I'm confused about something. . .
on
MythTV 0.21 Released
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Ok, let me see if I understand this right. . .
People were upset that Zap2It wasn't giving free listings (and they'd rather not pay for the pay service), so they setup another *pay* service as an alternative? Why not just pay for Zap2It? Were they asking for an outrageous fee for the listings?
I mean, I could see it being reasonable to pay a small monthly fee for listings - I mean, it's gotta cost some money to assemble the listing data, and then the cost of running servers and Internet connections to publish those listings. Why create a non-free competitor to Zap2It, instead of just using Zap2It?
The comment to which you replied, and the grandparent, are not discussing the thermoelectric generators. They are instead discussing the breeder reactors which you need in order to process Uranium into Plutonium to create the fuel (plutonium) for the thermoelectric generators. It's like the difference between an oil refinery and an internal combustion engine - they are discussing the 'refinery', while you are discussing the engine.
I know that he's saying that even though the OS exists, it just isn't that important anymore. I'm just saying that, I do not believe that the OS is NOT important simply because a sub-set of the applications a user might want to use are now accessible through a web browser. The point of my post is that there are a wide variety of applications that do not work well with the 'Web 2.0' model of using web browsers with AJAX to implement the user interface. So, Web 2.0 does not make the OS irrelevant (you could only make that claim if 100% of applications could be implemented in a web browser).
So, for example, if you need to use SolidWorks (which is a very sophisticated, powerful CAD program), you must use Windows, because it is a Windows only application (well. . . it might run under Wine/CrossOver, possibly, I'm not sure).
But, I'd sure like the OS to become less relevant. Now that computers have gotten faster/more memory, and Java has matured somewhat, it might actually live up to the promise, once made, of applications that run on any OS which has a JVM. Or rather, it does live up to that promise, largely, but many developers still don't use Java. I'm not sure, Java might still be unsuitable for something like SolidWorks, or 3D games, where you want the absolute maximum performance you can possibly squeeze out of the hardware. But, Java at least opens the door for a wider array of applications than Web 2.0 does.
What, exactly, would a Web 2.0 3D solid-modeling CAD program be? Or Web 2.0 3D games? Web 2.0 Medical imaging systems?
People who say operating systems are irrelevant because of the web immediately go into the "non-credible tech pundit" bin for me, because they've already shown, by that statement, that they *don't get it*. There are *many* applications we use computers for, which would not be good fits for the "Web 2.0" model. Sure, basic data storage and retrieval apps (documents, databases) can be made "Web 2.0" applications. But what is a Web 2.0 media player (the closest you get is something like Flash or Silverlight/Moonlight, and those are basically native Apps that display their output embedded in the browser window).
I, a few years ago, after trying to get a broad overview of different disciplines of science, and taking various science courses, have come to pretty much accept the 'old universe' view, because it's not just *one* science, it's evidence from almost all the different disciplines of science which draw a picture which can *only* be explained by an old universe. I mention that, at the start, so that people understand that my response is not a defense of the young universe belief.
But, that said, while people like to make the claim, as the parent does, that when the Bible talks about 7 days, it means 7 eras of vast amounts of time, I think you are missing one basic thing about the text of the Bible. It doesn't just say 7 days; in the account it has. . .
'3 And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning--the first day.
6 And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." 7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the expanse "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning--the second day.'
(Quotation from Genesis chapter 1, New International Version, Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society; quote retrieved from http://www.biblegateway.com/ )
Notice the expression "And there was evening, and there was morning - the [first|second] day". I think that gives a very strong indication that while the Hebrew word 'day' might *also* validly be interpreted as 'era', that is not the meaning the author is using, but rather an earth day (why else mention evening and morning?). To interpret it otherwise, I think, is not justified by the language of the text.
I've just come to believe that the Genesis account is not a literal account of creation. I still believe in God, and Christianity, but I accept that you cannot interpret Genesis Ch. 1 & 2 literally. Maybe it's allegory, but it's not historical.
I understand where you're coming from, but protocol-level features should not be implemented by a single vendor. They should have something akin to the W3C or IETF, where they work together on protocol-level stuff. Actually, their protocol could even have 'negotiation' built into it where, basically, you can embed other protocols inside the main IM protocol. So, when you connect to the IM service through some server, you send a list of supported 'protocols' (file transfer, voice chat, voice conference, video chat, shared whiteboard, shared desktop, shared browsing, whatever) to the server, which relays that info on to the other services' servers when you try to connect to a remote user. Then, our clients can use whatever 'protocols' are supported by both clients - the servers don't even really have to necessarily know anything about the data passing from client to client.
Generally, the IM servers, I believe, maintain presence info they receive from the client, but other than that, they basically just proxy data from one client to another, right? In the particular case of IM's, they can store-and-forward if a user is not currently available.
Think about web browsers - they all basically implement the same standards (well, some to a greater extent than others), but they still compete on features - they just, mostly, don't compete on 'protocol level' features. Instead they compete on things like tabbed browsing (or other UI enhancements), or integration with things like del.icio.us, facebook, myspace, etc, or other additional features that 'surround' the protocol.
The problem with the mentality that you shouldn't get paid next year for the work you did this year is that it can take *years* of research to develop something. I was just reading a write-up posted on the wall in my University's Physics building today, about how it took Edison and his assistants 18 *years* of labor every day to perfect the Alkaline Battery. When he started, while the basic concept of a battery had been around for awhile, he had to do a ton of basic materials science / chemistry research, then further engineering efforts once he found suitable materials, to find the best physical design for the battery. 18 years. Granted, not every 'invention' takes 18 years, but you need to keep in mind, when discussing patents, that the patent system needs to take into account that it could take a very long time to recoup the investment someone makes in an invention.
Another example of this is pharmaceutical patents. It can take years of research to develop a candidate for a new drug, then years of safety and efficacy testing before it receives FDA approval. All that makes it *very* expensive to bring a new drug to market. I think we can all see that, at least some drugs, have improved human health greatly, and so we should give the companies doing that R&D a chance to make back their money, and it very well might take years to make back the money.
I mean, if you did 10 or 18 years of R&D to create a new invention, it might easily take you 20 or 30 years to make back the money you invested in that (especially when you consider that, after spending all that time/money on R&D, you know have to spend a ton more money for manufacturing/distribution/marketting, and it just might take a few years for your product to be 'accepted' in the marketplace to the point where it begins to make any money at all.
I feel no pity for these services (I don't call them 'networks', because they aren't networks; the internet is the network, they are merely services on the network). They are their own worst enemy. They all had dreams of locking in users and becoming 'ma bell', as it were, in the IM world. Instead, they created their own problem. . .
With three competing services where you cannot send and receive IM's, files, chats, etc with users of the other services, they created a situation where most users have multiple IM accounts on multiple services. So, now, since 3 of my friends use Yahoo, and some of my co-workers use MSN, and other people I communicate with use Google Talk, I ended up with 4 different IM service accounts. Since I have the accounts, there's no barrier at all between me switching back and forth between them. Plus, I have an incentive to find a third-party IM client which will allow me to use all the services transparently. This situation leads to actually *less* lock-in than if they interoperated.
If the services had agreed to interoperate long ago, say in the late 90's, then once a user used one service, they would have little reason to go join another service. Without an incentive to have multiple IM accounts, there's little incentive to go find third-party IM clients (well, except for using the IM services on platforms not supported by the 'official' client, such as Linux, Mac, BSD, Solaris).
I suspect that the main reason for the popularity of third-party clients like Trillian, Pidgin, etc has mostly to do with being able to use multiple services with one client. Some of it, of course, does go to, e.g. Linux users wanting to IM and the main clients providing no support, or people who just prefer to use a Free Software program.
But, if we look at the vast majority of the market, if AIM, Yahoo, and MSN interoperated, they would be able to get a relatively stable set of users who would be using the 'official' client with the ads, and thus a pretty secure revenue stream.
But, since they didn't interoperate, they created a situation where their services have, I think, LESS VALUE from the company's perspective. They only realize this, though, when they start losing market share.
My #1 Rule of business: Don't push your customers into your competitors' arms.
Hey,
Thanks for the link to the discussion on Rosenlaw. That's a great link. I'm not sure I *completely* agree with Rosen - the one point where I think he might lose the argument is that statically-linked binaries are not derivatives. I understand where he's coming from - he's trying to find the simplest definition of derivative work.
But the problem is, a statically linked binary *does* contain your original work in part or in whole. In my earlier post, I put forth a statement of principle that, where there is no copying, there can be no copyright infringement. I think most reasonable people can say that the converse of that holds as well - where there is copying (without permission), there is copyright infringement.
Although, I suppose possibly what Rosen is getting at is that it would be possible for me to ship the original static library source code, and so fulfil the obligations of the GPL wrt providing access to the source code for the original work, and that my binary is not a derivative work. But, I think that still may be a weak argument.
Man, I don't know. It does get rather complicated. I mean if I dynamically link, and distribute the GPL.so and source code in the same zip file, CD, or installer as my seperate program, does that make the zip file, CD, or installer a derivative work? I know Linus has talked about that issue before, which he refers to as 'mere aggregation', which I believe is a reference to the GPL which explicitely allows mere aggregation. Where do you draw the line between aggregation and derivation? Maybe Rosen's suggestion is the simplest way to resolve the question, but it makes the GPL very weak, as a result.
But, we can't let the GPL be too strong, either. I really think these issues of loading proprietary drivers with GPL wrappers like NDISWrapper really expose the absurdity of the 'dynamic linking violates the GPL' idea, too.
I think almost all of these types of problems come down to the fact that, for copyright law with respect to computer software, the most *sane* approach is that linking does not create a derivative work, and therefor license terms cannot be applied to other works which link to the licensed work. NOTE: I am not a lawyer, this is not a statement of fact regarding current law, this is a statement of personal opinion. In otherwords, my opinion is that, if my view of copyright were adopted, there would be no GPL, only the LGPL. That is to say, since the only difference between the GPL and LGPL is the linking clause, and since I do not believe copyright should extend to other linked works, the GPL 'decays' to become the same thing as the LGPL.
Let me state it this way: It is my understanding that copyright law, currently, has no notion of 'linking'. Copyright covers copying material, or creating derivative works (such as translations, modified versions, etc). I don't know the full definition of derived work (I've tried to research it before, and it appears to get a bit complicated), but it is my understanding that the basic principle of a derived work is that it contains all or part of the work from which it is derived. For example, a translation is a derived work because, while all the words may be literally different, being in a different language, the works still essentially contains all the ideas and expressions from the original work.
It's also my understanding that copyright does not govern what you can and cannot do with with copyrighted work, except to the extent that you cannot copy, distribute, or perform for other people, the copyrighted work or distribute derivatives without permission (I think you can create derivatives without permission, even, you just can't distribute/copy/perform that derivative). So, copyright doesn't give me the power to say you can't 'link' your work with mine, unless such 'linking' creates a derivative and you then subsequently distribute/copy/perform that derivative work (so even if a derivative is created on the on the end-user computer, which I believe is not the case, I don't think copyright law would prohibit that).
The thing about software which dynamically links other software is, the two software works are fundamentally almost completely separate works, if I understand dynamic linking correctly. They are distributed separately (or at least, *can be* distributed separately), they are loaded into memory separately, and the works are never really combined, even in computer memory, I believe. Is that not correct? My understanding of 'dynamic linking' is that the computer is running code in one segment of memory, and encounters an instructions which just causes it to jump to another part of memory and start executing what's there, and when finished executing the linked function, to return to the original memory location + 1. If that is, in fact, the case, then it's rather like a note in a book which says, "Go read such-and-such magazine article, then return to this page and continue reading". Even if my book makes *no sense* unless you read the article I put the note in for, my book is still not a derivative, because it contains no copy of the magazine article. (I mention that last part because I've read where Linus, and some other people, make the claim that the test for derivative work should be whether software can run without the linked software - I personally think that is an irrelevant fact, because where there is no copying, there can be no violation of copyright).
Anyhow, I just ultimately believe that all this stuff about restricting what symbols can and can't be used by non-GPL software is just a mess, and not reasonable. I think the idea that because one work links another work, that the author of the linked work gets some kind of control over the second work is not reasonable. Separate works should have separate copyrights which do not touch each other AT ALL.
Now, it's my understanding that all this linking stuff vis-a-vis the GPL has never
I know, I know, don't feed the trolls. . . but he's so cuuuuuutte.
Judge Kimball already found that there was never any transfer of copyright. SCO's copyright registration was fraudulent (well, I suppose you could make the argument that it isn't fraud if they really *believed* they owned the copyright, but nevertheless, it's still invalid). It's already been decided that SCO does not own Unix copyrights or trademarks (the trademark issue was not decided in court, I do not believe, but by the US Patent and Trademark Office, I believe, which said that Unix was already a trademark owned by the Open Group [which anyone could have told SCO, but they wouldn't listen, of course]).
Basically, SCO owns no part of Unix.
There's also the *small* problem that they've never actually demonstrated any infringement by Linux, even if they *did* own Unix. Which they don't.
This whole Bankruptcy charade, as far as I can tell, has mostly been about delaying the inevitable, so that SCO's execs and board of director could continue to get salaries and outrageous bonuses for as long as possible, bleeding the company dry and leaving a worthless, dessicated carcass for Novell, IBM, Red Hat, and Autozone to fight over.
I know the idea of multicast has been around for a long time. Does anyone actually implement it? As far as I can tell, every stream I've ever watched has been unicast (although, I'm not sure how I'd know if it was multicast or not?).
I mean, I like the idea - only send the data through a backbone link once and let the router propagate copies to multiple local recipients - at least, I think that's the idea, right? Seems way more efficient than P2P which, while it will probably improve over-all speeds (and by extension, quality of service), probably also increases bandwidth use a lot too (because now, instead of my just receiving the stream, I'm also re-transmitting it to however many peers).
I've wondered about this before. Perhaps server software vendors need to come up with a better default password scheme than just a blank password, or even a static, generic password like 'admin', or 'linksys'. Something where a unique password is generated for every machine during installation, displayed to the user, then saved to a text document on their desktop or a standard 'repository' for the passwords (something like KeePass, Apple's keychain, etc, where you provide a master password to lookup the current password).
Something. I'm just brainstorming here, so I'm sure someone could come up with something that is better in the particulars, but the principal, I think, is good - don't use a known default password that is the same for every installation of a server product. That will shut down a heck of a lot of problems like this.
Man, I tried to read the article, but I just couldn't get past how aweful the CIO website is. It's like a case study on how NOT to design a website. Articles that are broken into 10 pages, with each 'page' being 2-3 paragraphs. Pages where *90 percent* of the page is NOT THE ARTICLE but crap surrounding the article. Page design that uses absolute layouts that cause about 40 percent of the available space on my widescreen display to be filled with empty nothingness.
The Board of Directors at CIO need to fire their Bad CIO and get one who can bring in a team that'll make their website not suck.
I gotta agree here. I'm very puzzled why Via is the only CPU maker that sees the value in adding hardware acceleration for crypto into their CPUs. On the mobile side of things, pretty much every business and government organization is mandating encryption on laptops. On the Server side of things, a lot of network communication is being encrypted, and it wouldn't surprise me if companies have decided there is value in encrypting data even in a 'secure' data center. Plus, there's stuff like encrypting data to backup tapes. On the desktop side of things, again a lot of network communications are being encrypted.
It just makes *so much* sense to put some crypto hardware on CPU's. Yet via has a corner on that market. So, without the support in hardware, that means that my laptop, server, or desktop is going to run just a little bit slower. Sure, most CPU's are fast enough to do software-based encryption pretty fast these day, but it would still be better to do it with optimized hardware. (And, I bet the optimized crypto hardware uses less power to do it than doing it in software on the general purpose CPU).
I would say your understanding of the Constitution is slightly flawed, actually. It's true that the Constitution clearly sets up a system of checks and balances, but the Legislature is still has ultimate primacy (within the branches of the Federal government - though even its power isn't ultimate, as I'll mention again in a moment).
The Legislature can pass bills, and the Executive Branch can accept the bills, and they become law, or the executive can veto them. But that isn't the end of the story. Congress can over-rule an Executive Veto and then the bill becomes law and the Executive Branch is bound by it (despite the legal theories of the Bush Administration that the Executive Branch has the right to just ignore laws it doesn't like). Congress also has the power to Impeach the President, if it so chooses, and, I think, Impeach Justices too, doesn't it?
It's true that the Judiciary can rule that a law is Unconstitutional. But, at that point, the Legislature can propose an Amendment - and this is where, of course, the Legislature's power ultimately gets checked - because the Legislature cannot pass an amendment without ratification from the States - but I still say with respect to the other two branches, the Legislature has primacy. Particularly with respect to the Executive Branch, which exists, primarily, to actually enact the laws and decrees of the Legislature. That's long been my understanding of how things are *supposed* to work, according to the Constitution. Of course, in reality, they may not always work that way.
If the cost of the blank BR media ever comes down to a reasonable level (2 dollars or less), it *might* make sense to setup a side-business doing this (if it's legal - not sure how copyright might interfere with this idea). That is, as most people are pointing out, it doesn't make sense, economically, for everyone in the world who has HD-DVD's to buy all the gear to do this.
However, if it's legal, it might make sense as the neighborhood geek to offer a service where people drop off their disc and $5 to cover the blank media and to give you a modest profit on the service, and they pick up the original disc and the blu-ray copy the next day. Again, blank media is way too expensive to make this worth while right now. Or places like Walmart, camera shops, etc could offer this as a service (again, going on the economies of scale that it doesn't make sense for individuals to buy all the gear, but walmart could have one automated station in their photo department (similar to those Kodak digital printer stations) that you pop the hd-dvd into and out pops a blu-ray disc 10 or 20 minutes later.
But, I suspect there's not enough people out there who even have HD-DVD discs to make this a worthwhile market for a company as big as Walmart.
Why the heck would I bother to convert the discs anyway? If I've got the hardware to watch the disc. . . why not just watch it in the native format? I mean, I guess if you have irreplaceable home videos (or you are an independent media producer) which are burned to an HD-DVD disc, and those are the *only* remaining extant copies of the video, you might do something like this.
But for most users, why bother converting? Just keep watching it on your current player.
In high school, back in the 90's, as I watched politics, I made a fundamental observation about politics. You have third party candidates and independent politicians try to make a run for the Presidency every couple of election cycles, and they never get anywhere. Why? Because they *have no base of support*. Even if the third party/independent candidate did manage to win the presidency, it would be, to a certain extent, meaningless, because the other parties would still control Congress, and a President can't do much without congress (which is as it ought to be; the Constitution sets out a government where the parliament is the primary branch, and the executive branch is fundamentally supposed to be the servant of Congress, carrying out the will of the People).
You won't overcome the republicans or democrats in one big presidential election. Never gonna happen. If you want to make any progress, you will have to build from the bottom up. Start getting candidates into local and state positions, and build on a track record of good governance at the local and state level to leverage your party into the House and the Senate. Once you have enough support in the House and Senate (at least 1/3rd of each), and are nationally known as a party people like and trust, then you are in an excellent position to run a Presidential candidate as a true, meaningful alternative to the two establisment parties.
People like to talk a lot about changing politics, changing congress. But how? Things like McCain-Feingold are at best weak protections. If someone wants to get around them, there is always a way. From 'issue ads' paid for by PACs/Lobbyists to other even harder to track things.
For example, there is a 'donation cap' of $2300 per person for individual contributions to a campaign or party, I believe. I could think of ways to get around such a donation cap. Most people don't have $2300 to give to political campaigns or parties. So, if someone 'arranges' for the people without the money to get the money to give to the favored candidate, it could be used to funnel a lot of money from one person/corporation to the candidate. I mean, there's nothing stopping me from giving $2300 buck to the campaign, then giving you, my close friend, who just so happens to support the same candidate, a gift of $2300, or a job with a 'signing bonus' of $2300.
Also, besides human ingenuity at getting around any type of rule/law, there is the simple, fundamental fact that corporations are made up of people. Boards of directors, executives, employees. Those people have free speach rights, and they have money. You will never, ever, ever be able to eliminate the influence of people with money and power from politics. It cannot be done. The influence of the rich and powerful on politics goes back far beyond the American Revolution and the founding of the United States. The definition of 'powerful' is that you have influence that you can wield.
The best you can hope to do is either convince the people with money and power that it is in their so-called 'enlightened self-interest' to use their influence and powern in such a way that benefits everyone, and not just themeselves and their allies, or else try to accumulate more power, influence, and money than they do.
Might may not make Right, but Right without power is meaningless and useless. Don't get me wrong, this post is not a defense of the way government is currently being run. I'm disgusted by the way Republican majority governments under Reagan and Bush have expanded the Federal Governments spending outrageously, expand earmarks outrageously, and are generally running the country bankrupt. I'm disappointed with the 'leadership' of a government which has gotten us into an occupation which wasn't necessary, under false pretenses, ticking off the rest of the world, and dropping the ball in Afghanistan, a country we absolutly needed to invade and remove the current government from power because it was clearly aiding, abetting, and providing safe harbor for the enemies of the United States who had actively commited crimes against us. By the way the government is systematically attacking our constitutional freedoms and privacy, justifying torture on a scale and with a lack of transparency or accountability that is horrifying to me as a us Citizen. By the way they have been continuousy expanding patents and copyrights, in the name of trying to protect the economy, but which is most likely having the opposite effect.
But, it's just a statement of plain truth: If you want to change government, you must influence the people around you, and it certainly helps to become famous, or run a large company. So go out and start your own company, or your own political group or blog or news organization and start building your power and accumulating wealth. Find friends who can give you $2300 (if you don't have it yourself) to donate to campaigns and causes you believe in, and donate it.
"I suppose you could hand out free copies of the Mona Lisa to everyone and everything would be OK, but for some reason that seems like a ridiculous idea to people."
I get your point, but that's a bad example. The Mona Lisa was painted in the 16th century, and has been in the Public Domain for a very long time. Want to print up a bunch of copies of Mona Lisa and hand them out? Knock yourself out. That doesn't seem such a ridiculous idea to me. . .
That said, people who think that there should be *no* copyright are, frankly, nutjobs. People who think copyrights should be 90 or 100 years are also nutjobs. Copyright for *limited terms*, such as 10 or maybe 20 years, seem perfectly reasonable. People *should* have a right to control the copying of their works for a limited time. This is Slashdot - I'm sure many people here believe quite strongly in the GPL. If there were no copyright on 'easily copyable' media such as music, videos, and softare, then there would be no GPL. If some company wanted to rip off your computer program, create a derivative, and only give people binary copies - which, by the way, had to be unlocked with some kind of DRM system which forced you to pay for a license, then reported demographic data about you back to the company so they could sell it to spammers, the GPL would not be able to force you to get the company to release the un-drm'ed source code.
I don't have access to the main journal article, so it's possible the answer is in there, but there are potentially a lot of variables in 'cell phone' use. The article kind of hints at that in the following:
Sadetzki says that the Israelis were early cell phone adopters and heavy users of the technology, a tendency that suggests higher radio frequency exposure than other populations. Her study found an increased risk of cancer for frequent cell phone users in rural areas, which may be attributable to the increased radiation output required when phones try to communicate in areas with fewer antennas.[emph. added] She believes that frequent mobile phone users and children face the largest increased risk of health effects.
I would be curious if anyone has done a larger break-down of the 'risk' seen in this study, to find out if users were using older analogue phones, or newer digital, spread-spectrum phones (which, I believe, typically run at much lower power levels). What frequencies do the phones run at? (It might be, I dunno, that different mobile phone networks around the world use different frequencies, and there might be a correlation to specific frequencies used and an increase in cancer). I would also be curious to see if anyone is able to repeat this finding in other populations outside of Israel? Maybe the increased risk is really something in the air or water? Hard to say sometimes. . .
Honestly though, if it were me, and I were living in Israel, I think there are risks I'd be more worried about than my cell phone. . . like Hezbollah missiles, Palestinian suicide bombers, another war erupting with the neighboring countries, etc. . .
I sure wish that I could get payed for work I did 95 years ago. . . Oh, wait, I'm only 30 years old.:-p
Still, where does this notion come from that someone deserves to be paid for their entire life for work they did 30, 40, or 50 years ago? Heck, I don't get paid for work I did 3 weeks ago. . . *grin*. I got to go with the people that say that Copyright should be limited to 10 or 20 years at most.
I understand that copyright is not quite like normal employment. For example, a company might employ hundreds of programmers for several years to create a program. Can't expect them to re-coup that investment and make a profit in 1 day (to take things to an extreme). But, if you haven't made a profit in ten or twenty years, guess what. . you never will.
It's truly unreasonable to expect that companies or people should get paid for work they did decades ago.
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Ok, let me see if I understand this right. . .
People were upset that Zap2It wasn't giving free listings (and they'd rather not pay for the pay service), so they setup another *pay* service as an alternative? Why not just pay for Zap2It? Were they asking for an outrageous fee for the listings?
I mean, I could see it being reasonable to pay a small monthly fee for listings - I mean, it's gotta cost some money to assemble the listing data, and then the cost of running servers and Internet connections to publish those listings. Why create a non-free competitor to Zap2It, instead of just using Zap2It?
The comment to which you replied, and the grandparent, are not discussing the thermoelectric generators. They are instead discussing the breeder reactors which you need in order to process Uranium into Plutonium to create the fuel (plutonium) for the thermoelectric generators. It's like the difference between an oil refinery and an internal combustion engine - they are discussing the 'refinery', while you are discussing the engine.
I know that he's saying that even though the OS exists, it just isn't that important anymore. I'm just saying that, I do not believe that the OS is NOT important simply because a sub-set of the applications a user might want to use are now accessible through a web browser. The point of my post is that there are a wide variety of applications that do not work well with the 'Web 2.0' model of using web browsers with AJAX to implement the user interface. So, Web 2.0 does not make the OS irrelevant (you could only make that claim if 100% of applications could be implemented in a web browser).
So, for example, if you need to use SolidWorks (which is a very sophisticated, powerful CAD program), you must use Windows, because it is a Windows only application (well. . . it might run under Wine/CrossOver, possibly, I'm not sure).
But, I'd sure like the OS to become less relevant. Now that computers have gotten faster/more memory, and Java has matured somewhat, it might actually live up to the promise, once made, of applications that run on any OS which has a JVM. Or rather, it does live up to that promise, largely, but many developers still don't use Java. I'm not sure, Java might still be unsuitable for something like SolidWorks, or 3D games, where you want the absolute maximum performance you can possibly squeeze out of the hardware. But, Java at least opens the door for a wider array of applications than Web 2.0 does.
What, exactly, would a Web 2.0 3D solid-modeling CAD program be? Or Web 2.0 3D games? Web 2.0 Medical imaging systems?
People who say operating systems are irrelevant because of the web immediately go into the "non-credible tech pundit" bin for me, because they've already shown, by that statement, that they *don't get it*. There are *many* applications we use computers for, which would not be good fits for the "Web 2.0" model. Sure, basic data storage and retrieval apps (documents, databases) can be made "Web 2.0" applications. But what is a Web 2.0 media player (the closest you get is something like Flash or Silverlight/Moonlight, and those are basically native Apps that display their output embedded in the browser window).
I, a few years ago, after trying to get a broad overview of different disciplines of science, and taking various science courses, have come to pretty much accept the 'old universe' view, because it's not just *one* science, it's evidence from almost all the different disciplines of science which draw a picture which can *only* be explained by an old universe. I mention that, at the start, so that people understand that my response is not a defense of the young universe belief.
But, that said, while people like to make the claim, as the parent does, that when the Bible talks about 7 days, it means 7 eras of vast amounts of time, I think you are missing one basic thing about the text of the Bible. It doesn't just say 7 days; in the account it has. . .
'3 And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning--the first day.
6 And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." 7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the expanse "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning--the second day.'
(Quotation from Genesis chapter 1, New International Version, Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society; quote retrieved from http://www.biblegateway.com/ )
Notice the expression "And there was evening, and there was morning - the [first|second] day". I think that gives a very strong indication that while the Hebrew word 'day' might *also* validly be interpreted as 'era', that is not the meaning the author is using, but rather an earth day (why else mention evening and morning?). To interpret it otherwise, I think, is not justified by the language of the text.
I've just come to believe that the Genesis account is not a literal account of creation. I still believe in God, and Christianity, but I accept that you cannot interpret Genesis Ch. 1 & 2 literally. Maybe it's allegory, but it's not historical.
I understand where you're coming from, but protocol-level features should not be implemented by a single vendor. They should have something akin to the W3C or IETF, where they work together on protocol-level stuff. Actually, their protocol could even have 'negotiation' built into it where, basically, you can embed other protocols inside the main IM protocol. So, when you connect to the IM service through some server, you send a list of supported 'protocols' (file transfer, voice chat, voice conference, video chat, shared whiteboard, shared desktop, shared browsing, whatever) to the server, which relays that info on to the other services' servers when you try to connect to a remote user. Then, our clients can use whatever 'protocols' are supported by both clients - the servers don't even really have to necessarily know anything about the data passing from client to client.
Generally, the IM servers, I believe, maintain presence info they receive from the client, but other than that, they basically just proxy data from one client to another, right? In the particular case of IM's, they can store-and-forward if a user is not currently available.
Think about web browsers - they all basically implement the same standards (well, some to a greater extent than others), but they still compete on features - they just, mostly, don't compete on 'protocol level' features. Instead they compete on things like tabbed browsing (or other UI enhancements), or integration with things like del.icio.us, facebook, myspace, etc, or other additional features that 'surround' the protocol.
The problem with the mentality that you shouldn't get paid next year for the work you did this year is that it can take *years* of research to develop something. I was just reading a write-up posted on the wall in my University's Physics building today, about how it took Edison and his assistants 18 *years* of labor every day to perfect the Alkaline Battery. When he started, while the basic concept of a battery had been around for awhile, he had to do a ton of basic materials science / chemistry research, then further engineering efforts once he found suitable materials, to find the best physical design for the battery. 18 years. Granted, not every 'invention' takes 18 years, but you need to keep in mind, when discussing patents, that the patent system needs to take into account that it could take a very long time to recoup the investment someone makes in an invention.
Another example of this is pharmaceutical patents. It can take years of research to develop a candidate for a new drug, then years of safety and efficacy testing before it receives FDA approval. All that makes it *very* expensive to bring a new drug to market. I think we can all see that, at least some drugs, have improved human health greatly, and so we should give the companies doing that R&D a chance to make back their money, and it very well might take years to make back the money.
I mean, if you did 10 or 18 years of R&D to create a new invention, it might easily take you 20 or 30 years to make back the money you invested in that (especially when you consider that, after spending all that time/money on R&D, you know have to spend a ton more money for manufacturing/distribution/marketting, and it just might take a few years for your product to be 'accepted' in the marketplace to the point where it begins to make any money at all.
I feel no pity for these services (I don't call them 'networks', because they aren't networks; the internet is the network, they are merely services on the network). They are their own worst enemy. They all had dreams of locking in users and becoming 'ma bell', as it were, in the IM world. Instead, they created their own problem. . .
With three competing services where you cannot send and receive IM's, files, chats, etc with users of the other services, they created a situation where most users have multiple IM accounts on multiple services. So, now, since 3 of my friends use Yahoo, and some of my co-workers use MSN, and other people I communicate with use Google Talk, I ended up with 4 different IM service accounts. Since I have the accounts, there's no barrier at all between me switching back and forth between them. Plus, I have an incentive to find a third-party IM client which will allow me to use all the services transparently. This situation leads to actually *less* lock-in than if they interoperated.
If the services had agreed to interoperate long ago, say in the late 90's, then once a user used one service, they would have little reason to go join another service. Without an incentive to have multiple IM accounts, there's little incentive to go find third-party IM clients (well, except for using the IM services on platforms not supported by the 'official' client, such as Linux, Mac, BSD, Solaris).
I suspect that the main reason for the popularity of third-party clients like Trillian, Pidgin, etc has mostly to do with being able to use multiple services with one client. Some of it, of course, does go to, e.g. Linux users wanting to IM and the main clients providing no support, or people who just prefer to use a Free Software program.
But, if we look at the vast majority of the market, if AIM, Yahoo, and MSN interoperated, they would be able to get a relatively stable set of users who would be using the 'official' client with the ads, and thus a pretty secure revenue stream.
But, since they didn't interoperate, they created a situation where their services have, I think, LESS VALUE from the company's perspective. They only realize this, though, when they start losing market share.
My #1 Rule of business: Don't push your customers into your competitors' arms.
Hey,
.so and source code in the same zip file, CD, or installer as my seperate program, does that make the zip file, CD, or installer a derivative work? I know Linus has talked about that issue before, which he refers to as 'mere aggregation', which I believe is a reference to the GPL which explicitely allows mere aggregation. Where do you draw the line between aggregation and derivation? Maybe Rosen's suggestion is the simplest way to resolve the question, but it makes the GPL very weak, as a result.
Thanks for the link to the discussion on Rosenlaw. That's a great link. I'm not sure I *completely* agree with Rosen - the one point where I think he might lose the argument is that statically-linked binaries are not derivatives. I understand where he's coming from - he's trying to find the simplest definition of derivative work.
But the problem is, a statically linked binary *does* contain your original work in part or in whole. In my earlier post, I put forth a statement of principle that, where there is no copying, there can be no copyright infringement. I think most reasonable people can say that the converse of that holds as well - where there is copying (without permission), there is copyright infringement.
Although, I suppose possibly what Rosen is getting at is that it would be possible for me to ship the original static library source code, and so fulfil the obligations of the GPL wrt providing access to the source code for the original work, and that my binary is not a derivative work. But, I think that still may be a weak argument.
Man, I don't know. It does get rather complicated. I mean if I dynamically link, and distribute the GPL
But, we can't let the GPL be too strong, either. I really think these issues of loading proprietary drivers with GPL wrappers like NDISWrapper really expose the absurdity of the 'dynamic linking violates the GPL' idea, too.
I'm not sure, but when it comes to names, I don't think copyright law applies, but instead, trademark / service mark law.
I think almost all of these types of problems come down to the fact that, for copyright law with respect to computer software, the most *sane* approach is that linking does not create a derivative work, and therefor license terms cannot be applied to other works which link to the licensed work. NOTE: I am not a lawyer, this is not a statement of fact regarding current law, this is a statement of personal opinion. In otherwords, my opinion is that, if my view of copyright were adopted, there would be no GPL, only the LGPL. That is to say, since the only difference between the GPL and LGPL is the linking clause, and since I do not believe copyright should extend to other linked works, the GPL 'decays' to become the same thing as the LGPL.
Let me state it this way: It is my understanding that copyright law, currently, has no notion of 'linking'. Copyright covers copying material, or creating derivative works (such as translations, modified versions, etc). I don't know the full definition of derived work (I've tried to research it before, and it appears to get a bit complicated), but it is my understanding that the basic principle of a derived work is that it contains all or part of the work from which it is derived. For example, a translation is a derived work because, while all the words may be literally different, being in a different language, the works still essentially contains all the ideas and expressions from the original work.
It's also my understanding that copyright does not govern what you can and cannot do with with copyrighted work, except to the extent that you cannot copy, distribute, or perform for other people, the copyrighted work or distribute derivatives without permission (I think you can create derivatives without permission, even, you just can't distribute/copy/perform that derivative). So, copyright doesn't give me the power to say you can't 'link' your work with mine, unless such 'linking' creates a derivative and you then subsequently distribute/copy/perform that derivative work (so even if a derivative is created on the on the end-user computer, which I believe is not the case, I don't think copyright law would prohibit that).
The thing about software which dynamically links other software is, the two software works are fundamentally almost completely separate works, if I understand dynamic linking correctly. They are distributed separately (or at least, *can be* distributed separately), they are loaded into memory separately, and the works are never really combined, even in computer memory, I believe. Is that not correct? My understanding of 'dynamic linking' is that the computer is running code in one segment of memory, and encounters an instructions which just causes it to jump to another part of memory and start executing what's there, and when finished executing the linked function, to return to the original memory location + 1. If that is, in fact, the case, then it's rather like a note in a book which says, "Go read such-and-such magazine article, then return to this page and continue reading". Even if my book makes *no sense* unless you read the article I put the note in for, my book is still not a derivative, because it contains no copy of the magazine article. (I mention that last part because I've read where Linus, and some other people, make the claim that the test for derivative work should be whether software can run without the linked software - I personally think that is an irrelevant fact, because where there is no copying, there can be no violation of copyright).
Anyhow, I just ultimately believe that all this stuff about restricting what symbols can and can't be used by non-GPL software is just a mess, and not reasonable. I think the idea that because one work links another work, that the author of the linked work gets some kind of control over the second work is not reasonable. Separate works should have separate copyrights which do not touch each other AT ALL.
Now, it's my understanding that all this linking stuff vis-a-vis the GPL has never
I know, I know, don't feed the trolls. . . but he's so cuuuuuutte.
Judge Kimball already found that there was never any transfer of copyright. SCO's copyright registration was fraudulent (well, I suppose you could make the argument that it isn't fraud if they really *believed* they owned the copyright, but nevertheless, it's still invalid). It's already been decided that SCO does not own Unix copyrights or trademarks (the trademark issue was not decided in court, I do not believe, but by the US Patent and Trademark Office, I believe, which said that Unix was already a trademark owned by the Open Group [which anyone could have told SCO, but they wouldn't listen, of course]).
Basically, SCO owns no part of Unix.
There's also the *small* problem that they've never actually demonstrated any infringement by Linux, even if they *did* own Unix. Which they don't.
This whole Bankruptcy charade, as far as I can tell, has mostly been about delaying the inevitable, so that SCO's execs and board of director could continue to get salaries and outrageous bonuses for as long as possible, bleeding the company dry and leaving a worthless, dessicated carcass for Novell, IBM, Red Hat, and Autozone to fight over.
I know the idea of multicast has been around for a long time. Does anyone actually implement it? As far as I can tell, every stream I've ever watched has been unicast (although, I'm not sure how I'd know if it was multicast or not?).
I mean, I like the idea - only send the data through a backbone link once and let the router propagate copies to multiple local recipients - at least, I think that's the idea, right? Seems way more efficient than P2P which, while it will probably improve over-all speeds (and by extension, quality of service), probably also increases bandwidth use a lot too (because now, instead of my just receiving the stream, I'm also re-transmitting it to however many peers).
I've wondered about this before. Perhaps server software vendors need to come up with a better default password scheme than just a blank password, or even a static, generic password like 'admin', or 'linksys'. Something where a unique password is generated for every machine during installation, displayed to the user, then saved to a text document on their desktop or a standard 'repository' for the passwords (something like KeePass, Apple's keychain, etc, where you provide a master password to lookup the current password).
Something. I'm just brainstorming here, so I'm sure someone could come up with something that is better in the particulars, but the principal, I think, is good - don't use a known default password that is the same for every installation of a server product. That will shut down a heck of a lot of problems like this.
Man, I tried to read the article, but I just couldn't get past how aweful the CIO website is. It's like a case study on how NOT to design a website. Articles that are broken into 10 pages, with each 'page' being 2-3 paragraphs. Pages where *90 percent* of the page is NOT THE ARTICLE but crap surrounding the article. Page design that uses absolute layouts that cause about 40 percent of the available space on my widescreen display to be filled with empty nothingness.
The Board of Directors at CIO need to fire their Bad CIO and get one who can bring in a team that'll make their website not suck.
I gotta agree here. I'm very puzzled why Via is the only CPU maker that sees the value in adding hardware acceleration for crypto into their CPUs. On the mobile side of things, pretty much every business and government organization is mandating encryption on laptops. On the Server side of things, a lot of network communication is being encrypted, and it wouldn't surprise me if companies have decided there is value in encrypting data even in a 'secure' data center. Plus, there's stuff like encrypting data to backup tapes. On the desktop side of things, again a lot of network communications are being encrypted.
It just makes *so much* sense to put some crypto hardware on CPU's. Yet via has a corner on that market. So, without the support in hardware, that means that my laptop, server, or desktop is going to run just a little bit slower. Sure, most CPU's are fast enough to do software-based encryption pretty fast these day, but it would still be better to do it with optimized hardware. (And, I bet the optimized crypto hardware uses less power to do it than doing it in software on the general purpose CPU).
I would say your understanding of the Constitution is slightly flawed, actually. It's true that the Constitution clearly sets up a system of checks and balances, but the Legislature is still has ultimate primacy (within the branches of the Federal government - though even its power isn't ultimate, as I'll mention again in a moment).
The Legislature can pass bills, and the Executive Branch can accept the bills, and they become law, or the executive can veto them. But that isn't the end of the story. Congress can over-rule an Executive Veto and then the bill becomes law and the Executive Branch is bound by it (despite the legal theories of the Bush Administration that the Executive Branch has the right to just ignore laws it doesn't like). Congress also has the power to Impeach the President, if it so chooses, and, I think, Impeach Justices too, doesn't it?
It's true that the Judiciary can rule that a law is Unconstitutional. But, at that point, the Legislature can propose an Amendment - and this is where, of course, the Legislature's power ultimately gets checked - because the Legislature cannot pass an amendment without ratification from the States - but I still say with respect to the other two branches, the Legislature has primacy. Particularly with respect to the Executive Branch, which exists, primarily, to actually enact the laws and decrees of the Legislature. That's long been my understanding of how things are *supposed* to work, according to the Constitution. Of course, in reality, they may not always work that way.
If the cost of the blank BR media ever comes down to a reasonable level (2 dollars or less), it *might* make sense to setup a side-business doing this (if it's legal - not sure how copyright might interfere with this idea). That is, as most people are pointing out, it doesn't make sense, economically, for everyone in the world who has HD-DVD's to buy all the gear to do this.
However, if it's legal, it might make sense as the neighborhood geek to offer a service where people drop off their disc and $5 to cover the blank media and to give you a modest profit on the service, and they pick up the original disc and the blu-ray copy the next day. Again, blank media is way too expensive to make this worth while right now. Or places like Walmart, camera shops, etc could offer this as a service (again, going on the economies of scale that it doesn't make sense for individuals to buy all the gear, but walmart could have one automated station in their photo department (similar to those Kodak digital printer stations) that you pop the hd-dvd into and out pops a blu-ray disc 10 or 20 minutes later.
But, I suspect there's not enough people out there who even have HD-DVD discs to make this a worthwhile market for a company as big as Walmart.
Why the heck would I bother to convert the discs anyway? If I've got the hardware to watch the disc. . . why not just watch it in the native format? I mean, I guess if you have irreplaceable home videos (or you are an independent media producer) which are burned to an HD-DVD disc, and those are the *only* remaining extant copies of the video, you might do something like this.
But for most users, why bother converting? Just keep watching it on your current player.
In high school, back in the 90's, as I watched politics, I made a fundamental observation about politics. You have third party candidates and independent politicians try to make a run for the Presidency every couple of election cycles, and they never get anywhere. Why? Because they *have no base of support*. Even if the third party/independent candidate did manage to win the presidency, it would be, to a certain extent, meaningless, because the other parties would still control Congress, and a President can't do much without congress (which is as it ought to be; the Constitution sets out a government where the parliament is the primary branch, and the executive branch is fundamentally supposed to be the servant of Congress, carrying out the will of the People).
You won't overcome the republicans or democrats in one big presidential election. Never gonna happen. If you want to make any progress, you will have to build from the bottom up. Start getting candidates into local and state positions, and build on a track record of good governance at the local and state level to leverage your party into the House and the Senate. Once you have enough support in the House and Senate (at least 1/3rd of each), and are nationally known as a party people like and trust, then you are in an excellent position to run a Presidential candidate as a true, meaningful alternative to the two establisment parties.
Otherwise, your just a flash in the pan.
People like to talk a lot about changing politics, changing congress. But how? Things like McCain-Feingold are at best weak protections. If someone wants to get around them, there is always a way. From 'issue ads' paid for by PACs/Lobbyists to other even harder to track things.
For example, there is a 'donation cap' of $2300 per person for individual contributions to a campaign or party, I believe. I could think of ways to get around such a donation cap. Most people don't have $2300 to give to political campaigns or parties. So, if someone 'arranges' for the people without the money to get the money to give to the favored candidate, it could be used to funnel a lot of money from one person/corporation to the candidate. I mean, there's nothing stopping me from giving $2300 buck to the campaign, then giving you, my close friend, who just so happens to support the same candidate, a gift of $2300, or a job with a 'signing bonus' of $2300.
Also, besides human ingenuity at getting around any type of rule/law, there is the simple, fundamental fact that corporations are made up of people. Boards of directors, executives, employees. Those people have free speach rights, and they have money. You will never, ever, ever be able to eliminate the influence of people with money and power from politics. It cannot be done. The influence of the rich and powerful on politics goes back far beyond the American Revolution and the founding of the United States. The definition of 'powerful' is that you have influence that you can wield.
The best you can hope to do is either convince the people with money and power that it is in their so-called 'enlightened self-interest' to use their influence and powern in such a way that benefits everyone, and not just themeselves and their allies, or else try to accumulate more power, influence, and money than they do.
Might may not make Right, but Right without power is meaningless and useless. Don't get me wrong, this post is not a defense of the way government is currently being run. I'm disgusted by the way Republican majority governments under Reagan and Bush have expanded the Federal Governments spending outrageously, expand earmarks outrageously, and are generally running the country bankrupt. I'm disappointed with the 'leadership' of a government which has gotten us into an occupation which wasn't necessary, under false pretenses, ticking off the rest of the world, and dropping the ball in Afghanistan, a country we absolutly needed to invade and remove the current government from power because it was clearly aiding, abetting, and providing safe harbor for the enemies of the United States who had actively commited crimes against us. By the way the government is systematically attacking our constitutional freedoms and privacy, justifying torture on a scale and with a lack of transparency or accountability that is horrifying to me as a us Citizen. By the way they have been continuousy expanding patents and copyrights, in the name of trying to protect the economy, but which is most likely having the opposite effect.
But, it's just a statement of plain truth: If you want to change government, you must influence the people around you, and it certainly helps to become famous, or run a large company. So go out and start your own company, or your own political group or blog or news organization and start building your power and accumulating wealth. Find friends who can give you $2300 (if you don't have it yourself) to donate to campaigns and causes you believe in, and donate it.
"I suppose you could hand out free copies of the Mona Lisa to everyone and everything would be OK, but for some reason that seems like a ridiculous idea to people."
I get your point, but that's a bad example. The Mona Lisa was painted in the 16th century, and has been in the Public Domain for a very long time. Want to print up a bunch of copies of Mona Lisa and hand them out? Knock yourself out. That doesn't seem such a ridiculous idea to me. . .
That said, people who think that there should be *no* copyright are, frankly, nutjobs. People who think copyrights should be 90 or 100 years are also nutjobs. Copyright for *limited terms*, such as 10 or maybe 20 years, seem perfectly reasonable. People *should* have a right to control the copying of their works for a limited time. This is Slashdot - I'm sure many people here believe quite strongly in the GPL. If there were no copyright on 'easily copyable' media such as music, videos, and softare, then there would be no GPL. If some company wanted to rip off your computer program, create a derivative, and only give people binary copies - which, by the way, had to be unlocked with some kind of DRM system which forced you to pay for a license, then reported demographic data about you back to the company so they could sell it to spammers, the GPL would not be able to force you to get the company to release the un-drm'ed source code.
I don't have access to the main journal article, so it's possible the answer is in there, but there are potentially a lot of variables in 'cell phone' use. The article kind of hints at that in the following:
I would be curious if anyone has done a larger break-down of the 'risk' seen in this study, to find out if users were using older analogue phones, or newer digital, spread-spectrum phones (which, I believe, typically run at much lower power levels). What frequencies do the phones run at? (It might be, I dunno, that different mobile phone networks around the world use different frequencies, and there might be a correlation to specific frequencies used and an increase in cancer). I would also be curious to see if anyone is able to repeat this finding in other populations outside of Israel? Maybe the increased risk is really something in the air or water? Hard to say sometimes. . .
Honestly though, if it were me, and I were living in Israel, I think there are risks I'd be more worried about than my cell phone. . . like Hezbollah missiles, Palestinian suicide bombers, another war erupting with the neighboring countries, etc. . .
I'd hate to think what would happen with Genetic programming without a Genetic Debugger. =)
I sure wish that I could get payed for work I did 95 years ago. . . Oh, wait, I'm only 30 years old. :-p
Still, where does this notion come from that someone deserves to be paid for their entire life for work they did 30, 40, or 50 years ago? Heck, I don't get paid for work I did 3 weeks ago. . . *grin*. I got to go with the people that say that Copyright should be limited to 10 or 20 years at most.
I understand that copyright is not quite like normal employment. For example, a company might employ hundreds of programmers for several years to create a program. Can't expect them to re-coup that investment and make a profit in 1 day (to take things to an extreme). But, if you haven't made a profit in ten or twenty years, guess what. . you never will.
It's truly unreasonable to expect that companies or people should get paid for work they did decades ago.