We need to stop working on better technology for big companies, and work on technology to reduce our very own dependence on services from these big companies. Our own technology should all our needs, not dependence on the services of some companies.
The idea is that the machines do the drudgery work, and humans can do only what they enjoy, indeed. The very essence and fundamental idea of better technology is to do more with less. The idea of any profit-seeking company is to produce more with less. Only one reason that has not yet resulted in mass unemployment -- expectations and consumption continue to rise. If technology can also produce for the increased demands of higher expectations and consumption, jobs will decrease.
It is a social and economic problem, not science and technical. The very idea of science and technology is to reduce the work needed. The problem our society has is, the benefits of scientific/technical advance are far greater to whoever can apply it for their direct needs. Others can actually lose out due to technical advancement of others, and frequently many do. For example, the Internet and telecom allowed research to move to India and China, and many US techs simply have less work.
The argument that cotton-pickers will simply become cotton-picking machine operators and salesmen, and nobody will be left unemployed, is simply ridiculous. Of course technology reduces the labor required, that's the very idea human advancement. What's needed is an economic/social mechanism for those who are not working on something "productive", meaning profitable, to continue studying and doing research for further social advancement, somehow, rather than being bitter and opposing social advancement because they are left without their job, which a machine does now.
XP and Office activation, back in 2001, was a rather despised and much criticed protection scheme. Previously Windows and office merely depended on a serial number, which was never verified at all. XP activation was a strong push toward DRM with a call-home feature to verify and activate the license key. It took a while until people figured out that if they wanted to run unauthorized/unlicenced Windows, and bypass activation, they could just use a leaked OEM version and key. Then the criticism stopped. Likewise, in Vista and Win7, DRM was despised, until reliable bypass methods were found. I suppose eventually they will just distribute Windows freely, and rent it to you on a yearly basis, authenticating based on "de-personalized" keys based on your fingerprints or other biometric data. Heck I should have charged them for that idea.
It's of course dramatized and supersized for the news, but you could accurately say the era of computing monopolized by 95% wintel desktop boxes seems to be coming to an end. And it increasingly appears that it might be slowly filled by a much wider variety of processors, OS's, shapes, interfaces and sizes, mostly highly portable and hand-held. The largest motivator seems to be mobile connectivity and extreme portability, and the limitations these impose. The huge power, processing, co-processing, memory, storage, bandwidth, and cooling, required by desktop OS's, simply do not exist in mobile devices. Linux, being open source, highly flexible and modular, was possible to adapt, though it took Google do be able to implement and market a widely adopted single system with a less-fragmented application compatibility. MacOS/Apple/iOS, being a one-manufacturer system, was possible to adapt and market quickly. Wintel, operated by a hodgepodge of monopolistic companies intent on stealing each other's lunch all the time at any cost, with a huge established base to protect or lose, takes more time, and could apparently actually miss the boat, but they are now trying hard to make it.
It's understandable that a great many people would love all big monopolies to go away, do whatever possible to avoid them, and see this change as opportunity -- which it clearly is. However simply wishing, rooting, and stating "monopolies will die" won't make them go away, without there being some capable group that has joined forces and created interesting, maintainable options which millions of common people can manage to access, acquire, and use. Whatever the platform, the main challenge seems to be compatiblity, and what standards can be used, or created. Everything here is a challenge. Old apps, new apps, old data, new data, interfaces, source code. Interopability agreements and increasing fragmentation seem to be the challenges that rule the moment.
Uh apple are not a standard, they are under no obligation to play fair. If your citizens are willing to buy at that price then that is the price apple will sell for.
Those are the norms for the market. Markets however operate under the laws of nations. As in "sovereign nations." Which pass any laws they please. Apple would be wise to take the issue seriously. If the Australian government simply negatively influences it's people on the fairness of Apple business practices, sales fall. That's without even passing any laws. In fact if the nation wanted to modify their IP laws and produce Apple clone products with an Apple brand and declare it legal, it could. Apple could only complain to the WTO or something.
Get these name on the watchlist ASAP.. John Smith, James Smith, Michael Smith, Robert Smith, John Johnson, James Johnson, Michael Johnson, Robert Johnson, John Williams, James Williams, Robert Williams, Michael Williams... surely one of those guys must be a bad guy, given the prevalence of the names... better safe than sorry!
In fact it's all very simple. Just ground all airplanes forever and tell everyone to stay home at all times every day. Everything will be perfectly safe.
I see no need for such complex vehicles for the majority of uses. While autonomous vehicles certainly are necessary for many uses, the majority of the trips are along regular routes - city streets and freeways - and adding some sort of tracks with a power source in some sort of third rail is old tech. We only don't have it because it doesn't sell cars, but that's an economic problem, not an engineering one. Yes, lots of people are crazy about cars and proclaim public disasters and military dictatorships at any sign of providing them with the option to not depend on one, but that's also not technical, that's just marketing, politics or entertainment. Millions of people everywhere have no personal car and live quite fine. If you add up their negatives, it becomes a long list. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_automobile_on_societies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_rail
Google made a virtual bid (just for laughs) for virtual property (intellectual property), claiming it maybe would be useful in a legal battle over hazy interpretations of virtual properties, aka a patent battle. If they won, they likely would pay in virtual money (stocks).
Hmm indeed. SIP is complex to get running. Accurate criticism. SIPbroker, even more complex. It's still mainly in the domain of techies and PBX admins.
Why can't HTML app development be a standard library, compatible with all OS's? Well it can - the trouble comes in making the standard be compatible wth the implementations. Making it no longer a standard, and no longer able to run many apps. There's lots of libraries in that situation. Anything that became standardized across platforms would work.
I think the solution is to require software companies to put their code into escrow.
Seems fair to me, but in the current legal system, that code is company property- period. It could only come about if some users organization had some power, leverage of some kind, to negoriate. Things can be achieved in negotiation of contracts, but only if users are more organized and can orient behavior of large numbers of users. Users associations should have a ratings system for different games, companies, and software contracts. Software distribution systems, website reviews. Participating more actively in the creating and managing of games, mods, servers, etc is the way to go.
It would be nice if technology evolves so you could generate your own power easily, perhaps with a few neighbors - and not pay or support any company at all.
So, if people are so angry, they should organize more. Organizing is the skill required in the game called "make it change". For example, games can be made based on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_pledge_system. Gamers have to be better organized in getting control of their code, having a group that organizes contract negotioations between users and companies, etc. Enough foolin' around, time to get some swords and guns and change things. Or pens and keyboards, whatever works best.
I'm not paying for the network, the program, the Net connection, the bandwidth, or the phone. I paid for my time, computer, monitor, table, and apartment already. Enough. Ok, I pay monthly for a half-dozen Net connections, still working on ways around that.
Revolution is paying big corporations for exactly nothing, and inventing decent ways to do everything.
If enough people dislike monopolies and act together, there would be none. We should be organized enough. We have tools for debate, forming opinions, and implementing alternatives. What we dont have, is the actual serious debate.
I propose we all switch to standards, SIP, and extend it where necessary. XMPP perhaps.
Sorry but I have never heard of these "music labels", what are they? Does that have anything to do with the ID3 in the mp3? If so ID3 data indeed does have to be better coordinated, too many mp3's are mislabeled with completely wrong ID3 data. Multible song and lyrics versions and lyrics.lrc syncrhonization is just a complete mess because there is no proper ID3 data standards, especially when it come to multiple versions of the same song by the same artist. Perhaps by putting it all in a cloud and comparing it we can choose the best versions of mp3's, ID3, and.lrc. Though somehow I think the RIAA is going to want to police and see receipts for everyone's cloud music data storage.
SIP can integrate to a PABX, run a whole PABX server, it's set into hardware phones grandma can use, make voice and video calls, get better calling rates than Skype, even get free calls to more numbers than Skype. enum, inum, peering, etc, are moving towards integrating all the voip networks into a single numbering system. Poof, both skype and the phone system will become obsolete, phone calls will cost no more than email.
It is long possible to clone skype using p2p and open source. In fact even the financial incentives of several voip providers are there. Maybe this is the catalyst for them to do it. Yes there are similar apps already, but clearly something is missing, or skype wouldn't be what it is.
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We need to stop working on better technology for big companies, and work on technology to reduce our very own dependence on services from these big companies. Our own technology should all our needs, not dependence on the services of some companies.
The idea is that the machines do the drudgery work, and humans can do only what they enjoy, indeed. The very essence and fundamental idea of better technology is to do more with less. The idea of any profit-seeking company is to produce more with less. Only one reason that has not yet resulted in mass unemployment -- expectations and consumption continue to rise. If technology can also produce for the increased demands of higher expectations and consumption, jobs will decrease.
It is a social and economic problem, not science and technical. The very idea of science and technology is to reduce the work needed. The problem our society has is, the benefits of scientific/technical advance are far greater to whoever can apply it for their direct needs. Others can actually lose out due to technical advancement of others, and frequently many do. For example, the Internet and telecom allowed research to move to India and China, and many US techs simply have less work.
The argument that cotton-pickers will simply become cotton-picking machine operators and salesmen, and nobody will be left unemployed, is simply ridiculous. Of course technology reduces the labor required, that's the very idea human advancement. What's needed is an economic/social mechanism for those who are not working on something "productive", meaning profitable, to continue studying and doing research for further social advancement, somehow, rather than being bitter and opposing social advancement because they are left without their job, which a machine does now.
XP and Office activation, back in 2001, was a rather despised and much criticed protection scheme. Previously Windows and office merely depended on a serial number, which was never verified at all. XP activation was a strong push toward DRM with a call-home feature to verify and activate the license key. It took a while until people figured out that if they wanted to run unauthorized/unlicenced Windows, and bypass activation, they could just use a leaked OEM version and key. Then the criticism stopped. Likewise, in Vista and Win7, DRM was despised, until reliable bypass methods were found. I suppose eventually they will just distribute Windows freely, and rent it to you on a yearly basis, authenticating based on "de-personalized" keys based on your fingerprints or other biometric data. Heck I should have charged them for that idea.
It's of course dramatized and supersized for the news, but you could accurately say the era of computing monopolized by 95% wintel desktop boxes seems to be coming to an end. And it increasingly appears that it might be slowly filled by a much wider variety of processors, OS's, shapes, interfaces and sizes, mostly highly portable and hand-held. The largest motivator seems to be mobile connectivity and extreme portability, and the limitations these impose. The huge power, processing, co-processing, memory, storage, bandwidth, and cooling, required by desktop OS's, simply do not exist in mobile devices. Linux, being open source, highly flexible and modular, was possible to adapt, though it took Google do be able to implement and market a widely adopted single system with a less-fragmented application compatibility. MacOS/Apple/iOS, being a one-manufacturer system, was possible to adapt and market quickly. Wintel, operated by a hodgepodge of monopolistic companies intent on stealing each other's lunch all the time at any cost, with a huge established base to protect or lose, takes more time, and could apparently actually miss the boat, but they are now trying hard to make it.
It's understandable that a great many people would love all big monopolies to go away, do whatever possible to avoid them, and see this change as opportunity -- which it clearly is. However simply wishing, rooting, and stating "monopolies will die" won't make them go away, without there being some capable group that has joined forces and created interesting, maintainable options which millions of common people can manage to access, acquire, and use. Whatever the platform, the main challenge seems to be compatiblity, and what standards can be used, or created. Everything here is a challenge. Old apps, new apps, old data, new data, interfaces, source code. Interopability agreements and increasing fragmentation seem to be the challenges that rule the moment.
Uh apple are not a standard, they are under no obligation to play fair. If your citizens are willing to buy at that price then that is the price apple will sell for.
Those are the norms for the market. Markets however operate under the laws of nations. As in "sovereign nations." Which pass any laws they please. Apple would be wise to take the issue seriously. If the Australian government simply negatively influences it's people on the fairness of Apple business practices, sales fall. That's without even passing any laws. In fact if the nation wanted to modify their IP laws and produce Apple clone products with an Apple brand and declare it legal, it could. Apple could only complain to the WTO or something.
Get these name on the watchlist ASAP.. John Smith, James Smith, Michael Smith, Robert Smith, John Johnson, James Johnson, Michael Johnson, Robert Johnson, John Williams, James Williams, Robert Williams, Michael Williams... surely one of those guys must be a bad guy, given the prevalence of the names... better safe than sorry!
In fact it's all very simple. Just ground all airplanes forever and tell everyone to stay home at all times every day. Everything will be perfectly safe.
DHS has failed to make the country safer; if anything it made it easier for government to abuse the citizens.
They do what there were supposed to do, and you still *can* leave the country very easily. So far.
We got to elect our own government.
Nothing more to say.
I see no need for such complex vehicles for the majority of uses. While autonomous vehicles certainly are necessary for many uses, the majority of the trips are along regular routes - city streets and freeways - and adding some sort of tracks with a power source in some sort of third rail is old tech. We only don't have it because it doesn't sell cars, but that's an economic problem, not an engineering one. Yes, lots of people are crazy about cars and proclaim public disasters and military dictatorships at any sign of providing them with the option to not depend on one, but that's also not technical, that's just marketing, politics or entertainment. Millions of people everywhere have no personal car and live quite fine. If you add up their negatives, it becomes a long list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_automobile_on_societies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_rail
Google made a virtual bid (just for laughs) for virtual property (intellectual property), claiming it maybe would be useful in a legal battle over hazy interpretations of virtual properties, aka a patent battle. If they won, they likely would pay in virtual money (stocks).
Somehow I think we're all in a non-virtual mess.
Hmm indeed. SIP is complex to get running. Accurate criticism. SIPbroker, even more complex. It's still mainly in the domain of techies and PBX admins.
What use are SIP and XMPP if all your contacts are on Skype?
What use is having all your contacts in Skype, if Microsoft doesn't let you access it anymore?
I think SIP, XMPP, and Asterisk are about to get a huge boost.
Why can't HTML app development be a standard library, compatible with all OS's? Well it can - the trouble comes in making the standard be compatible wth the implementations. Making it no longer a standard, and no longer able to run many apps. There's lots of libraries in that situation. Anything that became standardized across platforms would work.
I think the solution is to require software companies to put their code into escrow.
Seems fair to me, but in the current legal system, that code is company property- period. It could only come about if some users organization had some power, leverage of some kind, to negoriate. Things can be achieved in negotiation of contracts, but only if users are more organized and can orient behavior of large numbers of users. Users associations should have a ratings system for different games, companies, and software contracts. Software distribution systems, website reviews. Participating more actively in the creating and managing of games, mods, servers, etc is the way to go.
I wonder how many kWH can people manage to produce at home with today's technologies.
It would be nice if technology evolves so you could generate your own power easily, perhaps with a few neighbors - and not pay or support any company at all.
So, if people are so angry, they should organize more. Organizing is the skill required in the game called "make it change". For example, games can be made based on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_pledge_system. Gamers have to be better organized in getting control of their code, having a group that organizes contract negotioations between users and companies, etc. Enough foolin' around, time to get some swords and guns and change things. Or pens and keyboards, whatever works best.
I'm not paying for the network, the program, the Net connection, the bandwidth, or the phone. I paid for my time, computer, monitor, table, and apartment already. Enough. Ok, I pay monthly for a half-dozen Net connections, still working on ways around that.
Revolution is paying big corporations for exactly nothing, and inventing decent ways to do everything.
I think the solution is old and its something called PRT, for Personal Rapid Transit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit -- either way, it seems that's what they will eventually develop.
Scrutiny...without a doubt.
Skype already is a closed standard with almost no interopability. Alternatives are already needed.
If enough people dislike monopolies and act together, there would be none. We should be organized enough. We have tools for debate, forming opinions, and implementing alternatives. What we dont have, is the actual serious debate.
I propose we all switch to standards, SIP, and extend it where necessary. XMPP perhaps.
Sorry but I have never heard of these "music labels", what are they? Does that have anything to do with the ID3 in the mp3? If so ID3 data indeed does have to be better coordinated, too many mp3's are mislabeled with completely wrong ID3 data. Multible song and lyrics versions and lyrics .lrc syncrhonization is just a complete mess because there is no proper ID3 data standards, especially when it come to multiple versions of the same song by the same artist. Perhaps by putting it all in a cloud and comparing it we can choose the best versions of mp3's, ID3, and .lrc. Though somehow I think the RIAA is going to want to police and see receipts for everyone's cloud music data storage.
SIP can integrate to a PABX, run a whole PABX server, it's set into hardware phones grandma can use, make voice and video calls, get better calling rates than Skype, even get free calls to more numbers than Skype. enum, inum, peering, etc, are moving towards integrating all the voip networks into a single numbering system. Poof, both skype and the phone system will become obsolete, phone calls will cost no more than email.
There are dozens of decent VoIP apps out there
It is long possible to clone skype using p2p and open source. In fact even the financial incentives of several voip providers are there. Maybe this is the catalyst for them to do it. Yes there are similar apps already, but clearly something is missing, or skype wouldn't be what it is.