I'll admit I was a little peeved at the number of people willing to flame without giving my post a bit more thought or joining in with some useful comments. Include with this thought an expression of annoyance at the increasing abuse of moderation on Slashdot.
Change my original post title to "automated escrow agent"; at the time I couldn't remember the proper word-- this was the intent.
I think this kind of a system should be possible, widely available and mandatory.
Anyways, the penalty system would start off simply, as soon as a deal doesn't close past a set time, the automated escrow agent begins to levy fines on both parties. There would be different levels in the system finishing by human intervention. Larger sums would mean quicker human intervention.
bah... it's just an idea, I thought it would be interesting to discuss it. Apparently people are more interested in flaming.
"Which makes your position even worse, when even someone who is stupid enough to spell incorrectly can see how obviously uninformed you are."
LOL, um... really.. you're burying yourself... you'd do better to stop now before digging anymore. I'll be nice and not toss that statement back at you.
Thanks, but that wasn't my intent. I was merely expressing a bit of surprise that something, which seemed obvious to me as a solution to this problem, wasn't widely available to ebayers.
That an idea is obvious apparently isn't grounds for it not being patentable. This is why I followed my original post with the other.
Congratulations, you've just joined a growing list of people who have trouble understanding sarcasm.
I wonder why they don't have some kind of fund locking system.
Buyer does not receive item until funds are sent and verified. Seller cannot cash funds until Buyer verifies reception. If at any point either party refuses to check-off their part of the deal, the deal goes into Ebay managed arbitration during which both sides are billed until the dispute is resolved.
I think that would probably solve a lot of the problems.
I should probably have included it in my submission to Slashdot. My humble apologies to the maintainers of that website for any inconvenience caused by the traffic. I just linked to the site the way CNet did:-(
List: kde-devel Subject: New address From: Bernhard Rosenkraenzer Date: 2002-09-25 7:36:31 [Download message RAW]
Hi, Effective immediately, I've left Red Hat (mostly in mutual agreement - I don't want to work on crippling KDE, and they don't want an employee who admits RH 8.0's KDE is crippleware).
If anyone needs/wants to contact me, please use the addresses bero@berolinux.org or bero@kde.org.
For any RH specific KDE issues, please contact Than Ngo.
Hardly. I was ready to wait-and-see through all the comments over the last two weeks about what was happening to KDE in Redhat. I felt Bero would ensure whatever came out of Redhat was good. It was mostly because Bero worked for Redhat (and because rhn works pretty well) that I switched to them a year ago.
This post is perfect timing for me because the announcement came on Slashdot exactly at the time I was mulling over what I was going to do regarding my computer's OS.
Makes me pleased that I joined their club in support of their distribution. I expect to be wiping my Redhat installation soon, cancelling my rhn subscription and making the jump.
The new control panel looks awesome; I've been looking forward to being able to try out gcc 3.2 on a distro compiled for it.
I recall one amusing post in an earlier discussion where somebody pointed out that originally the FSF wanted little do with Linux preferring Hurd for their own reasons. It also bears pointing out that Linus never chose that name. Linux was coined after people thought the name Linus had picked was silly.
Years after Linux became incredibly popular, the FSF decided the name should be changed.
One of the criticisms I read regularly about the FSF is with respect to over-controlling nature of many of their interventions. This is partly exemplified by the recommendation their faqs make that not only you license your software via the GPL, but that turn over your copyright to the FSF (in this regard I recall some colorful emails by one of the main authors of glibc on this matter).
I'm not particular to any name myself and in fact do occasionally refer to the system as GNU/Linux. I do feel, however, that this squable over names is getting rather unseemly to the point of being petty. The name was Linux back in 95 when I got my first slackware CDs-- back then, names only mattered to the filesystem.
Nothing gets my goat more than having crappy software shoved down my throat with a "and you will like it" to wash it down.
I'm tons more willing to cut some slack to a free and open source project for a minor issue than to let off some corporation responsible for riddling my machine with security problems I can't uninstall-- and routinely refuses to fix ina timely manner.
oops.. thats a shell api (shlwapi.dll) function and not an msvcrt one.
Reading the docs further, this brings up one of my beefs actually: Multiple and vaguely documented versions of a function to do the same damn thing. This is a big bitch I've had about programming on Windows.
int wnsprintf(
LPTSTR lpOut,
int cchLimitIn,
LPCTSTR pszFmt, ...
);
Microsoft wraps all its C runtime functions with macros that switch effectively between wchar and char types seemlessly.
They also have a little security note at the bottom of the their documentation detailing how null termination is not guaranteed with this function-- along with some alternatives.
My problem with most of the library documentation they have is that until recently it was rather poor (at least every section I had to use was). Looks like they're taking steps to improve the standard library docs.
sprintf is evil.
The difference is that Microsoft has repeatedly exerted control over what OEM vendors can bundle with Windows to the detriment of its chief competitors.
99% of people don't get their Windows from Microsoft, they get it from resellers. Resellers who should have the right to build systems as it suits them, as it suits their customers-- and without anti-competitive Microsoft meddling.
Further to the point, Microsoft claims IE is an integral part of it's operating system and that critical features of Windows depend on IE. If this is so, why was it shipping a crippled version of java with it then?
Everyone's objection with Microsoft is about what Microsoft did to ultimately control how Windows was used-- thats is what is pissing most people off.
It's about a monopoly playing dirty to protect its monopoly.
If anybody sues over 'patent infrigements' in the kernel I'm sure IBM, which has quite an investement in Linux, will likely be more than pleased to have a nice little "lets see how many of my patents you violate" discussion with them.
As for the 'insightful' individual who equated copyright violation with patent infrigement.... gads, if you can't tell the difference between copying somebody else's work and implementing an idea which possibly might be covered by a patent, then obviously you are clueless. So let me explain it to you.
Copyright: you can't sell a copy of this work I've written-- the work belongs to me. Patent: nobody else can use this idea because I own it.
Knuth was incredibly insightful in his warnings to the patent office regarding the problems software patents would cause. I dearly hope software patent terms are drastically shortened in the immediate future because this concept of owning algorithms is going to stifle software innovation to a creeping snail's pace.
1. website X's story has a link to another website. I "right click-select: open in new tab". Now the two pages that are related are in the same client. This way, when I'm writing a reply I can cross-reference the linked story without having to worry about loosing what I'm writing by using the back/foward button. Summary: it reduces desktop clutter by allowing me to keep similarly related pages in the same browser instance without requiring back/forward button usage (which causes webpages to forget what you inputed at times).
2. I'm reading an article that spans multiple pages and writing a summary (obviously easier to do if you have the entire article at your finger tips). Without tabbed browsing, I'd have to open multiple windows to avoid the back button which makes the damn flashy thingies reload everytime. If the article is 5 pages long, that makes for a lot of browser windows and a lot of annoying manual window management.
3. Some websites insist on opening new windows to show some piece of information. Personally, I find that "load in new tab" feature priceless for such sites (example: the previews on kde-look.org).
These examples all revolve around situations where multiple windows are annoying and slow me down. Tabbed browsing, is imho an essential evolution in the presentation of webpages-- I would find the web incredibly more annoying without them.
Agreed, there are differences that make GPL (not LGPL) licensed software difficult for being adopted by commercial interests.
The problem with commercial software however, is that its lifespan is limited by profitability-- a volatile threshold that has seen countless interesting innovations dead on the shelves of corporate dis-interest.
We saw with PGP what happens when a company decides to cancel a products. It goes on the forget-about-me-shelf until somebody with enough muscle and $$$ can buy it from them-- and maybe resurrect it.
Some technologies lend themselves rather badly to being closed up into proprietary black boxes and I think the domain of secure software is one of these such areas.
What happens when it simply isn't profitable to fix a security flaw? I know I've spent countless hours in meetings weighing the pros & cons of fixing flaws in commercial software; meetings where the severity of the flaw is a miniscule factor when wheighed against the perceived return/cost of working on it.
Some things need to be maintained regularly for long periods of time. Commercial interests often fail far short of doing the job adequately.
I think there is value in insisting that security technologies remain open-- ensuring that critical security software continue to be properly maintained. To this end, I think the GPL/LGPL (the LGPL moreso) is an excellent vehicule.
It's particularly annoying that an explanation of exactly what the NSA didn't understand about the GPL wasn't well identified here-- other than "a lot of well-heeled lobbying.... erm complaints... changed our minds".
The NSA has a large breadth of expertise to offer that should not benefit solely proprietary software. Has no-one bothered to propose to them the concept of dual-licensing? Surely if Microsoft was interested in a portion of their technology they could obtain that technology under a different license.
This whole escapade has the feel of ugly politics.
I know I found the idea of SE Linux extremely refreshing and encouraging.
Government must use standards compliant software: 1. Software must store data in an open patent/royalty free standard format and be useable by any other software. 2. Software that must interoperate, should be able to do so without preference to a specific vendor. i.e. follow open and patent/royalty free communication standards. 3. Software, depending on its application, must be demonstratedly secure by:
- making it the law that a security flaw for software running on government systems must be fixed (no: "but you can buy our new later version full of features you don't need")-- for a reasonable fee if appropriate.
- a vendor shall be liable for refusing to disclose vulnerabilities their software has that have not been addressed in a timely fasion.
- having been the subject of independent review and analysis. 4. Portable software that is available on more than one platform must be given precedence over software that can only operate on one platform. 5. Companies who fail to support software, or refuse to or have gone bankrupt, should in their contract have clauses that force the code to their software made open-source so that the goverment may have somebody else support their system.
Clearly the intent of the game is to be a kind of nexus where people build worlds and come to.
It's not meant to be a play-once-and-throw-away game, so they didn't put all their eggs in the campaign it shipped with. Otherwise put: please show me the world builder that accompagnied BG2.
Highlights: - Entire official AD&D third edition rules support. - Gorgeous 3d graphics on par with anything else out there. In this alone, it outshines bg2. - Ships with a fun single player story line. - The ability to link servers toghether (yes, you and your friend can combine a world toghether on your servers) - Many different character classes and races. - Variable story line. WC3, for example, is extremely linear (multiplayer is what makes that game). - A hugely improved and innovated multiplayer interface and design. It works very well. - and more... read the box
A con or two: - gamespy is not, in my experience, well organized for bringing like minded players toghether. This is especially significant for AD&D. - There doesn't seem to be a way to maintain state between modules. Which means npc characters kind of forget stuff that happened before.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll admit I was a little peeved at the number of people willing to flame without giving my post a bit more thought or joining in with some useful comments. Include with this thought an expression of annoyance at the increasing abuse of moderation on Slashdot.
Change my original post title to "automated escrow agent"; at the time I couldn't remember the proper word-- this was the intent.
I think this kind of a system should be possible, widely available and mandatory.
Anyways, the penalty system would start off simply, as soon as a deal doesn't close past a set time, the automated escrow agent begins to levy fines on both parties. There would be different levels in the system finishing by human intervention. Larger sums would mean quicker human intervention.
bah... it's just an idea, I thought it would be interesting to discuss it. Apparently people are more interested in flaming.
"Which makes your position even worse, when even someone who is stupid enough to spell incorrectly can see how obviously uninformed you are."
LOL, um... really.. you're burying yourself... you'd do better to stop now before digging anymore. I'll be nice and not toss that statement back at you.
Thanks, but that wasn't my intent. I was merely expressing a bit of surprise that something, which seemed obvious to me as a solution to this problem, wasn't widely available to ebayers.
That an idea is obvious apparently isn't grounds for it not being patentable. This is why I followed my original post with the other.
Congratulations, you've just joined a growing list of people who have trouble understanding sarcasm.
I love it when people try to insult me and make spelling mistakes. Obviously you aren't a genius either.
Ass.
Apparently it's time for this to be implemented on a wide scale.
btw, I hereby release this idea into the public domain, to be used freely by anybody or entity wishing to implement this kind of idea.
I wonder why they don't have some kind of fund locking system.
Buyer does not receive item until funds are sent and verified.
Seller cannot cash funds until Buyer verifies reception.
If at any point either party refuses to check-off their part of the deal, the deal goes into Ebay managed arbitration during which both sides are billed until the dispute is resolved.
I think that would probably solve a lot of the problems.
I should probably have included it in my submission to Slashdot. My humble apologies to the maintainers of that website for any inconvenience caused by the traffic. I just linked to the site the way CNet did :-(
.
List: kde-devel
Subject: New address
From: Bernhard Rosenkraenzer
Date: 2002-09-25 7:36:31
[Download message RAW]
Hi,
Effective immediately, I've left Red Hat (mostly in mutual agreement - I
don't want to work on crippling KDE, and they don't want an employee who
admits RH 8.0's KDE is crippleware).
If anyone needs/wants to contact me, please use the addresses
bero@berolinux.org or bero@kde.org.
For any RH specific KDE issues, please contact Than Ngo
LLaP
bero
Hardly. I was ready to wait-and-see through all the comments over the last two weeks about what was happening to KDE in Redhat. I felt Bero would ensure whatever came out of Redhat was good. It was mostly because Bero worked for Redhat (and because rhn works pretty well) that I switched to them a year ago.
This post is perfect timing for me because the announcement came on Slashdot exactly at the time I was mulling over what I was going to do regarding my computer's OS.
Makes me pleased that I joined their club in support of their distribution. I expect to be wiping my Redhat installation soon, cancelling my rhn subscription and making the jump.
The new control panel looks awesome; I've been looking forward to being able to try out gcc 3.2 on a distro compiled for it.
Good job guys.
I recall one amusing post in an earlier discussion where somebody pointed out that originally the FSF wanted little do with Linux preferring Hurd for their own reasons. It also bears pointing out that Linus never chose that name. Linux was coined after people thought the name Linus had picked was silly.
Years after Linux became incredibly popular, the FSF decided the name should be changed.
One of the criticisms I read regularly about the FSF is with respect to over-controlling nature of many of their interventions. This is partly exemplified by the recommendation their faqs make that not only you license your software via the GPL, but that turn over your copyright to the FSF (in this regard I recall some colorful emails by one of the main authors of glibc on this matter).
I'm not particular to any name myself and in fact do occasionally refer to the system as GNU/Linux. I do feel, however, that this squable over names is getting rather unseemly to the point of being petty. The name was Linux back in 95 when I got my first slackware CDs-- back then, names only mattered to the filesystem.
Nothing gets my goat more than having crappy software shoved down my throat with a "and you will like it" to wash it down.
I'm tons more willing to cut some slack to a free and open source project for a minor issue than to let off some corporation responsible for riddling my machine with security problems I can't uninstall-- and routinely refuses to fix ina timely manner.
oops.. thats a shell api (shlwapi.dll) function and not an msvcrt one.
Reading the docs further, this brings up one of my beefs actually:
Multiple and vaguely documented versions of a function to do the same damn thing. This is a big bitch I've had about programming on Windows.
int wnsprintf(
...
LPTSTR lpOut,
int cchLimitIn,
LPCTSTR pszFmt,
);
Microsoft wraps all its C runtime functions with macros that switch effectively between wchar and char types seemlessly.
They also have a little security note at the bottom of the their documentation detailing how null termination is not guaranteed with this function-- along with some alternatives.
My problem with most of the library documentation they have is that until recently it was rather poor (at least every section I had to use was). Looks like they're taking steps to improve the standard library docs.
sprintf is evil.
If the army can admit people with eye correction needs so can the FBI. That restriction is a crock of shit...
Also, if your getting your eyes smacked, it don't matter if you have glasses or not, yer not gonna be seeing straight afterwards either.
The difference is that Microsoft has repeatedly exerted control over what OEM vendors can bundle with Windows to the detriment of its chief competitors.
99% of people don't get their Windows from Microsoft, they get it from resellers. Resellers who should have the right to build systems as it suits them, as it suits their customers-- and without anti-competitive Microsoft meddling.
Further to the point, Microsoft claims IE is an integral part of it's operating system and that critical features of Windows depend on IE. If this is so, why was it shipping a crippled version of java with it then?
Everyone's objection with Microsoft is about what Microsoft did to ultimately control how Windows was used-- thats is what is pissing most people off.
It's about a monopoly playing dirty to protect its monopoly.
If anybody sues over 'patent infrigements' in the kernel I'm sure IBM, which has quite an investement in Linux, will likely be more than pleased to have a nice little "lets see how many of my patents you violate" discussion with them.
As for the 'insightful' individual who equated copyright violation with patent infrigement.... gads, if you can't tell the difference between copying somebody else's work and implementing an idea which possibly might be covered by a patent, then obviously you are clueless. So let me explain it to you.
Copyright: you can't sell a copy of this work I've written-- the work belongs to me.
Patent: nobody else can use this idea because I own it.
Knuth was incredibly insightful in his warnings to the patent office regarding the problems software patents would cause. I dearly hope software patent terms are drastically shortened in the immediate future because this concept of owning algorithms is going to stifle software innovation to a creeping snail's pace.
http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/
And, judging by the license they were licensed under, probably always will be.
1. website X's story has a link to another website. I "right click-select: open in new tab". Now the two pages that are related are in the same client. This way, when I'm writing a reply I can cross-reference the linked story without having to worry about loosing what I'm writing by using the back/foward button.
Summary: it reduces desktop clutter by allowing me to keep similarly related pages in the same browser instance without requiring back/forward button usage (which causes webpages to forget what you inputed at times).
2. I'm reading an article that spans multiple pages and writing a summary (obviously easier to do if you have the entire article at your finger tips). Without tabbed browsing, I'd have to open multiple windows to avoid the back button which makes the damn flashy thingies reload everytime. If the article is 5 pages long, that makes for a lot of browser windows and a lot of annoying manual window management.
3. Some websites insist on opening new windows to show some piece of information. Personally, I find that "load in new tab" feature priceless for such sites (example: the previews on kde-look.org).
These examples all revolve around situations where multiple windows are annoying and slow me down. Tabbed browsing, is imho an essential evolution in the presentation of webpages-- I would find the web incredibly more annoying without them.
Agreed, there are differences that make GPL (not LGPL) licensed software difficult for being adopted by commercial interests.
The problem with commercial software however, is that its lifespan is limited by profitability-- a volatile threshold that has seen countless interesting innovations dead on the shelves of corporate dis-interest.
We saw with PGP what happens when a company decides to cancel a products. It goes on the forget-about-me-shelf until somebody with enough muscle and $$$ can buy it from them-- and maybe resurrect it.
Some technologies lend themselves rather badly to being closed up into proprietary black boxes and I think the domain of secure software is one of these such areas.
What happens when it simply isn't profitable to fix a security flaw? I know I've spent countless hours in meetings weighing the pros & cons of fixing flaws in commercial software; meetings where the severity of the flaw is a miniscule factor when wheighed against the perceived return/cost of working on it.
Some things need to be maintained regularly for long periods of time. Commercial interests often fail far short of doing the job adequately.
I think there is value in insisting that security technologies remain open-- ensuring that critical security software continue to be properly maintained. To this end, I think the GPL/LGPL (the LGPL moreso) is an excellent vehicule.
It's particularly annoying that an explanation of exactly what the NSA didn't understand about the GPL wasn't well identified here-- other than "a lot of well-heeled lobbying.... erm complaints ... changed our minds".
The NSA has a large breadth of expertise to offer that should not benefit solely proprietary software. Has no-one bothered to propose to them the concept of dual-licensing? Surely if Microsoft was interested in a portion of their technology they could obtain that technology under a different license.
This whole escapade has the feel of ugly politics.
I know I found the idea of SE Linux extremely refreshing and encouraging.
Exactly.
Except that the government will be buying Linux from a well positionned open-source vendor.. Suse, Redhat etc...
In such a case, that vendor would be responsible for that clause.
Government must use standards compliant software:
1. Software must store data in an open patent/royalty free standard format and be useable by any other software.
2. Software that must interoperate, should be able to do so without preference to a specific vendor. i.e. follow open and patent/royalty free communication standards.
3. Software, depending on its application, must be demonstratedly secure by:
- making it the law that a security flaw for software running on government systems must be fixed (no: "but you can buy our new later version full of features you don't need")-- for a reasonable fee if appropriate.
- a vendor shall be liable for refusing to disclose vulnerabilities their software has that have not been addressed in a timely fasion.
- having been the subject of independent review and analysis.
4. Portable software that is available on more than one platform must be given precedence over software that can only operate on one platform.
5. Companies who fail to support software, or refuse to or have gone bankrupt, should in their contract have clauses that force the code to their software made open-source so that the goverment may have somebody else support their system.
Clearly the intent of the game is to be a kind of nexus where people build worlds and come to.
It's not meant to be a play-once-and-throw-away game, so they didn't put all their eggs in the campaign it shipped with.
Otherwise put: please show me the world builder that accompagnied BG2.
Highlights:
- Entire official AD&D third edition rules support.
- Gorgeous 3d graphics on par with anything else out there. In this alone, it outshines bg2.
- Ships with a fun single player story line.
- The ability to link servers toghether (yes, you and your friend can combine a world toghether on your servers)
- Many different character classes and races.
- Variable story line. WC3, for example, is extremely linear (multiplayer is what makes that game).
- A hugely improved and innovated multiplayer interface and design. It works very well.
- and more... read the box
A con or two:
- gamespy is not, in my experience, well organized for bringing like minded players toghether. This is especially significant for AD&D.
- There doesn't seem to be a way to maintain state between modules. Which means npc characters kind of forget stuff that happened before.