There is no reason that the RIAA cannot sue p2p file sharers in court in a civil case. It is their right to do so. Its a stupid business practice to sue your customers, but it is their right.
But what they are trying to do here is have the government use my tax dollars to sue citizens for them in a civil case!! This would give the RIAA members double extra special citizen status allowng the government to operate on their behalf in civil cases using none of their (the RIAA) resources (read money) to do so.
Heres a deal I would agree with. To the RIAA: Transfer ALL of the copyrights of your music over to the federal government THEN let them try the cases. The government would be defending their copyrighted works appropirately. Does that sound silly, of course it does. But what this bill is trying to do is worse.
To put it another way, if you write software and copyright it and another person (maybe many many peolpe) takes it from you, should you expect the government to handle the court costs in your civil copyright case? Hell no!!!
This bill, if passed, will be a constitutional travesty.
I agree that accountability is important, but what you see in some of these cases is a feedback loop working against it. For example, customer support problems could be a result of bad procedures and processes. If the people working on the "front lines" in customer support could change things to improve service, service may well improve.
But, in most cases, the management likes to measure things that are supposed to make customer service better and then make their decisions. But they can't handle all that raw data for each case so they come up with measurements like call times, and # incidents closed and others that if you really looked hard at them have no bearing on improving customer serivce, but in fact can be very significant in making it worse.
I've just been thinking about this lately with respect to world events.
Everyone is claiming that the President should have know about the prisoner abuse in Iraq. Well, thats all fine and good, but what does that mean when its applied to you and your job? Does the president/CEO of your company need to know everything thats going on at your company? If you answered yes to that question, then the inverse of that is; do you have any decisionmaking ability whatsoever in your job?
I find it disturbing how many people in the media and people in general expect full and absolute accountability from top levels of companies and the government, yet fail to realize that this means there will end up being no responsibility or care for the customer at the bottom if those people have no power or influence. Of course in the corporate (and I'm sure government too) world, there is also a lot of higher ups blaming their powerless workers for problems created from the top as well.
The power and the responsibility need to be at the same level, or things get broken fast.
I AM (or will be), however, willing to buy a hybrid engine SUV, or a fuel cell SUV.
I wonder if all these "safety" arguments will go out the window once these machines arrive, and they WILL arrive. There are some interesting things you could do with respect to design of hybrid SUVs and car companies will make them.
The answer to this is not to try and make SUVs illegal, it is to bring them along in the move to alternative fuels.
Have you even seen the movie. The orignial poster is right. Although our present day is nowhere near as strange and constrained as the society in the movie.
The amazing part is that if THX-1138 really is about the brainwashed masses. Then not only did Lucas have true insight into this phenomenon, but he also executed it expertly with his movies that followed.
All in all, I think THX-1138 is more a story playing on our deelply ingrained post-apocalyptic fears and our fear of control. It also speaks to our deep need to be free. But it is a very strange movie at the very least.
Multiple proprietary gaming hardware platforms is better than proprietary software for a bunch of similar hardware.
Microsoft is just whining about not being able to win in the console market, so they're trying to define consoles as being just like the PC.
But to really decide if they're doing this for truly altruistic reasons, ask yourself. Would they let Sony build the common software like they want? Because all they really want is a common standard right?
Microsoft can't stand not to be in a monopoly position in any industry they're in. They're almost pathological about it.
Established cannon is that Anakin fell into lava and survived, but needed the Vader outfit (+ the force) to stay alive.
I had been hoping that they would indeed have the fight by lava. But surfing?!!! I don't think I can handle that. I was truly hoping for a great saber battle, but "lava surfing" has my hopes wayyyy down at the moment.
For those of you who claim there are no more good saber battles in Star Wars anymore, you should be sure to see the battle between Anakin and Asajj Ventress in the Clone Wars cartoon series. It is truly awesome (as good as Empire and Jedi's final battles). It was what had me hoping for good things with Episode III.
You know when I read the line about dispensing with the web browser as we know in their next release, I find myself thinking.... there will never be tabbed browsing in any Microsoft "browser".
I can't imagine not having this feature and it floors me that Microsoft can't imagine anyone ever needing it.
Re:Good point -- the very weak dollar doesn't help
on
Out of Gas
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· Score: 1
Blah, blah, blah, Bush, blah.
Now, its clear you don't like Bush and would like to blame everything on him but, how about I change lanes here???
How do you feel about outsourcing??? Do you dislike the trend, do you wish companies would start outsourcing? Do you know what one of the biggest influences against outsourcing will be in the next few years?
Its the value of the dollar. A stronger dollar is not what is needed. If we want international markets (including software) we will need lower value for the dollar. This will drive the cost of outsourcing up and bring value back into IT here in the US. Our trade deficit has been out of hand for decades now and currency values have not come around to balance this because the dollar always needs to have a "high value". My belief is that to grow the global economy (or as a result of it) the dollar cannot stay strong.
Actually because of various factors in many different states, dairy production is down too.
This isn't all directly attributed to gas prices, or even the economy as a whole. Its not helping things, buts it just that the dairy industry has had high price increases lately too.
High Prices are Required
on
Out of Gas
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· Score: 3, Insightful
The biggest thing I find interesting in this is that in a free market economy High prices are pretty much Required to spur new invention and alternative sources. Ethanol, people complain, costs more than regular gasoline. But as prices increase this isn't going to necessarily hold (please no lon debates and rants about the cost of ethanol production, its just an example).
With totally alternate technologies, as gas prices increase they become more cost competitive with gas. The extra cost/complexity of hybrid vechicles becomes less of a factor. Savings from using (now expensive) gas and moving to other fuels can be calculated. If you project increase in gas prices into the future maybe starting to invest in hydrogen powered vehicles can have a faster ROI (regarding all the infrastructure required) than before gas prices went up.
Basically, to sum up, I'm saying higher gas prices just show the need for new technology, they actulally are required to make it happen.
They'd have to be durable in northern climates because anything you put on the road has to be able to withstand getting scraped off of the road by a snowplow.
You know it would be entirely possible for Ford to by an executables only of embedded linux, and write their software to run on top of they. In that case they wouldn't even have the GPL source code.
Your argument is really weak. The AC who posted about code for Windows apps was right on. If you write a windows app (even using their APIs) you are not bound by the windows EULA, just because your software runs on it.
our culture, by its very nature, would rather destroy (or attempt to) something then bow down to it.
That's not just our culture, that is human nature. Fear/Hatred of the unknown is ingrained in our very being, it does not necessarily derive from religion.
On another note something that wasn't mentioned: assuming there are aliens another possibility is that they would come with their own religons or perhaps even have distinct knowledge or proof of an afterlife.
Yes I am sure of that. If Ford does not modify the kernel they do not need to release their code for the control system of the car. If you write a game that runs on Linux do you need to release all the code for it just because you run it on Linux. Of course not!!! Oracle runs on linux and the last time I checked they haven't put any of their code out there under the GPL.
Also, if Ford wanted to they could even create driver modules for the kernel and still not be required to include their source. See nvidia's Linux display drivers for this case.
So everyone using windows has a competitive advantage just because its proprietary??
That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Ford can sure as hell build its own systems to run on Linux and they would still an important part of competitively running their business. Also if you run MySQL as a database the important thing (the IP from a user perspective) is the DATA. That data is your proprietary data, IT IS YOUR IP!! The status of MySQL as open source softare has no effect on your IP for your business.
The guy who wrote this article is a flaming idiot. First he picks our numbers from the internet bubble where companies that make tangible items watched their value stay flat while companies that primarily traded in vapor got obscenely overvalued. It was interesting to note he stopped quoting S&P numbers with 1998 data (this for a report penned in 2004?).
Fantastic post! In the end IBM may be the only company that will be able to keep the Longhorn patents away from Linux.
Also the one looming question is: If Microsoft uses their patents against other operating systems, aren't they by default abusing their monopoly position? Remember, they were found guilty of being a monopoly, it was the settlement that was totally worthless. Could Linux companies counter sue from an anti-trust angle if Microsoft sued them over patents?
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There is no reason that the RIAA cannot sue p2p file sharers in court in a civil case. It is their right to do so. Its a stupid business practice to sue your customers, but it is their right.
But what they are trying to do here is have the government use my tax dollars to sue citizens for them in a civil case!! This would give the RIAA members double extra special citizen status allowng the government to operate on their behalf in civil cases using none of their (the RIAA) resources (read money) to do so.
Heres a deal I would agree with. To the RIAA: Transfer ALL of the copyrights of your music over to the federal government THEN let them try the cases. The government would be defending their copyrighted works appropirately. Does that sound silly, of course it does. But what this bill is trying to do is worse.
To put it another way, if you write software and copyright it and another person (maybe many many peolpe) takes it from you, should you expect the government to handle the court costs in your civil copyright case? Hell no!!!
This bill, if passed, will be a constitutional travesty.
Funny how in a discussion about freedom to listen, you mention that you only listen to radio we are all forced to pay for with taxes.
I agree that accountability is important, but what you see in some of these cases is a feedback loop working against it. For example, customer support problems could be a result of bad procedures and processes. If the people working on the "front lines" in customer support could change things to improve service, service may well improve.
But, in most cases, the management likes to measure things that are supposed to make customer service better and then make their decisions. But they can't handle all that raw data for each case so they come up with measurements like call times, and # incidents closed and others that if you really looked hard at them have no bearing on improving customer serivce, but in fact can be very significant in making it worse.
I've just been thinking about this lately with respect to world events.
Everyone is claiming that the President should have know about the prisoner abuse in Iraq. Well, thats all fine and good, but what does that mean when its applied to you and your job? Does the president/CEO of your company need to know everything thats going on at your company? If you answered yes to that question, then the inverse of that is; do you have any decisionmaking ability whatsoever in your job?
I find it disturbing how many people in the media and people in general expect full and absolute accountability from top levels of companies and the government, yet fail to realize that this means there will end up being no responsibility or care for the customer at the bottom if those people have no power or influence. Of course in the corporate (and I'm sure government too) world, there is also a lot of higher ups blaming their powerless workers for problems created from the top as well.
The power and the responsibility need to be at the same level, or things get broken fast.
I don't really have a problem with patents on THINGS, but I do have a problem with patents on algorightms and procedures.
The process of selling something by clicking a mouse button should never, ever have received a patent.
But by all means software should be able to be copyrighted and where you can make it work, it should be able to be a trade secret also.
I am not willing to give up my SUV.
I AM (or will be), however, willing to buy a hybrid engine SUV, or a fuel cell SUV.
I wonder if all these "safety" arguments will go out the window once these machines arrive, and they WILL arrive. There are some interesting things you could do with respect to design of hybrid SUVs and car companies will make them.
The answer to this is not to try and make SUVs illegal, it is to bring them along in the move to alternative fuels.
Have you even seen the movie. The orignial poster is right. Although our present day is nowhere near as strange and constrained as the society in the movie.
The amazing part is that if THX-1138 really is about the brainwashed masses. Then not only did Lucas have true insight into this phenomenon, but he also executed it expertly with his movies that followed.
All in all, I think THX-1138 is more a story playing on our deelply ingrained post-apocalyptic fears and our fear of control. It also speaks to our deep need to be free. But it is a very strange movie at the very least.
OsX derives from BSD, and that fights been done arleady.
Multiple proprietary gaming hardware platforms is better than proprietary software for a bunch of similar hardware.
Microsoft is just whining about not being able to win in the console market, so they're trying to define consoles as being just like the PC.
But to really decide if they're doing this for truly altruistic reasons, ask yourself. Would they let Sony build the common software like they want? Because all they really want is a common standard right?
Microsoft can't stand not to be in a monopoly position in any industry they're in. They're almost pathological about it.
Established cannon is that Anakin fell into lava and survived, but needed the Vader outfit (+ the force) to stay alive.
I had been hoping that they would indeed have the fight by lava. But surfing?!!! I don't think I can handle that. I was truly hoping for a great saber battle, but "lava surfing" has my hopes wayyyy down at the moment.
For those of you who claim there are no more good saber battles in Star Wars anymore, you should be sure to see the battle between Anakin and Asajj Ventress in the Clone Wars cartoon series. It is truly awesome (as good as Empire and Jedi's final battles). It was what had me hoping for good things with Episode III.
Lava Surfing......AAAAAGgggggghhhhh!!!!!
BTW: I think the name's fine.
You know when I read the line about dispensing with the web browser as we know in their next release, I find myself thinking.... there will never be tabbed browsing in any Microsoft "browser".
I can't imagine not having this feature and it floors me that Microsoft can't imagine anyone ever needing it.
Blah, blah, blah, Bush, blah.
Now, its clear you don't like Bush and would like to blame everything on him but, how about I change lanes here???
How do you feel about outsourcing??? Do you dislike the trend, do you wish companies would start outsourcing? Do you know what one of the biggest influences against outsourcing will be in the next few years?
Its the value of the dollar. A stronger dollar is not what is needed. If we want international markets (including software) we will need lower value for the dollar. This will drive the cost of outsourcing up and bring value back into IT here in the US. Our trade deficit has been out of hand for decades now and currency values have not come around to balance this because the dollar always needs to have a "high value". My belief is that to grow the global economy (or as a result of it) the dollar cannot stay strong.
Aw, hell, I'd give up a little milage to drive a car that cool. ;-)
Actually because of various factors in many different states, dairy production is down too.
This isn't all directly attributed to gas prices, or even the economy as a whole. Its not helping things, buts it just that the dairy industry has had high price increases lately too.
The biggest thing I find interesting in this is that in a free market economy High prices are pretty much Required to spur new invention and alternative sources. Ethanol, people complain, costs more than regular gasoline. But as prices increase this isn't going to necessarily hold (please no lon debates and rants about the cost of ethanol production, its just an example).
With totally alternate technologies, as gas prices increase they become more cost competitive with gas. The extra cost/complexity of hybrid vechicles becomes less of a factor. Savings from using (now expensive) gas and moving to other fuels can be calculated. If you project increase in gas prices into the future maybe starting to invest in hydrogen powered vehicles can have a faster ROI (regarding all the infrastructure required) than before gas prices went up.
Basically, to sum up, I'm saying higher gas prices just show the need for new technology, they actulally are required to make it happen.
They'd have to be durable in northern climates because anything you put on the road has to be able to withstand getting scraped off of the road by a snowplow.
Yeah, but that Clinton as a celibate priest thing. I don't think even parallel universes could cause that reality to exist!! ;-)
You know it would be entirely possible for Ford to by an executables only of embedded linux, and write their software to run on top of they. In that case they wouldn't even have the GPL source code.
Your argument is really weak. The AC who posted about code for Windows apps was right on. If you write a windows app (even using their APIs) you are not bound by the windows EULA, just because your software runs on it.
our culture, by its very nature, would rather destroy (or attempt to) something then bow down to it.
That's not just our culture, that is human nature. Fear/Hatred of the unknown is ingrained in our very being, it does not necessarily derive from religion.
On another note something that wasn't mentioned: assuming there are aliens another possibility is that they would come with their own religons or perhaps even have distinct knowledge or proof of an afterlife.
Yes I am sure of that. If Ford does not modify the kernel they do not need to release their code for the control system of the car. If you write a game that runs on Linux do you need to release all the code for it just because you run it on Linux. Of course not!!! Oracle runs on linux and the last time I checked they haven't put any of their code out there under the GPL.
Also, if Ford wanted to they could even create driver modules for the kernel and still not be required to include their source. See nvidia's Linux display drivers for this case.
You can connect to Oracle with both Perl and PHP.
I don't know if you were referring to connectivity or to being able to have the database understand the languages within the database, though.
So everyone using windows has a competitive advantage just because its proprietary??
That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Ford can sure as hell build its own systems to run on Linux and they would still an important part of competitively running their business. Also if you run MySQL as a database the important thing (the IP from a user perspective) is the DATA. That data is your proprietary data, IT IS YOUR IP!! The status of MySQL as open source softare has no effect on your IP for your business.
The guy who wrote this article is a flaming idiot. First he picks our numbers from the internet bubble where companies that make tangible items watched their value stay flat while companies that primarily traded in vapor got obscenely overvalued. It was interesting to note he stopped quoting S&P numbers with 1998 data (this for a report penned in 2004?).
Fantastic post! In the end IBM may be the only company that will be able to keep the Longhorn patents away from Linux.
Also the one looming question is: If Microsoft uses their patents against other operating systems, aren't they by default abusing their monopoly position? Remember, they were found guilty of being a monopoly, it was the settlement that was totally worthless. Could Linux companies counter sue from an anti-trust angle if Microsoft sued them over patents?
It is nothing at all like Netscape. Netscape actually made a product.
No, X works fine on 100mbps networks. 1000mbps is not needed. Now 100 is definately and noticibly better at running X then 10 is.
Also, dialup ICA and RDP while functional over dialup are painful and frustrating to use over dialup. I only use ICA over dialup if its an emergency.