"Adequate search" as You name it would require semantic understanding of the content.
By now, all aproaches of "semantic web" depend on a fair classification of content by the owner of the content.
Currently, Google is continuously fighting against page rank manipulations. Inventing something that depends on fairness would render the search engine useless.
You are showing some examples, in which some behaviour is not accepted.
But only the in last example, someone gets arrested for the very good reason of upsetting other people.
Bruce writes about people getting arrested for no good reason. History tells us, that "security by amateurs" and "reporting anything suspicious" leads to Guantanamo, concentration camps and stakes.
David is writing sense about the problems with linux WiFi drivers. But what is the solution?
In my oppinion, a good open source support for "really complicated" hardware will never exist in Linux for a simple reason: Fear
Linux developers (including L. Thorvalds) do not want their kernel to become closed source. Therefore, they insist on open source drivers for every piece of hardware.
This makes sense for "standard" hardware or "simple" hardware like IDE controllers, CPU, MMU, DMA controllers, parallel ports,...
But for "really complicated" hardware, vendors should be encouraged and entitled to provide closed source drivers for Linux, if it's not possible to provide open source drivers.
Unfortunately, the kernel developers tend to lock vendors out instead of accepting a closed source driver.
I think, that closed source drivers for "non-standard" hardware are no threat to Linux. A lack of hardware support is a threat to Linux.
But I don't see how the artists can make money from such a scheme after the labels take 90% of the profits?
Some big lables fail to realize the chances and changes of the internet.
They even wanted Apple to change its price model in a way that the "top 10"
songs become more expensive than the others.
But back to the question:
Artists can make money by
selling CDs. Especially, if the CD covers are of good quality and contain some background information about the band. Maybe there is a change to get one of those and signed CDs ("every 50th CD is singed by all band members" could do the trick)
gigs. If a lot of people want to hear a band, they will definitely buy some tickets. There are also "music festivals" which offer chances to less famous bands.
merchandizing.
...
I wonder if there still is a neccessity for thos "major labels".
Maybe something like http://www.garageband.com/ will be the future.
That is not true. Users do not want a BIOS, they do not even want an operating system. They only want functionality and productivity.
Therefore, I do not see any point in having a flashable BIOS at all. A BIOS should be smart enough to initialize all the hardware that is necessary to boot the operating system. After this step, the OS should take over.
Actually, most operating systems hardly need any BIOS functionality. LinuxBios http://www.linuxbios.org/ can even replace most BIOSes.
The problem has two names: "Shareholder Value" and "Quarterly reports"
Let me explain that with an example:
Company A: In A, projects are long term (long is much longer than 90 days, btw). Therefore, in A employees are trained in their work time and thus they can improve their skills, they make sensible recommendations to managemant and (last but not least) can lead more projects to success, because only few projects are considered "learning experiments". Management literally enforces 40h weeks, because they found out that the first 2 hours of a 10 hour day are wasted on fixing bugs that overworked workers produced in the last two hours of the day before.
In company A, everybody knows that the long term success will ensure the survival of the company _and_ the survival of their jobs.
Company B: In company B, people who are not familiar with the newest "bleeding edge" technologies get fired within two weeks. As the newest technologies promise to be the must productive ones, for every three fired workers two new ones will be employed (those who know the most buzzwords). This philosophy is not only applied to workers but also to upper management. In company B, long term strategy means 70 to 90 days.
+++ STOCK REPORT +++ STOCK REPORT +++ Breaking news: After a dreadful quarter B got a new CEO and a new CTO - both of them will downsize the company and concentrate on the most beneficial fields of operation. B is a STRONG BUY!
A has increased his profit by 21%. This is 6% lower than analysts expected. A is rated as low performer.
Summary: - good training, happy employees, long term profit -> bad - no training, hire and fire, short term profit and long term bancruptcy -> good
For many people (e.g. some shareholders), companies are just what CPUs are for overclockers: Things that can be made run fast and hot and productive. This makes them break soon, but that does not matter because they will be exchanged by then.
Unless your company is not a prison with letters and phone calls prohibited and all employees are prisoners, it is impossible to prevent that data leaves Your company.
Examples:
- e-mail (encrypted, hidden in other "meaningless" data) - paper sheets (carried away, not shreddered) - disks, laptops, USB sticks - peoples memory(!)
It is a mistake to believe that the amount of data (e.g. the 10GB mentioned in the article) is equivalent to the importance of the data.
Leaking out a single number can be fatal for the whole company:
"What will be the price your company is going to tell the customer?"
"1.500.000"
The next day, the customer receives a similar offer stating 1.420.000 from a competitor. About 10 Byte of data can change the direction of one and a half million dollars.
This is true when IE7 is going to be released and it will remain true for a couple of months (or even years).
But a simple analysis of the "user agent" field shows that IE6 is making about 80% of all requests while IE5.5 and IE5 make together only 2%. (By the way: Firefox is at about 10%) (*)
This means that the support will be there in the future and it will run through similar stages as CSS support.
Therefore, XMLHTTP in IE requests are a benefit. Not now, but in the future.
*) figures from analysis of a small company website
I do not see any connection between business(!) requirements and specific operation systems.
The typical business requirements are
- team coordination (MS Office, Evolution,...) - messaging - document creation and management - CRM -...
You are free to continue the list for Your own business. And unless You need some special software that has no counterpart on any other operating system, it does not matter if You use MS Windows, Mac OS (X), Linux,...
The interesting thing is that Microsoft is again comparing its software to Linux. They do not mention Apple, BSD, Zeta and others. It seems, that they are really concerned about linux.
Slashdot Mirror
"Adequate search" as You name it would require semantic understanding
of the content.
By now, all aproaches of "semantic web" depend on a fair classification
of content by the owner of the content.
Currently, Google is continuously fighting against page rank
manipulations. Inventing something that depends on fairness would
render the search engine useless.
You are right, but Bruce is also right.
You are showing some examples, in which some behaviour is not accepted.
But only the in last example, someone gets arrested for the very
good reason of upsetting other people.
Bruce writes about people getting arrested for no good reason.
History tells us, that "security by amateurs" and "reporting anything
suspicious" leads to Guantanamo, concentration camps and stakes.
Hi,
...
David is writing sense about the problems with linux WiFi drivers.
But what is the solution?
In my oppinion, a good open source support for "really complicated" hardware
will never exist in Linux for a simple reason: Fear
Linux developers (including L. Thorvalds) do not want their kernel to become
closed source. Therefore, they insist on open source drivers for every piece
of hardware.
This makes sense for "standard" hardware or "simple" hardware like IDE controllers,
CPU, MMU, DMA controllers, parallel ports,
But for "really complicated" hardware, vendors should be encouraged and entitled
to provide closed source drivers for Linux, if it's not possible to provide
open source drivers.
Unfortunately, the kernel developers tend to lock vendors out instead of
accepting a closed source driver.
I think, that closed source drivers for "non-standard" hardware are no threat
to Linux. A lack of hardware support is a threat to Linux.
Regards,
J. Uhrmann
Google could offer a blacklist service for "newspaper lobbyists".
If a newspaper does not want to be presented (and that's what it is -
merely a presentation) on GoogleNews, Google could simply blacklist
them.
Do I hear a newspaper lobbyist who wants his paper blacklisted?
No one? Anyone?
OK!
Some big lables fail to realize the chances and changes of the internet.
They even wanted Apple to change its price model in a way that the "top 10"
songs become more expensive than the others.
But back to the question:
Artists can make money by
- selling CDs.
- gigs.
- merchandizing.
- ...
I wonder if there still is a neccessity for thos "major labels".Especially, if the CD covers are of good quality and contain
some background information about the band.
Maybe there is a change to get one of those and signed CDs
("every 50th CD is singed by all band members" could do the trick)
If a lot of people want to hear a band, they will definitely buy some tickets.
There are also "music festivals" which offer chances to less famous bands.
Maybe something like http://www.garageband.com/ will be the future.
You state that users want a BIOS.
That is not true. Users do not want a BIOS, they do not even
want an operating system.
They only want functionality and productivity.
Therefore, I do not see any point in having a flashable BIOS at
all. A BIOS should be smart enough to initialize all the hardware
that is necessary to boot the operating system. After this step,
the OS should take over.
Actually, most operating systems hardly need any BIOS functionality.
LinuxBios http://www.linuxbios.org/ can even replace most BIOSes.
The problem has two names: "Shareholder Value" and "Quarterly reports"
Let me explain that with an example:
Company A:
In A, projects are long term (long is much longer than 90 days, btw).
Therefore, in A employees are trained in their work time and thus they
can improve their skills, they make sensible recommendations to managemant
and (last but not least) can lead more projects to success, because only
few projects are considered "learning experiments".
Management literally enforces 40h weeks, because they found out that
the first 2 hours of a 10 hour day are wasted on fixing bugs that
overworked workers produced in the last two hours of the day before.
In company A, everybody knows that the long term success will ensure
the survival of the company _and_ the survival of their jobs.
Company B:
In company B, people who are not familiar with the newest "bleeding edge"
technologies get fired within two weeks. As the newest technologies promise
to be the must productive ones, for every three fired workers two new ones
will be employed (those who know the most buzzwords).
This philosophy is not only applied to workers but also to upper management.
In company B, long term strategy means 70 to 90 days.
+++ STOCK REPORT +++ STOCK REPORT +++
Breaking news:
After a dreadful quarter B got a new CEO and a new CTO - both of them
will downsize the company and concentrate on the most beneficial
fields of operation.
B is a STRONG BUY!
A has increased his profit by 21%. This is 6% lower than analysts expected.
A is rated as low performer.
Summary:
- good training, happy employees, long term profit -> bad
- no training, hire and fire, short term profit and long term bancruptcy -> good
For many people (e.g. some shareholders), companies are just what CPUs are
for overclockers:
Things that can be made run fast and hot and productive. This makes them break
soon, but that does not matter because they will be exchanged by then.
Unless your company is not a prison with letters and phone calls prohibited and all
employees are prisoners, it is impossible to prevent that data leaves Your company.
Examples:
- e-mail (encrypted, hidden in other "meaningless" data)
- paper sheets (carried away, not shreddered)
- disks, laptops, USB sticks
- peoples memory(!)
It is a mistake to believe that the amount of data (e.g. the 10GB mentioned in the article)
is equivalent to the importance of the data.
Leaking out a single number can be fatal for the whole company:
"What will be the price your company is going to tell the customer?"
"1.500.000"
The next day, the customer receives a similar offer stating 1.420.000 from a competitor.
About 10 Byte of data can change the direction of one and a half million dollars.
see also: http://www.heise.de/ct/english/99/04/174/
Most drug dealers do not even dream of that business.
A grade school makes it real by spending that amount of money
for the illusion of security.
This is true when IE7 is going to be released and it will remain true for a couple of months
(or even years).
But a simple analysis of the "user agent" field shows that IE6 is making about 80% of
all requests while IE5.5 and IE5 make together only 2%. (By the way: Firefox is at about 10%) (*)
This means that the support will be there in the future and it will run through similar
stages as CSS support.
Therefore, XMLHTTP in IE requests are a benefit. Not now, but in the future.
*) figures from analysis of a small company website
I do not see any connection between business(!) requirements and
...) ...
...
specific operation systems.
The typical business requirements are
- team coordination (MS Office, Evolution,
- messaging
- document creation and management
- CRM
-
You are free to continue the list for Your own business.
And unless You need some special software that has no counterpart
on any other operating system, it does not matter if You use
MS Windows, Mac OS (X), Linux,
The interesting thing is that Microsoft is again comparing its software
to Linux. They do not mention Apple, BSD, Zeta and others.
It seems, that they are really concerned about linux.