It tells me they either 1)Don't know their senators are confused; or 2) Don't mind.
1) is often true because until very recently there has been almost no legitimate fourth estate in this country.
2) is often true because people can be shortsighted. e.g. they'll re-elect an incumbent who has brough federal dollars into the district, forgetting that district concerns are not the business of the federal government/tax base
This administration is about propagandists writing the dictionary. I just watched the Commerce committee's hearing on Grokster, and it's depressing how often they throw around the term "intellectual property"
Them I forgive; they're senators, not technologists. But note this well:
As Cresanti pushes to expand the scope and scale of software patents, he knows full well that the term "intellectual property" is problematic at best and outright deceitful at worst. As rms said, when people use this term they are either confused or attempting-to-confuse-you.
The senators are confused. Cresanti is a propagandist
This case is such BS. Makes me angry. I think the following points vary between obvious and mostly-true:
-SCO is actually pretty indifferent to how the case (a contract dispute with IBM) comes out.
-This case exists for the sole purpose of making people worry whether there's something dangerous about using or contributing to Linux
-As such, its value is directly proportional to its duration in time, and has nothing to do with the outcome, which will be a dismissal or a summary judgment for the defendant
-This value accrues to SCO, but also to Microsoft, who helped fund the case. Most of the value, in fact, accrues to Microsoft.
-When/if the "infringing code" is ever actually specified, it will be rewritten in days and all this value will evaporate -- assuming any code actually infringes anything.
I think all of the following should be on the table when this thing wraps up:
-Countersuit by IBM & Punitive damages from SCO
-An investigation into Microsoft's role in designing this lawsuit.
-Piercing the corporate veil for those execs who were personally enriched by the stock pump-and-dump.
-Announcement by IBM that they will donate a portion of the damages they are awarded (which should be basically SCO's market capitalization) to more Linux development.
I am not, and I use the RIAA radar to avoid them. Like e.g. I'm a big bjork fan but alas... good news is that her Drawing Restraint 9 soundtrack is non-RIAA. Can't decide how far to take the boycott -- boycott albums directly or any artist who generally releases under RIAA?
This morning before even reading this article I woke up thinking about plain email versus "fancy" email. In McLuhan-esque terms
The content of a medium is another medium. The content of a web page is a book (sometimes a film) and the content of email is speech. Your pithy, useful, one-liner emails resemble a bit of conversation a lot more than they do a piece of text.
Speech is electric (it was your sig that inspired me to post here). Books are not. Books move very slow and require a committee to "get them right". Speech is autonomous, isolated, demands free action. It's like the difference between cars jammed up on a highway (or content-management) system and people zipping around on their own personal jetpacks.
Here's another huge education process: getting people to reserve judgment about others until they know something about them. Something relevant to the task at hand.
Why is it a given that the powers-that-ben't (yet) are the ones that have a lot of learning to do?
The difference between IP restrictions and natural property rights is simple.
If I violate your right to tangible property, I do so by violating your natural right to control your own person (i.e. by forcibly taking the thing from you)
If I violate your intellectual property, it has no effect on you; in fact millions of people could violate it without you even becoming aware of it.
On a sidenote, I think this distinction is the root of the difference between libertarians and propertarians.
Intellectual property rights are prohibitions against me doing things, i.e. using/copying/modifying another person's discoveries/writings/inventions. They are restrictions of people's freedom, enacted (originally) to encourage science and the useful arts and (currently) to protect the business of established powers in various industries.
It is decidedly Orwellian that so many people think that severe limitations on freedom are properly called "rights". I do not say fascist or totalitarian, just "Orwellian".
4) Skip writing the operating system and just create a bunch of ads and press releases about how awesome it's going to be next year, then the year after that, then the year after that.
Don't be silly. You don't get ridiculed if you ask for help. You might get ridiculed if you
-contact the wrong person for help, a person who has nothing to do with your problem.
-skip all the "help me out" stuff and go immediately to threats and accusations.
-ignore the friendly, informative reply the the person (who didn't even have to acknowledge you) gave you
and
-Attempt to take the technical high ground with your 22 (imaginary) years of computer systems engineering experience. Unless those years were 1945-1967, that's got to be super-false.
Sounded convincing to me. But I believe you (too)... if I want to "drop any stupid carrier like the Bells" (Verizon in my case) how do I do that? Get another ISP or build a home hotspot, or _________?
And consequently way beyond the capacity of our govt. to process. Here's the Commerce Committee's meeting on spectrum reform:
Link
the potential of shared-spectrum tech did not even come up. Instead we got Mr. White of the "Progress and Freedom Foundation" repeatedly telling the committee that the electromagnetic spectrum is just like real estate.
Mr. White, congress, and friends: the spectrum is not just like real estate.
If they're choking your access to certain sites, how could you find that out? There are plenty of sites you can measure your connection speed, but how would you measure the speed you're getting when you connect to google against the speed when you connect to VerizonRules.net?
I'm sort of inclined to agree. Doing and end-run around the whole oligopoly, and using radio-on-chip devices to mesh ourselves together might be the best.
i was really miffed hearing (even though it's only partly true?) that Verizon is reserving 80% of the bandwidth in their FiOS net for their television service. The solution seems to be for Google (or someone) to light up their dark fiber and say "all your bandwidth are belong to you; do what you want with it". That will be a dark day for these gangsters
Slashdot Mirror
1) is often true because until very recently there has been almost no legitimate fourth estate in this country.
2) is often true because people can be shortsighted. e.g. they'll re-elect an incumbent who has brough federal dollars into the district, forgetting that district concerns are not the business of the federal government/tax base
Them I forgive; they're senators, not technologists. But note this well:
As Cresanti pushes to expand the scope and scale of software patents, he knows full well that the term "intellectual property" is problematic at best and outright deceitful at worst. As rms said, when people use this term they are either confused or attempting-to-confuse-you.
The senators are confused. Cresanti is a propagandist
-SCO is actually pretty indifferent to how the case (a contract dispute with IBM) comes out.
-This case exists for the sole purpose of making people worry whether there's something dangerous about using or contributing to Linux
-As such, its value is directly proportional to its duration in time, and has nothing to do with the outcome, which will be a dismissal or a summary judgment for the defendant
-This value accrues to SCO, but also to Microsoft, who helped fund the case. Most of the value, in fact, accrues to Microsoft.
-When/if the "infringing code" is ever actually specified, it will be rewritten in days and all this value will evaporate -- assuming any code actually infringes anything.
I think all of the following should be on the table when this thing wraps up:
-Countersuit by IBM & Punitive damages from SCO
-An investigation into Microsoft's role in designing this lawsuit.
-Piercing the corporate veil for those execs who were personally enriched by the stock pump-and-dump.
-Announcement by IBM that they will donate a portion of the damages they are awarded (which should be basically SCO's market capitalization) to more Linux development.
Me, I'd rather end SQL Server
I am not, and I use the RIAA radar to avoid them. Like e.g. I'm a big bjork fan but alas... good news is that her Drawing Restraint 9 soundtrack is non-RIAA. Can't decide how far to take the boycott -- boycott albums directly or any artist who generally releases under RIAA?
You'd have to fire a CEO who made $500K per hour.
The content of a medium is another medium. The content of a web page is a book (sometimes a film) and the content of email is speech. Your pithy, useful, one-liner emails resemble a bit of conversation a lot more than they do a piece of text.
Speech is electric (it was your sig that inspired me to post here). Books are not. Books move very slow and require a committee to "get them right". Speech is autonomous, isolated, demands free action. It's like the difference between cars jammed up on a highway (or content-management) system and people zipping around on their own personal jetpacks.
i.e. for putting this propaganda up as if it's a story?
Here's another huge education process: getting people to reserve judgment about others until they know something about them. Something relevant to the task at hand.
Why is it a given that the powers-that-ben't (yet) are the ones that have a lot of learning to do?
'Course as the metaverse expands eyes will become more-or-less obsolete...
Image That is all.
Who determines the quantity of lost profits?
If I violate your right to tangible property, I do so by violating your natural right to control your own person (i.e. by forcibly taking the thing from you)
If I violate your intellectual property, it has no effect on you; in fact millions of people could violate it without you even becoming aware of it.
On a sidenote, I think this distinction is the root of the difference between libertarians and propertarians.
It is decidedly Orwellian that so many people think that severe limitations on freedom are properly called "rights". I do not say fascist or totalitarian, just "Orwellian".
4) Skip writing the operating system and just create a bunch of ads and press releases about how awesome it's going to be next year, then the year after that, then the year after that.
-contact the wrong person for help, a person who has nothing to do with your problem.
-skip all the "help me out" stuff and go immediately to threats and accusations.
-ignore the friendly, informative reply the the person (who didn't even have to acknowledge you) gave you
and
-Attempt to take the technical high ground with your 22 (imaginary) years of computer systems engineering experience. Unless those years were 1945-1967, that's got to be super-false.
and deserving of ridicule.
Because there isn't a verb form of PHB. Yet.
Sounded convincing to me. But I believe you (too)... if I want to "drop any stupid carrier like the Bells" (Verizon in my case) how do I do that? Get another ISP or build a home hotspot, or _________?
And consequently way beyond the capacity of our govt. to process. Here's the Commerce Committee's meeting on spectrum reform:
Link
the potential of shared-spectrum tech did not even come up. Instead we got Mr. White of the "Progress and Freedom Foundation" repeatedly telling the committee that the electromagnetic spectrum is just like real estate.
Mr. White, congress, and friends: the spectrum is not just like real estate.
If they're choking your access to certain sites, how could you find that out? There are plenty of sites you can measure your connection speed, but how would you measure the speed you're getting when you connect to google against the speed when you connect to VerizonRules.net?
I'm sort of inclined to agree. Doing and end-run around the whole oligopoly, and using radio-on-chip devices to mesh ourselves together might be the best.
i was really miffed hearing (even though it's only partly true?) that Verizon is reserving 80% of the bandwidth in their FiOS net for their television service. The solution seems to be for Google (or someone) to light up their dark fiber and say "all your bandwidth are belong to you; do what you want with it". That will be a dark day for these gangsters
eom
eom
...or does it actually say "Google shall make no law... "