"Spending tax dollars to protect the interests of a specific private business (or set of such businesses) does not make sense."
So true. What sucks is that -- if you count any reasonable portion* of the defense department's budget -- a huge number of American tax dollars are spent on precisely this. I mean, like about a third. And the pseudoconservatives pretend that $121M for the National Endowment for the Arts is the biggest problem. sigh.
*Anyone want to debate what the reasonable portion would be?
Our "intellectual property" system at work for you, ensuring innovation and -- as a nice side effect -- severely restricting competition in the marketplace. Hip Hip Hooray
You're trying to use fact-selection and guilt by association and it won't work. True: Ross Mauri, chair of OSDL, is from IBM. Other board members are from (for example) Intel, HP, novell, Fujitsu, and on and on. Most or all of these companies also contribute money to OSDL.
You will see *numerous links to all sorts of blogs that reinforce SCO's theory about her. This, obviously, is damning evidence. Also, for about eleven minutes on August 6, 2006, the Wikipedia article on PJ clearly stated that she was an undercover IBM agent and a "$£77¥ h0!!!!"
I'm quoting it b/c joel rightly points out that having the contents of a drive be quickly searchable is not something incredibly revolutionary requiring 2GB of RAM and an expensive 3D video accelerator card. It comes naturally from good index design.
Since search was posited as a big thing that Vista does right, I'm expressing my non-impressedness. Nothing to do with WinFS.
"WinFS, advertised as a way to make searching work by making the file system be a relational database, ignores the fact that the real way to make searching work is by making searching work. Don't make me type metadata for all my files that I can search using a query language. Just do me a favor and search the damned hard drive, quickly, for the string I typed, using full-text indexes and other technologies that were boring in 1973."
"The real point is that people in the poorest counties need JOBS."
Alas, no. You're clearly very informed, but this line of argument is just an extended broken-windows fallacy, as another replier points out.
What the people in the poorest countries need is GROWTH. Genuine economic growth, based on economic problems being solved in the most efficient way possible. Which, I agree, is often through microcredits, giving the native population a leg up so they can use their intimate understanding of those economic problems and address root causes.
"When I am working in my garden I take pamphlets on bugs and fertilizers not my laptop." I take neither, because I have copied this information into my brain. This is the most efficient way to store and transport information. In brains. And the most efficient way to copy it is either by speaking to people or by making digital versions of it and sending it down a wire.
"Paper is sometimes better than computers." Yes. e.g. -When reliability of electricity (to run the computers) is not good. Hence the auxiliary manual power on OLPC -When the quantity of information needed is so small that a book is more weight- and cost-effective than a lightweight laptop
I don't see either of these situations obtaining in the case of your average third-world farmer.
It's a great story, isn't it? I love how carefully the analogy maps onto the expecations and experience of a music listener:
The fish is the listener. The bowl is -- I think -- The established media powers. The fish cannot get out of it without risking its life. The water is the filthy sludge that the bowl (see above) has immersed the fish in. Youtube is the air, in which the fish cannot live.
The analogy breaks down on this point: the listener is actually not a fish, and can live just fine in the air.
DRM is *very expensive to produce. There's the R&D costs, programming, buying up congresspeople. How is the DRM going to make a profit if their product's marginal utility (apparently) is -$.30?
"The second part is the consumer; we have to do a better job of explaining why promoting creativity, promoting songwriters, promoting not only the people who write the songs, but the people who bring the songs to us -- that has to be appreciated."
Stupid consumers. They're sharing culture with each other because we haven't fully explained to them how and why people create music [and movies, and TV shows, etc] (from Artists for File Sharing)
There's an alternate explanation: people are starting to realize that they are connected to each other directly, and no longer need the middlemen and middlewomen in order to figure out (amongst themselves) how to fund the things they enjoy.
I wonder if some of you realize it's pretty *offensive to assume that everyone outside of your own affluent country is a barely-human organism subsisting on tree bark or whatever. But here's how laptops feed them:
With the right information, you can increase the yield of your agriculture industry, like much of the world did in the mid-twentieth century. You can increase it a *lot.
Meanwhile, the house committee on "intellectual property" ponders how to implement a licensing regime for ephemeral copies of recordings each time they pass through a computer's RAM.
Sorry, I know I'm not supposed to bitch about rejected stories or (in this case) ones that have been pending for a week... couldn't help it this one time.
Slashdot Mirror
"Spending tax dollars to protect the interests of a specific private business (or set of such businesses) does not make sense."
So true. What sucks is that -- if you count any reasonable portion* of the defense department's budget -- a huge number of American tax dollars are spent on precisely this. I mean, like about a third. And the pseudoconservatives pretend that $121M for the National Endowment for the Arts is the biggest problem. sigh.
*Anyone want to debate what the reasonable portion would be?
"The same thing we do every day, Pinky: leverage our monopoly on the desktop to take over other markets."
"I wonder how long it will be before AT&T/Cingular starts suing ALL of the other phone companies for violating THEIR patents."
Shouldn't be long: only have to wait until this approach is more profitable than providing phone service.
"Renting switching equipment is not a good business model when switching equipment is ubiquitous". -- Eben Moglen
Our "intellectual property" system at work for you, ensuring innovation and -- as a nice side effect -- severely restricting competition in the marketplace. Hip Hip Hooray
Man, I hope so. That makes two very important gadget co.s and one major label...
Part of me wants to continue boycotting their stuff anyway, as punishment for years of bad behavior
...to be broadsided by someone surfing the web while heshe is driving
You're trying to use fact-selection and guilt by association and it won't work. True: Ross Mauri, chair of OSDL, is from IBM. Other board members are from (for example) Intel, HP, novell, Fujitsu, and on and on. Most or all of these companies also contribute money to OSDL.
SCO's filing makes it quite clear that PJ works for IBM, and has been dodging their subpoena like so many Bill Clintons during the Nam war.
Beginning on page 3 of
http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/IBM-1018.pdf
You will see *numerous links to all sorts of blogs that reinforce SCO's theory about her. This, obviously, is damning evidence. Also, for about eleven minutes on August 6, 2006, the Wikipedia article on PJ clearly stated that she was an undercover IBM agent and a "$£77¥ h0!!!!"
...like desperadoes under the eaves?
I'm quoting it b/c joel rightly points out that having the contents of a drive be quickly searchable is not something incredibly revolutionary requiring 2GB of RAM and an expensive 3D video accelerator card. It comes naturally from good index design.
Since search was posited as a big thing that Vista does right, I'm expressing my non-impressedness. Nothing to do with WinFS.
I'm quoting this article a lot today...
l
"WinFS, advertised as a way to make searching work by making the file system be a relational database, ignores the fact that the real way to make searching work is by making searching work. Don't make me type metadata for all my files that I can search using a query language. Just do me a favor and search the damned hard drive, quickly, for the string I typed, using full-text indexes and other technologies that were boring in 1973."
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.htm
"Microsoft Lost the Backwards Compatibility Religion
Inside Microsoft, the MSDN Magazine Camp has won the battle...."
From one of the best articles a guy can read
"their current position is this is an isolated problem"
Weird, 'cause I hear about one of these stories almost every week. Isolated in what sense?
...just a guess
"The real point is that people in the poorest counties need JOBS."
Alas, no. You're clearly very informed, but this line of argument is just an extended broken-windows fallacy, as another replier points out.
What the people in the poorest countries need is GROWTH. Genuine economic growth, based on economic problems being solved in the most efficient way possible. Which, I agree, is often through microcredits, giving the native population a leg up so they can use their intimate understanding of those economic problems and address root causes.
"When I am working in my garden I take pamphlets on bugs and fertilizers not my laptop."
I take neither, because I have copied this information into my brain. This is the most efficient way to store and transport information. In brains. And the most efficient way to copy it is either by speaking to people or by making digital versions of it and sending it down a wire.
"Paper is sometimes better than computers."
Yes. e.g.
-When reliability of electricity (to run the computers) is not good. Hence the auxiliary manual power on OLPC
-When the quantity of information needed is so small that a book is more weight- and cost-effective than a lightweight laptop
I don't see either of these situations obtaining in the case of your average third-world farmer.
no text I said.
It's a great story, isn't it? I love how carefully the analogy maps onto the expecations and experience of a music listener:
The fish is the listener.
The bowl is -- I think -- The established media powers. The fish cannot get out of it without risking its life.
The water is the filthy sludge that the bowl (see above) has immersed the fish in.
Youtube is the air, in which the fish cannot live.
The analogy breaks down on this point: the listener is actually not a fish, and can live just fine in the air.
DRM is *very expensive to produce. There's the R&D costs, programming, buying up congresspeople. How is the DRM going to make a profit if their product's marginal utility (apparently) is -$.30?
"The second part is the consumer; we have to do a better job of explaining why promoting creativity, promoting songwriters, promoting not only the people who write the songs, but the people who bring the songs to us -- that has to be appreciated."
Stupid consumers. They're sharing culture with each other because we haven't fully explained to them how and why people create music [and movies, and TV shows, etc]
(from Artists for File Sharing)
There's an alternate explanation: people are starting to realize that they are connected to each other directly, and no longer need the middlemen and middlewomen in order to figure out (amongst themselves) how to fund the things they enjoy.
I wonder if some of you realize it's pretty *offensive to assume that everyone outside of your own affluent country is a barely-human organism subsisting on tree bark or whatever. But here's how laptops feed them:
With the right information, you can increase the yield of your agriculture industry, like much of the world did in the mid-twentieth century. You can increase it a *lot.
At 3:Insightful that's the most overrated comment ever to appear on /.
bitch, bitch , bitch...
"If there was a story written about it, I'd like to read it."
- like.html
Here are my takes:
http://a4fs.net/blog/?p=18
http://btetc.blogspot.com/2007/03/found-senator-i
Governor of Disneyland Inflamed by Slashdot Comment
How 'bout "Dead Stop News Day"?
Meanwhile, the house committee on "intellectual property" ponders how to implement a licensing regime for ephemeral copies of recordings each time they pass through a computer's RAM.
Sorry, I know I'm not supposed to bitch about rejected stories or (in this case) ones that have been pending for a week... couldn't help it this one time.