>WTF is wrong with the dumbasses in the motion picture and recording industries?
Just because an industry grows bigger with change it doesn't mean that all the original players involved will profit. From a big corp/establishment perspective, uncontrolled change is bad -it allows other people to make money in an industry where I/my company dominates. I believe there's been a number of books written about resistance to change in corporate cultures.
On the other hand, while consumers think they are buying music, the industry thinks they are selling content that is bound to the media. There's a big difference which explains many of the actions, laws, and lawsuits of the industry distributors. Historically, they've been able to control the content by controlling the media and thus will need to be dragged forcably into the 21 digital century where content is independant of the media.
BTW, If digital media trivializes the cost and effort of content distribution, much of the music & movie industry is extraneous. They're just Luddites looking to protect their cash cow...
If a company had to pay for the license (probably big bucks), how are they going to make money by turning around and releasing a free version? Particularly if they open source it.
I hate to say this but from the questions you ask, I suspect you're asking for trouble. Implementing a transactional databases solution without any experience is a tough road to take.
> I would prefer to stay away from writing everything to file after each update...
What happens if the server crashes? Any unwritten data is lost.
>but they must all access the same database simultaneously...
You need a multi-user transactional database. Oracle, Sybase, DB2, Sql Server are good examples. MySQL is not since it does not offer transactional support. If you don't know what a commit/rollback is then you definitely need a good book.
The 4 DBMS systems I mentioned are tuned for multi-user systems and each has it's advantages (and drawbacks). My preference is Oracle or Sybase (as those are the ones I use on the job as a DBA).
Don't forget the point of my prior post was that digital media doesn't require half of the expenses you listed -cost of shipping, distribution channels (for physical stores), cost of CD making, profits for *all* the middle men...digital media can cut the cost of getting music from the musicial to the consumer down significantly -by cutting out the middle men. That's what the middle men oppose. That's the reason for the lawsuits.
I'm not suprised that they won the point here, as a pessamist I doubt it will be the last. The digital movie, software, and music (and nascent online book) industries are worth billions of dollars. In most cases the Original Creator of the product receives a small portion of the industries wealth. A huge percentage of that wealth is focused on the distribution and sale of the product.
Think about it, hundreds of millions of dollars are made around making a digital product difficult to get a hold of (or rather making sure you pay an artificially high price -does it really cost $17 to make a music CD?). These companies must realize that products like MP3 and deCSS can significantly reduce the need for middle men. They'll fight any change tooth and nail, including throwing millions at lawyers on these lawsuits (and later the appeals). They need to, they're Ludites who would see the value of their companies (and jobs) cut significantly if they did what was in the customers (and Original Creators) best interests.
If I break into your house, damage or steal nothing, but take pictures (with my camera) of whatever I find interesting am I commiting a crime? Does it matter if I take pictures of your financial info, bills, etc? How about an unpublished manuscript, music, or product design? How about if it's nothing important but something you find embarassing?
Should the law be able to prosecute me? Should the law be dependant on the info taken/seen or your intent or just your uninvited presence on my property?
but would you press any charges? I would charge you with breaking and entering regardless of whether you stole anything or not -your violating my privacy, at the least. The same holds true for breaking into my computer.
so by your logic, if I broke into your house, nosed around but didn't steal anything and informed you that your "security" wasn't good enough, you wouldn't charge me with breaking and entering?
I don't think the original poster was suggesting " that copyright should be taken outside and shot". I found his points to be quite good.
I also think your analogies could be polished a bit. For example, the tomatoes wouldn't be stolen. That would be like the original work be hacked from the musicians computer. Rather, the original tomatoes were bought from the grower, then the seeds were replanted and distributed by someone else (doesn't matter if its for free or money). It doesn't affect your use of the product of your labor, but it does limit your ability to make money from it -which leaps into a current contentious issue with one of the large agro companies that's developed a "terminator" gene that causes the seeds to be sterile, thus guarentying the company many returning customer.
Your example of forging an identity misrepresents one of his main points. Forging an identity should be prohibitted for issues that go beyond a question of copyright. What needs to be considered is why do we copyright, how does society benefit, and how can such a rule be implemented and at what cost?
I think the way it works is that he donated 10K shares of MS stock to some chartity. He gets the tax write-off for the actual dollar value at the time of donation. The charity puts the stocks in their portfolio and then does what they want with it.
Some recipients like Universities already have trust funds, i.e. investments in stocks & bonds. There is no need to cache in the stock immediately. Even if they need to, they have financial planners who will gradually sell the stock over time specifically to avoid disturbing the market.
If Gates donates enough of his stock, it will, over time dilute the value of the available shares, but it wont be a blip. The stock would just be a market laggard or slow performer or something like that. At which point the financial people would probably advise the charity hold the stock and sell into the next high rather than selling low...
Collusive arrangements between 2 competing companies is illegal under US antitrust laws. Finger pointing is irrelevant since both companies are considered guilty (assuming they're found guilty).
Collusive arrangements between 2 non-competing but complementary companies is called strategic partnerships and is extremely common, an example is an airline and hotel chain. Each company usually pursues whatever is in its shareholders best interests. It's possible that such behaviour may be restricted by the breakup decree. Otherwise MicroOS and MicroApps wont be prohibited from colluding but since it will undoubtably be heavily scrutinized the assumption is that such activity will be minimized.
Additionally, market forces would dictate a diverging directions for the 2 companies, they would no longer have a strong interest in maintaining a Windows monopoly (i.e. MicroApps will sell to as many OSes as possible, all app companies will get a fair shake with MicroOS since they will want many apps to run on their platform).
Have you ever had your house broken into? Who do you blame, the criminals or yourself for not having the latest home security devices installed?
Of course someone living in a high crime area should take precautions, but the point of his message stands, the gov't should pursue criminal behavior. Besides many edu & gov orgs don't have centralized admin, the sys admin may be the user of the PC or server. Nor did he state that he was responsible for the affected systems -and that would make you the arrogant asshole here...
So socialized medicine run by the gov't is not monopolistic? Who decides what treatment you get and can you get a better price for a similiar service from a competitor?
You raise an interesting point about the motivation of profit in health care. I suppose it can be abused, just like oil companies can suppress fuel efficient carburators, manufacturers can design products to need to be replaced frequently, etc. Your argument applies equally to business, in all cases the protection to consumers is knowledge. Would you go to a hospital/doctor/drug treatment knowing that its competitors treatments were healthier/cheaper?
It's gotta get more profitable to compete. A lot of people confuse "better" with "more profitable". How can I make my hospital more profitable? Charge more. Pay the doctors less. Cut corners. Only treat rich patients who can afford to pay. Get good deals from the drug companies by recommending their treatments. Open a lot of hospitals, get a monopoly and then hike prices. Does this sound like a certain software company?
Nonsense...The same rules that apply to companies could apply to hospitals. How can I make my COMPANY more profitable? Charge more. Pay the employees less. Cut corners...etc The consumer will benefit as long as there are choices between businesses competing for his/her money. Profit is the way to motivate the company to make their services attractive enough to lure consumers away from its competitor. BTW, corporate monopolistic behaviour is illegal.
I haven't heard about that discussion but I suspect you're misquoting. 32-bit OS like LINUX may have a 2GB file size limit, but DB's like Oracle and Sybase allow you to have multiple OS files within the database. While there is a limit, it's virtually unreachable (Peta-byte range for Oracle 8i).
32-bit OS (SUN, AIX, LINUX, etc) have another 2GB limit, but it's on RAM. This means the scalability of the db is limited, but again, only the largest systems (hundreds of concurrent users) need to worry.
>I've always been told that min/max_online engines should be set to # of processors -1
A good rule of thumb but if it's on a clean, dedicated DB only server it's not necessary. It's important to have when you have other processes running on the O/S.
And women shouldn't go into Tyson's hotel room alone, don't go down dark alleys, etc, etc.
There are "common sense" measures a person (or web site) can take to prevent a physical crime (or hacking), yet there is no way to guarentee security. When a population is threatened with physical crime the gov't response is More Police which is a physical presence and acts as a deterent. There is no comparable response to internet hacking, thus the attempt at deterence is based on escallating sentences.
Besides, the gov't isn't responsible for commercial computer security. Comparably, should a rapist be given a lighter sentence because the victim didn't have "common sense" (or good computer security)?
Not that I'm saying that raping and hacking are comparable or should get similiar sentences. Personally, I'd like to bring back public flogging & execution for violent offenders. Now that's deterence!
Wasn't Mitnick a "repeat" offender? Wasn't he a fugitive? Shouldn't these factor into the sentence? Tyson did neither and his case bordered on date rape. -bad example-
In the case of physical crime, the gov't does have a somewhat effective response, put more police on the streets. It usually has a very clear impact on crime. They don't have an effective response to increased hacking. Perhaps *you* have an answer?
Comparing GA chip development with life evolution is not an apples to apples comparision. Chip development has a goal to work towards (thus something to test against). Life evolution is goal-less, its existence & prolification is its point (depends on your philisophical view). Life never has a completed/perfect design which is what a chip designer is striving for. In fact, each living individual is a unique design itself that may or may not succeed whereas we would make millions of copies of the best chip design. Besides, you can count the evolutionary flaws in nature by counting the extinct species...or is a better comparision counting the unpropigated mutations within every species?
I'd agree with the tinfoil helmet perspective IFF he actually wrote a "Proof of Fermat's last theorem" (or so he beleives). In any case, his goal my have been merely to "get it published" (same as Sokal), which succeeded. I don't know the review process for the Internet Draft process, he may be attempting to make the point that he can get drivel published in tech circles. After all, Sokal pulled the hoax on the Social Text editors, there's no info on whether its readers bought it.
I agree, it's a Sokal mimic, for the following reasons:
1. Phrases like this are unintelligible: "To render a more pointed fact, I needed to pass a CISCO Certification Examination. However, this can never be accomplished, if the information that is needed and used in the preparation thereof, lacks continuity and propagates errors pertaining to foundational information. Needless to say, my endeavors were not in vein." (Not to mention the use of the word vein)
2. His most important references were to his own unpublished work on "The Proof of Fermat's Last Theorem..." and "The Rudiments of Finite Algebra...". His next most important references were for 50 year old books on "An Investigation of The Laws of Thought..." and "Meaning and Necessity".
3. Before his references he has "Note: If you enjoy the exercise, feel free, find and correct the Mathematical problems." An Internet-Draft with known/intentional math errors?
4. This draft is not accessable from the main ietf index. Was it pulled or was it never posted? If it was never posted perhaps the whole point was to watch our reaction?
Regardless, I suspect it was a bored geek rather than a spiteful Postmodern lit student.
Slashdot Mirror
>WTF is wrong with the dumbasses in the motion picture and recording industries?
Just because an industry grows bigger with change it doesn't mean that all the original players involved will profit. From a big corp/establishment perspective, uncontrolled change is bad -it allows other people to make money in an industry where I/my company dominates. I believe there's been a number of books written about resistance to change in corporate cultures.
On the other hand, while consumers think they are buying music, the industry thinks they are selling content that is bound to the media. There's a big difference which explains many of the actions, laws, and lawsuits of the industry distributors. Historically, they've been able to control the content by controlling the media and thus will need to be dragged forcably into the 21 digital century where content is independant of the media.
BTW, If digital media trivializes the cost and effort of content distribution, much of the music & movie industry is extraneous. They're just Luddites looking to protect their cash cow...
Support & service on a DVD player program for Linux????? Do you really expect people to pay for that?
If a company had to pay for the license (probably big bucks), how are they going to make money by turning around and releasing a free version? Particularly if they open source it.
I hate to say this but from the questions you ask, I suspect you're asking for trouble. Implementing a transactional databases solution without any experience is a tough road to take.
> I would prefer to stay away from writing everything to file after each update...
What happens if the server crashes? Any unwritten data is lost.
>but they must all access the same database simultaneously...
You need a multi-user transactional database. Oracle, Sybase, DB2, Sql Server are good examples. MySQL is not since it does not offer transactional support. If you don't know what a commit/rollback is then you definitely need a good book.
The 4 DBMS systems I mentioned are tuned for multi-user systems and each has it's advantages (and drawbacks). My preference is Oracle or Sybase (as those are the ones I use on the job as a DBA).
Don't forget the point of my prior post was that digital media doesn't require half of the expenses you listed -cost of shipping, distribution channels (for physical stores), cost of CD making, profits for *all* the middle men...digital media can cut the cost of getting music from the musicial to the consumer down significantly -by cutting out the middle men. That's what the middle men oppose. That's the reason for the lawsuits.
I'm not suprised that they won the point here, as a pessamist I doubt it will be the last. The digital movie, software, and music (and nascent online book) industries are worth billions of dollars. In most cases the Original Creator of the product receives a small portion of the industries wealth. A huge percentage of that wealth is focused on the distribution and sale of the product.
Think about it, hundreds of millions of dollars are made around making a digital product difficult to get a hold of (or rather making sure you pay an artificially high price -does it really cost $17 to make a music CD?). These companies must realize that products like MP3 and deCSS can significantly reduce the need for middle men. They'll fight any change tooth and nail, including throwing millions at lawyers on these lawsuits (and later the appeals). They need to, they're Ludites who would see the value of their companies (and jobs) cut significantly if they did what was in the customers (and Original Creators) best interests.
Agreed that the punishment would be significantly less than 4-5 yrs jail, but if parole was broken I would expect *some* jail time.
If I break into your house, damage or steal nothing, but take pictures (with my camera) of whatever I find interesting am I commiting a crime? Does it matter if I take pictures of your financial info, bills, etc? How about an unpublished manuscript, music, or product design? How about if it's nothing important but something you find embarassing?
Should the law be able to prosecute me? Should the law be dependant on the info taken/seen or your intent or just your uninvited presence on my property?
but would you press any charges? I would charge you with breaking and entering regardless of whether you stole anything or not -your violating my privacy, at the least. The same holds true for breaking into my computer.
so by your logic, if I broke into your house, nosed around but didn't steal anything and informed you that your "security" wasn't good enough, you wouldn't charge me with breaking and entering?
I don't think the original poster was suggesting " that copyright should be taken outside and shot". I found his points to be quite good.
I also think your analogies could be polished a bit. For example, the tomatoes wouldn't be stolen. That would be like the original work be hacked from the musicians computer. Rather, the original tomatoes were bought from the grower, then the seeds were replanted and distributed by someone else (doesn't matter if its for free or money). It doesn't affect your use of the product of your labor, but it does limit your ability to make money from it -which leaps into a current contentious issue with one of the large agro companies that's developed a "terminator" gene that causes the seeds to be sterile, thus guarentying the company many returning customer.
Your example of forging an identity misrepresents one of his main points. Forging an identity should be prohibitted for issues that go beyond a question of copyright. What needs to be considered is why do we copyright, how does society benefit, and how can such a rule be implemented and at what cost?
I think the way it works is that he donated 10K shares of MS stock to some chartity. He gets the tax write-off for the actual dollar value at the time of donation. The charity puts the stocks in their portfolio and then does what they want with it.
Some recipients like Universities already have trust funds, i.e. investments in stocks & bonds. There is no need to cache in the stock immediately. Even if they need to, they have financial planners who will gradually sell the stock over time specifically to avoid disturbing the market.
If Gates donates enough of his stock, it will, over time dilute the value of the available shares, but it wont be a blip. The stock would just be a market laggard or slow performer or something like that. At which point the financial people would probably advise the charity hold the stock and sell into the next high rather than selling low...
Collusive arrangements between 2 competing companies is illegal under US antitrust laws. Finger pointing is irrelevant since both companies are considered guilty (assuming they're found guilty).
Collusive arrangements between 2 non-competing but complementary companies is called strategic partnerships and is extremely common, an example is an airline and hotel chain. Each company usually pursues whatever is in its shareholders best interests. It's possible that such behaviour may be restricted by the breakup decree. Otherwise MicroOS and MicroApps wont be prohibited from colluding but since it will undoubtably be heavily scrutinized the assumption is that such activity will be minimized.
Additionally, market forces would dictate a diverging directions for the 2 companies, they would no longer have a strong interest in maintaining a Windows monopoly (i.e. MicroApps will sell to as many OSes as possible, all app companies will get a fair shake with MicroOS since they will want many apps to run on their platform).
Have you ever had your house broken into? Who do you blame, the criminals or yourself for not having the latest home security devices installed?
Of course someone living in a high crime area should take precautions, but the point of his message stands, the gov't should pursue criminal behavior. Besides many edu & gov orgs don't have centralized admin, the sys admin may be the user of the PC or server. Nor did he state that he was responsible for the affected systems -and that would make you the arrogant asshole here...
So socialized medicine run by the gov't is not monopolistic? Who decides what treatment you get and can you get a better price for a similiar service from a competitor?
You raise an interesting point about the motivation of profit in health care. I suppose it can be abused, just like oil companies can suppress fuel efficient carburators, manufacturers can design products to need to be replaced frequently, etc. Your argument applies equally to business, in all cases the protection to consumers is knowledge. Would you go to a hospital/doctor/drug treatment knowing that its competitors treatments were healthier/cheaper?
It's gotta get more profitable to compete. A lot of people confuse "better" with "more profitable". How can I make my hospital more profitable? Charge more. Pay the doctors less. Cut corners. Only treat rich patients who can afford to pay. Get good deals from the drug companies by recommending their treatments. Open a lot of hospitals, get a monopoly and then hike prices. Does this sound like a certain software company?
Nonsense...The same rules that apply to companies could apply to hospitals. How can I make my COMPANY more profitable? Charge more. Pay the employees less. Cut corners...etc
The consumer will benefit as long as there are choices between businesses competing for his/her money. Profit is the way to motivate the company to make their services attractive enough to lure consumers away from its competitor. BTW, corporate monopolistic behaviour is illegal.
I haven't heard about that discussion but I suspect you're misquoting. 32-bit OS like LINUX may have a 2GB file size limit, but DB's like Oracle and Sybase allow you to have multiple OS files within the database. While there is a limit, it's virtually unreachable (Peta-byte range for Oracle 8i).
32-bit OS (SUN, AIX, LINUX, etc) have another 2GB limit, but it's on RAM. This means the scalability of the db is limited, but again, only the largest systems (hundreds of concurrent users) need to worry.
>I've always been told that min/max_online engines should be set to # of processors -1
A good rule of thumb but if it's on a clean, dedicated DB only server it's not necessary. It's important to have when you have other processes running on the O/S.
And women shouldn't go into Tyson's hotel room alone, don't go down dark alleys, etc, etc.
There are "common sense" measures a person (or web site) can take to prevent a physical crime (or hacking), yet there is no way to guarentee security. When a population is threatened with physical crime the gov't response is More Police which is a physical presence and acts as a deterent. There is no comparable response to internet hacking, thus the attempt at deterence is based on escallating sentences.
Besides, the gov't isn't responsible for commercial computer security. Comparably, should a rapist be given a lighter sentence because the victim didn't have "common sense" (or good computer security)?
Not that I'm saying that raping and hacking are comparable or should get similiar sentences. Personally, I'd like to bring back public flogging & execution for violent offenders. Now that's deterence!
Aren't there sentencing standards?
Wasn't Mitnick a "repeat" offender? Wasn't he a fugitive? Shouldn't these factor into the sentence? Tyson did neither and his case bordered on date rape. -bad example-
In the case of physical crime, the gov't does have a somewhat effective response, put more police on the streets. It usually has a very clear impact on crime. They don't have an effective response to increased hacking. Perhaps *you* have an answer?
Comparing GA chip development with life evolution is not an apples to apples comparision. Chip development has a goal to work towards (thus something to test against). Life evolution is goal-less, its existence & prolification is its point (depends on your philisophical view). Life never has a completed/perfect design which is what a chip designer is striving for. In fact, each living individual is a unique design itself that may or may not succeed whereas we would make millions of copies of the best chip design.
Besides, you can count the evolutionary flaws in nature by counting the extinct species...or is a better comparision counting the unpropigated mutations within every species?
I'd agree with the tinfoil helmet perspective IFF he actually wrote a "Proof of Fermat's last theorem" (or so he beleives). In any case, his goal my have been merely to "get it published" (same as Sokal), which succeeded. I don't know the review process for the Internet Draft process, he may be attempting to make the point that he can get drivel published in tech circles. After all, Sokal pulled the hoax on the Social Text editors, there's no info on whether its readers bought it.
er...I stand corrected. Never the less, I'm sure it was posted as a Sokal-like hoax for the authors jollies.
I agree, it's a Sokal mimic, for the following reasons:
1. Phrases like this are unintelligible:
"To render a more pointed fact, I needed to pass a CISCO Certification Examination. However, this can never be accomplished, if the information that is needed and used in the preparation thereof, lacks continuity and propagates errors pertaining to foundational information. Needless to say, my endeavors were not in vein."
(Not to mention the use of the word vein)
2. His most important references were to his own unpublished work on "The Proof of Fermat's Last Theorem..." and "The Rudiments of Finite Algebra...". His next most important references were for 50 year old books on "An Investigation of The Laws of Thought..." and "Meaning and Necessity".
3. Before his references he has "Note: If you enjoy the exercise, feel free, find and correct the Mathematical problems." An Internet-Draft with known/intentional math errors?
4. This draft is not accessable from the main ietf index. Was it pulled or was it never posted? If it was never posted perhaps the whole point was to watch our reaction?
Regardless, I suspect it was a bored geek rather than a spiteful Postmodern lit student.