. Can you produce a cite, a ruling to the contrary? You are stating something as if it a fact of (US?) law, that simply hasn't been decided.
I wish more bands would do things like that. [publish mp3's, fanclub mp3 albums, etc]
LOTS of bands WISH they could do that, but they're totally forbidden to do any such thing by their record company contracts.
As soon as ONE of the big record companies realizes the potential to be had in embracing this technology, that company alone will have the technological advantage over all the others. When the first bookstore went online, the rest had to go online too...
When the first record company signs a contract with a band (and I mean A BAND, like, signs the next Nirvana or even, tragically enough, the next Britney Spears), and the contract states that the band *MUST* release in digital format at specified intervals, etc., it will be seen as a success story, and everyone else will follow suit, not wanting to be left behind.
The "piracy" thing will be no more relevant after that revolution than Radio is today.
If you had the engineers of the record mixing your mp3 from the beginning, you'd have a high quality mix. Bundle it with some graphics that add a marketing angle to it, and you've got something that will distribute itself. There will still be a reason to go buy the CD, online, or at the brick&mortar.
If the record companies actually succeeded in making it so that you had to either buy the media or have no way of listening to it, I think the impact would be felt on the popularity of certain genres of music. Ever since the days of open reel tape, music sharing has been a vehicle by which artists' popularity has grown, particularly those artists whose works are not played on the radio. There may be diminishing returns on the total strangulation of the trading community.
>Yeah, like biological ones. But we don't go >around spreading them happily, do we?
Happily enough; look at STD's.
>> Some of the ideas used in them have been >> incorporated into modern software.
> Like? I can only think of BSOD as an example > of payload.
I've seen a production system that has a component which delivers itself to hosts around the network as a virus. It has brakes, but it's a virus. It does real work in the real world.
i wish that the *name* of the virus could be something that would be *very* embarrassing to say on CNN or CSPAN... It would need to be subtle (so that the embarrassing thing would be said enough times to take hold:-)
Slashdot Mirror
"Microsoft went so
:-)
far as to revoke the right of Compaq to sell Windows"
I had completely forgotten that. Did they "try" to do this, or was Compaq unable to sell Windows
for a time? Are we talking "3.1" ?
Also, I cannot believe I misplelld "typo"
I was thinking something like
the "hillarystwatwarts" virus,
but even more subtle. Something that
would get repeated for a few hours or days
before people realized what they were saying.
It would probably have to be something like,
i dunno, remember the "dole means penis in iranian" rumor?
"I have long dreamed now of, once (and if) I have sufficient money, buying (or better yet, building) a
house somewhere on the seashore a few hundred miles to the north of Cisco"
I think you're missing my point.
Where your dream house would be located is
in one of the desirable places. Everybody can't
have a house on the cliffs overlooking the pacific! Or next to a waterfall! The problem
with being able to telecommute with ease will be
that your house will just as well be in Nebraska or Iowa, as on the West Coast, or anywhere glamorous.
You totally misunderstood what I meant by "rural lifestyle".
I would consider a cottage near Florence OR and a telecommuting job in Eugene, to qualify as "Glamorous". Think, "oklahoma panhandle",
to get an idea of what I meant. Cisco has reasons to pay you enough to live reasonably well. But
another company might not have the same motivations. If they can get somebody for $30K which makes them among the wealthiest people in their town, they might get more motivation and productivity out of them than they would for $300K for someone living in the bay area!
The thing is, if they can support the glamorous lifestyle among their employees, that might be
a selling point with which they can attract good talent, and therefore worthwhile.
I'm rambling. Sorry.
"didn't Windows and Office each hold monopoly positions for their products? Do we not now have two companies, each
with a monopoly in their realm? "
If they do, one is now prevented from using its monopoly power in its own market to influence the marketplace of the other. That was the point of the trial, and that is why the remedy is appropriate.
It's perfectly acceptable to have a monopoly in a given market (Oil production). It is entirely unacceptable to leverage that monopoly power to the dominance of another market (Oil transportation). QED.
"And Microsoft agrees. It must be so depressing to work
in an office where your code is presumed to be so bad by your own coworkers that they'd go so far as to revoke Compaq's write to sell Windows just
because they couldn't imagine that the product was good enough to eventually dominate a market on its own merits. "
I don't know what you're referring to here.
And Dan, are you using a speech-to-text thingy,
or do you just need coffee? (Not sure I've
ever seen you post a type before!)
" So what's to prevent the two new companies from poking holes in their firewalls for each other and sharing information informally? "
The original trial was a civil matter.
Something like what you describe would be
a violation of a court order, the type of crime
that people can go to jail for.
One of the things that enforces environmental and
workplace safety laws, is the threat that when they are violated, suits can and do go to prison.
The wording is usually something like "the person
at the highest level of authority who knew or should have known about the violation".
If the scenario that you describe were to happen,
the person up the chain who *should* have known
about it but *didn't*, can go to jail.
If you really believe that there are jails with
golf courses, shopping centers, and hookers, your
head is in the sand, by the way.
What we had before was a trial over company's business practices. What we will have if this decision takes full force is a situation where a court has ordered specific practices on a company.
*NOW* it becomes a criminial matter to obstruct justice or even fail to comply with the order through ignorance and incompetence.
Whether it would be enforced that way is open to conjecture, but the fact is the possibility exists for ballmergates to find themselves locked up for
noncompliance. At least locked up long enough for
someone to pay their bail
It'll never happen I know. But, this ruling has the same force as a court order on a company that had been found guilty of, say, violating a lot of OSHA or EPA rules... If you get caught doing it again, somebody responsible might do time... It does happen to factory bosses and oil company suits...
"well why isn't there a huge push from the geek community to submit to the patent office"
Have you researched the costs and effort involved in doing this?
"Image hundreds of geeks with patents that they filed specifically to show the patent office
is handing out crap, and actually getting it."
Maybe that's what's really going on. The geeks with the money are patenting the stupid one-clicks and banner-methods to show how stupid everyone is,
including the patent office. They're even taking the joke to the next level and profiting from it.
" I usually don't bother reading license agreements. What's the point? "
Awareness. If masses of people were *aware* that
they were being "done" to an extent they hadn't expected, they would become *angry*.
"I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
" The civil court system is reserved for rich people"
That is one way of looking at it. So in those
masses of people who would become aware by reading what they are agreeing to, perhaps there are one or two rich people, or even the odd person who is industrious enough to realize that it's not literally true that only the rich can use the court system to their advantage. Or perhaps they
do vote and write their congressional representative, which I susped you do not do.
" Lawyers will not take contingency cases that don't offer the prospect of large judgements. "
Some lawyers will work for a reasonable hourly rate. Mine will, and does. I don't want to take on a software licensor, but then, I have no quarrel with any such entity.
What was this topic about? Oh, the EULA's are unnecessarily binding. If you say so. Write an
office suite and publish it under a less restrictive license, if it bothers you.
"You have a girlfriend or boyfriend, and it can be semi-permanent. It's serious, but non-binding. "
Spoken by somebody who has never "oopsed" himself
into child support.
"Manager retains the
right to remove any vehicle for any reason they deem appropriate."
The local statutes might protect you here.
You can't put something in a contract that
supercedes the laws of your city or state.
I'd be filing a complaint with the attorney general, not with slashdot.
However, I would have never signed this lease as written. At the VERY least, I would have had
a specific list of what those "reasons" do and
do not include. You have to negotiate these things. It is *VERY* important to not be homeless while you are shopping for your next apartment.
When you have the luxury of using your feet to
negotiate, you have power over them.
>people understand that they don't own the video
> that they rent. Do they understand that they
> don't own the video they "purchase"
They have an underlying framework by which they are allowed the complacency of knowing that any means of TAKING the video from them will be a violation of something more fundamental. So in a broader sense, they "DO" own the video, so long as they keep it.
When the police start breaking down doors and
waving their bulk erasers over the tapes, we have
a mechanism that deals with that. Until it gets
to that point, we have complacency.
Complacency is what people think they pay taxes for. It's what we got when we were promised leisure time, back in the 30's and 50's.
Until you do something that takes the Cable TV away from the rednecks, I'm afraid none of these issues are going to be significant enough to engender change.
"My grandfather can't for the life of him figure out how I can't afford a house"
Oh but you probably can afford "a house"
Not one overlooking San Diego, perhaps, or
one in Downtown San Jose.
There is plenty of available real estate in America. I could have bought the last house
I lived in near Dallas Texas, for under $30,000,
nice big yard, two bedroom house. For under $200,000 you can still find 4/5 bedroom houses
on a couple of ACRES around there. But that's
around Dallas. The same places in Austin will be
either impossible or millions of dollars already.
But I'd MUCH rather rent in a place with some
excitement than own in a boring place. I'll
bet you could pick up a farm or two in Oklahoma or
Kansas on your income.
I'm guessing that your lifestyle doesn't consider
isolation to be a plus however, and you want to live someplace that is more "desirable".
I agree, by the way. I'd go absolutely bananas
if I had to deal with a rural lifestyle right now.
When your grandfather bought his first house, it was in a relatively small town, where less than
1000 people a day were moving there, I'd hazard a guess.
If you picked such a spot, I'll bet you could afford to live there tool
If your grandfather was trying to get into downtown Manhattan, even in his day, I'll bet he
would understand.
"I'm really quite suprised that more US companies are not establishing development shops in economically disadvantaged places. "
How in the hell is that going to happen,
when the management of these companies won't
even let you telecommute from Santa Cruz to
San Jose???
Fortunately or unfortunately, a remote team is
not generally regarded as manageable.
" the guy who kicked your fucken ass "
If I had moderator points, I'd deal you down accordingly. Since I don't, I'll mention this:
I think that "fucken" is becoming a word. I'm glad it is, because it rhymes with "Turducken". I also think it would work in a subjunctive mood usage context.
"PCs will work OK in any heat and humidity that people will"
I pictured myself framing a house in the Texas summer heat, and repairing a barbed wire fence in a snowstorm.
"The fact that you may own the CD, and hence, have the right to make a copy of that CD does *NOT* imply (though it sounds bizarre) that you have the
right to copy it from another source (ie: napster). "
Yes, it does. Can you produce a cite, a ruling
to the contrary? You are stating something as if it a fact of (US?) law, that simply hasn't been
decided.
I wish more bands would do things like that. [publish mp3's, fanclub mp3 albums, etc]
LOTS of bands WISH they could do that, but
they're totally forbidden to do any such thing
by their record company contracts.
As soon as ONE of the big record companies realizes the potential to be had in embracing this technology, that company alone will have the technological advantage over all the others.
When the first bookstore went online, the rest had
to go online too...
When the first record company signs a contract with a band (and I mean A BAND, like, signs the
next Nirvana or even, tragically enough, the next
Britney Spears), and the contract states that the
band *MUST* release in digital format at specified
intervals, etc., it will be seen as a success story, and everyone else will follow suit, not
wanting to be left behind.
The "piracy" thing will be no more relevant after
that revolution than Radio is today.
If you had the engineers of the record mixing your
mp3 from the beginning, you'd have a high quality mix. Bundle it with some graphics that add a marketing angle to it, and you've got something that will distribute itself. There will still be
a reason to go buy the CD, online, or at the brick&mortar.
If the record companies actually succeeded in
making it so that you had to either buy the media
or have no way of listening to it, I think the
impact would be felt on the popularity of certain genres of music. Ever since the days of open reel
tape, music sharing has been a vehicle by which artists' popularity has grown, particularly those
artists whose works are not played on the radio.
There may be diminishing returns on the total strangulation of the trading community.
You are confusing "security through secrecy"
with "security through obscurity".
One works, one doesn't.
>How much money do you get from the sale of each
>CD, and how much goes to the record company?
Lars, you did NOT answer this question, or even
attempt to address the question in your response.
I suspect the reason you did not answer the question, is because you DON'T KNOW the answer.
What I take away from this interview, is that you
did not, for whatever reason, answer this one question.
>universities don't have all that much money
This is Oxford we're talking about.
I believe they *do* have all that much money.
>>Viruses are challenging and interesting.
>Yeah, like biological ones. But we don't go
>around spreading them happily, do we?
Happily enough; look at STD's.
>> Some of the ideas used in them have been
>> incorporated into modern software.
> Like? I can only think of BSOD as an example
> of payload.
I've seen a production system that has a component which delivers itself to hosts around the network as a virus. It has brakes, but it's a virus. It does real work in the real world.
i wish that the *name* of the virus could be :-)
something that would be *very* embarrassing
to say on CNN or CSPAN...
It would need to be subtle (so that the embarrassing thing would be said enough times
to take hold
>...spare a thought for those of us in the u.k.
>who (sometimes) buy a cd for around 17 pounds
>(probably about 30 dollars).
Silly brit, the most mundane UK import costs
$30-50 in the USA.
> It seems that if anything's funny it's put as
> Weird Al or Adam Sandler
When it should obviously be put under "Dr. Demento"