just thinking aloud: Novell has some sort(s) of big plans for Mono. Mono is the most likely target of patent action by MS. They're covering their bases before they roll out a killer app.
Your dichotomy is false. Nobody says the individual creates nothing. The question -- when it comes to treating ideas as property -- is whether the cost to the public is greater than the benefit.
Make no mistake: the cost to the public is germaine; it is the public that sets up the state, which in turn is the thing that forbids from from freely copying & distributing other people's ideas.
"If you believe that ideas are generated from individuals in isolation and that thinking and ideas are hard work, you should probably be opposed to the change."
If, however, you believe that most of the progression of ideas is incremental advance upon previous ideas, you should probably support the change.
My other comments from today tend in this direction, but I'll return.
I agree with a lot of what you say about Linux elitism. It's actually TFA's attitude of condescension that first got under my skin. In no particular order my thoughts on what you said are:
-People are accustomed to having the complexity of computers hidden from them. Keeping a network-connected machine free of malware/etc is *not simple. Turning electromagnetic waves into readable web pages is *not simple -Linux is better not because it hides complexity better (it doesn't) or because it does more complex things. It is better because nothing is hidden. -If Linux or any other free OS were the dominant one, there would be an *open *market in a Very Lucrative service industry: "hiding complexity" -- just as there is an open market in car repair because individuals can learn how engines work.
Please not that as manufacturers computerize their cars more and more, this previously-very-open market is closing pretty quickly.
Suppose Microsoft decides to sue AutoZone and Chrysler for patent infringement because of their use of Linux. If the victims don't particularly feel like fighting, a logical settlement would be to "come into compliance" by migrating to the Novell/MS distro(s). I could see a lot of judges encouraging this sort of settlement rather than trying to figure out who owns what "intellectual property"...
A few hundred commercial users later, you have the standard EmExEx scenario
'Most people really don't care about how all of the internals work. They just want to put the key in the ignition, turn it on, and drive. Is it within most people's ability to do a significant amount of their own maintenance? Yes. Do they? No.'
The most critical thing has been left out of this (frequently-used) analogy. True: most cars are user friendly, as you point out. The API (key-ignition, fuel tank cap) is straightforward and 90% of people go no further into the internals.
But the far more important thing about the closed-source car is that the internals are unknown to *everyone except the manufacturer. Fuel injection or carburetor? Dunno. Does it have a combustion engine, or a hybrid? Dunno. How many volts does the starter need? Dunno.
It's not that the "average user" needs this information to get around town, it's that the average user cannot get maintenance/repair from a free market because the relevant info is under lock and key.
If free software achieved world domination, the best effect would be the freeing of the market, *not any incredible upsurge in functionality or usability.
The free market would cause the incredible upsurges therein.
This might end up revealing a lot about how many people will accept loss of control for the sake of "pragmatism". If you don't mind non-free drivers, etc. then I suspect you'll like whatever MS/Novell concoct. No doubt it will contain plenty of non-free technology that the proverbial "average user" needs in order to get hisher nonfree hardware to work out-of-the-box, and so on.
"The problem is the psychology of EULA abuse: Forbid by default even while admitting (as here) when you are placing legal (non-technical accomplishing virtualization is just as easy with any version of Vista) restrictions on some users.
If they dont like these completely superfluous restrictions, defend it by saying there arent very many of them. Fascinating, like I said. This is truly a test of what people will put up with."
Well since they'e not the government (officially), they can't actually ban such. They could impose a condition on whoever clicks through the EULA that heshe is responsible for EULA-violating behavior by anyone who ever uses the machine. In fact I wonder if there's such a condition floating around somewhere...
Ten years from now, when every PHB who spent a decade trying to prevent people from sharing culture with each other has seen the light and starts issuing press releases about how they've discovered that filesharing is a cost-effective loss leader, etc.
Meanwhile I suppose the geeks will begging the corporate & government tag-team to "allow" things like GNURadio, spectrum sharing, etc. And the beat goes on...
weird, 'cause as hard as I try I can't find my referral id in that link...
This is the same as any make-tons-of-money scam. If the person really knew how to scam up tons of money, heshe would do that instead of selling books/videos/whatev for a living.
My friend was reading an adSense book that consisted, essentially, of "here's how to build a click farming portal that looks like an actual website". The author even said get your old papers & homework from high school if you need "content"
Let me be the first to say: if you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type
Slashdot Mirror
just thinking aloud: Novell has some sort(s) of big plans for Mono. Mono is the most likely target of patent action by MS. They're covering their bases before they roll out a killer app.
Your dichotomy is false. Nobody says the individual creates nothing. The question -- when it comes to treating ideas as property -- is whether the cost to the public is greater than the benefit. Make no mistake: the cost to the public is germaine; it is the public that sets up the state, which in turn is the thing that forbids from from freely copying & distributing other people's ideas.
"If you believe that ideas are generated from individuals in isolation and that thinking and ideas are hard work, you should probably be opposed to the change."
If, however, you believe that most of the progression of ideas is incremental advance upon previous ideas, you should probably support the change.
these statements make it pretty clear that this is a royalty (like for example by saying "royalty"). I hope Moglen crushes this deal.
On the rare occasions when I need to buy hardware, I look for linux friendly stuff. Vote with your dollars
http://linuxresource.com/Hardware/index.php
My other comments from today tend in this direction, but I'll return.
I agree with a lot of what you say about Linux elitism. It's actually TFA's attitude of condescension that first got under my skin. In no particular order my thoughts on what you said are:
-People are accustomed to having the complexity of computers hidden from them. Keeping a network-connected machine free of malware/etc is *not simple. Turning electromagnetic waves into readable web pages is *not simple
-Linux is better not because it hides complexity better (it doesn't) or because it does more complex things. It is better because nothing is hidden.
-If Linux or any other free OS were the dominant one, there would be an *open *market in a Very Lucrative service industry: "hiding complexity" -- just as there is an open market in car repair because individuals can learn how engines work.
Please not that as manufacturers computerize their cars more and more, this previously-very-open market is closing pretty quickly.
Suppose Microsoft decides to sue AutoZone and Chrysler for patent infringement because of their use of Linux. If the victims don't particularly feel like fighting, a logical settlement would be to "come into compliance" by migrating to the Novell/MS distro(s). I could see a lot of judges encouraging this sort of settlement rather than trying to figure out who owns what "intellectual property"...
A few hundred commercial users later, you have the standard EmExEx scenario
'Most people really don't care about how all of the internals work. They just want to put the key in the ignition, turn it on, and drive. Is it within most people's ability to do a significant amount of their own maintenance? Yes. Do they? No.'
The most critical thing has been left out of this (frequently-used) analogy. True: most cars are user friendly, as you point out. The API (key-ignition, fuel tank cap) is straightforward and 90% of people go no further into the internals.
But the far more important thing about the closed-source car is that the internals are unknown to *everyone except the manufacturer. Fuel injection or carburetor? Dunno. Does it have a combustion engine, or a hybrid? Dunno. How many volts does the starter need? Dunno.
It's not that the "average user" needs this information to get around town, it's that the average user cannot get maintenance/repair from a free market because the relevant info is under lock and key.
If free software achieved world domination, the best effect would be the freeing of the market, *not any incredible upsurge in functionality or usability.
The free market would cause the incredible upsurges therein.
This might end up revealing a lot about how many people will accept loss of control for the sake of "pragmatism". If you don't mind non-free drivers, etc. then I suspect you'll like whatever MS/Novell concoct. No doubt it will contain plenty of non-free technology that the proverbial "average user" needs in order to get hisher nonfree hardware to work out-of-the-box, and so on.
Acceptable?
Much as I wish your plan B were the case, I think your first stab is more likely.
"The problem is the psychology of EULA abuse: Forbid by default even while admitting (as here) when you are placing legal (non-technical accomplishing virtualization is just as easy with any version of Vista) restrictions on some users.
If they dont like these completely superfluous restrictions, defend it by saying there arent very many of them. Fascinating, like I said. This is truly a test of what people will put up with."
source:
http://btetc.blogspot.com/2006/11/eulas.html
Well since they'e not the government (officially), they can't actually ban such. They could impose a condition on whoever clicks through the EULA that heshe is responsible for EULA-violating behavior by anyone who ever uses the machine. In fact I wonder if there's such a condition floating around somewhere...
Ten years from now, when every PHB who spent a decade trying to prevent people from sharing culture with each other has seen the light and starts issuing press releases about how they've discovered that filesharing is a cost-effective loss leader, etc.
Meanwhile I suppose the geeks will begging the corporate & government tag-team to "allow" things like GNURadio, spectrum sharing, etc. And the beat goes on...
If we keep brainstorming great stuff like that, we will be able to do all kinds of awesome stuff, like:
study our own computers' performance.
tell people what we find
share ideas on how to improve them
Before you know it, we'l have "free speech" as I like to call it.
The only surprise would be if this kind of shit werent in there.
"total number of downloads and total number of users are not the same thing."
You think they're going to honor this distinction when they crow about what 'the market' wants? This company allows dead people to speak out for them.
Well, maybe in Texas
well, the link was copied from amazon's search results page, so if it has an associate ID in it then that associate is a lucky son of a bitch.
weird, 'cause as hard as I try I can't find my referral id in that link... This is the same as any make-tons-of-money scam. If the person really knew how to scam up tons of money, heshe would do that instead of selling books/videos/whatev for a living.
Stay the hell away from this book: http://www.amazon.com/AdSense-Code-Google-Making-M oney/dp/1933596708/sr=8-2/qid=1162405831/ref=pd_bb s_2/002-3621573-4586425?ie=UTF8&s=books
My friend was reading an adSense book that consisted, essentially, of "here's how to build a click farming portal that looks like an actual website". The author even said get your old papers & homework from high school if you need "content"
goggle a bit to get my joke. (hint: i'm not actually the first to say that)
Just support GNURadio and spread spectrum technologies. Proprietization of the spectrum will go obsolete.
e ss.html
Read up:
http://www.econlib.org/LIBRARY/Columns/Klingwirel
Let me be the first to say: if you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type
i said (n/t)