While I respect the fact a market economy is a neccesity for the human race at the present time (I say that in the hope that replicators are invented at some point) I don't see the neccesity to blindly approve of the persuit of profit at all costs simply because people want to and "That's just the way things have been done". There is a cost associated with such activity, a cost for which we have no means to compensate. The free flow and generation of capital should never undermine or be put ahead of the greater free flow of ideas in society as a whole , or the freedom of individuals, or you inevitably end up with a "snake eating his own tail" situation.
I think you might want to look a bit more into what "market economy" means -- "free market", specifically. A big problem with patents is precisely that they do undermine the "free flow and generation of capital", by restricting who can engage in a given business activity. This is quite deliberate; the justification for patents is/was that the free market doesn't reward innovation enough, since it lets others use your ideas before you have recouped the cost of development.
Now we see that the system is breaking down and getting out of control. Clearly, something needs to be done about this. What prevents it from being fixed is entrenched interests in the existing system.
So we have a difficult problem on our hands. Different people have different ideas about how to go about solving things, but the "free market" people are on your side (if I understand you correctly).
... the priority seems to be shifting towards stability.... Which is also, btw, what people say they want from MS and Windows.
Emphasis on the word "say". If most people & businesses made purchasing decisions based primarily on stability, Windows would be either fixed or dead in no time.
I recently file a patent for some software work.... when the final patent was written up I didn't really understand it.... after my experience with the patent office I'm inclined to think the process is basically fake.
You may be right. But the one possible hole in your argument involves field-specific jargon.
Specialists in any field need to discuss repeatedly concepts that may have lengthy definitions. So we evolve jargon. This makes specialist talk look like nonsense. It isn't; but you have to know the definitions and conventions to understand it.
It sounds like you don't know the definitions for the jargon used in the field of patent law. For people who do, it is possible that the patent made sense, and the Patent Office's response was a reasonable one.
Just guessing, though. You might simply be dealing with a bunch of idiots.
[Please read my entire message before replying. Thank you.]
I applaud the EFF for looking into this, but... they say:
Yet there are no laws to stop the Secret Service -- or for that matter, any other governmental agency or private company -- from using printer codes to secretly trace the origin of non-currency documents.
Why should there be such laws? You're printing an ID in all your documents. If you give such a document out, you are publicizing your printer ID. Using this to find you just makes sense. What if the printer printed your name, instead of an ID code? Would you have a problem with someone tracing you then? What's the difference?
Now, what is a problem is that printer manufacturers are doing this hard-to-detect printing without telling anyone.
So let's shine the light of openness on this practice, and let the market decide. When I buy my next printer, I hope there is a list of all models that print ID codes. There are a number of issues to consider when buying a printer; make this one of them. I'll try to avoid those on the list. Perhaps other people will, too. Market pressure might solve this problem very quickly.
windows 98 was clearly 3 better than windows 95, but then they decided to put out windows 2000. Although it was better, I think that everyone agrees that it certainly isn't 1900+ better than windows 98.
Things will be better if they stick to unconfusing names and letter combinations.
On the contrary, I think they should stick to their generally exponential numbering scheme and call the next version "Windows 393,428,661,000,000".
We elected officials based on the performance of the economy... which encouraged them to stay out of the way of businesses as they tracked, junk-mailed, and spammed us.
Perhaps you'd better back that one up a bit: "We put the current vote-for-a-single-person system in place, thus denying ourselves any serious input into many issues."
Of course I didn't vote based on spam-related issues; nor do I ever intend to. Nor should you. There were and are and will be more important things on the table. That doesn't mean I don't care about spam; it means I don't consider it the most important issue there is.
A similar problem affects all sorts of minor issues in any democracy. And I really don't know what to do about this.
Of course it's news. No, it doesn't need to be controversial, or shocking, or whatever. But it's happening, and it didn't happen before. That makes it news.
Hey, there, folks: It just came out, and Google continually improves their stuff. If you have an idea for an improvement, don't complain; WRITE THEM and suggest it. I did.
Re:oh, CRAP, get an EV 30W and do it RIGHT.
on
Death Star Subwoofer
·
· Score: 2, Funny
get'cha an EV 30W organ/reinforcement woofer someplace
Wow, a woofer so powerful I need to reinforce my organs to use it.
Maybe that's a bit excessive?
As long as IE remains bundled with the windows OS, Firefox will *never* take off and reach a significant install base.
Oh, come off it. Do you really think Windows is going to be the dominant OS FOREVER??? Be real. In another 15 years max, we'll have someone else to be mad at.
When the nation's leaders stop rewarding managerial ineptitude and punishing technical workers, we might have a chance of turning this around. You can count on other nations (China, anyone?) not making this particular blunder.
I'm not sure about that.
It's tough to generalize about East Asian cultures, but we can generally say that most of them place a high value on education and technical skills. They do much better than U.S. culture in that way.
But they also (again, overgeneralizing a bit) tend to have a reverence for authority and experience that makes bad managers difficult to eliminate. In my experience, they do worse than U.S. culture in that way.
Disclaimer: My primary experience and information come from Japan, Malaysia, and Korea. Maybe China is significantly different from all of these?
I still don't know how to write a VB app.... But I can learn by Thursday.... Now, my degree did cover quite a bit of practical stuff.... I don't know how many CS degrees stick too much to the theory?
Maybe I don't understand you; are you are making an argument that CS degree programs should emphasize theory? After all, the language of the year can be learned in a week, if you know your theory well.
In any case, if that is what you are saying, then I agree with you.:-)
1. Clueless user gets rid of old Windows PC
2. Clueless user installs or has installed the same old software he had.
3. Still clueless user continues same behaviors he was doing, only on a new computer.
4. New computer becomes infested or otherwise hosed up.
4. Repeat.
Continuing:
4. Remember that "5" is an evil number and should never be used.
4. Never.
4. We mean it.
Really easy to comprehend if you aren't a dishonest scum sucking son of a bitch bastard
Easy to comprehend, but not easy to check. Also rather ambiguous. (By your definition and my opinion, MCI is a "fake company", for example; but I doubt a court of law would agree.) Furthermore, there is no legal difference between the two. Thus, a plan to keep personal info out of the bad guys' hands by not giving it to "fake companies" is doomed to failure.
The easiest way to buy personal information here in the U.S. is to set up a fake company, then request the desired information from one of the major credit bureaus....
Question: What is the difference between a "real company" and a "fake company"?
Answer: Nothing.
Second, they've banned "sexy cheerleading". Yes, that right.
Actually, they tried & failed (the bill didn't pass). But I don't call that one "moronic". We basically have a system in which minor girls compete for positions in an organization whose job is to provide low-level erotic entertainment at football games.
Not a good system, I think. So I applaud those who tried to do something about it. (Of course, the way the girls are treated is quite benign compared to the abuse & exploitation gotten by the boys who are out on the field playing football, but that's another issue.)
Because these days, everyone is expected to waste three or four years memorising things that can easily be looked up, rather than actually learning anything useful or cutting edge in a degree.
Odd that you'd say that. Looking at the history of education, I'd say that memorization has been the primary technique for centuries, if not millenia. One noteworthy thing about education in recent decades is that we have been getting away from this.
We (the security-loving Internet elite) want maximal transparency for all of our systems, cryptographic and otherwise, so problems are found and fixed... right?
Certainly.
I hope he didn't really mean that....
I imagine he did mean it, but doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. I also imagine he's not in directly in charge of any encryption work at Google. And I have hope that their corporate culture is healthy enough that, if the issue comes up in a practical way, people who do know what they're talking about will feel free to set him straight.
This requires a company willing to give up control of its corporate voice, and that just ain't going to happen without a lot of preconditions. Conditions such as censoring the blogs, "training" the bloggers in what can be disclosed and what can't, legal review, etc.
I don't get it. Big companies have have PR/advertising departments for decades. How is a blog any different from that? Of course companies want to keep control of their "corporate voice", but they already know how to do that, and they have been doing it for a long time. This is just more of the same in a different medium. I don't see why you think it's such a difficult thing.
Could we please try to restore the word "hacker" a more positive meaning on mainstream media?
Yes, we can try. But we can't succeed.
I'm on your side, though. I remember writing a letter to my hometown newspaper 20 years ago asking them to please understand what a "hacker" really was. But it was hopeless then, and it's hopeless now.
So face it, this is a battle we cannot win. Save your energy for the ones where we have a chance.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you might want to look a bit more into what "market economy" means -- "free market", specifically. A big problem with patents is precisely that they do undermine the "free flow and generation of capital", by restricting who can engage in a given business activity. This is quite deliberate; the justification for patents is/was that the free market doesn't reward innovation enough, since it lets others use your ideas before you have recouped the cost of development.
Now we see that the system is breaking down and getting out of control. Clearly, something needs to be done about this. What prevents it from being fixed is entrenched interests in the existing system.
So we have a difficult problem on our hands. Different people have different ideas about how to go about solving things, but the "free market" people are on your side (if I understand you correctly).
Emphasis on the word "say". If most people & businesses made purchasing decisions based primarily on stability, Windows would be either fixed or dead in no time.
You may be right. But the one possible hole in your argument involves field-specific jargon.
Specialists in any field need to discuss repeatedly concepts that may have lengthy definitions. So we evolve jargon. This makes specialist talk look like nonsense. It isn't; but you have to know the definitions and conventions to understand it.
It sounds like you don't know the definitions for the jargon used in the field of patent law. For people who do, it is possible that the patent made sense, and the Patent Office's response was a reasonable one.
Just guessing, though. You might simply be dealing with a bunch of idiots.
I applaud the EFF for looking into this, but ... they say:
Yet there are no laws to stop the Secret Service -- or for that matter, any other governmental agency or private company -- from using printer codes to secretly trace the origin of non-currency documents.
Why should there be such laws? You're printing an ID in all your documents. If you give such a document out, you are publicizing your printer ID. Using this to find you just makes sense. What if the printer printed your name, instead of an ID code? Would you have a problem with someone tracing you then? What's the difference?
Now, what is a problem is that printer manufacturers are doing this hard-to-detect printing without telling anyone.
So let's shine the light of openness on this practice, and let the market decide. When I buy my next printer, I hope there is a list of all models that print ID codes. There are a number of issues to consider when buying a printer; make this one of them. I'll try to avoid those on the list. Perhaps other people will, too. Market pressure might solve this problem very quickly.
Yes, I've spent many a fine day floating down the Pentium ....
I very, very much agree. (And I wonder why your post was mod'ed "funny".)
Things will be better if they stick to unconfusing names and letter combinations.
On the contrary, I think they should stick to their generally exponential numbering scheme and call the next version "Windows 393,428,661,000,000".
Perhaps you'd better back that one up a bit: "We put the current vote-for-a-single-person system in place, thus denying ourselves any serious input into many issues."
Of course I didn't vote based on spam-related issues; nor do I ever intend to. Nor should you. There were and are and will be more important things on the table. That doesn't mean I don't care about spam; it means I don't consider it the most important issue there is.
A similar problem affects all sorts of minor issues in any democracy. And I really don't know what to do about this.
Of course it's news. No, it doesn't need to be controversial, or shocking, or whatever. But it's happening, and it didn't happen before. That makes it news.
Hey, there, folks: It just came out, and Google continually improves their stuff. If you have an idea for an improvement, don't complain; WRITE THEM and suggest it. I did.
Wow, a woofer so powerful I need to reinforce my organs to use it. Maybe that's a bit excessive?
Oh, come off it. Do you really think Windows is going to be the dominant OS FOREVER??? Be real. In another 15 years max, we'll have someone else to be mad at.
I'm not sure about that.
It's tough to generalize about East Asian cultures, but we can generally say that most of them place a high value on education and technical skills. They do much better than U.S. culture in that way.
But they also (again, overgeneralizing a bit) tend to have a reverence for authority and experience that makes bad managers difficult to eliminate. In my experience, they do worse than U.S. culture in that way.
Disclaimer: My primary experience and information come from Japan, Malaysia, and Korea. Maybe China is significantly different from all of these?
Maybe I don't understand you; are you are making an argument that CS degree programs should emphasize theory? After all, the language of the year can be learned in a week, if you know your theory well.
In any case, if that is what you are saying, then I agree with you. :-)
2. Clueless user installs or has installed the same old software he had.
3. Still clueless user continues same behaviors he was doing, only on a new computer.
4. New computer becomes infested or otherwise hosed up.
4. Repeat.
Continuing:
4. Remember that "5" is an evil number and should never be used.
4. Never.
4. We mean it.
Easy to comprehend, but not easy to check. Also rather ambiguous. (By your definition and my opinion, MCI is a "fake company", for example; but I doubt a court of law would agree.) Furthermore, there is no legal difference between the two. Thus, a plan to keep personal info out of the bad guys' hands by not giving it to "fake companies" is doomed to failure.
Where did you get that silly idea? Of course they aren't. Why should they be?
Question: What is the difference between a "real company" and a "fake company"?
Answer: Nothing.
Just a thought.
That would be the most recent communist insurgency/revolution. Read the news from Nepal some time.
Actually, they tried & failed (the bill didn't pass). But I don't call that one "moronic". We basically have a system in which minor girls compete for positions in an organization whose job is to provide low-level erotic entertainment at football games.
Not a good system, I think. So I applaud those who tried to do something about it. (Of course, the way the girls are treated is quite benign compared to the abuse & exploitation gotten by the boys who are out on the field playing football, but that's another issue.)
Odd that you'd say that. Looking at the history of education, I'd say that memorization has been the primary technique for centuries, if not millenia. One noteworthy thing about education in recent decades is that we have been getting away from this.
Certainly.
I hope he didn't really mean that ....
I imagine he did mean it, but doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. I also imagine he's not in directly in charge of any encryption work at Google. And I have hope that their corporate culture is healthy enough that, if the issue comes up in a practical way, people who do know what they're talking about will feel free to set him straight.
Will all due respect, you really don't know what you're talking about here. Read some Bruce Schneier.
I don't get it. Big companies have have PR/advertising departments for decades. How is a blog any different from that? Of course companies want to keep control of their "corporate voice", but they already know how to do that, and they have been doing it for a long time. This is just more of the same in a different medium. I don't see why you think it's such a difficult thing.
Yes, we can try. But we can't succeed.
I'm on your side, though. I remember writing a letter to my hometown newspaper 20 years ago asking them to please understand what a "hacker" really was. But it was hopeless then, and it's hopeless now.
So face it, this is a battle we cannot win. Save your energy for the ones where we have a chance.