It's obvious Microsoft is shooting for an iTunes-ish end-to-end solution for music, a tightly integrated store+software+player solution.
You are the first post to try to answer the main question - why would Microsoft 'abandon' their PlaysForSure ecosystem? And I think you give a good answer: they simply want to dominate the market, and don't want to share it with any of their PlaysForSure partners. I am guessing that they don't want to spend a lot of cash on Zune, have it beat the iPod, only to have other PlaysForSure devices made that are cheaper, and cause them to sell few of their own Zune devices. Their fear is to grab the market from the iPod, only to lose it to players compatible with their own.
So long as they were just selling software, they were happy to see the hardware manufacturers fight amongst themselves. But once they make players, they don't want any competition against them. Hence, Zune as a non-PlaysForSure device.
If in fact this turns out to be true, their former PlaysForSure partners should be enraged. I would be if I were them.
It's another case of the broken window economic fallacy. If more people receiving health care is what's helping keep the economy afloat, that's not a good thing.
Yep. Now, TFA does seem to realize that this isn't a good thing; however, what TFA says regarding the problem with this matter doesn't make too much sense:
" There's another enormous long-term problem: If current trends continue, 30% to 40% of all new jobs created over the next 25 years will be in health care. That sort of lopsided job creation is not the blueprint for a well-functioning economy. One solution would be to make health care less labor-intensive by investing a lot more in information technology."
Basically, TFA is saying: "The problem is a high percentage of jobs will be in healthcare. The solution: create less jobs in healthcare." Now, this would lower the percentage of healthcare jobs, to be sure. But perhaps the issue is not "too many" healthcare jobs, but not enough jobs in other areas? Perhaps the US might focus on getting more growth in other areas, rather than trying to 'stunt' the healthcare industry's expansion.
Note: improving the efficiency of healthcare is a good idea, of course, and this might create fewer 'unnecessary' jobs there. However, when TFA says "One solution would be [to improve efficiency]", it seems clear that their goal is just to reduce the number of jobs. Which, again, doesn't make much sense.
(Aside from various other interesting points that you made,)
This is what bothers me about the whole discussion of cheating in the classroom: If you're paying attention to your students, cheating isn't all that hard to spot.
I think you've hit the nail on the head with this one. I have seen far too many courses where there is one professor and 200 people taking the class, and their exams are graded by a handful of TAs, all of whom have never even seen the students. The lack of professor-student interaction is exactly what makes cheating possible, and also isn't a good idea for plenty of other reasons (of course, it might make sense for e.g. an intro to calculus course, but you'd grade them on an exam in that class anyhow). To change things would require more professors and TAs, and that costs money, which is the underlying issue, I guess.
As I mentioned in another thread, this doesn't make sense. The problem is that 'handed-in work' and exams don't actually serve the same purpose. Professors don't want students to write papers in order to demonstrate their knowledge; they want students to write papers because that format promotes original thought and the development of new ideas. You can't replace this function with exams.
You make an excellent point here, I must admit. Perhaps my bias stems from the fact that I work in fields in which exams are the norm, and not papers.
Still, I do want to argue a different position than yours. Now, I agree with you that exams do not test original thought, the development of new ideas, and research skills. However, I claim that the majority of papers do not do this much either. Many undergrad papers are basically 'book-report'-type things (albeit with several books and more difficult subject matter than grade school book reports). For this type of paper, an exam is a reasonable substitute (the only thing it might not test is long-term writing skills, i.e. editing and so forth, and not short-term writing skills).
For papers of a higher level, that is those that do focus on original thought, I would say the following. First, cheating is less of a problem with such things; they appear mostly in graduate-level courses, with less students, and more direct professor-student interaction. So, perhaps you are right in this case, and papers could continue to be used as the grading technique. However, if cheating were still an issue, there is another option, apart from exams and papers, suitable for classes with few students: a grade based on class interaction and/or a one-on-one interview-type exam. I recall taking classes where part of the grade was determined in this way, it seemed surprisingly fair, actually.
Students learn by doing, and in most academic fields, doing means research and writing. Many college courses need fewer tests, not more.
Again, an excellent point, which you have mostly convinced me of. I would only add what I just said above, that class participation and interviews could also be used, not just papers. A paper accompanied by an interview seems like a particularly useful method; I would think that discussion of the research and thought process that went into the creation of a paper would do much against the possibility of cheating. Of course, this would make sense in small classes only, as I said above.
Unfortunately, the 'I don't have time or funding for anything special' answer to the problem is to move massive amounts of assessment into in-class, high-pressure exams. So, if you're like me (thrive in these kind of exams, don't mind cram-studying, etc.) you'll love it. But there are many smart people out there - especially, it seems, women - who do comparatively worse under these kinds of high-stakes, high-pressure assessment than they do under comparatively more realistic settings.
Well, I think that exams don't need to be high-pressure. If you give a 15-minute mini-exam at the end of every lesson, this will quickly become routine. A while ago I was a TA in a class that did something similar (not weekly, but monthly). What is certainly stressful is the once-in-a-semester 2.5 hour exam that determines 100% of your grade. The reason this is common is because it is less work for the professor and his TA.
(btw, I'm not even going to get into the 'woman' comment you made.)
this discussion undermines the ridiculous and hypocritical nature of higher education - creating an institution where what they are really selling is reputation.
No, no - you're going way too far here. Your point is valid, but not the main issue, at least as I see it.
The issue is that handed-in work - i.e. papers, exercises, and so forth, written alone and submitted later on - have become easy to cheat with. This was always true, and always will be true, and yes, the internet does make this far easier. But this has always existed.
The solution is very simple, and I am amazed that TFA didn't at least mention it. The solution is not to base grades on such handed-in work. Instead, base grades on performance that you can ensure is the student's own. Higher (and lower) education have a name for this: exams. Conduct an exam under carefully-controlled conditions, and no cheating is possible.
Of course, this is also getting harder and harder; recently I have heard of a students going to the restroom and using their cellphones to IM questions&answers, things like that. But this can also be solved - have short enough exams so that going to the restroom isn't allowed. You may need to have several mini-exams during a semester; this is more work for the professor and his TAs, but seems the right thing to do to me.
Higher (and maybe lower, as well) education needs to wake up to the newly-connected world we live in. Once not under supervision, a student can get help from any number of sources - friends, internet, whatever. Once we stop expecting to grade work they do in such uncontrolled circumstances, we are free to let them learn however they want, outside of the classroom. The professor teaches his class; later on, students are free to use wikipedia, group study, or whatever, to get more of a feel for the subject matter. Whatever and however they want. This wouldn't be cheating. (And, btw, if they choose wikipedia and it happens to contain false information, they will have learned a valuable lesson.) Then, when they take an exam under supervised conditions, the professor can ensure no cheating takes place, and their actual knowledge is tested.
Note: It may be a challenge to adapt this principle to certain academic fields, in particular those most used to grading papers and not exams. I don't deny this may take effort on the professors' part. Change isn't always easy - but it is necessary.
I used the Google translation tool to read the last link. The translation is actually almost readable. Some funny quotes:
"The project is not much too much the Amateurhaftigkeit" (said by Sanger)
"Wikipedia is today one of the 20 to most called web pages in the Internet, over five million article in over 100 languages the unpaid Freiwilligen already gathered."
As for the last line in the summary, of course they aren't 'amused'. But, a fork is legal, and legitimate. We'll see how it turns out.
Both the Microsoft and IBM models involve focussing on the particular tools where the firm's management believe the firm have a competitive advantage (e.g. closed-source software IP in Microsoft's case, and principally customisation/support services in IBM's case), and either giving away the other tools, selling them cheaply or allowing partner firms to provide them. In that sense, then, the models are essentially identical, so I'm not really sure what your objection is.
Yes, I agree. My issue was not that the 'core&surroundings' model was a good perspective, but rather that his identification of the 'core', in the case of Microsoft, was not accurate. Perhaps, btw, the same is true of IBM's core (I don't know enough about IBM to say). On the other hand, what he said about Red Hat's core (support) was obviously true. So, again, my only issue was with what he identified as Microsoft's core.
In economic terms, neither Windows nor Office is a monopoly. The Windows desktop OS (but not Windows Server or Office) has been ruled to be a 'political' monopoly by the government of the USA, but that doesn't mean it actually is a monopoly in economic terms, which it isn't, and never has been.
Yes, fair enough. I did not mean only economically, in any strict sense, however. Just the basic fact that they control 97% of the desktop, and have virtually no competition. Now, what I claim is that they worked hard to arrive at this situation, and are working hard at maintaining it. Which is why I see this (maintaining their monopoly) as a more central aspect of their business strategy rather than just "Windows and Office are our main assets".
Wow. So IBM only supports Linux because it thinks it'll make them money? Next you're going to tell me that Apple only sells iPods for the same reason. Or that the purpose of a business is to make a profit.
In addition to trying to make open-source business models seem just like commercial ones, as in "they just change the core of their doughnut" (from intellectual property to support services), this Hilf fellow isn't very accurate (honest?) about the actual core of Microsoft's doughnut. Microsoft's core asset isn't Windows and Office. Microsoft's core asset is their monopoly, without which their whole model collapses (or, if you like his metaphor, their doughnut crumbles).
Their monopoly is based on their core values of non-interoperability, embrace-and-extinguish methods, and so forth. Now, this Hilf seems like a friendly guy, and he does make some good points. So I would like to believe him when he says that OpenXML and the ODF plugin are Microsoft 'opening up'; I would like to believe him when he says Microsoft intends to compete in some areas, cooperate in other ones, with Linux. I would like to, but I'm not sure I can. Still, my cynicism is a bit milder after seeing this interview, I'm not sure exactly why.
I stole the picture I sent from another site! Ha Ha!
This is exactly what I was thinking as I read the article. Who is being fooled here, exactly? There is certainly the possibility that
1. Mr. Fortuny made up all the responses, to get publicity (which he indeed did).
or
2. Many of the responses were made up by whoever sent them. Just like Mr. Fortuny made up a fake listing for fun, other people may have sent fake responses for fun.
In other words, what verification do we have that the posted information is real? None whatsoever.
I'm not trying to be a troll but with the way Vista has been handled, hasn't MS shown that their management techniques aren't exactly very good?
Exactly what I was thinking. When I read "[Microsoft] didn't pay the $63 million cost -- that was borne by the Philadelphia School District -- but shared its personnel and management skills" in TFA, my reaction was: it would have been better for them to just donate a big stack of cash and keep their 'skills' to themselves. Money is something Microsoft have more than enough of; 'management skills' - doubtful at best.
And even if they did have 'management skills' - they have no idea of how to teach those skills to children. All their experience is with hiring already-skilled adults.
Had I heard "Microsoft donates $1 billion to the Philadelpha public school system", I would have applauded Microsoft for their generosity (despite everything I have against them). But this project just sounds like a bad idea to me.
So this is going to be the least installed patch for windows ever. untill they make it mandatory
Actually, this is a very serious question: is the patch marked critical, or not? This is important, because:
1. If the patch is critical, it will get criticized for being, in effect, mandatory degradation of capability (by the tech-savvy). Also, this will make light of Microsoft's security policy, to call this sort of patch 'critical'.
2. If the patch is not critical, then - oh, the irony - by default, it will not be installable on computers failing WGA. Perhaps Microsoft will get around this. But, as WGA currently works, only critical patches are allowed to systems marked as 'non-genuine'. This would be amusing - pirated copies of Windows would not receive this unwanted patch, but paid-for copies would.
I can't find, in TFA or the sources it cites, any mention of the severity of the patch. Anyone know the answer to this?
TFA mentions 80 possible memory leaks and 54 certain ones (as certain as you can trust their software, but that's something else). That doesn't sound like very much for a large project like Firefox. Still, Firefox does seem to use more memory than it should, at times. Perhaps these newly-identified defects are related to such behavior?
(Oops, I meant to write 10,000, came out 11,000. Ah well.)
Ok, thanks for the clarifications. And yes, I can easily understand how you would be justifiably pissed off here. I wish you luck in getting them to stop their infringing use of your GPLed code.
Ok, thanks for the clarification. Please clarify something else, as well: it says in the lawsuit that you want 10,000 NIS per violation of copyright; you claim 11 violations, for a total of 110,000 NIS. The 11 counts include - if I read correctly - 8 bitmap images of Jin's interface. Am I right in understanding that you want 11,000 NIS (about $2250) for each screenshot of your software that appears on their site?
Well, you would know:) But where am I reading it wrong? In the attorney's letter, point #6 says 20,000 NIS; I can't find the 110,000 NIS figure you mention there. IANAL, so please explain - is the 20,000 (for 'statutory damages') just part of the damages you are seeking?
I happen to know Hebrew. Some more information from the Hebrew documents is the matter of money; the Jin programmer is requesting 20,000 NIS (about $4500) as 'damages' (for the violations made so far). This is perhaps an initial offer for settlement. Note how the $4500 is just higher than the $4000 he initially wanted from them (which seemed more than fair to me, personally).
In the lawsuit, it is mentioned that in Israeli law (which I cannot confirm or deny, I have no idea) the minimal fine possible for this type of offense is 10,000 NIS (about $2250).
I can translate other parts of the Hebrew documents if anyone is interested.
Why are laws written in english anyway? English is ambiguous, and that's a bad thing. Why not some formal law language with clear semantics and syntax?
There are very good reasons why this is impossible. Actually, what you are proposing is a very natural notion, that sadly turns out to be wrong. I say 'natural', because during the first third or so of the 20th century, philosophy (of language, in particular), was seeking exactly what you are driving at - a 'pure' language, free from ambiguity. This would have had benefits for legal matters, as well as philosophical ones, and even metamathematical implications. But this was shown to be a futile attempt (Wittgenstein being the major figure showing this). I'll briefly summarize why this is so.
First, when you refer to human-related things - as laws are, they mention e.g. 'assault', 'homicide', and so forth - there is no way to 'clean up' the language. It cannot be made unambiguous, because the underlying concepts are ambiguous. Try to define (as the famous example goes) 'game'. For any suggested definition, there are counterexamples (e.g. not all games are about winning or losing, not all games have scores, not all games are fun, etc. etc.). This is a simple consequence of the fact that life is complex - we use the word 'game' in many contexts, in many ways. Unlike in math, where we start with definitions, in the law we start with pre-existing human concepts and try to work with them. We therefore cannot arrive at unambiguous statements.
Second, and this is a more subtle issue, language is meaningless without a context of use. By this I mean, that if you see some scribbles on a page, they are worthless without someone to read them. A sentence + a reader are what is necessary for 'meaning' to exist. Thus, even if we write what we believe to be unambiguous text, we can never remove the element of the reader: for us, the statement is unambiguous, but for another person, with a slightly different mindset, it may not be so. You may claim that your interpretation is 'correct', but that will not avail you when a matter is put before the public, i.e. open to interpretation by many people, as the law must be.
Sorry to go on at length, but this is a fascinating topic for me.
Perhaps you joke, but it really isn't that clear whether this will work or not. TFA says
The research group tested BrowserShield against eight IE patches released in 2005 and found that BrowserShield--when used in tandem with standard anti-virus and HTTP filtering--would have provided the same protection as the software patches in every case
There were far more than 8 patches in 2005. How were these 8 selected? Were they of a specific type? Without such details, it's hard to form an opinion about this 'BrowserShield' thingie. For all we know, they selected the most convenient 8 to prove their point.
I'd give a lot more consideration to an enterprising spammer/botnet advertiser being behind this.
Exactly.
We have no evidence for the media corporations being involved in such actions; and it wouldn't make much sense for them to do so, either. This adware will make money; money is something that media companies already have, but adware companies constantly work to get. What the media companies need is not more money, but to scare people off of using p2p software - and this isn't the way to do that. No, the way to scare people would be to damage their computers, not to make money off of them.
A distro is "mere aggregation" which is allowed by the GPL. Debian includes software with GPL-incompatible licenses, such as Apache.
Mostly true, but this needs qualification. Apache is fine despite not being GPL, but a non-GPL kernel module would not be ok (such as the binary NVidia drivers). Likewise a non-GPL program linking to GPL (but not LGPL) portions of GNOME would also be problematic.
So, yes, you can in some cases include non-GPL code in a Linux distribution, but not always.
... people won't buy! Unsigned bands have enough trouble getting their music heard when they're GIVING it away!
Never underestimate the power of teen fanboy(|girl)ism.
Personally I think this idea might work out well for Myspace. Certainly they have little or no risk / cost. And since it's non-DRM'ed mp3's, I really have no objection to it.
>> Stallman has never suggested that software developers should not be paid.
> Is that so? "The programmers writing non-free software? They are doing something antisocial. They should get some other job. [- Stallman]"
Stallman is not against making money for writing software. As I said elsewhere in this topic, he would probably support e.g. FLOSS developers getting paid by governments. What he is against is non-free software. So, it follows that he is against getting paid for making non-free software. He is also against paying money for non-free software, using non-free software, teaching people how to use non-free software... you get the point.
Slashdot Mirror
It's obvious Microsoft is shooting for an iTunes-ish end-to-end solution for music, a tightly integrated store+software+player solution.
You are the first post to try to answer the main question - why would Microsoft 'abandon' their PlaysForSure ecosystem? And I think you give a good answer: they simply want to dominate the market, and don't want to share it with any of their PlaysForSure partners. I am guessing that they don't want to spend a lot of cash on Zune, have it beat the iPod, only to have other PlaysForSure devices made that are cheaper, and cause them to sell few of their own Zune devices. Their fear is to grab the market from the iPod, only to lose it to players compatible with their own.
So long as they were just selling software, they were happy to see the hardware manufacturers fight amongst themselves. But once they make players, they don't want any competition against them. Hence, Zune as a non-PlaysForSure device.
If in fact this turns out to be true, their former PlaysForSure partners should be enraged. I would be if I were them.
It's another case of the broken window economic fallacy. If more people receiving health care is what's helping keep the economy afloat, that's not a good thing.
Yep. Now, TFA does seem to realize that this isn't a good thing; however, what TFA says regarding the problem with this matter doesn't make too much sense:
" There's another enormous long-term problem: If current trends continue, 30% to 40% of all new jobs created over the next 25 years will be in health care. That sort of lopsided job creation is not the blueprint for a well-functioning economy. One solution would be to make health care less labor-intensive by investing a lot more in information technology."
Basically, TFA is saying: "The problem is a high percentage of jobs will be in healthcare. The solution: create less jobs in healthcare." Now, this would lower the percentage of healthcare jobs, to be sure. But perhaps the issue is not "too many" healthcare jobs, but not enough jobs in other areas? Perhaps the US might focus on getting more growth in other areas, rather than trying to 'stunt' the healthcare industry's expansion.
Note: improving the efficiency of healthcare is a good idea, of course, and this might create fewer 'unnecessary' jobs there. However, when TFA says "One solution would be [to improve efficiency]", it seems clear that their goal is just to reduce the number of jobs. Which, again, doesn't make much sense.
Slashdotted [...] CPU quota exceeded.
Indeed. Yet, just by reading the summary, I can tell it would have been a juicy article:
They were tested for strength, length and a number of other things.
Circumference? Growth ratio?
(Aside from various other interesting points that you made,)
This is what bothers me about the whole discussion of cheating in the classroom: If you're paying attention to your students, cheating isn't all that hard to spot.
I think you've hit the nail on the head with this one. I have seen far too many courses where there is one professor and 200 people taking the class, and their exams are graded by a handful of TAs, all of whom have never even seen the students. The lack of professor-student interaction is exactly what makes cheating possible, and also isn't a good idea for plenty of other reasons (of course, it might make sense for e.g. an intro to calculus course, but you'd grade them on an exam in that class anyhow). To change things would require more professors and TAs, and that costs money, which is the underlying issue, I guess.
As I mentioned in another thread, this doesn't make sense. The problem is that 'handed-in work' and exams don't actually serve the same purpose. Professors don't want students to write papers in order to demonstrate their knowledge; they want students to write papers because that format promotes original thought and the development of new ideas. You can't replace this function with exams.
You make an excellent point here, I must admit. Perhaps my bias stems from the fact that I work in fields in which exams are the norm, and not papers.
Still, I do want to argue a different position than yours. Now, I agree with you that exams do not test original thought, the development of new ideas, and research skills. However, I claim that the majority of papers do not do this much either. Many undergrad papers are basically 'book-report'-type things (albeit with several books and more difficult subject matter than grade school book reports). For this type of paper, an exam is a reasonable substitute (the only thing it might not test is long-term writing skills, i.e. editing and so forth, and not short-term writing skills).
For papers of a higher level, that is those that do focus on original thought, I would say the following. First, cheating is less of a problem with such things; they appear mostly in graduate-level courses, with less students, and more direct professor-student interaction. So, perhaps you are right in this case, and papers could continue to be used as the grading technique. However, if cheating were still an issue, there is another option, apart from exams and papers, suitable for classes with few students: a grade based on class interaction and/or a one-on-one interview-type exam. I recall taking classes where part of the grade was determined in this way, it seemed surprisingly fair, actually.
Students learn by doing, and in most academic fields, doing means research and writing. Many college courses need fewer tests, not more.
Again, an excellent point, which you have mostly convinced me of. I would only add what I just said above, that class participation and interviews could also be used, not just papers. A paper accompanied by an interview seems like a particularly useful method; I would think that discussion of the research and thought process that went into the creation of a paper would do much against the possibility of cheating. Of course, this would make sense in small classes only, as I said above.
Unfortunately, the 'I don't have time or funding for anything special' answer to the problem is to move massive amounts of assessment into in-class, high-pressure exams. So, if you're like me (thrive in these kind of exams, don't mind cram-studying, etc.) you'll love it. But there are many smart people out there - especially, it seems, women - who do comparatively worse under these kinds of high-stakes, high-pressure assessment than they do under comparatively more realistic settings.
Well, I think that exams don't need to be high-pressure. If you give a 15-minute mini-exam at the end of every lesson, this will quickly become routine. A while ago I was a TA in a class that did something similar (not weekly, but monthly). What is certainly stressful is the once-in-a-semester 2.5 hour exam that determines 100% of your grade. The reason this is common is because it is less work for the professor and his TA.
(btw, I'm not even going to get into the 'woman' comment you made.)
this discussion undermines the ridiculous and hypocritical nature of higher education - creating an institution where what they are really selling is reputation.
No, no - you're going way too far here. Your point is valid, but not the main issue, at least as I see it.
The issue is that handed-in work - i.e. papers, exercises, and so forth, written alone and submitted later on - have become easy to cheat with. This was always true, and always will be true, and yes, the internet does make this far easier. But this has always existed.
The solution is very simple, and I am amazed that TFA didn't at least mention it. The solution is not to base grades on such handed-in work. Instead, base grades on performance that you can ensure is the student's own. Higher (and lower) education have a name for this: exams. Conduct an exam under carefully-controlled conditions, and no cheating is possible.
Of course, this is also getting harder and harder; recently I have heard of a students going to the restroom and using their cellphones to IM questions&answers, things like that. But this can also be solved - have short enough exams so that going to the restroom isn't allowed. You may need to have several mini-exams during a semester; this is more work for the professor and his TAs, but seems the right thing to do to me.
Higher (and maybe lower, as well) education needs to wake up to the newly-connected world we live in. Once not under supervision, a student can get help from any number of sources - friends, internet, whatever. Once we stop expecting to grade work they do in such uncontrolled circumstances, we are free to let them learn however they want, outside of the classroom. The professor teaches his class; later on, students are free to use wikipedia, group study, or whatever, to get more of a feel for the subject matter. Whatever and however they want. This wouldn't be cheating. (And, btw, if they choose wikipedia and it happens to contain false information, they will have learned a valuable lesson.) Then, when they take an exam under supervised conditions, the professor can ensure no cheating takes place, and their actual knowledge is tested.
Note: It may be a challenge to adapt this principle to certain academic fields, in particular those most used to grading papers and not exams. I don't deny this may take effort on the professors' part. Change isn't always easy - but it is necessary.
I used the Google translation tool to read the last link. The translation is actually almost readable. Some funny quotes:
"The project is not much too much the Amateurhaftigkeit" (said by Sanger)
"Wikipedia is today one of the 20 to most called web pages in the Internet, over five million article in over 100 languages the unpaid Freiwilligen already gathered."
As for the last line in the summary, of course they aren't 'amused'. But, a fork is legal, and legitimate. We'll see how it turns out.
Both the Microsoft and IBM models involve focussing on the particular tools where the firm's management believe the firm have a competitive advantage (e.g. closed-source software IP in Microsoft's case, and principally customisation/support services in IBM's case), and either giving away the other tools, selling them cheaply or allowing partner firms to provide them. In that sense, then, the models are essentially identical, so I'm not really sure what your objection is.
Yes, I agree. My issue was not that the 'core&surroundings' model was a good perspective, but rather that his identification of the 'core', in the case of Microsoft, was not accurate. Perhaps, btw, the same is true of IBM's core (I don't know enough about IBM to say). On the other hand, what he said about Red Hat's core (support) was obviously true. So, again, my only issue was with what he identified as Microsoft's core.
In economic terms, neither Windows nor Office is a monopoly. The Windows desktop OS (but not Windows Server or Office) has been ruled to be a 'political' monopoly by the government of the USA, but that doesn't mean it actually is a monopoly in economic terms, which it isn't, and never has been.
Yes, fair enough. I did not mean only economically, in any strict sense, however. Just the basic fact that they control 97% of the desktop, and have virtually no competition. Now, what I claim is that they worked hard to arrive at this situation, and are working hard at maintaining it. Which is why I see this (maintaining their monopoly) as a more central aspect of their business strategy rather than just "Windows and Office are our main assets".
Wow. So IBM only supports Linux because it thinks it'll make them money? Next you're going to tell me that Apple only sells iPods for the same reason. Or that the purpose of a business is to make a profit.
In addition to trying to make open-source business models seem just like commercial ones, as in "they just change the core of their doughnut" (from intellectual property to support services), this Hilf fellow isn't very accurate (honest?) about the actual core of Microsoft's doughnut. Microsoft's core asset isn't Windows and Office. Microsoft's core asset is their monopoly, without which their whole model collapses (or, if you like his metaphor, their doughnut crumbles).
Their monopoly is based on their core values of non-interoperability, embrace-and-extinguish methods, and so forth. Now, this Hilf seems like a friendly guy, and he does make some good points. So I would like to believe him when he says that OpenXML and the ODF plugin are Microsoft 'opening up'; I would like to believe him when he says Microsoft intends to compete in some areas, cooperate in other ones, with Linux. I would like to, but I'm not sure I can. Still, my cynicism is a bit milder after seeing this interview, I'm not sure exactly why.
I stole the picture I sent from another site! Ha Ha!
This is exactly what I was thinking as I read the article. Who is being fooled here, exactly? There is certainly the possibility that
1. Mr. Fortuny made up all the responses, to get publicity (which he indeed did).
or
2. Many of the responses were made up by whoever sent them. Just like Mr. Fortuny made up a fake listing for fun, other people may have sent fake responses for fun.
In other words, what verification do we have that the posted information is real? None whatsoever.
I'm not trying to be a troll but with the way Vista has been handled, hasn't MS shown that their management techniques aren't exactly very good?
Exactly what I was thinking. When I read "[Microsoft] didn't pay the $63 million cost -- that was borne by the Philadelphia School District -- but shared its personnel and management skills" in TFA, my reaction was: it would have been better for them to just donate a big stack of cash and keep their 'skills' to themselves. Money is something Microsoft have more than enough of; 'management skills' - doubtful at best.
And even if they did have 'management skills' - they have no idea of how to teach those skills to children. All their experience is with hiring already-skilled adults.
Had I heard "Microsoft donates $1 billion to the Philadelpha public school system", I would have applauded Microsoft for their generosity (despite everything I have against them). But this project just sounds like a bad idea to me.
So this is going to be the least installed patch for windows ever. untill they make it mandatory
Actually, this is a very serious question: is the patch marked critical, or not? This is important, because:
1. If the patch is critical, it will get criticized for being, in effect, mandatory degradation of capability (by the tech-savvy). Also, this will make light of Microsoft's security policy, to call this sort of patch 'critical'.
2. If the patch is not critical, then - oh, the irony - by default, it will not be installable on computers failing WGA. Perhaps Microsoft will get around this. But, as WGA currently works, only critical patches are allowed to systems marked as 'non-genuine'. This would be amusing - pirated copies of Windows would not receive this unwanted patch, but paid-for copies would.
I can't find, in TFA or the sources it cites, any mention of the severity of the patch. Anyone know the answer to this?
Toronto Hydro is the power company, not the water company. Just in case you were wondering.
Electricity, water, whatever. Just as long as we are clear that the internet is, in fact, a series of pipes.
Sure, here we have wi-fi for part of the way, but after that it's pipes galore.
TFA mentions 80 possible memory leaks and 54 certain ones (as certain as you can trust their software, but that's something else). That doesn't sound like very much for a large project like Firefox. Still, Firefox does seem to use more memory than it should, at times. Perhaps these newly-identified defects are related to such behavior?
(Oops, I meant to write 10,000, came out 11,000. Ah well.)
Ok, thanks for the clarifications. And yes, I can easily understand how you would be justifiably pissed off here. I wish you luck in getting them to stop their infringing use of your GPLed code.
Ok, thanks for the clarification. Please clarify something else, as well: it says in the lawsuit that you want 10,000 NIS per violation of copyright; you claim 11 violations, for a total of 110,000 NIS. The 11 counts include - if I read correctly - 8 bitmap images of Jin's interface. Am I right in understanding that you want 11,000 NIS (about $2250) for each screenshot of your software that appears on their site?
Well, you would know :) But where am I reading it wrong? In the attorney's letter, point #6 says 20,000 NIS; I can't find the 110,000 NIS figure you mention there. IANAL, so please explain - is the 20,000 (for 'statutory damages') just part of the damages you are seeking?
I happen to know Hebrew. Some more information from the Hebrew documents is the matter of money; the Jin programmer is requesting 20,000 NIS (about $4500) as 'damages' (for the violations made so far). This is perhaps an initial offer for settlement. Note how the $4500 is just higher than the $4000 he initially wanted from them (which seemed more than fair to me, personally).
In the lawsuit, it is mentioned that in Israeli law (which I cannot confirm or deny, I have no idea) the minimal fine possible for this type of offense is 10,000 NIS (about $2250).
I can translate other parts of the Hebrew documents if anyone is interested.
Why are laws written in english anyway? English is ambiguous, and that's a bad thing. Why not some formal law language with clear semantics and syntax?
There are very good reasons why this is impossible. Actually, what you are proposing is a very natural notion, that sadly turns out to be wrong. I say 'natural', because during the first third or so of the 20th century, philosophy (of language, in particular), was seeking exactly what you are driving at - a 'pure' language, free from ambiguity. This would have had benefits for legal matters, as well as philosophical ones, and even metamathematical implications. But this was shown to be a futile attempt (Wittgenstein being the major figure showing this). I'll briefly summarize why this is so.
First, when you refer to human-related things - as laws are, they mention e.g. 'assault', 'homicide', and so forth - there is no way to 'clean up' the language. It cannot be made unambiguous, because the underlying concepts are ambiguous. Try to define (as the famous example goes) 'game'. For any suggested definition, there are counterexamples (e.g. not all games are about winning or losing, not all games have scores, not all games are fun, etc. etc.). This is a simple consequence of the fact that life is complex - we use the word 'game' in many contexts, in many ways. Unlike in math, where we start with definitions, in the law we start with pre-existing human concepts and try to work with them. We therefore cannot arrive at unambiguous statements.
Second, and this is a more subtle issue, language is meaningless without a context of use. By this I mean, that if you see some scribbles on a page, they are worthless without someone to read them. A sentence + a reader are what is necessary for 'meaning' to exist. Thus, even if we write what we believe to be unambiguous text, we can never remove the element of the reader: for us, the statement is unambiguous, but for another person, with a slightly different mindset, it may not be so. You may claim that your interpretation is 'correct', but that will not avail you when a matter is put before the public, i.e. open to interpretation by many people, as the law must be.
Sorry to go on at length, but this is a fascinating topic for me.
Perhaps you joke, but it really isn't that clear whether this will work or not. TFA says
The research group tested BrowserShield against eight IE patches released in 2005 and found that BrowserShield--when used in tandem with standard anti-virus and HTTP filtering--would have provided the same protection as the software patches in every case
There were far more than 8 patches in 2005. How were these 8 selected? Were they of a specific type? Without such details, it's hard to form an opinion about this 'BrowserShield' thingie. For all we know, they selected the most convenient 8 to prove their point.
I'd give a lot more consideration to an enterprising spammer/botnet advertiser being behind this.
Exactly.
We have no evidence for the media corporations being involved in such actions; and it wouldn't make much sense for them to do so, either. This adware will make money; money is something that media companies already have, but adware companies constantly work to get. What the media companies need is not more money, but to scare people off of using p2p software - and this isn't the way to do that. No, the way to scare people would be to damage their computers, not to make money off of them.
A distro is "mere aggregation" which is allowed by the GPL. Debian includes software with GPL-incompatible licenses, such as Apache.
Mostly true, but this needs qualification. Apache is fine despite not being GPL, but a non-GPL kernel module would not be ok (such as the binary NVidia drivers). Likewise a non-GPL program linking to GPL (but not LGPL) portions of GNOME would also be problematic.
So, yes, you can in some cases include non-GPL code in a Linux distribution, but not always.
... people won't buy! Unsigned bands have enough trouble getting their music heard when they're GIVING it away!
Never underestimate the power of teen fanboy(|girl)ism.
Personally I think this idea might work out well for Myspace. Certainly they have little or no risk / cost. And since it's non-DRM'ed mp3's, I really have no objection to it.
>> Stallman has never suggested that software developers should not be paid.
> Is that so? "The programmers writing non-free software? They are doing something antisocial. They should get some other job. [- Stallman]"
Stallman is not against making money for writing software. As I said elsewhere in this topic, he would probably support e.g. FLOSS developers getting paid by governments. What he is against is non-free software. So, it follows that he is against getting paid for making non-free software. He is also against paying money for non-free software, using non-free software, teaching people how to use non-free software... you get the point.