Are you familiar with the phrase "false economy?" That sounds very much like what you might be engaged in...
The real question is not "how much does storage cost per xB," but, "how much am I willing to risk not being able to recover what I need, when I need it?" That's the risk analysis, and then the cost analysis is "how likely is media failure for medium X, how much would it cost me to recover/reproduce the data stored on medium X, and, if that data was neither recoverable nor reproducable, how badly screwed would I be?"
It's fundamentally an actuarial problem, and it's how insurance companies make their money. It's also why, if you've done your homework, they'll charge you considerably less in premiums because you've mitigated the risks that they would otherwise have to bear by underwriting you.
Never think of backup as a "how much does it cost to store it?" problem, but always as a "how much would it cost to lose it?" problem.
Even though Office XP is quite capable, I can't stand the way that they put icons in the left of the menus.
I offer this not to change your opinion of them, but
perhaps to shed some light on the motivation. Those
icons are a pedagogical device[Alan Cooper] to help you build a mental association
between the menu action and the toolbar icon.
This is the same purpose that putting the
accelerator keys in the menus served in the
original Mac UI (which continues to this day).
Fundamentally, it's "training without cost" (or,
at least, training with the sole cost of some
temporarily used screen real estate), that routes
around the problem of icons having to be
innately meaningful (because the simple fact is
that it's impossible for them to be so every
time).
It's training that doesn't punish casual users,
because all of the actions are still accessible
through the original command vector (the menu),
but it rewards frequent users when they notice
the match between a button on the toolbar and a
frequently-used command, and then start using
the button instead.
What you're describing is called the
attractive nuisance doctrine, and really only applies to the situation with the neighborhood kid, not to an adult upon whom different expectations are placed.
One could argue that the real issue is negligence, but proving negligence turns on the phrase (from the referenced definition) "the care of a reasonably prudent or ordinarily careful person in the circumstances".
It's unclear whether or not you'd be able to point to an "average user" and call them "ordinarily careful", in which case you'd definitely be doing about what's average. It might, instead, turn out that the court would say "you're a professional, a sysadmin, and we hold you to a higher standard of "reasonable prudence" by virtue of your knowledge of the consequences. This would be analogous to the trained fighter or black belt getting into a fistfight and whaling on some poor schmoe. Regardless of who "started it", the fighter is going to be held to a higher standard of control and "carefulness".
Of course, that said, you could also use a defense based on trespass, in which you argue that, because the attacker was not authorized to use your system, as long as you weren't specifically stockpiling "munitions" there:-), you're not liable for the attacks based out of your system. I'm not sure what case law in the real world says about this. If you left your front door open and a sniper walked in, sat down in your living room, and started taking potshots at passers-by, would you be liable? Would the court say that, because you failed to lock your door, or deadbolt it, or whatever, you were negligent?
Tough to say, these days.
Thankfully, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't have to worry about such weighty theoretical issues:-)
Assessments of change, dynamics, and cause and effect are at the heart of thinking and explanation. To understand is to know what cause provokes what effect, by what means, at what rate. How then is such knowledge to be represented?
This book describes design strategies--the proper arrangement in space and time of images, words, and numbers--for presenting information about motion, process, mechanism, cause and effect. These strategies are found again and again in portrayals of explanations, quite independent of the particular substantive ocntent of display.
And we also enter the cognitive paradiese of explanation, a sparkling and exuberant world, intensely relevant to the design of information. Those who discover an explanation are often those who construct its representation. [...] All these quick-qitted creators and discoverers demonstrate methods by which to represent, describe, illustrate, and, indeed, construct knowledge.
Many of our examples suggest that clarity and excellence in thinking is very much like clarity and excellence in the display of data. When the principles of design replicate principles of thought, the act of arranging information becomes an act of insight.
[...]
The idea is to make designs that enhance the richness, complexity, resolution, dimensionality, and clarity of the content. By extending the visual capacities of paper, video, and computer screen, we are able to extend the depth of our own knowledge and experience. [...]
-- Edward R. Tufte,
Visual Explanations (Introduction)
For some of us, idea gathering is both vocation and avocation. I'm one of those. The (crappy) integrated camera and voice recorder in the NX70V has already made a significant positive impact on my ability to capture ideas when I have them, not just when I "get back to the tools".
It's nice to be inspired by a piece of art, or an image in a book, or a detail on a building, and capture it right there, along with notes about what I saw in it, what it suggests to me, what I might do with it.
It's also handy for shopping:)
But when I got the NX70V (Thanksgiving, dammit!), I said "this is great, and it will be even greater when it has a better camera and a cellphone.
So now there's the NZ90, and it's already on my list. When it ships, I'm selling the NX70V and upgrading, because that knocks another item off the list. For most purposes, I'm guessing the NZ90's camera is going to match my PowerShot S100 (which I bought precisely because it was "small enough to always carry", but then didn't end up always carrying it because of everything -else- that's "small enough to always carry").
So I'm one of those people "who needs this". Sure, I -can- live without it, but why, when I -can- live with it?
There's another dimension to this that's harder to see without either already knowing it, or digging around to find connections.
The Weather Channel is a Landmark Communications property. Landmark Communications owns other media properties (The Virginian-Pilot and Ledger Star, the hometown newspaper of my youth, the Insider's Guide guidebook series) and online outgrowths of the same (pilotonline.com, insidersguide.com, etc.), and so on.
Landmark Communications is primarily the work of the Batten family, and Frank Batten (Jr., I think) is the current head of their armada.
That same Frank Batten is the "early investor" Frank Batten of Red Hat fame. Great Bridge Software, the (now defunct) folks behind the PostgreSQL commercialization attempt, are also an outgrowth of the Landmark / Batten nexus.
Basically, for whatever reasons, Frank Batten seems to either "get" open source, or see financial advantage in it, or both. I think he understands that investing in these companies helps him build infrastructure that his many companies can rely on without lock-in. Since one trait that all of his "properties" share is an extremely heavy dependance on technological infrastructure, he's in a position to see how investing in open source development at the lowest level will give him better returns than investing in proprietary software at the purchasing level.
It's perfectly valid. It may even be perfectly correct, but the indentation suggests an intent that the code does support.
Yes, it is "suspicious", inasmuch as one would probably never write this code all at once. However, programmers, practicing the First Virtue (laziness), very often use:
if (x > 10) x = 10;
or the original, indented example, leaving out the braces in either case. When another coder comes along and realizes that the code also needs to set y=0 when x > 10, there is a "not insignificant" chance that they will forget to wrap the whole thing in braces.
The reason for this is simple: tunnel vision. It's the same thing that causes me to make a perfect cut on my tablesaw, then perfectly align the perfectly-cut piece with the wrong side of the other perfectly-cut piece, and glue them together.
In this particular regard, then, Python eliminates the ambiguity and resolves intention with indentation. If it looks like it belongs to a block, then it does.
Like so many Python converts, I was initially skeptical of this entire process. My license plate used to read "USE PERL"! However, since writing "real" code in Python, and extending someone else's "very large" project in C, I confess that I now realize using indentation for blocking is the "right" answer, as long as we're presuming a text-based language:)
I saw Rep. Boucher on Saturday at a local "Town Meeting", as I'm a constituent. More on that in another post, as I want to specifically address the patent issue here.
Boucher's aides handed out a pamphlet titled Congressman Boucher: Annual Congressional Activities Report for 2000, (the content of which is very likely available on his website), the last page of which contained this item on "business method" patents:
In October, I introduced comprehensive legislation to change the process for the award of business method patents. At present, patents are being awarded for entire concepts of doing business, such as using the Internet to solicit charitable donations or using the Internet to conduct international commercial transaction. These broad patents are contrary to the original intent of the patent law. They restrict rather than stimulate innovation by foreclosing entire fields of commerce to competition. My legislation to reform the practice of patent awards will be debated in 2001.
I realize this doesn't specifically address "software patents" and the amazing idiocy we've seen from the USPTO regarding, e.g., Amazon's One-Click(tm) shopping. However, it does point out that, in general, Boucher is committed to realigning legislation with the constitution and the original intentions of the founders. As with his above deferral on the DeCSS issue, I suspect that he's not been "hit in the face" with the specific issue of idiotic software patents yet, but will study it and try to correct imbalances when he understands it.
To call Carl Malamud's proposed tax credit a subsidy is a bit of hyperbole, and clearly intended to inflame the community. Nevertheless, it's important to set the record straight.
The tax credit Carl proposes doesn't subsidize open-source coders any more than the various deductions offered to business, large and small, subsidize them. It's a deduction. If it passed, and I spent a thousand dollars ($1000) on a computer to use in open-source coding, I wouldn't have to pay taxes on that thousand dollars. Depending on my tax bracket, in order to buy that computer without being able to deduct its cost, I might have to make up to fourteen-hundred dollars ($1400), just so I can give a thousand ($1000) to the computer company and four-hundred ($400) to Uncle Sam.
Now, Uncle Sam isn't giving me that four-hundred dollars. He's just agreeing not to take it from me as long as I'm using the money for open-source work.
This whole idea is important because many open-source coders don't want the hassle or overhead of creating a business entity just to be able to deduct the expenses involved in delivering code to the community. I, for example, would not benefit from this credit at all, because I already have a sole-proprietorship established under which I do all of my consulting and open-source work. All Carl's proposal does is extend what people like me can do to ordinary folks who just want to write code and don't care about generating income and revenue from it.
Re:Don't believe everything you read on the Web
on
The Battle for .Web
·
· Score: 1
They most certainly are indicators of a thriving, healthy economy. When the titans do battle, it means that they're faced with real competition from each other, which, in turn, makes it possible for mere mortals to find niches, do business, and possibly become, themselves, titans.
When it turns sour is when there are no titans slugging it out, but just one titan, making all of the rules. Past examples include United States Steel Corporation, J.P. Morgan's railroad empire, and AT&T's monopoly over the telephone system. These are all examples of the monopolies Woodrow Wilson railed against.
Some people seem to be missing the point of FOCI, and for that, I must take responsibility, as the primary author of the letter, the petition, and most of the content of the site.
The point is competition. The point is that, of the proposals on the table at ICANN, over half are related to either Afilias or Melbourne IT. The point is not whether.web is or isn't a good idea, or whether TLDs or the DNS are or are not good ideas. The point is that, given a world that is this way (which is currently is), can we keep competition alive long enough to make real change?
If Afilias and Melbourne IT are allowed to dominate the DNS any more than they already do, all the Karl Auerbachs in the world won't do us any good.
I'm not saying that Image Online Design are heroes. I'm saying that they represent competition to Afilias and Melbourne IT, and for that, you should consider supporting their bid.
And, as I said in the letter:
As a final note, we encourage you to be critical of what you hear on this issue (even from us!).
So I fully agree with you that people should do research and make up their own minds. There's plenty of public record of the entire history of.web. Furthermore, there's a lively discussion in the ICANN comments area, in which plenty of skeptics, critics, or outright IOD detractors are posting alternative viewpoints. Of course, not all of them are using their names, but that's the 'net for ya'.
Please, though, don't try to make it out like John Mitchell or I are hiding anything. We've made our affiliations clear from the first moment. When we changed the wording of the petition after realizing what Melbourne IT was up to, we mailed all of the existing signatories to let them choose whether or not to apply their signature to the new wording, or let it stand with the old.
We, FOCI, have worked very hard to be precisely the sort of effort on behalf of a company that we'd like to see more of. We're not trying to snow you, or convince you that we don't have, ultimately, capitalist interests at heart. We're trying to be straight with you, and let you decide what is important to a Competitive Internet.
Boucher does represent Virginia's "Silicon Valley", but it's Southwestern Virginia, not Northern Virginia ("Virginia's Technology Corridor", so say the interstate signs:) ).
He's the congressional representative for the ninth district of Virginia, which happens to include Blacksburg, VA, home of Virginia Tech, and an awful lot of innovation. Blacksburg is also the home of The Blacksburg Electronic Village, which was a fairly early (circa 1993) project to bring widespread access to the community (ethernet in apartments, etc.). Finally, Blacksburg is home to Cliff.
Interestingly, Blacksburg is also home to BizNet Technologies, Inc., who builtBOES (Borderless Order Entry System) for DE Technologies, whom you may remember from this slashdot article on an egregious patent for international commerce. So this latest legislation is definitely a feather in his cap, and an indicator of his continued integrity. It's nice to see that he regards the people as his constituency, not the businesses.
Boucher seems quite friendly to the consumers' side of technology, and, as congressional representatives go, he's been a pretty good one (I'll vote for him again, when given the chance). His record of late shows a committment to undoing some of the boneheadedness that seems to be inherent in the system. He was instrumental in the reactive legislation to undo the "work for hire" clause the RIAA's PAC slipped into the satellite act. He's working with Carl Malamud on the open source tax credit proposal. To use the vernacular, he rocks.
The Artists Coalition would probably also like to hear from those of us that would actively support a voluntary, tip-based, just compensation system.
In addition to your congressional representive, you might want to cc: your notes to mine, Rick Boucher, who's one of the forces behind repealing the "work for hire" mess described in this salon article.
Well put! My job is to foment rebellion, not organize it, so your suggested actions are an wonderful complement:)
Here's another one that I'm planning: Send real money to artists. Say you're listening to an Oingo Boingo and decide that, if such a system existed, you'd tip the boys. So write a check for a buck and send it away! Even if they never cash it, if enough artists get enough random bucks flowing in in envelopes, they'll get the clue. They'll realize that, if infrastructure existed, they could sever their ties with the beast.
No, it's not practical and scalable. But it makes a point, and that's what's important.
Serious about your frustration with the RIAA and corporatism in
general? Try Civil
Disobedience. No, really. Be willing to get arrested for
possessing the tools we take for granted. I am. But read on...
First, a summary, since this is long and will get chopped:
We can't win if we look like the bad guys. Therefore,
we must clean up our act, both public and private, and be
willing to address the real, underlying concerns of our
fellow artists and consumers.
Corporations don't trust individuals; individuals don't
trust corporations. Therefore, we must gather all of the
individuals together on our side, artists and consumers
alike, instead of allowing the corporations to divide us.
The future is change; everyone is scared. The industry
is afraid, but also opportunistic. It believes it can secure a
future for itself built by legally forcing nature to behave
itself. It attacks the fears of consumers to create this legal
impetus.
The "Tragedy of the Commons" is worrisome. Individual
artists are afraid that if they open themselves up to a
meritocracy, they'll be raped. We have counterexamples, and we
also need to set expectations.
We can't win if we look like the bad guys
Before you don your DeCSS
Shirt, it's important that we get our act together and learn
the very powerful art of spin. Don't sneer and say
that's beneath us. Right now, the RIAA and MPAA are mobilizing a
very powerful political engine. They are engaging in a classic
tactic, painting our community's members as pirates and
criminals in the public's eye. It's our job to spin right
back at them, to recast the debate in terms that make us
clearly the good guys, and them clearly the corporate
Goliath, out to trample the rights of individual artists and
consumers. Here's how...
Start giving props to artists.Start
decrying the fact that there's no widely available, secure,
trustable infrastructure for "tipping". Start pitting the
labels against the individual artists, whom you would
compensate directly, if there were a reliable means to do
so. Blame the corporate hegemony for this
situation. Traditional corporations exist for one reason alone:
profit; profit to the exclusion of all else,
including the rights of artists, and the rights of individual
consumers. Start pitting the labels against consumers, by
using inflammatory phrases like "abrogation of our
rights" and "corporate hegemony" (please understand what
they mean and be able to defend them calmly, though). As
soon as we can swing the focus of our fellow consumers' mistrust
and cynicism to the industry, as soon as we can paint ourselves
the David in this battle, we will begin changing things.
The reasons for this are simple:
People root for the underdog. Right now, the RIAA and
MPAA are painting themselves and the artists as the underdog
against the massive, unstoppable tide of digital piracy and
mayhem. As it happens, they may be right, but I'll get to that
in a minute.
People fear for their own property. People want to be
"secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects". The
RIAA and MPAA are casting this debate squarely in terms of
theft of property because they know that will
strike a chord with the public. They want you, the consumer,
to believe that, if you don't side with them to stop Napster
and DeCSS, you'll lose out just as much as if someone broke
into your house and stole all of your CDs.
My freshman year in college, someone stole 250 CDs from my dorm
room. 250 CDs that I had worked very hard to afford, and had
worked very hard to acquire (many rare imports, anime, etc.). I
felt hurt, violated, confused, angry, and all of that. The RIAA
and MPAA are trying to connect with those feelings in the
consumer public.
We need to be going for the same connection, while also making
the connection between individual freedom and liberty. We need
to make it clear that we're all for just compensation, and that
we don't need Goliath's hand to ensure that compensation. We
need to show our fellow consumers that the industry is just in
the game for the sake of revenue, and that they don't
give a damn about consumer rights, nor do they
trust consumers in the least. Yet they ask for our trust
that they will justly compensate artists, that they will respect
our rights to fair use, that they will treat us as equals
(IANAL, but a corporation is legally considered a person.)
The RIAA and MPAA would have you believe that every artist and
"legitimate consumer" out there is on their side, and that
everyone else is a pirate. We know that's wrong, but what do we
do about it?
Get all the individuals on the same side. Artists are
individuals. Consumers are individuals. Everything in between
the two is corporate infrastructure. The internet makes that
corporatism irrelevant to the kind of relationships we could be
building with our fellow individuals.
If I play your song, and I like it, I'll give you a tip.
If I play it all the damned time, I'll give you big tips,
frequently. If Metallica pulled their heads out, they'd
understand that they'd make a lot more from me letting me tip
them than they are right now, since I won't buy anything new of
theirs (even though I really want to).
The future is change; everyone is scared
Things we've taken for granted, as a society, as individuals,
and as corporations, are all in the process of changing
dramatically and radically. Specifically, traditional notions of
property become more meaningless with each passing
day. We know how to treat tangible items as property (you're
stealing it if you deprive me of it without my consent), but we
don't know how to treat intangibles as property; after all, if
you copy it from me, how are you depriving me of it?
And if you think that distinction is cut-and-dried, and that it
just means we need two classes of property, intellectual and
tangible, think again. What's going to happen in a decade or
three when nano-technology makes tangible property
available to anyone with a handful of garbage, a replicator, and
a design?
Now, it's understandable that corporations might be
afraid. After all, they might disappear. Or have to
reinvent themselves radically. I think they're pretty well aware
of that fact. The issue, ultimately, is one of
control. The industry wants to control its
destiny, but it doesn't have that kind of power. It seeks to
create that power, artificially, by lobbying to create laws like
the DMCA, that curtail individual rights that are far
more powerful than they were when they were granted, 225 years
ago, before there was an Internet.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to be controlled
by a corporation. I want the freedom to interact with my
fellow individuals, to share and communicate and
transact by our own rules. I want to write code and
trust that you'll compensate me for it justly. And
I do. Literally. I have a 100% GPL clause for the work I
do. And I trust the community and individuals to be
faithful to one another, and to support one another. I don't
need a law or a corporation to enforce what ought to be
human decency.
The "Tragedy of the Commons" is worrisome
The idea that some people will steal all the goodies is
worrisome. They can't. Unlike the commons about which
"The Tragedy of the Commons" was written, you can't trample
up the grass around an artist. You can't turn a director
into mud by copiously copying her work.
You can refrain from contributing to their
livelihood. You can enjoy their work and simply not tip
them, even though you can afford to tip them. Fine. We already
have a really good term for that in place: cheap asshole.
Perhaps we could get it made into a legal term?
Anyway, there are natural responses to the problem of the
cheap asshole. The first is the pillory,
metaphorically speaking. A good tipping infrastructure will
allow you to leave your tips either anonymously or with
credit. An advogato-like
trust
metric will allow folks to rate your generosity in
comparison to your means. A well-deployed
micro-accounting infrastructure will make artists,
producers, technicians, and so forth, accountable for how
they spend the tips in pursuit of their art. All of that means
that assholes will be highlighted in
red, and the object of public scorn.
This is as it should be, and there is a long tradition of such
treatment. Read A Christmas Carol if you doubt
me. Everyone hated Scrooge
because he was... well, you know. A c.a.
The second is based on what I call "laws of information
physics". The two fundamental laws of information physics
are:
Bandwidth between any two points at any given time is a
finite resource.
Information flows freely as long as there is available
bandwidth.
These laws can be exploited to prevent the c.a.'s from
propagating:
First of all, imagine if you had to pay for bandwidth
by your usage. Hey, if we're not relying on king
corporation any more, someone's got to foot the bill for
your 128Kbps chunk of the OC48 to gratefuldead.com. Thus,
when you download directly from them, there's a mandatory tip
of $.05/MB ($3.00 for a 60MB album). You'd still want to tip
on top of that if you liked it; that was just to
cover their connectivity. Of course, they may be popular
enough, and get tipped enough as it is, to not
charge that connectivity fee.
Imagine if free file-sharing networks allowed you to hook into
the aforementioned trust-metric,
and determine based on that whether or not you would allow
your server to send files to a c.a. Through literal
peer-pressure, people would find themselves either
tipping liberally, or cut off from the goods.
Such infrastructure can be exploited in a lot of other ways that
bring back our ability to trust one another, and to
build community even in the massive scale of the Internet
and a global economy. People who've had hard times could "get a
break." Or if you're a real hard-liner about people overcoming
circumstance, you could set your own metrics to shun anyone who
claimed hard times, or anyone who was rich without working for
it, and not generous with their wealth. "The
possibilities," as they say, "are limitless."
Getting there from here
I'd recap, but you can scroll to the top for that. The bottom
line is that we need to pay attention to the fears and
concerns of our fellow individuals, and address
those, and not just go spouting off about how we're going to
do whatever we please and the industry can't stop us. We all
believe the industry can't stop us, because ultimately, we can
hide. But who wants to hide? And who wants a world in
which sharing is a criminal act? So don't feed their
fire. Help your fellow artists, consumers, individuals
understand how we can build a better future together,
without corporate hegemony.
And be prepared to get
arrested in the meantime. But when you do, make sure you
come off sane, rational, and reasonable. Make it clear that
the man is putting you down. If you're not calm,
careful, and likable, your fellow consumers and artists are
going to see exactly what the RIAA and MPAA want them to
see. And away goes your freedom and their freedom.
P.S. I'd have crossposted this to advogato, but I'm not
certified by anyone as having done anything special. So if
you're of a mind to, and have a decent cert there, please
certify me
if you think I can add value to the discussions there.
Thanks.
Seth, thanks for the response. Believe it or not, I have no
particular interest in being "right" on the issue of whether or
not Nautilus is revolutionary:) I'd much prefer to hear that
I'm wrong, and that the world is changing.
I don't want to go into a lengthy response, either, mainly as
I'm trying desperately to get offline and onto the road, but,
here are a few highlights:
Medusa sounds like a very strong direction. At the
same time, I caution you to not make the same mistakes BeOS
did, which is to say ignoring the work of the RDBMS industry
(though I'm not a fan of RDBMSes) and, more importantly, the
scads of academic work put into semantic networks. I'm not
quite sure what you mean by the phrase "multi-key,
semantically queried virtual filesystem". Okay, I get
"virtual filesystem", and I can stab at what multi-key and
semantically queried mean, but I'm not sure what precise
synthesis you folks have in mind.
To clarify, since I haven't seen any good, introductory
material on semantic networks for anything other than
linguistic applications, I'll "drop a little science" (note,
Seth, I'm not presuming that you do or do not know anything
about semnets. I'm posting this for general edification.)
Semantic networks, roughly speaking, are large graph
structures with bidirectional semantics applied to
edges. Nodes themselves, in a "true" semnet, contain no
content. Content is implied by traversing edges and
"reading" the semantics in the direction of your
traversal. Nodes themselves are just the
connectors. However, in the "modified" semnets which most
people actually use to get "real" work done, the
nodes do store data, and the semantics of the edges imply
metadata and (gasp!) information about the nodes and
their relationship to one another.
This phrase "bidirectional semantics" has a simple meaning:
meaning! An edge has a phrase describing it in one
direction, and the converse of that phrase describing it in
the other direction. Example "seth (is-friend-of /
has-friend) tripp". Read from left to right, "seth is a
friend of tripp." Read from right to left, "tripp has friend
seth". Not that this does not imply anything about how
seth feels about the friendship:) My offering
friendship to seth only says I'm extending a hand and
consider him a friend. If he "accepts", then we'd add
another edge between the same two nodes, with the same
semantics, but reversed direction: tripp (is-friend-of /
has-friend) seth.
This, of course, brings up the issue that there can be a
plurality of edges between nodes. Thus, you can arbitrarily
add lots of meaning to basic data by interrelating it with
other data. Also wickedly cool is the fact that an edge
itself can be treated as a node. So you can now take the
edge "is-friend-of / has-friend" between seth and tripp, and
mark it with edges relating it to, say, a start date
(ie: the date of my peace offering:) ). Because of this,
that means it's also meaningful to have multiple edges
between the same two nodes with those edges having the same
semantics and the same direction. If you did
construct such a graph, it would presumably be because those
edges themselves were further modified by other edges
pointing out somewheres, lending the two similar edges
uniqueness by how they are modified.
The fundamental offering of a semnet is to separate
content (ie: data) from position and
relationship. In a semnet, position is how a
node is determined to be unique in the world. There is no
implicit requirement for unique data, as it will become
unique by virtue of how you relate it to other data. (Of
course, as implementations go, there are unique IDs
generated, etc., etc., but all of this is abstracted away by
the semnet engine itself, and not something you worry about
when manipulating the network.)
So, to bring things back to Eazel, Nautilus, and Medusa, my
argument is primarily that we need to be looking at technologies
such as this (which, incidentally, is older than I am:) ) to
revolutionize the way we conceptualize the manipulation
of information. Thus the pointer to Framer-D in my original
post:)
However, I do want to point out (as if anyone's still reading)
that I understand the necessary schism between
revolutionary and evolutionary. Been
there, done that, etc.:) My rant was written in a moment of
weakness, and I forgot my compassion for the trials of the
implementor. I believe in and have experienced the necessity of
evolutionary progress toward revolutionary goals. I, myself, am
engaged in such progress with my own projects, so I don't
begrudge you the "preview releases" and "1.0s" and so forth that
are a part of the process.
At the same time, I humbly propose that it might do Nautilus
well to provide periodic "capsule overviews" (brain screenshots,
if you will) of what's going on in your heads,
architecturally. I realize there are mailing lists, CVS repos,
etc., but (pardon my lazy ass:) ), that's an awful lot of
investment for someone who's not yet sure of where you're going,
and whether his/her energies would be best spent diving into
Nautilus or forging ahead with something else.
What I mean by this is that you should give more webshare to
"open architectural process". Not that you should open up to
random flaming, etc., etc., but posting summaries of what you're
thinking in the loooong term, how it all fits together,
etc. Documents that can be easily digested, reflected upon, and
so forth. An example that springs to mind is the old XPFE / XUI
stuff that the Mozilla folk wrote. Those were pretty
straightforward docs that said "here's where we want to go,
ultimately." As I am a critic by trade (well, consultant), I
took perverse delight in printing those out and marking the hell
out of them!:) Though I disagreed with things, I at least knew
what, precisely, I was disagreeing with:)
I'm bringing this up because of my aforementioned experience
with the BeBox. I bought a BeBox at a time when my consultancy
really couldn't afford it:) I dove into being a developer,
learning the tools, reading huge volumes of mail and newsgroup
flak, and so forth. Ultimately, I dropped my BeOS project(s)
because of a number of reasons. The one I remember most vividly,
though, was my disappointment at what they weren't
revolutionizing (see bedevtalk and comp.sys.be archives for
specifics). A lot of us poured a lot of energy and effort into
discussions about what we'd like to see, and what revolutions
were possible. To Be's credit, they listened and responded as
much as they were able, but there were some fundamental
decisions that had long since been made, and were unchangeable.
As open source projects, GNOME, HelixCode (GNOME++?), and
Eazel's offerings (Nautilus and whatever else is under the
covers) promise a relief from that frustration. Ultimately, if
we have the source, we can go in whatever direction we
like. However, we all know that, practically, that's a lot
harder if the architecture is cast, and our direction(s) diverge
from assumptions made by the architects. Encouraging early
feedback, even if only at the 50,000 foot level, on the
architecture is a good thing for a project of this magnitude and
potential impact:)
I do want to set aside this paragraph to clarify what I'm saying
above. There already exist mailing lists, CVS repositories, and
feedback mechanisms for giving our two cents' worth to the
developers. No worries there:) What does not exist (or at
least, not obviously from a casual traverse of the website) is a
low-overhead architectural primer. A tool that a person can use
to decide, fundamentally, if it's worth going any further for
them down this path. Some of us old farts feel burned by past
experiences, and don't want to slog, gung-ho and
head-first, into another mailing list and development project
without some vague idea that what's going on under the hood is
powerful mojo, and that them what runs things will listen to
carefully considered flames:)
Thanks for listening... and don't take things personally, I'm
just prematurely bitter and jaded:)
I'm following in the footsteps of an earlier poster in saying that I'm
disappointed to see Apple and NeXT's best and brightest come up
with... a file browser. I'm just as disappointed as I was five years
ago when I signed up to be one of the first fifteen-hundred BeBox
developers, after I discovered what their idea of "revolutionizing"
the operating system was.
To quote Alan Cooper, from About Face: The Essentials of User
Interface Design:
Even though the file system is an internal facility that
shouldn't--by all rights--even affect the user, it creates a
large problem because the influence of the file system on the
interface of most programs is very deep. The most intractable
problems facing user interface designers usually concern the
file system and its demands. It affects our menus, our
dialogs, even the procedural framework of our programs, and
this influence is likely to continue indefinitely unless we
make a concerted effort to stop it.
Currently, most software treats the file system in much the
same way that the operating system shell does (Explorer, File
Manager). This is tantamount to you dealing with your car
the same way your mechanic does. Even though this
approach is tragically bad, it is an established, de facto
standard and there is considerable resistance to improving it.
Fundamentally, I'm a bit tired of hearing about how everyone's
"revolutionizing" everything, when they're really
not. Look: revolution
and revolutioniz e
both imply "sudden, radical, or complete change". The American
colonies didn't fight the Revolutionary War to install a local
king. The French Revolution wasn't so they could hire a newer,
prettier cake-eater.
The file system, fundamentally, is an implementation
detail. It's an artifact of how "things have always been
done". It's a drag on doing real, substantive improvement to the
way computers work for people. There are millions of
people out there who have never used a computer, and have
yet to learn. They don't need to learn what a filesystem
is, or to navigate it. They need to be able to find and
use the information and tools that are important to them,
period.
If we truly want to revolutionize the user interface, the
user experience, etc., then we really need to start with a more
fundamental re-thinking of how things work. Some of the ideas
Miguel de Icaza outlined in his Let's
Make Unix Not Suck talk/paper are a good starting place. The
universal presence of an ORB, lots of small tools cooperating
via the ORB interactively, are all good kicks in the
pants of the Unix mindset. But, fundamentally, that's nothing
more than what Redmond is doing with COM*, etc. There's more
work to be done. There's ripping out the filesystem as a
mechanism for data storage and retrieval, and replacing it with
a dynamic semantic
network, allowing information storage and retrieval
(don't confuse data and information). There's
moving away from skins and into real, powerful,
direct-manipulation user interfaces. For those of you that
remember OS/2 and IBM's System Object Model, there was some
very, very powerful technology underneath all of that!
Hell, you still can't reliably drag a document over top
of the printer and have it "do the right thing" in Windows or
Linux like you could in OS/2. And that was CORBA all over the
place, too, so there was plenty of room for those services to
make their way out over the network.
Don't even get me started on package management and installation
management, or system administration. Suffice it to say that
very little of our technology is designed to help us
achieve our goals. It's a lot of work, but this community has
boundless energy, and the opportunity and environment to do
things that are truly revolutionary. We revolutionized
the development model, now let's revolutionize the technology.
I've got to throw in a "me, too," here, as I'm listed on Karl's endorsements page:)
I've worked closely with Karl for a number of years on the InteropNet NOC Team (when it was still a harrowing experience:) ). He knows his stuff in all the important dimensions - technical, philsophical, ethical, etc. He's very much been "in the trenches" (quote borrowed from his ICANN At Large Candidate Page), and has used that experience to formulate a set of very good basic values centered around the individuals of the Internet's population (ie: not the corporations).
Karl has a long history of interest in issues that are only now being recognized as "important" to the continued freedom of the Internet (an Intellectual Property law degree can work against corporatism as well as for it:) ).
Visit his platform page, though. Don't let me put words into his mouth.
Self rules. Too bad you posted AC, otherwise I'd let you in on my two dirty little secrets: implementations of classless OOP (a la Self) for Perl and Python, complete with robust persistence, including code storage. I guess you'll just have to wait for the release:)
Hey, thanks for the positive feedback. To throw out a little more info, we're running:
FreeBSD
Linux
Win2k
Solaris
OpenVMS
across
Nortel
Cisco
3Com
routers. We're running Quake natively over v6:) Bind 9, Apache for v6, ssh, etc., etc. Stop by if you're at the show... Heck, if I can get these kernel patches in, we might even play with v6 mobility under Linux. Woot!
All they have to do is to mandate that all U.S. routers use IPv6, keep full logs of all connections, and make these logs accessible at will, in real time.
Yeah, right. "full logs of all connections."
Why is IPv6 necessary for this? Why not just force ISPs to make "full logs of all connections" for v4?
What is the big "privacy" issue? If you're talking about the "embedded MAC address" FUD, read the RFCs and learn all about the "u" bit in the EUI. You don't have to base your stateless autoconfig'ed address on your MAC.
IPsec cures all woes -- when you control both ends (which is the only situation you can ever trust, don't kid yourself), wiretapping is irrelevant. Don't believe that the spec'ed ciphers haven't been hacked by the/dev/null cartel (NSA)? Fine, write your own. You can write your own, you know...
He's around in spirit, though he doesn't actively write articles any more (aside from the closing editorial of each issue). He publishes a magazine that's a loose descendant of Circuit Cellar called Circuit Cellar, Ink. Companion website is http://www.circuitcellar.com/
IANAL, but I had a meeting with one a few weeks ago about patents. I learned some interesting things. Most interesting (and distressing) to me was when I learned about what "disclosure" is actually about.
Basically, when you a) offer for sale or b) publish your work, you're "disclosing" it publicly (even if you sell it to a client who's under NDA, you are "offering it for sale", which means it's been disclosed).
From the time of disclosure, you have one year to "patent, or get off the pot". However, if you don't start your filing process either before you disclose, or real darned soon thereafter, someone else can! That is to say, if you show no interest in patenting your work during the post-disclosure window, someone else who sees value in it can patent it.
Of course, to a Free Software / Free Hardware / Free Ideas zealot like myself, this is a pretty appalling state of affairs. What it means to me, in a nutshell, is that I have to go through the cumbersome and expensive process of patenting my "novel inventions" (and, in this day and age, even my "totally fscking obvious inventions to anyone with two brain cells to rub together"), in order to keep them from, basically, getting pirated.
That means that I cannot simply disclose and rest secure in the knowledge that the freedom of my ideas is protected, and that they will remain free from the moment of disclosure thereafter.
That sucks.
(ObDisclaimer: IANAL, and I may have horribly misunderstood this, but I did ask a great many questions of this poor guy, and attempt to clarify that I was actually hearing what I thought I was).
I build a kiosk using a bunch of GPL'ed bits. I extend and hack those GPL'ed bits (as opposed to merely adding my own, fresh bits). I place that kiosk in the mall and charge $5 to use it. Am I distributing that code? Absolutely not. I'm providing a service on a machine that runs that code, but not distributing the software (in either binary or source form).
case 2: embedded consumer appliance
SO, I take that same, easy to use software and stuff it inside of a sexy little consumer box. It has my same hacks, only instead of charging $5 a pop to use the box, I'm charging $500 to buy the box for your own personal enjoyment. Now I'm distributing the code (since it's embedded on the box), and have to follow the terms of the GPL.
Disclaimer:
Though I'm quite bright, I'm not a lawyer.
PS:
Though I hate to give the sharks chum, does this little scenario suggest that perhaps embedded manufacturers might get around the GPL by "leasing" the device itself and not actually "distributing" it per se? That's an interesting set of thorny legal questions... Of course, as an Official Free Software Zealot(tm), I believe that the right thing to do is release the source and make your money based on actual talents, reputation, branding, and so forth. But I'm silly that way.
I happen to appreciate Jon's work. In fact, my click-throughs on the techno articles are hit or miss at best. Usually it's enough for me to see the front page blurb, and skip all the rambling commentary by the flamekiddies.
I always read Jon's articles, though. "Geek Culture" is fascinating to me. I've been trying to understand it for years, from an insider's perspective. What makes me tick? Jon, not being a hardcore tech-head, has an interesting take on things. He allows me to see from an "informed outsider's" vantage. I've always wanted more insight into why we (Geeks) are the way we are, and why the rest of the world has so much trouble dealing with us. In fact, in this Rushmore piece, Jon really put the finger on it with this line:
Max triumphs not because he becomes more mainstream or likeable, but because his obsessive instinct to create things means that sooner or later, even he must score.
That very "obsessive instinct to create things" is, I think, what you'll find inside of yourself if you are truly a Geek. Thanks, Jon, for naming it.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you familiar with the phrase "false economy?" That sounds very much like what you might be engaged in...
The real question is not "how much does storage cost per xB," but, "how much am I willing to risk not being able to recover what I need, when I need it?" That's the risk analysis, and then the cost analysis is "how likely is media failure for medium X, how much would it cost me to recover/reproduce the data stored on medium X, and, if that data was neither recoverable nor reproducable, how badly screwed would I be?"
It's fundamentally an actuarial problem, and it's how insurance companies make their money. It's also why, if you've done your homework, they'll charge you considerably less in premiums because you've mitigated the risks that they would otherwise have to bear by underwriting you.
Never think of backup as a "how much does it cost to store it?" problem, but always as a "how much would it cost to lose it?" problem.
I offer this not to change your opinion of them, but perhaps to shed some light on the motivation. Those icons are a pedagogical device [Alan Cooper] to help you build a mental association between the menu action and the toolbar icon. This is the same purpose that putting the accelerator keys in the menus served in the original Mac UI (which continues to this day).
Fundamentally, it's "training without cost" (or, at least, training with the sole cost of some temporarily used screen real estate), that routes around the problem of icons having to be innately meaningful (because the simple fact is that it's impossible for them to be so every time).
It's training that doesn't punish casual users, because all of the actions are still accessible through the original command vector (the menu), but it rewards frequent users when they notice the match between a button on the toolbar and a frequently-used command, and then start using the button instead.
What you're describing is called the attractive nuisance doctrine , and really only applies to the situation with the neighborhood kid, not to an adult upon whom different expectations are placed.
One could argue that the real issue is negligence , but proving negligence turns on the phrase (from the referenced definition) "the care of a reasonably prudent or ordinarily careful person in the circumstances".
It's unclear whether or not you'd be able to point to an "average user" and call them "ordinarily careful", in which case you'd definitely be doing about what's average. It might, instead, turn out that the court would say "you're a professional, a sysadmin, and we hold you to a higher standard of "reasonable prudence" by virtue of your knowledge of the consequences. This would be analogous to the trained fighter or black belt getting into a fistfight and whaling on some poor schmoe. Regardless of who "started it", the fighter is going to be held to a higher standard of control and "carefulness".
Of course, that said, you could also use a defense based on trespass, in which you argue that, because the attacker was not authorized to use your system, as long as you weren't specifically stockpiling "munitions" there :-), you're not liable for the attacks based out of your system. I'm not sure what case law in the real world says about this. If you left your front door open and a sniper walked in, sat down in your living room, and started taking potshots at passers-by, would you be liable? Would the court say that, because you failed to lock your door, or deadbolt it, or whatever, you were negligent?
Tough to say, these days.
Thankfully, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't have to worry about such weighty theoretical issues :-)
For some of us, idea gathering is both vocation and avocation. I'm one of those. The (crappy) integrated camera and voice recorder in the NX70V has already made a significant positive impact on my ability to capture ideas when I have them, not just when I "get back to the tools".
:)
It's nice to be inspired by a piece of art, or an image in a book, or a detail on a building, and capture it right there, along with notes about what I saw in it, what it suggests to me, what I might do with it.
It's also handy for shopping
But when I got the NX70V (Thanksgiving, dammit!), I said "this is great, and it will be even greater when it has a better camera and a cellphone.
So now there's the NZ90, and it's already on my list. When it ships, I'm selling the NX70V and upgrading, because that knocks another item off the list. For most purposes, I'm guessing the NZ90's camera is going to match my PowerShot S100 (which I bought precisely because it was "small enough to always carry", but then didn't end up always carrying it because of everything -else- that's "small enough to always carry").
So I'm one of those people "who needs this". Sure, I -can- live without it, but why, when I -can- live with it?
There's another dimension to this that's harder to see without either already knowing it, or digging around to find connections.
The Weather Channel is a Landmark Communications property. Landmark Communications owns other media properties (The Virginian-Pilot and Ledger Star, the hometown newspaper of my youth, the Insider's Guide guidebook series) and online outgrowths of the same (pilotonline.com, insidersguide.com, etc.), and so on.
Landmark Communications is primarily the work of the Batten family, and Frank Batten (Jr., I think) is the current head of their armada.
That same Frank Batten is the "early investor" Frank Batten of Red Hat fame. Great Bridge Software, the (now defunct) folks behind the PostgreSQL commercialization attempt, are also an outgrowth of the Landmark / Batten nexus.
Basically, for whatever reasons, Frank Batten seems to either "get" open source, or see financial advantage in it, or both. I think he understands that investing in these companies helps him build infrastructure that his many companies can rely on without lock-in. Since one trait that all of his "properties" share is an extremely heavy dependance on technological infrastructure, he's in a position to see how investing in open source development at the lowest level will give him better returns than investing in proprietary software at the purchasing level.
It's perfectly valid. It may even be perfectly correct, but the indentation suggests an intent that the code does support.
Yes, it is "suspicious", inasmuch as one would probably never write this code all at once. However, programmers, practicing the First Virtue (laziness), very often use:
or the original, indented example, leaving out the braces in either case. When another coder comes along and realizes that the code also needs to set y=0 when x > 10, there is a "not insignificant" chance that they will forget to wrap the whole thing in braces.
The reason for this is simple: tunnel vision. It's the same thing that causes me to make a perfect cut on my tablesaw, then perfectly align the perfectly-cut piece with the wrong side of the other perfectly-cut piece, and glue them together.
In this particular regard, then, Python eliminates the ambiguity and resolves intention with indentation. If it looks like it belongs to a block, then it does.
Like so many Python converts, I was initially skeptical of this entire process. My license plate used to read "USE PERL"! However, since writing "real" code in Python, and extending someone else's "very large" project in C, I confess that I now realize using indentation for blocking is the "right" answer, as long as we're presuming a text-based language :)
I saw Rep. Boucher on Saturday at a local "Town Meeting", as I'm a constituent. More on that in another post, as I want to specifically address the patent issue here.
Boucher's aides handed out a pamphlet titled Congressman Boucher: Annual Congressional Activities Report for 2000, (the content of which is very likely available on his website), the last page of which contained this item on "business method" patents:
I realize this doesn't specifically address "software patents" and the amazing idiocy we've seen from the USPTO regarding, e.g., Amazon's One-Click(tm) shopping. However, it does point out that, in general, Boucher is committed to realigning legislation with the constitution and the original intentions of the founders. As with his above deferral on the DeCSS issue, I suspect that he's not been "hit in the face" with the specific issue of idiotic software patents yet, but will study it and try to correct imbalances when he understands it.
To call Carl Malamud's proposed tax credit a subsidy is a bit of hyperbole, and clearly intended to inflame the community. Nevertheless, it's important to set the record straight.
The tax credit Carl proposes doesn't subsidize open-source coders any more than the various deductions offered to business, large and small, subsidize them. It's a deduction. If it passed, and I spent a thousand dollars ($1000) on a computer to use in open-source coding, I wouldn't have to pay taxes on that thousand dollars. Depending on my tax bracket, in order to buy that computer without being able to deduct its cost, I might have to make up to fourteen-hundred dollars ($1400), just so I can give a thousand ($1000) to the computer company and four-hundred ($400) to Uncle Sam.
Now, Uncle Sam isn't giving me that four-hundred dollars. He's just agreeing not to take it from me as long as I'm using the money for open-source work.
This whole idea is important because many open-source coders don't want the hassle or overhead of creating a business entity just to be able to deduct the expenses involved in delivering code to the community. I, for example, would not benefit from this credit at all, because I already have a sole-proprietorship established under which I do all of my consulting and open-source work. All Carl's proposal does is extend what people like me can do to ordinary folks who just want to write code and don't care about generating income and revenue from it.
They most certainly are indicators of a thriving, healthy economy. When the titans do battle, it means that they're faced with real competition from each other, which, in turn, makes it possible for mere mortals to find niches, do business, and possibly become, themselves, titans.
When it turns sour is when there are no titans slugging it out, but just one titan, making all of the rules. Past examples include United States Steel Corporation, J.P. Morgan's railroad empire, and AT&T's monopoly over the telephone system. These are all examples of the monopolies Woodrow Wilson railed against.
Some people seem to be missing the point of FOCI, and for that, I must take responsibility, as the primary author of the letter, the petition, and most of the content of the site.
The point is competition. The point is that, of the proposals on the table at ICANN, over half are related to either Afilias or Melbourne IT. The point is not whether .web is or isn't a good idea, or whether TLDs or the DNS are or are not good ideas. The point is that, given a world that is this way (which is currently is), can we keep competition alive long enough to make real change?
If Afilias and Melbourne IT are allowed to dominate the DNS any more than they already do, all the Karl Auerbachs in the world won't do us any good.
I'm not saying that Image Online Design are heroes. I'm saying that they represent competition to Afilias and Melbourne IT, and for that, you should consider supporting their bid.
And, as I said in the letter:
So I fully agree with you that people should do research and make up their own minds. There's plenty of public record of the entire history of .web. Furthermore, there's a lively discussion in the ICANN comments area, in which plenty of skeptics, critics, or outright IOD detractors are posting alternative viewpoints. Of course, not all of them are using their names, but that's the 'net for ya'.
Please, though, don't try to make it out like John Mitchell or I are hiding anything. We've made our affiliations clear from the first moment. When we changed the wording of the petition after realizing what Melbourne IT was up to, we mailed all of the existing signatories to let them choose whether or not to apply their signature to the new wording, or let it stand with the old.
We, FOCI, have worked very hard to be precisely the sort of effort on behalf of a company that we'd like to see more of. We're not trying to snow you, or convince you that we don't have, ultimately, capitalist interests at heart. We're trying to be straight with you, and let you decide what is important to a Competitive Internet.
Boucher does represent Virginia's "Silicon Valley", but it's Southwestern Virginia, not Northern Virginia ("Virginia's Technology Corridor", so say the interstate signs :) ).
He's the congressional representative for the ninth district of Virginia, which happens to include Blacksburg, VA, home of Virginia Tech, and an awful lot of innovation. Blacksburg is also the home of The Blacksburg Electronic Village, which was a fairly early (circa 1993) project to bring widespread access to the community (ethernet in apartments, etc.). Finally, Blacksburg is home to Cliff.
Interestingly, Blacksburg is also home to BizNet Technologies, Inc., who built BOES (Borderless Order Entry System) for DE Technologies, whom you may remember from this slashdot article on an egregious patent for international commerce. So this latest legislation is definitely a feather in his cap, and an indicator of his continued integrity. It's nice to see that he regards the people as his constituency, not the businesses.
Boucher seems quite friendly to the consumers' side of technology, and, as congressional representatives go, he's been a pretty good one (I'll vote for him again, when given the chance). His record of late shows a committment to undoing some of the boneheadedness that seems to be inherent in the system. He was instrumental in the reactive legislation to undo the "work for hire" clause the RIAA's PAC slipped into the satellite act. He's working with Carl Malamud on the open source tax credit proposal. To use the vernacular, he rocks.
The Artists Coalition would probably also like to hear from those of us that would actively support a voluntary, tip-based, just compensation system.
In addition to your congressional representive, you might want to cc: your notes to mine, Rick Boucher, who's one of the forces behind repealing the "work for hire" mess described in this salon article.
Finally, go visit fairtunes, mentioned a few weeks ago in this slashdot story.
crime pays when corporate pigs can't afford to put gas in their BMWs.
Well put! My job is to foment rebellion, not organize it, so your suggested actions are an wonderful complement :)
Here's another one that I'm planning: Send real money to artists. Say you're listening to an Oingo Boingo and decide that, if such a system existed, you'd tip the boys. So write a check for a buck and send it away! Even if they never cash it, if enough artists get enough random bucks flowing in in envelopes, they'll get the clue. They'll realize that, if infrastructure existed, they could sever their ties with the beast.
No, it's not practical and scalable. But it makes a point, and that's what's important.
Mod erotus' post up. That's a good link: http://www.osopin ion.com/Opinions/DavidNimmons/DavidNimmons1.html
Serious about your frustration with the RIAA and corporatism in general? Try Civil Disobedience. No, really. Be willing to get arrested for possessing the tools we take for granted. I am. But read on...
First, a summary, since this is long and will get chopped:
-
We can't win if we look like the bad guys. Therefore,
we must clean up our act, both public and private, and be
willing to address the real, underlying concerns of our
fellow artists and consumers.
-
Corporations don't trust individuals; individuals don't
trust corporations. Therefore, we must gather all of the
individuals together on our side, artists and consumers
alike, instead of allowing the corporations to divide us.
-
The future is change; everyone is scared. The industry
is afraid, but also opportunistic. It believes it can secure a
future for itself built by legally forcing nature to behave
itself. It attacks the fears of consumers to create this legal
impetus.
-
The "Tragedy of the Commons" is worrisome. Individual
artists are afraid that if they open themselves up to a
meritocracy, they'll be raped. We have counterexamples, and we
also need to set expectations.
We can't win if we look like the bad guysBefore you don your DeCSS Shirt, it's important that we get our act together and learn the very powerful art of spin . Don't sneer and say that's beneath us. Right now, the RIAA and MPAA are mobilizing a very powerful political engine. They are engaging in a classic tactic, painting our community's members as pirates and criminals in the public's eye. It's our job to spin right back at them, to recast the debate in terms that make us clearly the good guys, and them clearly the corporate Goliath, out to trample the rights of individual artists and consumers. Here's how...
Start giving props to artists. Start decrying the fact that there's no widely available, secure, trustable infrastructure for "tipping". Start pitting the labels against the individual artists, whom you would compensate directly, if there were a reliable means to do so. Blame the corporate hegemony for this situation. Traditional corporations exist for one reason alone: profit ; profit to the exclusion of all else, including the rights of artists, and the rights of individual consumers. Start pitting the labels against consumers, by using inflammatory phrases like "abrogation of our rights" and "corporate hegemony" (please understand what they mean and be able to defend them calmly, though). As soon as we can swing the focus of our fellow consumers' mistrust and cynicism to the industry, as soon as we can paint ourselves the David in this battle, we will begin changing things.
The reasons for this are simple:
My freshman year in college, someone stole 250 CDs from my dorm room. 250 CDs that I had worked very hard to afford, and had worked very hard to acquire (many rare imports, anime, etc.). I felt hurt, violated, confused, angry, and all of that. The RIAA and MPAA are trying to connect with those feelings in the consumer public.
We need to be going for the same connection, while also making the connection between individual freedom and liberty. We need to make it clear that we're all for just compensation, and that we don't need Goliath's hand to ensure that compensation. We need to show our fellow consumers that the industry is just in the game for the sake of revenue, and that they don't give a damn about consumer rights, nor do they trust consumers in the least. Yet they ask for our trust that they will justly compensate artists, that they will respect our rights to fair use, that they will treat us as equals (IANAL, but a corporation is legally considered a person.)
Corporations don't trust individuals; individuals don't trust corporationsThe RIAA and MPAA would have you believe that every artist and "legitimate consumer" out there is on their side, and that everyone else is a pirate. We know that's wrong, but what do we do about it?
Get all the individuals on the same side. Artists are individuals. Consumers are individuals. Everything in between the two is corporate infrastructure. The internet makes that corporatism irrelevant to the kind of relationships we could be building with our fellow individuals.
If I play your song, and I like it, I'll give you a tip. If I play it all the damned time, I'll give you big tips, frequently. If Metallica pulled their heads out, they'd understand that they'd make a lot more from me letting me tip them than they are right now, since I won't buy anything new of theirs (even though I really want to).
The future is change; everyone is scaredThings we've taken for granted, as a society, as individuals, and as corporations, are all in the process of changing dramatically and radically. Specifically, traditional notions of property become more meaningless with each passing day. We know how to treat tangible items as property (you're stealing it if you deprive me of it without my consent), but we don't know how to treat intangibles as property; after all, if you copy it from me, how are you depriving me of it?
And if you think that distinction is cut-and-dried, and that it just means we need two classes of property, intellectual and tangible, think again. What's going to happen in a decade or three when nano-technology makes tangible property available to anyone with a handful of garbage, a replicator, and a design?
Now, it's understandable that corporations might be afraid. After all, they might disappear. Or have to reinvent themselves radically. I think they're pretty well aware of that fact. The issue, ultimately, is one of control. The industry wants to control its destiny, but it doesn't have that kind of power. It seeks to create that power, artificially, by lobbying to create laws like the DMCA, that curtail individual rights that are far more powerful than they were when they were granted, 225 years ago, before there was an Internet.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to be controlled by a corporation. I want the freedom to interact with my fellow individuals, to share and communicate and transact by our own rules. I want to write code and trust that you'll compensate me for it justly. And I do. Literally. I have a 100% GPL clause for the work I do. And I trust the community and individuals to be faithful to one another, and to support one another. I don't need a law or a corporation to enforce what ought to be human decency.
The "Tragedy of the Commons" is worrisomeThe idea that some people will steal all the goodies is worrisome. They can't. Unlike the commons about which "The Tragedy of the Commons" was written, you can't trample up the grass around an artist. You can't turn a director into mud by copiously copying her work.
You can refrain from contributing to their livelihood. You can enjoy their work and simply not tip them, even though you can afford to tip them. Fine. We already have a really good term for that in place: cheap asshole. Perhaps we could get it made into a legal term?
Anyway, there are natural responses to the problem of the cheap asshole. The first is the pillory, metaphorically speaking. A good tipping infrastructure will allow you to leave your tips either anonymously or with credit. An advogato-like trust metric will allow folks to rate your generosity in comparison to your means. A well-deployed micro-accounting infrastructure will make artists, producers, technicians, and so forth, accountable for how they spend the tips in pursuit of their art. All of that means that assholes will be highlighted in red, and the object of public scorn.
This is as it should be, and there is a long tradition of such treatment. Read A Christmas Carol if you doubt me. Everyone hated Scrooge because he was... well, you know. A c.a.
The second is based on what I call "laws of information physics". The two fundamental laws of information physics are:
These laws can be exploited to prevent the c.a.'s from propagating:
Such infrastructure can be exploited in a lot of other ways that bring back our ability to trust one another, and to build community even in the massive scale of the Internet and a global economy. People who've had hard times could "get a break." Or if you're a real hard-liner about people overcoming circumstance, you could set your own metrics to shun anyone who claimed hard times, or anyone who was rich without working for it, and not generous with their wealth. "The possibilities," as they say, "are limitless."
Getting there from hereI'd recap, but you can scroll to the top for that. The bottom line is that we need to pay attention to the fears and concerns of our fellow individuals, and address those, and not just go spouting off about how we're going to do whatever we please and the industry can't stop us. We all believe the industry can't stop us, because ultimately, we can hide. But who wants to hide? And who wants a world in which sharing is a criminal act? So don't feed their fire. Help your fellow artists, consumers, individuals understand how we can build a better future together, without corporate hegemony.
And be prepared to get arrested in the meantime. But when you do, make sure you come off sane, rational, and reasonable. Make it clear that the man is putting you down. If you're not calm, careful, and likable, your fellow consumers and artists are going to see exactly what the RIAA and MPAA want them to see. And away goes your freedom and their freedom.
P.S. I'd have crossposted this to advogato, but I'm not certified by anyone as having done anything special. So if you're of a mind to, and have a decent cert there, please certify me if you think I can add value to the discussions there. Thanks.
Seth, thanks for the response. Believe it or not, I have no particular interest in being "right" on the issue of whether or not Nautilus is revolutionary :) I'd much prefer to hear that
I'm wrong, and that the world is changing.
I don't want to go into a lengthy response, either, mainly as I'm trying desperately to get offline and onto the road, but, here are a few highlights:
Medusa sounds like a very strong direction. At the same time, I caution you to not make the same mistakes BeOS did, which is to say ignoring the work of the RDBMS industry (though I'm not a fan of RDBMSes) and, more importantly, the scads of academic work put into semantic networks. I'm not quite sure what you mean by the phrase "multi-key, semantically queried virtual filesystem". Okay, I get "virtual filesystem", and I can stab at what multi-key and semantically queried mean, but I'm not sure what precise synthesis you folks have in mind.
To clarify, since I haven't seen any good, introductory material on semantic networks for anything other than linguistic applications, I'll "drop a little science" (note, Seth, I'm not presuming that you do or do not know anything about semnets. I'm posting this for general edification.)
Semantic networks, roughly speaking, are large graph structures with bidirectional semantics applied to edges. Nodes themselves, in a "true" semnet, contain no content. Content is implied by traversing edges and "reading" the semantics in the direction of your traversal. Nodes themselves are just the connectors. However, in the "modified" semnets which most people actually use to get "real" work done, the nodes do store data, and the semantics of the edges imply metadata and (gasp!) information about the nodes and their relationship to one another.
This phrase "bidirectional semantics" has a simple meaning: meaning! An edge has a phrase describing it in one direction, and the converse of that phrase describing it in the other direction. Example "seth (is-friend-of / has-friend) tripp". Read from left to right, "seth is a friend of tripp." Read from right to left, "tripp has friend seth". Not that this does not imply anything about how seth feels about the friendship :) My offering
friendship to seth only says I'm extending a hand and
consider him a friend. If he "accepts", then we'd add
another edge between the same two nodes, with the same
semantics, but reversed direction: tripp (is-friend-of /
has-friend) seth.
This, of course, brings up the issue that there can be a plurality of edges between nodes. Thus, you can arbitrarily add lots of meaning to basic data by interrelating it with other data. Also wickedly cool is the fact that an edge itself can be treated as a node. So you can now take the edge "is-friend-of / has-friend" between seth and tripp, and mark it with edges relating it to, say, a start date (ie: the date of my peace offering :) ). Because of this,
that means it's also meaningful to have multiple edges
between the same two nodes with those edges having the same
semantics and the same direction. If you did
construct such a graph, it would presumably be because those
edges themselves were further modified by other edges
pointing out somewheres, lending the two similar edges
uniqueness by how they are modified.
The fundamental offering of a semnet is to separate content (ie: data) from position and relationship. In a semnet, position is how a node is determined to be unique in the world. There is no implicit requirement for unique data, as it will become unique by virtue of how you relate it to other data. (Of course, as implementations go, there are unique IDs generated, etc., etc., but all of this is abstracted away by the semnet engine itself, and not something you worry about when manipulating the network.)
So, to bring things back to Eazel, Nautilus, and Medusa, my argument is primarily that we need to be looking at technologies such as this (which, incidentally, is older than I am :) ) to
revolutionize the way we conceptualize the manipulation
of information. Thus the pointer to Framer-D in my original
post :)
However, I do want to point out (as if anyone's still reading) that I understand the necessary schism between revolutionary and evolutionary. Been there, done that, etc. :) My rant was written in a moment of
weakness, and I forgot my compassion for the trials of the
implementor. I believe in and have experienced the necessity of
evolutionary progress toward revolutionary goals. I, myself, am
engaged in such progress with my own projects, so I don't
begrudge you the "preview releases" and "1.0s" and so forth that
are a part of the process.
At the same time, I humbly propose that it might do Nautilus well to provide periodic "capsule overviews" (brain screenshots, if you will) of what's going on in your heads, architecturally. I realize there are mailing lists, CVS repos, etc., but (pardon my lazy ass :) ), that's an awful lot of
investment for someone who's not yet sure of where you're going,
and whether his/her energies would be best spent diving into
Nautilus or forging ahead with something else.
What I mean by this is that you should give more webshare to "open architectural process". Not that you should open up to random flaming, etc., etc., but posting summaries of what you're thinking in the loooong term, how it all fits together, etc. Documents that can be easily digested, reflected upon, and so forth. An example that springs to mind is the old XPFE / XUI stuff that the Mozilla folk wrote. Those were pretty straightforward docs that said "here's where we want to go, ultimately." As I am a critic by trade (well, consultant), I took perverse delight in printing those out and marking the hell out of them! :) Though I disagreed with things, I at least knew
what, precisely, I was disagreeing with :)
I'm bringing this up because of my aforementioned experience with the BeBox. I bought a BeBox at a time when my consultancy really couldn't afford it :) I dove into being a developer,
learning the tools, reading huge volumes of mail and newsgroup
flak, and so forth. Ultimately, I dropped my BeOS project(s)
because of a number of reasons. The one I remember most vividly,
though, was my disappointment at what they weren't
revolutionizing (see bedevtalk and comp.sys.be archives for
specifics). A lot of us poured a lot of energy and effort into
discussions about what we'd like to see, and what revolutions
were possible. To Be's credit, they listened and responded as
much as they were able, but there were some fundamental
decisions that had long since been made, and were unchangeable.
As open source projects, GNOME, HelixCode (GNOME++?), and Eazel's offerings (Nautilus and whatever else is under the covers) promise a relief from that frustration. Ultimately, if we have the source, we can go in whatever direction we like. However, we all know that, practically, that's a lot harder if the architecture is cast, and our direction(s) diverge from assumptions made by the architects. Encouraging early feedback, even if only at the 50,000 foot level, on the architecture is a good thing for a project of this magnitude and potential impact :)
I do want to set aside this paragraph to clarify what I'm saying above. There already exist mailing lists, CVS repositories, and feedback mechanisms for giving our two cents' worth to the developers. No worries there :) What does not exist (or at
least, not obviously from a casual traverse of the website) is a
low-overhead architectural primer. A tool that a person can use
to decide, fundamentally, if it's worth going any further for
them down this path. Some of us old farts feel burned by past
experiences, and don't want to slog, gung-ho and
head-first, into another mailing list and development project
without some vague idea that what's going on under the hood is
powerful mojo, and that them what runs things will listen to
carefully considered flames :)
Thanks for listening... and don't take things personally, I'm just prematurely bitter and jaded :)
I'm following in the footsteps of an earlier poster in saying that I'm disappointed to see Apple and NeXT's best and brightest come up with... a file browser. I'm just as disappointed as I was five years ago when I signed up to be one of the first fifteen-hundred BeBox developers, after I discovered what their idea of "revolutionizing" the operating system was.
To quote Alan Cooper, from About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design:
Fundamentally, I'm a bit tired of hearing about how everyone's "revolutionizing" everything, when they're really not. Look: revolution and revolutioniz e both imply "sudden, radical, or complete change". The American colonies didn't fight the Revolutionary War to install a local king. The French Revolution wasn't so they could hire a newer, prettier cake-eater.
The file system, fundamentally, is an implementation detail. It's an artifact of how "things have always been done". It's a drag on doing real, substantive improvement to the way computers work for people. There are millions of people out there who have never used a computer, and have yet to learn. They don't need to learn what a filesystem is, or to navigate it. They need to be able to find and use the information and tools that are important to them, period.
If we truly want to revolutionize the user interface, the user experience, etc., then we really need to start with a more fundamental re-thinking of how things work. Some of the ideas Miguel de Icaza outlined in his Let's Make Unix Not Suck talk/paper are a good starting place. The universal presence of an ORB, lots of small tools cooperating via the ORB interactively, are all good kicks in the pants of the Unix mindset. But, fundamentally, that's nothing more than what Redmond is doing with COM*, etc. There's more work to be done. There's ripping out the filesystem as a mechanism for data storage and retrieval, and replacing it with a dynamic semantic network, allowing information storage and retrieval (don't confuse data and information). There's moving away from skins and into real, powerful, direct-manipulation user interfaces. For those of you that remember OS/2 and IBM's System Object Model, there was some very, very powerful technology underneath all of that! Hell, you still can't reliably drag a document over top of the printer and have it "do the right thing" in Windows or Linux like you could in OS/2. And that was CORBA all over the place, too, so there was plenty of room for those services to make their way out over the network.
Don't even get me started on package management and installation management, or system administration. Suffice it to say that very little of our technology is designed to help us achieve our goals. It's a lot of work, but this community has boundless energy, and the opportunity and environment to do things that are truly revolutionary. We revolutionized the development model, now let's revolutionize the technology.
I've got to throw in a "me, too," here, as I'm listed on Karl's endorsements page :)
I've worked closely with Karl for a number of years on the InteropNet NOC Team (when it was still a harrowing experience :) ). He knows his stuff in all the important dimensions - technical, philsophical, ethical, etc. He's very much been "in the trenches" (quote borrowed from his ICANN At Large Candidate Page), and has used that experience to formulate a set of very good basic values centered around the individuals of the Internet's population (ie: not the corporations).
Karl has a long history of interest in issues that are only now being recognized as "important" to the continued freedom of the Internet (an Intellectual Property law degree can work against corporatism as well as for it :) ).
Visit his platform page, though. Don't let me put words into his mouth.
Self rules. Too bad you posted AC, otherwise I'd let you in on my two dirty little secrets: implementations of classless OOP (a la Self) for Perl and Python, complete with robust persistence, including code storage. I guess you'll just have to wait for the release :)
- FreeBSD
- Linux
- Win2k
- Solaris
- OpenVMS
across- Nortel
- Cisco
- 3Com
routers. We're running Quake natively over v6He's around in spirit, though he doesn't actively write articles any more (aside from the closing editorial of each issue). He publishes a magazine that's a loose descendant of Circuit Cellar called Circuit Cellar, Ink. Companion website is http://www.circuitcellar.com/
IANAL, but I had a meeting with one a few weeks ago about patents. I learned some interesting things. Most interesting (and distressing) to me was when I learned about what "disclosure" is actually about.
Basically, when you a) offer for sale or b) publish your work, you're "disclosing" it publicly (even if you sell it to a client who's under NDA, you are "offering it for sale", which means it's been disclosed).
From the time of disclosure, you have one year to "patent, or get off the pot". However, if you don't start your filing process either before you disclose, or real darned soon thereafter, someone else can! That is to say, if you show no interest in patenting your work during the post-disclosure window, someone else who sees value in it can patent it.
Of course, to a Free Software / Free Hardware / Free Ideas zealot like myself, this is a pretty appalling state of affairs. What it means to me, in a nutshell, is that I have to go through the cumbersome and expensive process of patenting my "novel inventions" (and, in this day and age, even my "totally fscking obvious inventions to anyone with two brain cells to rub together"), in order to keep them from, basically, getting pirated.
That means that I cannot simply disclose and rest secure in the knowledge that the freedom of my ideas is protected, and that they will remain free from the moment of disclosure thereafter.
That sucks.
(ObDisclaimer: IANAL, and I may have horribly misunderstood this, but I did ask a great many questions of this poor guy, and attempt to clarify that I was actually hearing what I thought I was).
Not so much accurate, I think.
I believe it goes more like this:
case 1: kioskI build a kiosk using a bunch of GPL'ed bits. I extend and hack those GPL'ed bits (as opposed to merely adding my own, fresh bits). I place that kiosk in the mall and charge $5 to use it. Am I distributing that code? Absolutely not. I'm providing a service on a machine that runs that code, but not distributing the software (in either binary or source form).
case 2: embedded consumer applianceSO, I take that same, easy to use software and stuff it inside of a sexy little consumer box. It has my same hacks, only instead of charging $5 a pop to use the box, I'm charging $500 to buy the box for your own personal enjoyment. Now I'm distributing the code (since it's embedded on the box), and have to follow the terms of the GPL.
Disclaimer:Though I'm quite bright, I'm not a lawyer.
PS:Though I hate to give the sharks chum, does this little scenario suggest that perhaps embedded manufacturers might get around the GPL by "leasing" the device itself and not actually "distributing" it per se? That's an interesting set of thorny legal questions... Of course, as an Official Free Software Zealot(tm), I believe that the right thing to do is release the source and make your money based on actual talents, reputation, branding, and so forth. But I'm silly that way.
I happen to appreciate Jon's work. In fact, my click-throughs on the techno articles are hit or miss at best. Usually it's enough for me to see the front page blurb, and skip all the rambling commentary by the flamekiddies.
I always read Jon's articles, though. "Geek Culture" is fascinating to me. I've been trying to understand it for years, from an insider's perspective. What makes me tick? Jon, not being a hardcore tech-head, has an interesting take on things. He allows me to see from an "informed outsider's" vantage. I've always wanted more insight into why we (Geeks) are the way we are, and why the rest of the world has so much trouble dealing with us. In fact, in this Rushmore piece, Jon really put the finger on it with this line:
That very "obsessive instinct to create things" is, I think, what you'll find inside of yourself if you are truly a Geek. Thanks, Jon, for naming it.