Three people dead, others injured, out of a small team. A proper test (testFLIGHT?) was due in a few days. Seems to me that this will definitely set things back, even if they don't take time to grieve, which I'm sure they will.
What I'd love to know is... what are the other competing projects right now, and how ruthless are they?
According to the article, two were killed on-site, and a further died in hospital, post-surgery.
I tend to think these guys are heroes -- much more so, as people trying to innovate and expand our potential, than, say, those who go to iraq to fight other human beings, and find themselves strangely fought back against in the process. However, the article also says that Scaled Composites undertakes projects for the military, which muddies their heroism somewhat.
Would sunglasses block this? Don't laugh, I'm being serious!
That's beside the point. If you don't want people to have these weapons, or a chance to use them on you, you should fight it. Otherwise, you'll soon find yourself fighting a criminal charge for wearing sunglasses on all but the sunniest days, or without being on a designated sunbathing spot.
Of course they can't. Just like Microsoft can't pay public officials to get people fired, can't operate above the law and ignore court orders to split their company into pieces or to compensate for their monopolistic practices etc.
they want their lawyers to have a chance to review any license they release under and don't want to be beholden to the unknown. Frankly I think that's a good thing. In theory GPLv4 could say: this can be used in closed source proprietary DRM schemes
Agreed. The real problem is that many projects lose touch with their contributors, and so can't contact them all and say, "what about moving to this new license?" Of course, even if they could, getting agreement on that would be tough.
Exactly. Good riddance. It's not as though these things are in high demand.
Yep. When I first read the title, "Seagate to Drop IDE Drives...", I was thinking of "IDE drive" as a generic term for a moment, and hoping they were dropping magnetic media in favour of solid state or something.
This is essentially just moving to a more modern interface. Wake me up when they move to holograms.
I never said it was obsolete. I like 70's rock too, and much older stuff. That's not the point. The point is that there aren't any 70's rock artists still trying to use that style unchanged. It's a well-known style, and the basis of more modern styles, so it shouldn't be protected as a "trade secret" or some sort of unique product any more.
Perhaps he's waiting for the $10,000, or perhaps he knows that theory is the important thing, and if it's viable, there will be many organisations vying for better and better implementations.
This is like half science.. "Here's my hypothesis, someone test it for me."
I for one don't consider science to be something that only people with money do. One has to wonder how many da Vinci's there would have been, if other people all had the resources he had. The renaissance itself shows that progress pops up everywhere, given resources. Doesn't mean the science wasn't there in the back of people's minds, waiting for them to get past the point of scraping together money for a loaf of bread, though.
I dunno, if the remaining Beatles survive another 6 years then their early work will be out of copyright in their lifetime.
Cliff Richard will start losing royalties two years before that.
So? The point of copyright is NOT to pay artists. That's a side-effect. The point is to encourage creativity in society. In previous and current incarnations of copyright law, this is done by paying artists royalties for a given period of time. If I understand correctly, this period of time has constantly increased.
I would argue that the period of time should be DECREASING. As more and more artists exposed to more and more global ideas are able to evolve new works more quickly, the legitimacy of holding on to now-outdated work quickly falls away.
Long copyright terms made more sense when the latest popular music was the same stuff some classical artist created 15 years ago -- when it just spread far enough for everyone to learn about and for others to begin dreaming up variations on. Today, music is distributed worldwide in seconds or less, and is absorbed into a huge global consciousness of styles, tastes, remixes, etc.
Music should not be copyrighted for more than a few years, imho.
illegal downloading, not P2P technology. It's funny that even a defender would confuse the two.
That's because people like the RIAA have propaganda battles going on to obfuscate the fact that P2P is just a natural face of the many-faceted internet. "File sharing" is what people do everytime they download a webpage.
A "social network" is next to useless for building professional contacts if it's just full of other dumbass teenagers texting OMG WTF BBQ at each other all day.
Social networks aren't about giving kids a voice or anything like that. Email, IM and VOIP do that just fine. They're about using kids to build content, that hooks other kids, and builds revenue streams.
The real question is whether these kids are learning that they need to keep their society free of business interests.
I mean, is anyone really going to buy Zune 2.0? After all, it didn't work with the DRM scheme standard Microsoft was pushing
In short, it was crippled beyond belief. It had one goal, which was to be a outlet for Microsoft's envisaged new media ownership. It was not at all designed with users' needs in mind, hence the lack of even basic features like podcasting, and the presence of things like highly restrictive DRM, and the lack of cross-platform usability.
If Zune 2.0 is any better, it'll only be by grumbling admission that Microsoft can't screw users THAT much and get away with it. I'm not even convinced that their "podcasting" support will mean proper, standardised podcasting that works for any podcast. They're likely to come up with some craptastic DRM-enabled podcast distribution system that operates through MS's websites.
Anyone who respects themselves would be well advised to avoid a product that never respected their needs.
They're just not required to give out details. Looking out for the consumer would be requiring them to PROTECT details (at least until the law judges them guilty).
What exactly do you want?They got a warrant. Isn't that kind of oversight what we want? I don't understand why you think making a comparison to the Gestapo (and did they really have warrants?) adds a single thing to the conversation.
Then you, Sir, are very gullible. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Don't worry. Just wait 'till the bunny-powered jet comes out. The first versions will be messy, with the blood and what have you, but the next generations will be much improved. Then you'll see how environmentally friendly they are.
Note that he said "it's a fallacy that our politicians take FOREVER to get things done." Actually, that's not saying very much: of course it's a fallacy; "forever" is a ridiculous exaggeration. Doesn't mean they don't take a HELL of a long time though;)
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed.
For one thing, it may be just upset that someone messed with its DNA
You can have features, windows, and running. Choose two.
Three people dead, others injured, out of a small team. A proper test (testFLIGHT?) was due in a few days. Seems to me that this will definitely set things back, even if they don't take time to grieve, which I'm sure they will.
What I'd love to know is... what are the other competing projects right now, and how ruthless are they?
According to the article, two were killed on-site, and a further died in hospital, post-surgery.
I tend to think these guys are heroes -- much more so, as people trying to innovate and expand our potential, than, say, those who go to iraq to fight other human beings, and find themselves strangely fought back against in the process. However, the article also says that Scaled Composites undertakes projects for the military, which muddies their heroism somewhat.
No, it means it WAS a unique product, which is, very importantly, now a historical foundation of modern culture.
That's beside the point. If you don't want people to have these weapons, or a chance to use them on you, you should fight it. Otherwise, you'll soon find yourself fighting a criminal charge for wearing sunglasses on all but the sunniest days, or without being on a designated sunbathing spot.
Of course they can't. Just like Microsoft can't pay public officials to get people fired, can't operate above the law and ignore court orders to split their company into pieces or to compensate for their monopolistic practices etc.
It's called corruption.
Agreed. The real problem is that many projects lose touch with their contributors, and so can't contact them all and say, "what about moving to this new license?" Of course, even if they could, getting agreement on that would be tough.
Yep. When I first read the title, "Seagate to Drop IDE Drives...", I was thinking of "IDE drive" as a generic term for a moment, and hoping they were dropping magnetic media in favour of solid state or something.
This is essentially just moving to a more modern interface. Wake me up when they move to holograms.
I never said it was obsolete. I like 70's rock too, and much older stuff. That's not the point. The point is that there aren't any 70's rock artists still trying to use that style unchanged. It's a well-known style, and the basis of more modern styles, so it shouldn't be protected as a "trade secret" or some sort of unique product any more.
Yes, that's great. But... does it actually have drivers for modern hardware?
Perhaps he's waiting for the $10,000, or perhaps he knows that theory is the important thing, and if it's viable, there will be many organisations vying for better and better implementations.
I for one don't consider science to be something that only people with money do. One has to wonder how many da Vinci's there would have been, if other people all had the resources he had. The renaissance itself shows that progress pops up everywhere, given resources. Doesn't mean the science wasn't there in the back of people's minds, waiting for them to get past the point of scraping together money for a loaf of bread, though.
So? The point of copyright is NOT to pay artists. That's a side-effect. The point is to encourage creativity in society. In previous and current incarnations of copyright law, this is done by paying artists royalties for a given period of time. If I understand correctly, this period of time has constantly increased.
I would argue that the period of time should be DECREASING. As more and more artists exposed to more and more global ideas are able to evolve new works more quickly, the legitimacy of holding on to now-outdated work quickly falls away.
Long copyright terms made more sense when the latest popular music was the same stuff some classical artist created 15 years ago -- when it just spread far enough for everyone to learn about and for others to begin dreaming up variations on. Today, music is distributed worldwide in seconds or less, and is absorbed into a huge global consciousness of styles, tastes, remixes, etc.
Music should not be copyrighted for more than a few years, imho.
You seem to like defining my definitions ;)
That's because people like the RIAA have propaganda battles going on to obfuscate the fact that P2P is just a natural face of the many-faceted internet. "File sharing" is what people do everytime they download a webpage.
Ahh, interesting stuff. Thanks for clearing that up :)
Social networks aren't about giving kids a voice or anything like that. Email, IM and VOIP do that just fine. They're about using kids to build content, that hooks other kids, and builds revenue streams.
The real question is whether these kids are learning that they need to keep their society free of business interests.
Dominant? Yes. Total control? No. Plenty of us run 64bit apps, just not on Windows.
In short, it was crippled beyond belief. It had one goal, which was to be a outlet for Microsoft's envisaged new media ownership. It was not at all designed with users' needs in mind, hence the lack of even basic features like podcasting, and the presence of things like highly restrictive DRM, and the lack of cross-platform usability.
If Zune 2.0 is any better, it'll only be by grumbling admission that Microsoft can't screw users THAT much and get away with it. I'm not even convinced that their "podcasting" support will mean proper, standardised podcasting that works for any podcast. They're likely to come up with some craptastic DRM-enabled podcast distribution system that operates through MS's websites.
Anyone who respects themselves would be well advised to avoid a product that never respected their needs.
The whole EGCS link is also unclear. If I recall correctly, EGCS was a fork to OPTIMISE gcc, not to subvert it.
They're just not required to give out details. Looking out for the consumer would be requiring them to PROTECT details (at least until the law judges them guilty).
Then you, Sir, are very gullible. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Bill MADE me do it?
Don't worry. Just wait 'till the bunny-powered jet comes out. The first versions will be messy, with the blood and what have you, but the next generations will be much improved. Then you'll see how environmentally friendly they are.
Note that he said "it's a fallacy that our politicians take FOREVER to get things done." Actually, that's not saying very much: of course it's a fallacy; "forever" is a ridiculous exaggeration. Doesn't mean they don't take a HELL of a long time though ;)