The solution is clear. OSHA already has standards in place to prev ent RSI injuries in the workplace. Federal laws already exist governing
how often and for how long truck drivers must sleep before returning to the road. New guidelines must be set for how much IT workers can
be forced to work without sleep. In the footsteps of pioneers of the 10-hour work day of the nineteenth century, we must today pioneer the
8-hour sleep day. The safety of our IT infrastructure and ultimately of our fellow workers demands it.
The solution is not clear. I don't need the nanny state government telling me when to go to sleep. It is already enough that they run as much of my life as they can. This is absurd. It is my body and I will do with it as I please. I thought a woman would understand such ideas. I guess a woman only has the right to choose abortion and not to regulate her own sleep schedule free from government interference. Are we in a race to become as pathetic as the French government? Stuart Eichert
Government monopoly: I try to compete I will be imprisoned, fined, or possibly worse. It is illegal for me to have any market share at all.
Free market monopoly: I can compete but may lose all of my money. I may have an incredibly small market share. It may seem that the days of the monopolist will never end, but at least it isn't a crime to try.
The last thing on earth that I want is further government involvement in telecomm. They have already made quite a mess. With virtually no regulation of ISPs I have several ways to get on the Internet(dialup, dsl, cable, satellite, cellular, that weird Palm VII network, wireless broadband(sprint's new service), and others I am forgetting). We don't need a grand unified network. That is not the purpose of the Internet.The internet is meant to "inter connect" various hetergeneous networks. One size does not fit all. Besides with the free market my business can subscribe to multiple access methods and thus reduce my chances of losing all access to the net. Stuart Eichert
I think the rational is that Yahoo is presenting its content in France via the Internet. As long as it is visible to the French, they therefore can regulate it. It sounds stupid, but we are talking about governments, not rational people. Stuart Eichert
the fine art of plucking every feather from a goose without the goose wiggling. I believe some French king made this quote. Essentially governments invent several thousand little taxes, little subsidies, little pieces of corruption. It is not worth your time to fight each little one(even a free software tax) because the relief gained(i.e. not paying the tax) is less than the cost of the tax. You have to fight taxation and government meddling in all cases. Most importantly you need other people to support you. And if things get really bad you have to throw the tea into the harbor. Stuart Eichert
Of course anything that Microsoft proposes will immediately make the Slashdot crowd assume the idea is crap. What prejudice!
This idea, of hosted services that a user pays a subscription or one-time use fee to use is excellent. I would much rather pay for Word on this model, rather than having to buy, install, and patch Office. This could work well for smaller software companies. No longer do you have to physically produce software packages and ship them to stores. Instead your customers can use their browser to access your program and pay you for it. This should make the industry much more competitive.
What a lot of Slashdot readers who think that open source free software is the only way to go fail to realize is that many people are willing to pay for software and pay for its continued development. Is it morally wrong for corporations and others to fund the Apache Foundation? Hell no. These entities have a vested interest in the continued growth of the apache software. Likewise for many offices that type up documents and do spreadsheets they have a vested interest in the continued development of Office.
I am an entrepreneur in Mountain View, CA who is not on the public dole. That is my bias.
I agree that basic research has a lot of benefits to society as a whole. Where would we be without our understanding of physics, biology, chemistry, astronomy, etc? However, basic research, like everything else is best handled in a market environment. Individuals should be free to fund the basic research they see as the most valuable. Instead the government forcibly collects taxes in order to fund science for "our own good". Politicians respond to political action groups and special interests. They are not scientists and usually don't care about the advacement of science, but rather getting re-elected. Many scientists have complained to me about the government's preference to fund AIDS research over anything else. Many great cancer researchers find themselves out of luck and out of money and having to switch their research to AIDS just to continue doing any sort of research. This model is clearly inefficient. If people truly value basic research then they will find a way to fund it. Arguing that most people don't care is irrelevant. I don't need 100% of the population to fund a cure for AIDS. I just need a group of concerned people with disposable income to fund it.
As for funding the arts through the government I would argue again that the arts benefit society, but no one, not even the government, has the moral authority to put a gun to my head to force me to pay for it. Libertarians , unlike many people, hold government to the same moral standards as anyone else. I can't see many people saying it is moral for me to mug someone in an alley and say to them "but this is more my town's ballet program". It wouldn't matter what the money was for, I was still mugging them. The government not only mugs you but makes you fill out annoying forms while they do it.
Stuart Eichert
Mr. Browne proposes to use the current tariff and excise taxes to fund the constitutional functions of the government. Also remember that individuals can contribute to the government's treasury. So if you thought a missle defense system was a good idea you could send a contribution into the treasury. If Libertarians are ever elected I could see them implementing a system whereby an individual could log on to a web page, click "fund missile defense", and then give whatever money they felt was necessary. Stuart Eichert
Not an end to all forms of blindness
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End To Blindness?
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My friend suffers from RP(retinatis pigmentosa) and is actively watching this research work. He noted to me that these new chips will be useful for him, but not for people who lost their vision from other causes. For example, children who were born blind, can probably not be helped with an artificial retina. In addition, those that have never known sight may not be able to process the images in their brain. This work does look very promising for RP sufferers. When this technology becomes a reality for him, I figure I'll take him on down to the strip club, since it has been a while. Stuart Eichert
Why o' why did I buy a boxed copy of RH 7.0? Here I am, thinking that by buying Redhat from Redhat I would be promoting what I want(which is to encourage someone to put together a standard distribution of all the linux mess). Instead I get a bunch of CDs that are now useless. Oh I guess I could install RH 7.0 and then download a million patches. Yeah that would be great. I guess I will have to wait for RH 7.1 and then I know who is getting my money: CheapBytes.
Service packs are a great idea because you can consolidate all of the fixes into a comprehensive unit and thus you can tell people, my software will work on Redhat 7.0 service pack 3. Windows may suck, but at least for NT I can say that my software will run on NT 4.0 Service pack 3. I guess what Redhat does is best, in that it releases fixes as they are available and makes service packs available(i.e. the.1,.2,.3 are really just service packs for the.0 release). I think once FreeBSD has good support for PCMCIA, USB, vmware, and the other crap on my laptop I will be kissing Linux goodbye.
Stuart Eichert
So in other words you are asking for the government to grant you a monopoly on "notes" about your lecture. Instead why don't you make it part of the contract with the students (remember they do enter into one with University) that they will not commercially distribute notes about your lectures.
My guess is that you are upset about people profiting and you not getting a piece of the action. Why not offer to work with one of these businesses to create materials for students who choose not to attend lectures and then you to can
get your piece of the pie. Stuart Eichert
Like it or not, flash is a great way to communicate many types of information. Flash on netscape for linux sucks. it does not work on most flash pages. forget rendering basic html, forget rendering pngs, get the flash plugin working and maybe you will have a chance. for now i will be primarily using ie 5.5 on top of windows through vmware on linux, because it still performs better than netscape on linux.
netscape needs to die now. it is too screwed up. i have tried mozilla, it sucks too. renders faster, but still sucks. somebody needs to write an i.e. hack or build a new browser from scratch that runs on Xfree86 4 for linux. forget multi-platform. it is a waste of time.
Stuart Eichert
Re:I've said it before, and I've said it again...
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You've been wrong before and you are wrong again. Laws will not protect your privacy. What if I incorporate out of the US, where US law has no relevance. We already have legal mechanisms for dealing with companies that sell your data after they explicitly tell you they won't. It's called the courts. If someone tells you they are only collecting the data so they can bill your credit card and ship you your stuff, but then go and sell the list to a marketing firm, they are guilty of fraud. Plain and simple. A smart lawyer would get a class action suit ready against toysmart because he could easily win. Of course the first organization that should be sued for this sort of fraud would be the US federal government for that whole "this number is just for social security" scam. Stuart Eichert
When a twit like you starts defending M$ the question I always want to ask is "If they're not a pack of shits why do they bribe, threaten, steal and lie? Do you think it's some sort of hobby?"
Not to get into this, but heck why not.
Who did Microsoft bribe? I thought that was the reason they are getting screwed by the government, because they didn't bribe people like various Valley firms.
Who did Microsoft threaten with loss of life and limb(a threat to take away market share is just business)?
Who's building did Microsoft break into, who's computer did they hack and how exactly did Microsoft steal somebody's private property?
Which customer, competitor, etc. did Microsoft defraud(in your words lie)?
I'm not saying you don't have answers to these questions, but if you could give me some good ones then maybe I could see a reason for legal action to be brought against Microsoft or some of its employees. Otherwise the government is just doing this to flex its muscles and make good on the bribes it received from Scott McNealy and others.
When are people going to get it? Always looking to the law to solve your problems. What are you going to do when the law can't reach these people(like when they operate in a foreign country)? Instead you need to be more aware of how to protect yourself and read privacy warnings like this. Use technology and the internet to solve this problem. Why don't you write a script that parses through a privacy policy looking for key words like "URL, IP, log",etc.
On a side note such scripts would be useful for congressional bills as well. Stuart Eichert
When are people going to get it? Always looking to the law to solve your problems. What are you going to do when the law can't reach these people(like when they operate in a foreign country)? Instead you need to be more aware of how to protect yourself and read privacy warnings like this. Use technology and the internet to solve this problem. Why don't you write a script that parses through a privacy policy looking for key words like "URL, IP, log",etc.
On a side note such scripts would be useful for congressional bills as well. Stuart Eichert
Stop listening to your record company. Real money can be made from concerts and merchandise. If I didn't have to spend $100s of dollars a year buying CDs I could spend it on live performances, t-shirts, and collectibles(which is all CDs will become). You will not stop digital distribution, you will only waste large sums of money on lawyers who can make more money by keeping you believing the old world is still alive and well, instead of helping you make money in the new one. Stuart Eichert
My friend distributed his new album on Napster, so that my girlfriend could download it for me, put it on a zip disk and mail it to me in China. This technology is easy for anyone to use and will allow artists to get out their new music. As for paying for it, my friend gave the album away, why do you insist he press it on a CD and charge people? Stuart Eichert
Business is competitive and ruthless because, we, as customers are also competitive and ruthless. When we decide that we don't like a particular product or service, or service provider we drop them in a nano-second. Because we stop buying garbage as soon as we realize it is such businesses have no choice but to compete as vigorously as they do.
1) In their own words, Microsoft indicated that they were giving away IE to undercut Netscape. So. This is business and Microsoft has the freedom to decide for themselves what to do with their browser. Why are you so upset that they made IE free. Isn't that a success for the free-software movement that a commercial company offered its product for free because the free product, Netscape, was doing so well. 2) They went out and paid off several large ISPs (from AOL on down) so that the ISPs distributed IE instead of Netscape. This is a pretty normal thing to do. You want your software to become dominant so you advertise the best way you can(in this case by putting it on the AOL CDs). 3) They threatened to raise prices on OEMs such as Compaq if they shipped Netscape preinstalled. Sounds like a good plan. Remember they can sell their product, Windows, at whatever price they want with whatever conditions they want. If Compaq doesn't like Microsoft's offer they can reject it. Compaq is free to sell its PCs with another operating system or make a deal with Microsoft. I would argue that Compaq sells so many PCs and thus is in pretty good position for negotiating favorable terms from Microsoft. 4) They forbade OEMs from placing any other Internet or ISP-related icon on the preinstalled Windows desktop.How can you say they forbade OEMs from doing anything. They made an offer to OEMs to sell them the Windows operating system, and related applications, under certain conditions. If the OEMs don't like it they can leave it. And I do not accept the argument of these poor OEMs really have no choice but to kowtow to Microsoft. If these OEMs entered the market thinking they could out bargain Microsoft then they were foolish. Anyone entering the PC market that wants to put Windows on their computers has to deal with Microsoft. It doesn't take a business genius to understand this. 5) They paid and rewarded large websites that included IE-specific features like Channels. Again they are trying to market their product. This is like a perfume manufacturer giving incentives to Macy's for displaying their perfumes in promiment places within the store. If these large websites think it is in their best business interest to include IE specific stuff, then that is their choice. 6) They tied key Windows system DLLs to Internet Explorer, so that some 3rd party applications would be forced to have IE4 as a prerequisite for install. If you don't like the Windows operating system, then don't develop applications for it. I love your continuing use of the word "force", like Microsoft put a gun to somebody's head. If you want to see force wait till you see how the US government deals with Microsoft. That is real force!
Business is business. If you don't like Microsoft's practices then don't buy their software for your home or office. Encourage others to use alternatives, but don't encourage the government to "force" companies to behave according to your ideals. That is anti-freedom and will do nothing but harm the entire software industry/free software movement. Stuart Eichert
Re:The only "shortage" is of **CHEAP** tech worker
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The IT Labor Shortage
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Indeed H1B visas do not contribute to a free market. The US government should lead the world in free trade and allow anyone to come to the US to work. That way workers in the US will be paid the market rate for their work, whether they were born in the US or otherwise. More and more work can be done from the Internet. The US government's protectionist policies can only protect uncompetitive US born workers for so long. Eventually more than half of a company's technical staff may reside and work in other parts of the world.
Free trade means services to, not just bars of soap. Stuart Eichert
Re:I'm not in the US. Why does DMCA matter to me?
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Certainly you are angry, even fighting mad. But violence is certainly not the answer. Changing the way people think, is far more important. Making people aware of the reality you perceive is also very important.
In the past I naively thought that all corporate CEOs, like myself, believed in free markets, without interference from government. However, some of them wish to use the power of the state for their own short term material gain. These are the people that commonly bribe congress to harass a competitor of theirs or to pass regulations that infringe of the basic freedoms of consumers. These people would like to legislate that everyone by law has to give them several thousand dollars a year. In effect, they want a share of the government's power and they are willing to pay for it.
I agree with you, that this is harmful to society. In the long run I believe this sort of behavior will be harmful for corporations as well. Only with the freedom to choose can our economy and society truly progress. A great article explaining why Silicon Valley should not normalize relations with Washington D.C. is available at Cato's website. I think we may have disagreements on the exact source of the evil. I don't feel that corporations, or any free associations of man, are inherently evil. It is these free associations which allow us to cooperative and progress as a species. Evil comes when individuals or groups of individuals acting in concert decide to use force to achieve their aims. At this point they infringe upon the right of others to live in a world free from violence where they can pursue their own aims. Therefore corporations, recording associations, etc. are not inherently evil. They are just free associations of man. Some individuals within these organizations are seeking to use force to gain what they desire.
If these ideas interest you you might want to check out some libertarian web sites. Stuart Eichert
Clearly the Party is controlling many minds, even within the Slashdot community. Governments impose taxes to keep themselves in power not to serve the public. If they wished to serve the public they would form their own charities, schools, libraries, etc. as private citizens. Taxation is only a way to keep them in power. Brick and mortar merchants should not be arguing for a net sales tax. Instead they should be arguing for the end of existing sales taxes.
So take the right pill and read Goldstein's book again. Stuart Eichert
There is no real crime or moral outrage in "cybersquatting" if we define cybersquatting as buying a domain name for the sole purpose of resale. People do this all the time in the physical real estate market, stock exchange, etc. This is the free market. People buy and sell things to try and make money.
Fraud is a different story. Buying ibm.com(not that you could have) and putting up a website claiming to be International Business Machines, Inc. is fraud and IBM would have good legal recourse to make you stop defrauding the public. Buying ibm.com and turning to IBM and saying "Would you like to buy this?" is just simple real estate speculation. You could also offer ibm.com to Investment Banking Management Corporation or other companies that have the acronym IBM.
Involving the law/government is usually a mistake. In the above example, where someone impersonated IBM in order to damage them, the more reasonable course of action is to 1)try to buy the domain name, 2)put out press releases etc. stating that this attacker is impersonating IBM., 3)ask DNS servers to drop the entry., 4)start doing business under another domain (ibmcorp.com, etc). It is better for corporations to have free market responses to these attacks rather than relying on big daddy government(remember as a US corporation you can't always get foreign government cooperation(unless you are the MPAA and the foreign government is in Norway)).
As for selling the domain, you can use various domain brokering services. I found some the other day at register.com that may be of use. You can also try an auction at Ebay. I would however, recommend using a market site geared towards the buying and selling of domains as it is likely you will find a larger more desirable(i.e. has real money) market. You can advertise the sale as well through website ads. You know this is basically just like buying and selling real estate.
Recently I have been working with XML and XSL to see how the relavent content of any site can be presented to a hetergenous group of browsers. For the technical stuff check out Apache's website and in particular their XML stuff. A friend of mine is nearly blind so he and I spend quite a good deal of time talking about issues surrounding accessibility and what new technologies can do to enable him to take advantage of the internet. Often he and I share the same frustration of visiting a web site and being assaulted by all of these graphical images, fixed size small fonts, and general clutter. Sometimes it is a real pain to search through data to find what we are interested in. I think if sites can start using XML and XSL a lot of these problems could be solved. XML allows a content developer to tag the data they are presenting for what content it represents (i.e. on a music site with a track list from an album you might see tags for artist name, album title, track title, etc). XSL allows these site developers to specify how to present that data to the end viewer's particular browser. So you could make a style sheet for MSIE/Netscape, lynx, WAP, an audio browser, a palm pilot, etc. I have already requested that my webmaster install support for XML so that I can redo my pages to be more friendly for text based browsers, audio browsers, PDA based browsers, etc.
A simple thing, aside from websites, is unified messaging. I have been using JFax just as a place to get voice mail and faxes, since I don't have a home telephone number. You can also use JFAX to get and send your e-mail from any account that is POP-3 accessible. For my friend, this might be the easiest way to communicate via the internet. And yes that JFax link I provided is for the affiliate program so that I get a commission if you sign up.
Given that companies are trying to make their websites as accessible as possible in the hopes of being able to sell more and more products, I don't think we have much to worry about in terms of the future. Just think about what has happened with WAP in the last year or so. Certainly on a small cell phone screen one cannot use the images and annoying fonts that are used in a graphical browser. I think the future is looking bright for all those who suffer some form of visual impairment. Think of how much harder it would be for them to interact with the rest of the world, if there were no internet.
Anyway, how hard is it to simply prohibit using public computing resources to display things defined as pornography? For enforcement, employ the human nodes - if Joe Schmo views porno at his library, Joe is asked to leave. Debates as to what porno is would be relatively rare, especially if libraries drafted a quick policy on what porno is and isn't. These restrictions on intrusive "indecency" are a good thing - the definition of "decent" needs to be limited and tightened up
This whole issue arises from government controlled libraries(you may know them as "public"). Libraries should not be run by the government. Non-profit and for-profit organizations should run them. The government has no incentive not to censor material available in its own libraries. Non-profit and for-profit organizations will censor material as the market dictates. Likely the market will dictate that some libraries have open access to everything(those used mostly by adults) and that some libraries have censorship(those used mostly by children). If library censorship really bothers you , then you should form a non-profit with some like minded individuals and build a library with open access to the entire Internet. Stuart Eichert
Slashdot Mirror
The solution is not clear. I don't need the nanny state government telling me when to go to sleep. It is already enough that they run as much of my life as they can. This is absurd. It is my body and I will do with it as I please. I thought a woman would understand such ideas. I guess a woman only has the right to choose abortion and not to regulate her own sleep schedule free from government interference. Are we in a race to become as pathetic as the French government?
Stuart Eichert
Free market monopoly: I can compete but may lose all of my money. I may have an incredibly small market share. It may seem that the days of the monopolist will never end, but at least it isn't a crime to try.
The last thing on earth that I want is further government involvement in telecomm. They have already made quite a mess. With virtually no regulation of ISPs I have several ways to get on the Internet(dialup, dsl, cable, satellite, cellular, that weird Palm VII network, wireless broadband(sprint's new service), and others I am forgetting). We don't need a grand unified network. That is not the purpose of the Internet.The internet is meant to "inter connect" various hetergeneous networks. One size does not fit all. Besides with the free market my business can subscribe to multiple access methods and thus reduce my chances of losing all access to the net.
Stuart Eichert
I think the rational is that Yahoo is presenting its content in France via the Internet. As long as it is visible to the French, they therefore can regulate it. It sounds stupid, but we are talking about governments, not rational people.
Stuart Eichert
the fine art of plucking every feather from a goose without the goose wiggling. I believe some French king made this quote. Essentially governments invent several thousand little taxes, little subsidies, little pieces of corruption. It is not worth your time to fight each little one(even a free software tax) because the relief gained(i.e. not paying the tax) is less than the cost of the tax. You have to fight taxation and government meddling in all cases. Most importantly you need other people to support you. And if things get really bad you have to throw the tea into the harbor.
Stuart Eichert
Of course anything that Microsoft proposes will immediately make the Slashdot crowd assume the idea is crap. What prejudice! This idea, of hosted services that a user pays a subscription or one-time use fee to use is excellent. I would much rather pay for Word on this model, rather than having to buy, install, and patch Office. This could work well for smaller software companies. No longer do you have to physically produce software packages and ship them to stores. Instead your customers can use their browser to access your program and pay you for it. This should make the industry much more competitive.
What a lot of Slashdot readers who think that open source free software is the only way to go fail to realize is that many people are willing to pay for software and pay for its continued development. Is it morally wrong for corporations and others to fund the Apache Foundation? Hell no. These entities have a vested interest in the continued growth of the apache software. Likewise for many offices that type up documents and do spreadsheets they have a vested interest in the continued development of Office.
Stuart Eichert
I agree that basic research has a lot of benefits to society as a whole. Where would we be without our understanding of physics, biology, chemistry, astronomy, etc? However, basic research, like everything else is best handled in a market environment. Individuals should be free to fund the basic research they see as the most valuable. Instead the government forcibly collects taxes in order to fund science for "our own good". Politicians respond to political action groups and special interests. They are not scientists and usually don't care about the advacement of science, but rather getting re-elected. Many scientists have complained to me about the government's preference to fund AIDS research over anything else. Many great cancer researchers find themselves out of luck and out of money and having to switch their research to AIDS just to continue doing any sort of research. This model is clearly inefficient. If people truly value basic research then they will find a way to fund it. Arguing that most people don't care is irrelevant. I don't need 100% of the population to fund a cure for AIDS. I just need a group of concerned people with disposable income to fund it.
As for funding the arts through the government I would argue again that the arts benefit society, but no one, not even the government, has the moral authority to put a gun to my head to force me to pay for it. Libertarians , unlike many people, hold government to the same moral standards as anyone else. I can't see many people saying it is moral for me to mug someone in an alley and say to them "but this is more my town's ballet program". It wouldn't matter what the money was for, I was still mugging them. The government not only mugs you but makes you fill out annoying forms while they do it.
Stuart Eichert
Mr. Browne proposes to use the current tariff and excise taxes to fund the constitutional functions of the government. Also remember that individuals can contribute to the government's treasury. So if you thought a missle defense system was a good idea you could send a contribution into the treasury. If Libertarians are ever elected I could see them implementing a system whereby an individual could log on to a web page, click "fund missile defense", and then give whatever money they felt was necessary.
Stuart Eichert
My friend suffers from RP(retinatis pigmentosa) and is actively watching this research work. He noted to me that these new chips will be useful for him, but not for people who lost their vision from other causes. For example, children who were born blind, can probably not be helped with an artificial retina. In addition, those that have never known sight may not be able to process the images in their brain. This work does look very promising for RP sufferers. When this technology becomes a reality for him, I figure I'll take him on down to the strip club, since it has been a while.
Stuart Eichert
Service packs are a great idea because you can consolidate all of the fixes into a comprehensive unit and thus you can tell people, my software will work on Redhat 7.0 service pack 3. Windows may suck, but at least for NT I can say that my software will run on NT 4.0 Service pack 3. I guess what Redhat does is best, in that it releases fixes as they are available and makes service packs available(i.e. the .1, .2, .3 are really just service packs for the .0 release). I think once FreeBSD has good support for PCMCIA, USB, vmware, and the other crap on my laptop I will be kissing Linux goodbye.
Stuart Eichert
My guess is that you are upset about people profiting and you not getting a piece of the action. Why not offer to work with one of these businesses to create materials for students who choose not to attend lectures and then you to can get your piece of the pie.
Stuart Eichert
netscape needs to die now. it is too screwed up. i have tried mozilla, it sucks too. renders faster, but still sucks. somebody needs to write an i.e. hack or build a new browser from scratch that runs on Xfree86 4 for linux. forget multi-platform. it is a waste of time.
Stuart Eichert
You've been wrong before and you are wrong again. Laws will not protect your privacy. What if I incorporate out of the US, where US law has no relevance. We already have legal mechanisms for dealing with companies that sell your data after they explicitly tell you they won't. It's called the courts. If someone tells you they are only collecting the data so they can bill your credit card and ship you your stuff, but then go and sell the list to a marketing firm, they are guilty of fraud. Plain and simple. A smart lawyer would get a class action suit ready against toysmart because he could easily win. Of course the first organization that should be sued for this sort of fraud would be the US federal government for that whole "this number is just for social security" scam.
Stuart Eichert
Not to get into this, but heck why not.
- Who did Microsoft bribe? I thought that was the reason they are getting screwed by the government, because they didn't bribe people like various Valley firms.
- Who did Microsoft threaten with loss of life and limb(a threat to take away market share is just business)?
- Who's building did Microsoft break into, who's computer did they hack and how exactly did Microsoft steal somebody's private property?
- Which customer, competitor, etc. did Microsoft defraud(in your words lie)?
I'm not saying you don't have answers to these questions, but if you could give me some good ones then maybe I could see a reason for legal action to be brought against Microsoft or some of its employees. Otherwise the government is just doing this to flex its muscles and make good on the bribes it received from Scott McNealy and others.Stuart Eichert
On a side note such scripts would be useful for congressional bills as well.
Stuart Eichert
On a side note such scripts would be useful for congressional bills as well.
Stuart Eichert
Stop listening to your record company. Real money can be made from concerts and merchandise. If I didn't have to spend $100s of dollars a year buying CDs I could spend it on live performances, t-shirts, and collectibles(which is all CDs will become). You will not stop digital distribution, you will only waste large sums of money on lawyers who can make more money by keeping you believing the old world is still alive and well, instead of helping you make money in the new one.
Stuart Eichert
Stuart Eichert
My friend distributed his new album on Napster, so that my girlfriend could download it for me, put it on a zip disk and mail it to me in China. This technology is easy for anyone to use and will allow artists to get out their new music. As for paying for it, my friend gave the album away, why do you insist he press it on a CD and charge people?
Stuart Eichert
1) In their own words, Microsoft indicated that they were giving away IE to undercut Netscape. So. This is business and Microsoft has the freedom to decide for themselves what to do with their browser. Why are you so upset that they made IE free. Isn't that a success for the free-software movement that a commercial company offered its product for free because the free product, Netscape, was doing so well.
2) They went out and paid off several large ISPs (from AOL on down) so that the ISPs distributed IE instead of Netscape. This is a pretty normal thing to do. You want your software to become dominant so you advertise the best way you can(in this case by putting it on the AOL CDs).
3) They threatened to raise prices on OEMs such as Compaq if they shipped Netscape preinstalled. Sounds like a good plan. Remember they can sell their product, Windows, at whatever price they want with whatever conditions they want. If Compaq doesn't like Microsoft's offer they can reject it. Compaq is free to sell its PCs with another operating system or make a deal with Microsoft. I would argue that Compaq sells so many PCs and thus is in pretty good position for negotiating favorable terms from Microsoft.
4) They forbade OEMs from placing any other Internet or ISP-related icon on the preinstalled Windows desktop.How can you say they forbade OEMs from doing anything. They made an offer to OEMs to sell them the Windows operating system, and related applications, under certain conditions. If the OEMs don't like it they can leave it. And I do not accept the argument of these poor OEMs really have no choice but to kowtow to Microsoft. If these OEMs entered the market thinking they could out bargain Microsoft then they were foolish. Anyone entering the PC market that wants to put Windows on their computers has to deal with Microsoft. It doesn't take a business genius to understand this.
5) They paid and rewarded large websites that included IE-specific features like Channels. Again they are trying to market their product. This is like a perfume manufacturer giving incentives to Macy's for displaying their perfumes in promiment places within the store. If these large websites think it is in their best business interest to include IE specific stuff, then that is their choice.
6) They tied key Windows system DLLs to Internet Explorer, so that some 3rd party applications would be forced to have IE4 as a prerequisite for install. If you don't like the Windows operating system, then don't develop applications for it. I love your continuing use of the word "force", like Microsoft put a gun to somebody's head. If you want to see force wait till you see how the US government deals with Microsoft. That is real force!
Business is business. If you don't like Microsoft's practices then don't buy their software for your home or office. Encourage others to use alternatives, but don't encourage the government to "force" companies to behave according to your ideals. That is anti-freedom and will do nothing but harm the entire software industry/free software movement.
Stuart Eichert
Free trade means services to, not just bars of soap.
Stuart Eichert
In the past I naively thought that all corporate CEOs, like myself, believed in free markets, without interference from government. However, some of them wish to use the power of the state for their own short term material gain. These are the people that commonly bribe congress to harass a competitor of theirs or to pass regulations that infringe of the basic freedoms of consumers. These people would like to legislate that everyone by law has to give them several thousand dollars a year. In effect, they want a share of the government's power and they are willing to pay for it.
I agree with you, that this is harmful to society. In the long run I believe this sort of behavior will be harmful for corporations as well. Only with the freedom to choose can our economy and society truly progress. A great article explaining why Silicon Valley should not normalize relations with Washington D.C. is available at Cato's website. I think we may have disagreements on the exact source of the evil. I don't feel that corporations, or any free associations of man, are inherently evil. It is these free associations which allow us to cooperative and progress as a species. Evil comes when individuals or groups of individuals acting in concert decide to use force to achieve their aims. At this point they infringe upon the right of others to live in a world free from violence where they can pursue their own aims. Therefore corporations, recording associations, etc. are not inherently evil. They are just free associations of man. Some individuals within these organizations are seeking to use force to gain what they desire.
If these ideas interest you you might want to check out some libertarian web sites.
Stuart Eichert
So take the right pill and read Goldstein's book again.
Stuart Eichert
Fraud is a different story. Buying ibm.com(not that you could have) and putting up a website claiming to be International Business Machines, Inc. is fraud and IBM would have good legal recourse to make you stop defrauding the public. Buying ibm.com and turning to IBM and saying "Would you like to buy this?" is just simple real estate speculation. You could also offer ibm.com to Investment Banking Management Corporation or other companies that have the acronym IBM.
Involving the law/government is usually a mistake. In the above example, where someone impersonated IBM in order to damage them, the more reasonable course of action is to 1)try to buy the domain name, 2)put out press releases etc. stating that this attacker is impersonating IBM., 3)ask DNS servers to drop the entry., 4)start doing business under another domain (ibmcorp.com, etc). It is better for corporations to have free market responses to these attacks rather than relying on big daddy government(remember as a US corporation you can't always get foreign government cooperation(unless you are the MPAA and the foreign government is in Norway)).
As for selling the domain, you can use various domain brokering services. I found some the other day at register.com that may be of use. You can also try an auction at Ebay. I would however, recommend using a market site geared towards the buying and selling of domains as it is likely you will find a larger more desirable(i.e. has real money) market. You can advertise the sale as well through website ads. You know this is basically just like buying and selling real estate.
Stuart Eichert
Recently I have been working with XML and XSL to see how the relavent content of any site can be presented to a hetergenous group of browsers. For the technical stuff check out Apache's website and in particular their XML stuff. A friend of mine is nearly blind so he and I spend quite a good deal of time talking about issues surrounding accessibility and what new technologies can do to enable him to take advantage of the internet. Often he and I share the same frustration of visiting a web site and being assaulted by all of these graphical images, fixed size small fonts, and general clutter. Sometimes it is a real pain to search through data to find what we are interested in. I think if sites can start using XML and XSL a lot of these problems could be solved. XML allows a content developer to tag the data they are presenting for what content it represents (i.e. on a music site with a track list from an album you might see tags for artist name, album title, track title, etc). XSL allows these site developers to specify how to present that data to the end viewer's particular browser. So you could make a style sheet for MSIE/Netscape, lynx, WAP, an audio browser, a palm pilot, etc. I have already requested that my webmaster install support for XML so that I can redo my pages to be more friendly for text based browsers, audio browsers, PDA based browsers, etc.
A simple thing, aside from websites, is unified messaging. I have been using JFax just as a place to get voice mail and faxes, since I don't have a home telephone number. You can also use JFAX to get and send your e-mail from any account that is POP-3 accessible. For my friend, this might be the easiest way to communicate via the internet. And yes that JFax link I provided is for the affiliate program so that I get a commission if you sign up.
Given that companies are trying to make their websites as accessible as possible in the hopes of being able to sell more and more products, I don't think we have much to worry about in terms of the future. Just think about what has happened with WAP in the last year or so. Certainly on a small cell phone screen one cannot use the images and annoying fonts that are used in a graphical browser. I think the future is looking bright for all those who suffer some form of visual impairment. Think of how much harder it would be for them to interact with the rest of the world, if there were no internet.
Stuart Eichert
This whole issue arises from government controlled libraries(you may know them as "public"). Libraries should not be run by the government. Non-profit and for-profit organizations should run them. The government has no incentive not to censor material available in its own libraries. Non-profit and for-profit organizations will censor material as the market dictates. Likely the market will dictate that some libraries have open access to everything(those used mostly by adults) and that some libraries have censorship(those used mostly by children). If library censorship really bothers you , then you should form a non-profit with some like minded individuals and build a library with open access to the entire Internet.
Stuart Eichert