Why can't I get paid to spout idiotic claptrap all day?
Because apparently you don't know the difference between opinions and measurable data. Whether or not the conclusion in TFA is correct, at least it's possible to measure intelligence.
It is not possible to scientifically measure whether one color or flavor is "better" than another; the closest you could get is polling ice cream lovers to see which flavor is more popular.
So how is it supposed to go if you seek an injunction?
Bayer - "Oh crud, you caught us. Too bad, we're going to keep selling Blaritin." Smaller company - "Please stop." Bayer - "No." Smaller company - "Then we'll make you stop." Bayer - "OK, let's drag this out in court. We will keep on selling Blaritin and by the time we have this all settled (or adjudicated), you'll end up a couple million in the hole... etc."
See, you have to go to court anyway to get an injunction. If the judge is going to issue a document saying "Bayer, stop selling Blaritin", he could just as easily say "Bayer, pay Smaller Company [some reasonable amount] per pill or else stop selling Blaritin".
You're right of course, that is the Open Source development model. It works great in areas where someone has already done most of the work (e.g. a kernel). It works lousy in cases where there are a large number of people, each of whom is willing to pay a small amount for a really big improvement.
Nope. All you have to do is take your offer one step further:
"My 1,000,000 friends and I would like an OS that is as easy to learn as MS Windows and as functional as Linux. We're each willing to pay about $150 for it."
And, of course, supply some of the money up front so the developers can keep a roof over their heads while they're working on this project. The only difficult part about this is coordinating your actions with everyone else who wants the same product developed.
Trademark, etc aside, you have no recourse. Sure, you'll get some licensing fees after giving a bunch of money to your lawyers [...]
Of course you have recourse - you can make them license the patent from you. Yes, you'll have to go to court, but you'd have to do that anyway to get an injunction.
What difference does it make if you (1) get them to stop producing Blaritin, thus increasing the sales of your own Claritin and putting more money in your pocket, or (2) get them to pay you for each Blaritin pill they sell, putting more money in your pocket directly? Either way, you're profiting from your invention, and the public is able to buy allergy medication.
My point is there's no reason to grant patents if society can't benefit from them. There's no point in encouraging inventors to come up with new things if they're going to be off-limits to everyone who wants to use them.
I can't really agree with Cringley's position there. Take this bit:
I don't want to be too petty about this, but what if I, as the inventor, simply don't like you, the infringer? What if I fear you'll be using my very peaceful invention to make weapons of mass destruction? Can't I stop you from using my property? Under the proposed law, I can only do so if your infringement will effectively put me out of business.
No, Cringely, you shouldn't be able to stop people from using your invention just because you don't like them or what they might do with it. That's an abuse of the patent system, just like sitting on out-of-print books and obsolete software is an abuse of the copyright system. If you aren't going to make your invention available to people who want to use it, then you don't deserve to have a patent.
I have two Halo 2 presets - F1 for normal play, F2 for vehicles/turrets (with a higher deadband). Vehicles and turrets are still borderline unusable, though, since vertical motion is so much faster than horizontal.
Try controlling a vehicle or a turret with the SmartJoy Frag. It needs so much more joystick force that I have to either turn the deadband WAY up or use my whole coffee table as a mousepad, and one axis moves a lot faster than the other. Contrast that to Halo on the PC, where driving or manning the turret feels totally natural.
I was round a friend's house the other weekend, and she fired up Halo 2 on her XBox, and I was struck with how primitive the graphics look. Sure, an XBox is a damn sight cheaper than my PC, but I can see why.
It's not just the graphics that are disappointing. You have to control it with a gamepad too, unless you buy a keyboard/mouse adapter, and even then it doesn't quite feel like a real PC FPS.
Yes, it was originally intended as a sequel. 3D Realms is a division of Apogee, but it wasn't formed until after ROTT came out. Apogee published Wolf3D for id, so they're not entirely unrelated.
On the other hand, you have a multitude of excuses for piracy. The "copyright infringement isn't theft" is my favorite, as it in no way justifies breaking of the law.
And no one says it does. That statement is used as a response to misinformed copyright advocates who claim that it is theft (despite the Supreme Court finding that it isn't). Surely you've seen arguments like "Why would you download music? You wouldn't steal a CD off the shelf, would you? It's the same thing!"
Well, no, it isn't the same thing, and it's quite reasonable for someone to have moral objections to actual theft but not to illicit copying.
Don't forget hydroelectric. I pay about 4.6 cents per kWh (or about $0.061/kWh this month if you count taxes and fees) thanks to Grand Coulee Dam. It rearranges the landscape a little, but it doesn't pollute, and it's renewable as long as water keeps obeying the laws of physics.
For those who've forgotten, ROTT was intended as a sequel to Wolfenstein 3D, but eventually became its own game. It still has Wolf3D's orthogonal walls, but it gained outdoor areas with sky, varying heights (platforms you can walk over or under), new weapons, and multiplayer modes. In fact, ROTT was the first FPS with a Capture the Flag mode.
On one hand, Real is making it easy and accessible to its customers to break Apple's proprietary codec. Apple spent time and money to make the files only play on their players, and Real is trying to use the files without permission.
You've got it backwards. Real wants to make files from their own store play on Apple's player, by converting them to Apple style DRM files (instead of unrestricted MP3s, which is what they'd do if they really cared about their customers.. but I digress).
Also, don't forget that just because a company spends time and money to keep you from doing something, that doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to do it anyway. For example, if Ford spent months engineering a specially shaped gas tank opening to force customers to buy gas from Ford-owned stations, you'd still have every right to file it open and buy gas from the corner store - it's your car, and you should be able to fill it up however you like.
Similarly, it's your iPod, and you should be able to fill it with music from anyone who can supply it to you. If Apple wants you to come back to them for a "refill" of music, they can compete fairly by providing a better selection or lower prices... and if they can't compete fairly, they deserve to fail as their customers switch to other music stores.
Slashdot posts dupes. So the fuck what? Get over it already.
Some people are Slashdot subscribers, and they're rightfully upset when they still have to deal with bottom-of-the-barrel editing work on a site they pay for.
The real lesson here is: don't pay for a subscription. If you want to hide the ads, there are ways to do it for free. If you want to see the next story minutes before non-subscribers do, just let it go, it's probably a dupe anyway.;)
RMS's philosophy is that software should be "free as in my definition of freedom". That definition of "freedom" just happens to include making selling software practically impossible.
Certainly, one effect of making software free to distribute is that it's hard to make money distributing it. But you seem to be going further than pointing out that obvious fact; you're insinuating that preventing people from making money is one of RMS's goals, rather than a side effect, and I don't believe you have any evidence for that.
It's hard to sell free software just like it's hard to sell tap water - why pay for a glass of tap water when you can turn on your faucet for next to nothing? People buy bottled water mainly because it's cleaner or tastier than tap water. Now, an effort to clean up your city's tap water might have the effect of making it harder for companies to sell bottled water, but it's still a good idea in itself, because the benefit to the majority who want to drink water outweighs the detriment to the minority who want to sell it.
And so it is with software. Making software available for free means it's hard to make money selling it, but it provides a huge benefit to the majority who simply want to use software rather than sell it.
Free software [development] does not appear to have any viable method of recouping development costs (particularly initial development costs).
Sure it does: if you want a particular feature developed, hire some programmers to write the necessary code. You just have to realize programmers are providing a service, rather than manufacturing a good.
I think you're right. It's still telling, however, that they chose to resell Sprint instead of, say, Cingular or T-Mobile.
I believe Cricket (aka Leap) and Metro PCS run their own CDMA networks, though. They provide unlimited local and incoming calls for a flat monthly rate within a local area - basically like a landline you can take with you around town. I'm not aware of any flat-rate GSM services.
I think the GP meant locked into your handset. With a GSM phone it's easy to get a new handset: buy new phone, take out SIM card from old phone, insert it into new phone, that's it. Often even your addresses are stored in the SIM card, not in the handset.
While it is slightly more complicated to switch phones with CDMA, you're hardly "locked in" to a single handset. I've had 4 different handsets with Verizon and upgrading each time was no trouble at all.
Typical scenario #1: Go to carrier's store (or a third party store with techs who know what they're doing) and pick out the phone you want. The tech behind the counter programs your new phone and transfers the address book from your old one using two data cables and a PC with the right software.
Typical scenario #2: Find the phone you want on your carrier's web site, eBay, flea market, side of the road, etc. Call your carrier or visit their web site, tell them you're switching phones, and give them the new phone's ESN. Dial *228 on the new phone to program it automatically. Transfer your address book using your PC (if you have the right cables and software) or by hand.
So why are newer operators in the US (T-Mobile, Cingular) using GSM, when the standard there is (was) CDMA?
First, T-Mobile and Cingular aren't newer operators, they're just newer names for older operators. The VoiceStream of years past is now T-Mobile; the GTE, AT&T Wireless, and others of years past are now Cingular. Cricket and Virgin Mobile are newer than either of them, IIRC, and they both use CDMA.
Why are some carriers using GSM? To provide a wider selection of cheaper phones and use cheaper equipment to build their network, I suspect, as well as to support international visitors. T-Mobile's main draw is low prices.
Cingular's main draw is... well, I have no idea. Their prices are high and they're hemorrhaging customers left and right. They became the largest carrier after the AT&T merger, but I don't think they'll stay there for long.
Why, in India, are the CDMA companies (Reliance, Tata) faring so poorly, with so many complaints of flaky service and hidden costs, compared to the GSM ones (Airtel, Hutch/Orange, RPG, BSNL,...)?
Poor management? Customer desire to roam in nearby GSM countries? Incomplete networks due to being late to market? I don't know the situation in India, so I can only guess.
The wireless technology itself isn't the only thing that affects customers' experience. GSM carriers aren't faring nearly as well as CDMA carriers in the US, but frankly I doubt that has much to do with technology either. From a customer's perspective, except for SIM cards (GSM) and high speed data (CDMA), it's hard to tell the two systems apart.
You should vote with your feet and move to a GSM provider. Don't let them lock you in.
But it's OK to be locked into GSM?;)
Seriously, CDMA is the most widely used mobile phone technology in North America. It's used by at least four major carriers I've heard of (Sprint, Verizon, Alltel, and Virgin Mobile), and probably a bunch of smaller ones I haven't. You can transfer phones between carriers in many cases - I'm not sure about the others, but Verizon doesn't lock the phones they sell or lock other carriers' phones from being activated on their network.
As far as international roaming goes, Samsung has a phone that can use CDMA in North America (on NA frequencies) and GSM elsewhere (on international frequencies). That's not much more complicated than the tri- or quad-band phones that are required to use GSM both here and abroad.
Do some CDMA providers also use GSM?
Not that I know of. CDMA is a much more efficient use of their radio spectrum, since neighboring towers can use the same frequencies. A carrier with spare spectrum would be foolish to dedicate it to GSM when they could expand their CDMA capacity instead.
Ditto. My Verizon phone works everywhere I need it to, and when my cable modem goes out or I'm out of WiFi range with my laptop, I can get online through Verizon at a decent speed. The phone itself (LG VX7000) was free, thanks to New Every Two and an online discount.
The service costs more than, say, Sprint, but you get what you pay for.
Slashdot Mirror
How can IQ be defined and measured?
See Wikipedia's article on IQ. I guess their article on emotional intelligence (EQ) answers my original question.
How is EQ objectively defined and measured?
Why can't I get paid to spout idiotic claptrap all day?
Because apparently you don't know the difference between opinions and measurable data. Whether or not the conclusion in TFA is correct, at least it's possible to measure intelligence.
It is not possible to scientifically measure whether one color or flavor is "better" than another; the closest you could get is polling ice cream lovers to see which flavor is more popular.
So how is it supposed to go if you seek an injunction?
Bayer - "Oh crud, you caught us. Too bad, we're going to keep selling Blaritin."
Smaller company - "Please stop."
Bayer - "No."
Smaller company - "Then we'll make you stop."
Bayer - "OK, let's drag this out in court. We will keep on selling Blaritin and by the time we have this all settled (or adjudicated), you'll end up a couple million in the hole... etc."
See, you have to go to court anyway to get an injunction. If the judge is going to issue a document saying "Bayer, stop selling Blaritin", he could just as easily say "Bayer, pay Smaller Company [some reasonable amount] per pill or else stop selling Blaritin".
You're right of course, that is the Open Source development model. It works great in areas where someone has already done most of the work (e.g. a kernel). It works lousy in cases where there are a large number of people, each of whom is willing to pay a small amount for a really big improvement.
Nope. All you have to do is take your offer one step further:
"My 1,000,000 friends and I would like an OS that is as easy to learn as MS Windows and as functional as Linux. We're each willing to pay about $150 for it."
And, of course, supply some of the money up front so the developers can keep a roof over their heads while they're working on this project. The only difficult part about this is coordinating your actions with everyone else who wants the same product developed.
Trademark, etc aside, you have no recourse. Sure, you'll get some licensing fees after giving a bunch of money to your lawyers [...]
Of course you have recourse - you can make them license the patent from you. Yes, you'll have to go to court, but you'd have to do that anyway to get an injunction.
What difference does it make if you (1) get them to stop producing Blaritin, thus increasing the sales of your own Claritin and putting more money in your pocket, or (2) get them to pay you for each Blaritin pill they sell, putting more money in your pocket directly? Either way, you're profiting from your invention, and the public is able to buy allergy medication.
My point is there's no reason to grant patents if society can't benefit from them. There's no point in encouraging inventors to come up with new things if they're going to be off-limits to everyone who wants to use them.
What settings are you using?
I have two Halo 2 presets - F1 for normal play, F2 for vehicles/turrets (with a higher deadband). Vehicles and turrets are still borderline unusable, though, since vertical motion is so much faster than horizontal.
In what way is it different?
Try controlling a vehicle or a turret with the SmartJoy Frag. It needs so much more joystick force that I have to either turn the deadband WAY up or use my whole coffee table as a mousepad, and one axis moves a lot faster than the other. Contrast that to Halo on the PC, where driving or manning the turret feels totally natural.
I was round a friend's house the other weekend, and she fired up Halo 2 on her XBox, and I was struck with how primitive the graphics look. Sure, an XBox is a damn sight cheaper than my PC, but I can see why.
It's not just the graphics that are disappointing. You have to control it with a gamepad too, unless you buy a keyboard/mouse adapter, and even then it doesn't quite feel like a real PC FPS.
That's only the first page. The second page is also in Google's cache, but good luck finding any more.
Yes, it was originally intended as a sequel. 3D Realms is a division of Apogee, but it wasn't formed until after ROTT came out. Apogee published Wolf3D for id, so they're not entirely unrelated.
On the other hand, you have a multitude of excuses for piracy. The "copyright infringement isn't theft" is my favorite, as it in no way justifies breaking of the law.
And no one says it does. That statement is used as a response to misinformed copyright advocates who claim that it is theft (despite the Supreme Court finding that it isn't). Surely you've seen arguments like "Why would you download music? You wouldn't steal a CD off the shelf, would you? It's the same thing!"
Well, no, it isn't the same thing, and it's quite reasonable for someone to have moral objections to actual theft but not to illicit copying.
Don't forget hydroelectric. I pay about 4.6 cents per kWh (or about $0.061/kWh this month if you count taxes and fees) thanks to Grand Coulee Dam. It rearranges the landscape a little, but it doesn't pollute, and it's renewable as long as water keeps obeying the laws of physics.
Rise of the Triad source code
For those who've forgotten, ROTT was intended as a sequel to Wolfenstein 3D, but eventually became its own game. It still has Wolf3D's orthogonal walls, but it gained outdoor areas with sky, varying heights (platforms you can walk over or under), new weapons, and multiplayer modes. In fact, ROTT was the first FPS with a Capture the Flag mode.
Customers can't switch to other stores because no other store can sell mainstream music that plays on iPod.
Exactly... because Apple has chosen to compete unfairly.
On one hand, Real is making it easy and accessible to its customers to break Apple's proprietary codec. Apple spent time and money to make the files only play on their players, and Real is trying to use the files without permission.
You've got it backwards. Real wants to make files from their own store play on Apple's player, by converting them to Apple style DRM files (instead of unrestricted MP3s, which is what they'd do if they really cared about their customers.. but I digress).
Also, don't forget that just because a company spends time and money to keep you from doing something, that doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to do it anyway. For example, if Ford spent months engineering a specially shaped gas tank opening to force customers to buy gas from Ford-owned stations, you'd still have every right to file it open and buy gas from the corner store - it's your car, and you should be able to fill it up however you like.
Similarly, it's your iPod, and you should be able to fill it with music from anyone who can supply it to you. If Apple wants you to come back to them for a "refill" of music, they can compete fairly by providing a better selection or lower prices... and if they can't compete fairly, they deserve to fail as their customers switch to other music stores.
Slashdot posts dupes. So the fuck what? Get over it already.
;)
Some people are Slashdot subscribers, and they're rightfully upset when they still have to deal with bottom-of-the-barrel editing work on a site they pay for.
The real lesson here is: don't pay for a subscription. If you want to hide the ads, there are ways to do it for free. If you want to see the next story minutes before non-subscribers do, just let it go, it's probably a dupe anyway.
RMS's philosophy is that software should be "free as in my definition of freedom". That definition of "freedom" just happens to include making selling software practically impossible.
Certainly, one effect of making software free to distribute is that it's hard to make money distributing it. But you seem to be going further than pointing out that obvious fact; you're insinuating that preventing people from making money is one of RMS's goals, rather than a side effect, and I don't believe you have any evidence for that.
It's hard to sell free software just like it's hard to sell tap water - why pay for a glass of tap water when you can turn on your faucet for next to nothing? People buy bottled water mainly because it's cleaner or tastier than tap water. Now, an effort to clean up your city's tap water might have the effect of making it harder for companies to sell bottled water, but it's still a good idea in itself, because the benefit to the majority who want to drink water outweighs the detriment to the minority who want to sell it.
And so it is with software. Making software available for free means it's hard to make money selling it, but it provides a huge benefit to the majority who simply want to use software rather than sell it.
Free software [development] does not appear to have any viable method of recouping development costs (particularly initial development costs).
Sure it does: if you want a particular feature developed, hire some programmers to write the necessary code. You just have to realize programmers are providing a service, rather than manufacturing a good.
I think you're right. It's still telling, however, that they chose to resell Sprint instead of, say, Cingular or T-Mobile.
I believe Cricket (aka Leap) and Metro PCS run their own CDMA networks, though. They provide unlimited local and incoming calls for a flat monthly rate within a local area - basically like a landline you can take with you around town. I'm not aware of any flat-rate GSM services.
Every carrier I've talked to will refuse to give you decent rates without a contract.
That's a different issue, and yeah, it sucks. But you can stick with prepaid service if you don't want to sign a contract.
I think the GP meant locked into your handset. With a GSM phone it's easy to get a new handset: buy new phone, take out SIM card from old phone, insert it into new phone, that's it. Often even your addresses are stored in the SIM card, not in the handset.
...)?
While it is slightly more complicated to switch phones with CDMA, you're hardly "locked in" to a single handset. I've had 4 different handsets with Verizon and upgrading each time was no trouble at all.
Typical scenario #1: Go to carrier's store (or a third party store with techs who know what they're doing) and pick out the phone you want. The tech behind the counter programs your new phone and transfers the address book from your old one using two data cables and a PC with the right software.
Typical scenario #2: Find the phone you want on your carrier's web site, eBay, flea market, side of the road, etc. Call your carrier or visit their web site, tell them you're switching phones, and give them the new phone's ESN. Dial *228 on the new phone to program it automatically. Transfer your address book using your PC (if you have the right cables and software) or by hand.
So why are newer operators in the US (T-Mobile, Cingular) using GSM, when the standard there is (was) CDMA?
First, T-Mobile and Cingular aren't newer operators, they're just newer names for older operators. The VoiceStream of years past is now T-Mobile; the GTE, AT&T Wireless, and others of years past are now Cingular. Cricket and Virgin Mobile are newer than either of them, IIRC, and they both use CDMA.
Why are some carriers using GSM? To provide a wider selection of cheaper phones and use cheaper equipment to build their network, I suspect, as well as to support international visitors. T-Mobile's main draw is low prices.
Cingular's main draw is... well, I have no idea. Their prices are high and they're hemorrhaging customers left and right. They became the largest carrier after the AT&T merger, but I don't think they'll stay there for long.
Why, in India, are the CDMA companies (Reliance, Tata) faring so poorly, with so many complaints of flaky service and hidden costs, compared to the GSM ones (Airtel, Hutch/Orange, RPG, BSNL,
Poor management? Customer desire to roam in nearby GSM countries? Incomplete networks due to being late to market? I don't know the situation in India, so I can only guess.
The wireless technology itself isn't the only thing that affects customers' experience. GSM carriers aren't faring nearly as well as CDMA carriers in the US, but frankly I doubt that has much to do with technology either. From a customer's perspective, except for SIM cards (GSM) and high speed data (CDMA), it's hard to tell the two systems apart.
You should vote with your feet and move to a GSM provider. Don't let them lock you in.
;)
But it's OK to be locked into GSM?
Seriously, CDMA is the most widely used mobile phone technology in North America. It's used by at least four major carriers I've heard of (Sprint, Verizon, Alltel, and Virgin Mobile), and probably a bunch of smaller ones I haven't. You can transfer phones between carriers in many cases - I'm not sure about the others, but Verizon doesn't lock the phones they sell or lock other carriers' phones from being activated on their network.
As far as international roaming goes, Samsung has a phone that can use CDMA in North America (on NA frequencies) and GSM elsewhere (on international frequencies). That's not much more complicated than the tri- or quad-band phones that are required to use GSM both here and abroad.
Do some CDMA providers also use GSM?
Not that I know of. CDMA is a much more efficient use of their radio spectrum, since neighboring towers can use the same frequencies. A carrier with spare spectrum would be foolish to dedicate it to GSM when they could expand their CDMA capacity instead.
Ditto. My Verizon phone works everywhere I need it to, and when my cable modem goes out or I'm out of WiFi range with my laptop, I can get online through Verizon at a decent speed. The phone itself (LG VX7000) was free, thanks to New Every Two and an online discount.
The service costs more than, say, Sprint, but you get what you pay for.