WIPO has confused the issue, and Boyle does little to clear it up. The term "right" has been used in place of "entitlement" or "monopoly" to describe the expanded ability of a broadcaster to claim public domain works as their own for 20 years. This is not a right, this is a reduction in rights of everyone else. It is an entitlement, an entitlement to something that no one else will be allowed to have. It gives broadcasters a monopoly on works that they did not create. Boyle is correct in saying that this is bad policy. Anyone with eyes can see it as so.
But he also tackles the issue from a strange direction. He sees law and policy as a means to an end rather than the description and implementation of a general principle. Laws should reflect the general will of the people, in my opinion, rather than be used to reach a specific outcome. By requiring that laws need a specific goal (in this case to expand broadcast network infrastructure), we leave ourselves open to exactly the problem of industrial horse-trading that Boyle seeks to avoid. If Boyle really believes that these laws are wrong, why does he attack it on the effects it will have rather than on the general principle?
The problem is that by granting special "copyright" to public domain works to broadcasters, it effectively removes those works from the public domain. As a result, the freedom to access or otherwise use those works becomes infringed. This is not a matter of the new rules having no positive effect. It is a matter of reducing the amount of freedoms of everyone except a handful of quick-moving broadcasters. That is the principle at stake here, not some untestable hypothesis regarding the reduced likelihood of new networks being set up.
This is, as Boyle points out, a bad direction on the part of WIPO. It is unnecessary and harms the freedoms of almost all involved. However, fighting this encroachment of rights should not be waged on an effects basis because then we become the horse-traders that Boyle seems to despise. Instead it is necessary to confront this on the basis of first principles from which can be developed a sane and equitable intellectual property policy.
"caused by us" is the key phrase there. If something horrific happens on their end, they will reduce your next month's bill by the pro-rated amount. Better than nothing, but not that far from it.
It doesn't cover anything in the middle, so any network problems that occur outside their doors are automatically not their problem. The infrastructure itself (when I was over there) is a mess, and there isn't much an ISP can do about that. There really isn't a good, direct relationship between an ISP and a subscriber. The subscriber is at the mercy of the wire-owners which are typically not the ISPs themselves.
"It would be nice if this would be implemented here in the states, but the corporate entities that provide teh high speed internet access are quite greedy and, if/when they manage to provide that kind of bandwith, it would cost tremendously more than $43 a month."
That wouldn't be the case if the U.S. government saw fit to fund such a program. If the internet is a good thing, as I hope we can all agree, then getting it into the homes of every citizen ought to be a goal that we can all rally around. If companies are unwilling to bring forth broadband services to uncompetitive areas, the government can use a combination of carrots and sticks to goad private enterprises into those areas.
Is it a little bit Socialist? Yeah, sure. But legislated and managed effectively, it can be economically implemented with very little raise in costs (taxes) to the average citizen. Since we are talking about the UK in this article, we can look at their NHS program and see how much more services are provided at a lower average cost than the same services in the U.S. Government funding doesn't need to be some mysterious, mismanaged black hole. It only seems that way because we elect leaders who are more interested in getting pork barrel spending for their home districts rather than helping the entire country.
But I also love service and stability and a broadband connection that is always available. My experience with English broadband is that it is run over deteriorating copper wires that were apparently laid when Alex Bell was experimenting with his telegraph machine, and which are frequently sliced into little segments by construction crews mangling the roads.
Sure they offer high speed access, but can they also offer guaranteed access?
If it does work out, my only wish was that I was able to get on that network. Limping along at 512kbps is not quite the exhilarating ride that it once was when I first switched from 56.6 dialup.
Surely they should have chosen a name that implied success rather than invoke the name of a hopeless romantic who is known for fighting the inevitable.
And they could have spelled it correctly: Don Quixote.
Wikipedia's main claim to fame is its ability to evolve with time as new facts are available. A topic like NASA can be updated just as frequently as the main NASA webpage by anyone with the gumption to do it. People who have extensive topical knowledge can give that information to the world with an entry in Wikipedia. And the more people that participate, the more voluminous and comprehensive the information gets.
Unfortunately, this is also the online encyclopedia's Achilles heel. When the entire database is open to anyone willing to edit the posts, it runs the risk of getting not only incorrect information but also maliciously incorrect information. As someone else mentioned in another post before this one, topics that engender strong emotions frequently succumb to "vandalism". But other less popular topics also run the risk of being vandalized, and since they are not as frequently viewed or commonly understood, the incorrect information presents a timebomb for any hapless dataminer.
So who can you trust? Are the days of authoritative encyclopedias like Britannica and World Book behind us? Lexis Nexis is still around, charging outrageous fees for very good information. Does Wikipedia compete with authoritative encyclopedias, or is it just a condensed version of the Internet (which is to say a sometimes useful, sometimes useless collection of random topics)?
When I was a little kid, I was a bully. I pushed other weak little kids around and took their lunch money. I'm not proud of that, but just saying.
I got older, and they got older. And when they started getting to be about the same size as me (I was big for my age in elementary school), they started fighting back. But they didn't fight back with fists and bats. They knew what they'd get if they tried that with me and my friends. Rather, they fought back with whining and posturing. They would take every little perceived slight to heart and try to come back with the cleverest, most hurtful response. But, you see, it didn't affect me, like water off a duck's back.
I wasn't in any competition with them. I was out of their league. I was so far ahead of them in smarts and brawn that I simply didn't have to mess with them anymore once out of middle school. The slights they perceived were of their own creation. Their inferiority complex (which I may have helped create) made them react like whiners instead of winners (and there's your soundbite for today).
Many Microsoft employees have never worked anywhere else. They were plucked out of college and have worked for MS ever since. So it would be reasonable to think that their view of corporate life would be a little bit skewed.
As for your signature, Windows can't use UNC paths as a path to be 'cd'd to. You can copy from a UNC path, but not 'cd' to it. To navigate a network drive, you need to "net use * (UNC)" it. It will give you a valid drive (like x:) to which you can cd to. Not the most painless approach, but it works, for some definitions of "works".
First, its main function is to provide an augmented internet experience for its owners. It will read email, read news, etc. for the owner who would not then be required to sit at the computer. Having an always-on connection would allow it to update its internal data any time it wanted to.
And on top of that, if Mitsubishi needs to push out the service pack that fixes the "Push gramma down the stairs" bug, having an always-on connection will allow that to happen without the device needing to specifically connect for that (by which time it may be too late).
There seems to be a clamor for Flash-like functionality but without Macromedia's proprietary player and tools.
SVG is one alternative that a lot of people seem to like. Scalable Vector Graphics. Supposedly, Firefox/Mozilla will support it soon. Sounds like a great thing.
Then why doesn't Microsoft's Sparkle sound like a great thing too? The language is written in XML (this statement doesn't compute, but works), so it's not like you couldn't program your little game in something like vi or Notepad. Is it because it is Microsoft that everyone is down on it?
While there are certainly areas of crossover, like the algorithms to filter through the volumes of data that biotech firms have, the fundamental difference between bio companies and computer companies is that biotech produces *something*. Computer technology is basically ephemeral. But Biotech leads to medicines and other discoveries that are both difficult to discover and inherently valuable.
It makes sense to cover biotech with patents, as it took significant effort to research and develop those things.
Computer tech, on the other hand, is primarily focused on automating processes. Computers are inherently faster than humans at doing repetitive tasks, especially in regards to calculations. But it is difficult to find a program that implements a process that doesn't exist already in another form, or that isn't blatantly obvious to everyone. Something like developing "a secure mechanism by which encrypted media data is stored on a device and available for playback when read and decrypted by the client application" would probably be a good candidate for a patent. "Users can click once and purchase an item without having to load the shopping cart menu" is both obvious and not really that far removed from the systems that preceded it.
That people get greedy and innovation slows down when companies are competing is just a small side-effect of the patent process.
But industry shouldn't have a role? That's crazy talk. Parents ought to keep a close eye on the things their kids do, but it is also the community's responsibility to raise kids rightly. If a kid is running around Wal-mart yelling and screaming, most of the time people just look the other way and mutter under their breath. But that is doing a huge disservice to the child who will not learn proper behavior.
So too is it important that industries concentrate on producing high-quality, wholesome products. Whether this be something as nutritious as breakfast cereal or as empty as your typical R-rated movie, it is important that the community standards to which a majority of a community profess are supported by the corporation's product.
It is good business to provide people with things they need. But there is also a lot of money involved in selling people their vices. We do not accept people who wish to sell drugs to minors, nor do we absolve of guilt those who would ply them with alcohol.
It is not always 100% the job of the parent. The community must be held responsible to the extent that they have offered moral corruption from beyond the purview of the child's parents.
It would be nice if they synchronized the version numbers so that it was obvious which version of JUnit worked with which version of Java.
I'm looking at the samples and am left scratching my head. I don't see any difference in the various example tests they show. Maybe someone can explain this "annotation" and how it is better (it's certainly more verbose!) than the normal way of doing things.
The article I read was back in 2000/2001, during the "dotcom implosion". They weren't a huge company, maybe less than 30 employees, but for a company of that size, they were very profitable.
I'm afraid I don't have a link to the article, and can't even remember the company's name.
I understand that it goes against the grain of conventional wisdom which says that you've got to give your customers a free taste so they will come back for seconds. But I also noticed your handle was "be-fan", so I wouldn't put much stock into that conventional wisdom.
I read an article once about a company that was based on Ayn Rand's Objectivist teachings. The owner was such a fan that he made up a bunch of rules for the company and its employees to follow.
One of the tenets was that anything of value must be paid for. This meant that they didn't have any "free demos". They did have volume pricing, as well as negotiable prices for large customers, if I recall correctly.
There is nothing wrong with charging for your product, especially if you think that it is a good one that many people will benefit from.
There is a definite market for something like this. Knowing what exceptions your application is generating at runtime "in the wild" is very valuable to help debug and speed bug fixes.
The only problem is that it would be much more convenient if the exception were sent directly to the application makers instead of to some third party. Microsoft's error reporting system is somewhat like this, but I don't know anyone who actually sends in bug reports when an application crashes in XP. Likewise, Firefox used to have a quality feedback agent, but I never saw it pop up or notify me in any way. Maybe it is silently calling home?
If your users are your testers, it's very important that you get as much detailed information from any problems that arise as you can. Ideally these bugs would have been fixed before it ever hit the doors, but in this day and age of rapid development and short production cycles, it's sometimes better to give a working version to the customer and update it periodically.
A sign of a healthy office is a fairly high level of chatter. It means that people get along well with each other and are comfortable talking amongst themselves. Some large, draconian corporations try to encourage this through "company picnics" and other hokey things that force people together who would otherwise not normally associate. Companies where people like each other generally do not need such encouragement.
If you are so anti-social that you feel that your coworkers' chatting is driving you insane (I'm sure you're exaggerating), I wouldn't be surprised to find that others also find you socially repulsive. Humans are a social animal and anti-social behavior is a sign of sickness. If you notice people chatting near you, it is a sign of a healthy personality that you join them for a few laughs. Turning up your iPod is not healthy.
And who said you need to have music to tune out coworkers anyway? If you are really bothered by their presence, earplugs work very well. And they don't hurt your hearing.
Slashdot Mirror
I found this online which claims to be a better translation than IGN's.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/edg/520709.html
It's still pretty verbose and awkward. Maybe if I were on pins and needles waiting for this thing I'd be trying to hack the website like all of you.
Retailers must have already known if the release date was in 12 hours. Was it kept a big secret? I can't believe that.
WIPO has confused the issue, and Boyle does little to clear it up. The term "right" has been used in place of "entitlement" or "monopoly" to describe the expanded ability of a broadcaster to claim public domain works as their own for 20 years. This is not a right, this is a reduction in rights of everyone else. It is an entitlement, an entitlement to something that no one else will be allowed to have. It gives broadcasters a monopoly on works that they did not create. Boyle is correct in saying that this is bad policy. Anyone with eyes can see it as so.
But he also tackles the issue from a strange direction. He sees law and policy as a means to an end rather than the description and implementation of a general principle. Laws should reflect the general will of the people, in my opinion, rather than be used to reach a specific outcome. By requiring that laws need a specific goal (in this case to expand broadcast network infrastructure), we leave ourselves open to exactly the problem of industrial horse-trading that Boyle seeks to avoid. If Boyle really believes that these laws are wrong, why does he attack it on the effects it will have rather than on the general principle?
The problem is that by granting special "copyright" to public domain works to broadcasters, it effectively removes those works from the public domain. As a result, the freedom to access or otherwise use those works becomes infringed. This is not a matter of the new rules having no positive effect. It is a matter of reducing the amount of freedoms of everyone except a handful of quick-moving broadcasters. That is the principle at stake here, not some untestable hypothesis regarding the reduced likelihood of new networks being set up.
This is, as Boyle points out, a bad direction on the part of WIPO. It is unnecessary and harms the freedoms of almost all involved. However, fighting this encroachment of rights should not be waged on an effects basis because then we become the horse-traders that Boyle seems to despise. Instead it is necessary to confront this on the basis of first principles from which can be developed a sane and equitable intellectual property policy.
The "sexy friend" has cat ears and a tail. What kind of perversion is this?
"caused by us" is the key phrase there. If something horrific happens on their end, they will reduce your next month's bill by the pro-rated amount. Better than nothing, but not that far from it.
It doesn't cover anything in the middle, so any network problems that occur outside their doors are automatically not their problem. The infrastructure itself (when I was over there) is a mess, and there isn't much an ISP can do about that. There really isn't a good, direct relationship between an ISP and a subscriber. The subscriber is at the mercy of the wire-owners which are typically not the ISPs themselves.
"It would be nice if this would be implemented here in the states, but the corporate entities that provide teh high speed internet access are quite greedy and, if/when they manage to provide that kind of bandwith, it would cost tremendously more than $43 a month."
That wouldn't be the case if the U.S. government saw fit to fund such a program. If the internet is a good thing, as I hope we can all agree, then getting it into the homes of every citizen ought to be a goal that we can all rally around. If companies are unwilling to bring forth broadband services to uncompetitive areas, the government can use a combination of carrots and sticks to goad private enterprises into those areas.
Is it a little bit Socialist? Yeah, sure. But legislated and managed effectively, it can be economically implemented with very little raise in costs (taxes) to the average citizen. Since we are talking about the UK in this article, we can look at their NHS program and see how much more services are provided at a lower average cost than the same services in the U.S. Government funding doesn't need to be some mysterious, mismanaged black hole. It only seems that way because we elect leaders who are more interested in getting pork barrel spending for their home districts rather than helping the entire country.
But I also love service and stability and a broadband connection that is always available. My experience with English broadband is that it is run over deteriorating copper wires that were apparently laid when Alex Bell was experimenting with his telegraph machine, and which are frequently sliced into little segments by construction crews mangling the roads.
Sure they offer high speed access, but can they also offer guaranteed access?
If it does work out, my only wish was that I was able to get on that network. Limping along at 512kbps is not quite the exhilarating ride that it once was when I first switched from 56.6 dialup.
That's funny since the original text has it spelled Quixote: http://csdl.tamu.edu/cgi-bin/shuehu/qbrowse/qb?POR C=P&NO=1
I wonder when they decided to change the spelling.
Surely they should have chosen a name that implied success rather than invoke the name of a hopeless romantic who is known for fighting the inevitable.
And they could have spelled it correctly: Don Quixote.
Wikipedia's main claim to fame is its ability to evolve with time as new facts are available. A topic like NASA can be updated just as frequently as the main NASA webpage by anyone with the gumption to do it. People who have extensive topical knowledge can give that information to the world with an entry in Wikipedia. And the more people that participate, the more voluminous and comprehensive the information gets.
Unfortunately, this is also the online encyclopedia's Achilles heel. When the entire database is open to anyone willing to edit the posts, it runs the risk of getting not only incorrect information but also maliciously incorrect information. As someone else mentioned in another post before this one, topics that engender strong emotions frequently succumb to "vandalism". But other less popular topics also run the risk of being vandalized, and since they are not as frequently viewed or commonly understood, the incorrect information presents a timebomb for any hapless dataminer.
So who can you trust? Are the days of authoritative encyclopedias like Britannica and World Book behind us? Lexis Nexis is still around, charging outrageous fees for very good information. Does Wikipedia compete with authoritative encyclopedias, or is it just a condensed version of the Internet (which is to say a sometimes useful, sometimes useless collection of random topics)?
When I was a little kid, I was a bully. I pushed other weak little kids around and took their lunch money. I'm not proud of that, but just saying.
I got older, and they got older. And when they started getting to be about the same size as me (I was big for my age in elementary school), they started fighting back. But they didn't fight back with fists and bats. They knew what they'd get if they tried that with me and my friends. Rather, they fought back with whining and posturing. They would take every little perceived slight to heart and try to come back with the cleverest, most hurtful response. But, you see, it didn't affect me, like water off a duck's back.
I wasn't in any competition with them. I was out of their league. I was so far ahead of them in smarts and brawn that I simply didn't have to mess with them anymore once out of middle school. The slights they perceived were of their own creation. Their inferiority complex (which I may have helped create) made them react like whiners instead of winners (and there's your soundbite for today).
I just tried it:
C:\>echo @echo batch test >batch_test.bat
C:\>batch_test
batch test
C:\>batch_test
batch test
C:\>batch_test
batch test
C:\>batch_test
batch test
C:\>batch_test
batch test
C:\>ver
Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
C:\>
It doesn't seem to behave as you explained, though.
Many Microsoft employees have never worked anywhere else. They were plucked out of college and have worked for MS ever since. So it would be reasonable to think that their view of corporate life would be a little bit skewed.
As for your signature, Windows can't use UNC paths as a path to be 'cd'd to. You can copy from a UNC path, but not 'cd' to it. To navigate a network drive, you need to "net use * (UNC)" it. It will give you a valid drive (like x:) to which you can cd to. Not the most painless approach, but it works, for some definitions of "works".
First, its main function is to provide an augmented internet experience for its owners. It will read email, read news, etc. for the owner who would not then be required to sit at the computer. Having an always-on connection would allow it to update its internal data any time it wanted to.
And on top of that, if Mitsubishi needs to push out the service pack that fixes the "Push gramma down the stairs" bug, having an always-on connection will allow that to happen without the device needing to specifically connect for that (by which time it may be too late).
Makes sense. Thanks!
There seems to be a clamor for Flash-like functionality but without Macromedia's proprietary player and tools.
SVG is one alternative that a lot of people seem to like. Scalable Vector Graphics. Supposedly, Firefox/Mozilla will support it soon. Sounds like a great thing.
Then why doesn't Microsoft's Sparkle sound like a great thing too? The language is written in XML (this statement doesn't compute, but works), so it's not like you couldn't program your little game in something like vi or Notepad. Is it because it is Microsoft that everyone is down on it?
While there are certainly areas of crossover, like the algorithms to filter through the volumes of data that biotech firms have, the fundamental difference between bio companies and computer companies is that biotech produces *something*. Computer technology is basically ephemeral. But Biotech leads to medicines and other discoveries that are both difficult to discover and inherently valuable.
It makes sense to cover biotech with patents, as it took significant effort to research and develop those things.
Computer tech, on the other hand, is primarily focused on automating processes. Computers are inherently faster than humans at doing repetitive tasks, especially in regards to calculations. But it is difficult to find a program that implements a process that doesn't exist already in another form, or that isn't blatantly obvious to everyone. Something like developing "a secure mechanism by which encrypted media data is stored on a device and available for playback when read and decrypted by the client application" would probably be a good candidate for a patent. "Users can click once and purchase an item without having to load the shopping cart menu" is both obvious and not really that far removed from the systems that preceded it.
That people get greedy and innovation slows down when companies are competing is just a small side-effect of the patent process.
But industry shouldn't have a role? That's crazy talk. Parents ought to keep a close eye on the things their kids do, but it is also the community's responsibility to raise kids rightly. If a kid is running around Wal-mart yelling and screaming, most of the time people just look the other way and mutter under their breath. But that is doing a huge disservice to the child who will not learn proper behavior.
So too is it important that industries concentrate on producing high-quality, wholesome products. Whether this be something as nutritious as breakfast cereal or as empty as your typical R-rated movie, it is important that the community standards to which a majority of a community profess are supported by the corporation's product.
It is good business to provide people with things they need. But there is also a lot of money involved in selling people their vices. We do not accept people who wish to sell drugs to minors, nor do we absolve of guilt those who would ply them with alcohol.
It is not always 100% the job of the parent. The community must be held responsible to the extent that they have offered moral corruption from beyond the purview of the child's parents.
It would be nice if they synchronized the version numbers so that it was obvious which version of JUnit worked with which version of Java.
I'm looking at the samples and am left scratching my head. I don't see any difference in the various example tests they show. Maybe someone can explain this "annotation" and how it is better (it's certainly more verbose!) than the normal way of doing things.
The article I read was back in 2000/2001, during the "dotcom implosion". They weren't a huge company, maybe less than 30 employees, but for a company of that size, they were very profitable.
I'm afraid I don't have a link to the article, and can't even remember the company's name.
I understand that it goes against the grain of conventional wisdom which says that you've got to give your customers a free taste so they will come back for seconds. But I also noticed your handle was "be-fan", so I wouldn't put much stock into that conventional wisdom.
I read an article once about a company that was based on Ayn Rand's Objectivist teachings. The owner was such a fan that he made up a bunch of rules for the company and its employees to follow.
One of the tenets was that anything of value must be paid for. This meant that they didn't have any "free demos". They did have volume pricing, as well as negotiable prices for large customers, if I recall correctly.
There is nothing wrong with charging for your product, especially if you think that it is a good one that many people will benefit from.
I need to feed my Tamagotchi!
There is a definite market for something like this. Knowing what exceptions your application is generating at runtime "in the wild" is very valuable to help debug and speed bug fixes.
The only problem is that it would be much more convenient if the exception were sent directly to the application makers instead of to some third party. Microsoft's error reporting system is somewhat like this, but I don't know anyone who actually sends in bug reports when an application crashes in XP. Likewise, Firefox used to have a quality feedback agent, but I never saw it pop up or notify me in any way. Maybe it is silently calling home?
If your users are your testers, it's very important that you get as much detailed information from any problems that arise as you can. Ideally these bugs would have been fixed before it ever hit the doors, but in this day and age of rapid development and short production cycles, it's sometimes better to give a working version to the customer and update it periodically.
Thanks for the link!
Yes, just as too much introversion is a sign of a problem, so too is too much extroversion.
A mentally healthy person will typically find some middle ground.
A sign of a healthy office is a fairly high level of chatter. It means that people get along well with each other and are comfortable talking amongst themselves. Some large, draconian corporations try to encourage this through "company picnics" and other hokey things that force people together who would otherwise not normally associate. Companies where people like each other generally do not need such encouragement.
If you are so anti-social that you feel that your coworkers' chatting is driving you insane (I'm sure you're exaggerating), I wouldn't be surprised to find that others also find you socially repulsive. Humans are a social animal and anti-social behavior is a sign of sickness. If you notice people chatting near you, it is a sign of a healthy personality that you join them for a few laughs. Turning up your iPod is not healthy.
And who said you need to have music to tune out coworkers anyway? If you are really bothered by their presence, earplugs work very well. And they don't hurt your hearing.
http://quarkvsindesign.com/news/archives/2005/03/q uarks-postcards-from-the-edge/