One of the things I learned in college is that if you show up in class, you can pretty much postpone the reading until the exam preparation, and even then you can use your book as a reference rather than reading it pages 1-n.
YMMV.
(one example: the compiler class had the entire Java Language Specification, ~800 pages, as the curriculum. I read ~ten pages, and got the best grade.)
Are you saying that this Ubuntu can run on a computer without Linux underneath it, at all ? As in, without a boot disk, without any drivers, and without any services ?
That sounds preposterous to me.
If it were true (and I doubt it), then companies would be selling computers with a Ubuntu. This clearly is not happening, so there must be some error in your calculations. I hope you realise that Linux is more than just the kernel ? Its a whole system that runs the computer from start to finish, and that is a very difficult thing to acheive. A lot of people dont realise this.
Linus just spent $9 billion and many years to create Linux, so it does not sound reasonable that some new alternative could just snap into existence overnight like that. It would take billions of dollars and a massive effort to achieve. IBM tried, and spent a huge amount of money developing OS/2 but could never keep up with Linux. Apple tried to create their own system for years, but finally gave up recently and moved to Intel and Linux.
Its just not possible that a freeware like the Ubuntu could be extended to the point where it runs the entire computer fron start to finish, without using some of the more critical parts of Linux. Not possible.
..he doesn't want people to know how to use the laws. They wouldn't need to pay a lawyer if such information was made public, right?
Yes they would!
Consider something I guess you know about: programming. All the information you need to get started (and probably even good) is available to the public, much of it at no cost (even more if you get it from "pBay"). Yet very few people solve their programming problems themselves. They get experts to do it for them, because it's more efficient.
(if) The law is public knowledge, people will still want to hire experts, because it's more efficient.
(here's a paraphrased theorem from economics: the optimally allocation of work is reached by making everyone do what they're best at, relative to how good others are; make the guy who's better at law than everybody else a lawyer).
There are no good guys in politics. They merely use those labels [Democrat, Republican] to cut down the number of people yelling at them by half.
Now I clearly see the benefit of a two-party system. If you had, say, six parties, the politicians would have five sixths of the electorate yelling at them instead of only one half.
First man proves that god doesn't exist (see the Babel fish argument). Then he proceeds to prove that black is white, and gets killed in the next zebra crossing.
(I might have omitted one of mankind's great proofs. I humbly apologize if that is indeed the case.)
ISPs should just provide internet access not police and monitor traffic.
Yeah, and if they help my neighbour get rid of their malware, there will be less useless (even harmful) traffic clogging up the pipes I want to use.
Even though I get along well with the "privacy paranoid" group, I think it's reasonably for ISPs to monitor for malware/spam traffic, and contact the users who get hit by it (which in many cases is through no fault of their own), tell them what's going on and offer help changing the situation.
That's good for the malware-infected customer; it gives the ISP a better reputation and frees up the pipes, which is good for the other customers, making the ISP more competitive, which is good for the ISP. Isn't this just good all around?
On the other hand, having the ultimate power to shut people off with no way of appealing is bad. Very bad. But I'm not sure what to do about users who deny the existence of malware, or refuse to remove it. Just block tcp/25 out? While good, is that good enough?
I want the 5 seconds back that I just spent reading your comment. It would have taken you less time to google it [...]
I believe his point was that it would take the editors much less time to put up such a blurb than it would take for the first thousand/.'ers to google it. Telling O(n) people to google it instead of having O(1) people do it for them is a net loss (for large enough values of n).
But baseball is a sport. Sport is popular. Science is not popular. Science is nerdy. Thus, you will have popular support for people dying playing baseball, but not doing space exploration.
In most free markets, the market price tends towards the marginal cost of production (so I hear). Typically, there are some fixed costs and some non-trivial per-unit costs.
Some areas are special, though. The areas I mean are those where the margin price is way off from the fixed costs (one, two, five orders of magnitude), and you're at the margin when i=2. That is to say, the first unit is costly to make, the rest are essentially free.
One such area is information; mathematical proofs, investigative journalism, music, movies, software, works of reference (encyclopaedias, dictionaries,...), scientific publications, etc.
(I think pharmacy is similar: very high fixed costs in generating a useful, correct, FDA-approved chemical formula; at that point, the formula is free to copy and cheap, per unit, to put to use by making drugs using the formula.)
Since information is essentially free to copy (or at least close enough to free as to be, practically speaking, abundant), we as a society lose out if we deny anyone a copy of published information.
On the other hand, some kinds of information take financial incentives (i.e. money) to produce, or at least to produce well.
The real trick questions are these: how do you send money towards the people who are creating the no-cost-copy products? How do you make sure that they produce what the people at large most wants to consume? How do you weigh up providing big incentives versus those of making widespread use of what already exists?
Is copyright the right system at all? Is the duration right? Is the scope right? Should every different kind of right be monopolized for equally long periods of time?
What if companies respected laws as reflecting regional morals rather than lobbying with all their power for whatever is best for them?
You're a funny person, I like that:)
But to sincerely answer your questions, I would go down into my basement, grab all the cages, put them out on the street, and unleash my genetically engineered winged pigs.
I can think about PageRank [wikipedia.org] all day long and accomplish nothing. But if I apply PageRank to pages on the internet and use it to optimize searches, then it becomes a patentable invention [google.com].
So you're only restricted from using it if you actually use it?
What is patentable is, according to the Federal Circuit, the use of an algorithm tied to a particular machine to accomplish a useful result.
From what I hear, "a general-purpose computer" counts as a particular machine. Maybe if you implement a patented algorithm in mechanical logic using a contraption of wood blocks, water buckets and strips of wire in your back yard it won't count, but any useful implementation...
Slashdot Mirror
One of the things I learned in college is that if you show up in class, you can pretty much postpone the reading until the exam preparation, and even then you can use your book as a reference rather than reading it pages 1-n.
YMMV.
(one example: the compiler class had the entire Java Language Specification, ~800 pages, as the curriculum. I read ~ten pages, and got the best grade.)
Are you saying that this Ubuntu can run on a computer without Linux underneath it, at all ? As in, without a boot disk, without any drivers, and without any services ?
That sounds preposterous to me.
If it were true (and I doubt it), then companies would be selling computers with a Ubuntu. This clearly is not happening, so there must be some error in your calculations. I hope you realise that Linux is more than just the kernel ? Its a whole system that runs the computer from start to finish, and that is a very difficult thing to acheive. A lot of people dont realise this.
Linus just spent $9 billion and many years to create Linux, so it does not sound reasonable that some new alternative could just snap into existence overnight like that. It would take billions of dollars and a massive effort to achieve. IBM tried, and spent a huge amount of money developing OS/2 but could never keep up with Linux. Apple tried to create their own system for years, but finally gave up recently and moved to Intel and Linux.
Its just not possible that a freeware like the Ubuntu could be extended to the point where it runs the entire computer fron start to finish, without using some of the more critical parts of Linux. Not possible.
I think you need to re-examine your assumptions.
(This is an adaptation of an original work of art which can be located at http://talkback.zdnet.com/5208-12355-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=31199&messageID=579806&start=43)
I can't help but wonder exactly what prostate as a verb means. It sounds deeply unpleasant.
I think it means someone's being a cancer on society
(kthxeatveal...)
He's probabwy a good fwiend of Biggus Dikkus...
..he doesn't want people to know how to use the laws. They wouldn't need to pay a lawyer if such information was made public, right?
Yes they would!
Consider something I guess you know about: programming. All the information you need to get started (and probably even good) is available to the public, much of it at no cost (even more if you get it from "pBay"). Yet very few people solve their programming problems themselves. They get experts to do it for them, because it's more efficient.
(if) The law is public knowledge, people will still want to hire experts, because it's more efficient.
(here's a paraphrased theorem from economics: the optimally allocation of work is reached by making everyone do what they're best at, relative to how good others are; make the guy who's better at law than everybody else a lawyer).
Specialization is good!
There are no good guys in politics. They merely use those labels [Democrat, Republican] to cut down the number of people yelling at them by half.
Now I clearly see the benefit of a two-party system. If you had, say, six parties, the politicians would have five sixths of the electorate yelling at them instead of only one half.
Or you could put Debian on it, which has supported ARM since... roughly forever?
Watch out for zebras
What the hell are you on about?
First man proves that god doesn't exist (see the Babel fish argument). Then he proceeds to prove that black is white, and gets killed in the next zebra crossing.
(I might have omitted one of mankind's great proofs. I humbly apologize if that is indeed the case.)
was voted the most likely to be a well-mannered urban European middle-class authority-fearing white-coat-deferring sit-downer
By the way, I have this 450-Volt battery and a student whom you are to teach something...
What next, an Indie OS?
Try Haiku or Aros.
(based on BeOS R5 and Amiga OS 3.1, respectively)
ISPs should just provide internet access not police and monitor traffic.
Yeah, and if they help my neighbour get rid of their malware, there will be less useless (even harmful) traffic clogging up the pipes I want to use.
Even though I get along well with the "privacy paranoid" group, I think it's reasonably for ISPs to monitor for malware/spam traffic, and contact the users who get hit by it (which in many cases is through no fault of their own), tell them what's going on and offer help changing the situation.
That's good for the malware-infected customer; it gives the ISP a better reputation and frees up the pipes, which is good for the other customers, making the ISP more competitive, which is good for the ISP. Isn't this just good all around?
On the other hand, having the ultimate power to shut people off with no way of appealing is bad. Very bad. But I'm not sure what to do about users who deny the existence of malware, or refuse to remove it. Just block tcp/25 out? While good, is that good enough?
Hosting providers need to get their heads out of the sand
Are you saying they have sand in their asses? ;-)
I don't agree! Everyone who's with me, let's form a sub-community so we can disagree and argue with Desler! ;-)
I want the 5 seconds back that I just spent reading your comment. It would have taken you less time to google it [...]
I believe his point was that it would take the editors much less time to put up such a blurb than it would take for the first thousand /.'ers to google it. Telling O(n) people to google it instead of having O(1) people do it for them is a net loss (for large enough values of n).
(Or he might just be a lazy slob, I don't know).
People get killed playing baseball!
But baseball is a sport. Sport is popular. Science is not popular. Science is nerdy. Thus, you will have popular support for people dying playing baseball, but not doing space exploration.
What the world needs is another cold war ;-)
[insert an "oh wait..." if you want to]
Who are the people that need protecting?
Let's try asking an even more basic question.
In most free markets, the market price tends towards the marginal cost of production (so I hear). Typically, there are some fixed costs and some non-trivial per-unit costs.
Some areas are special, though. The areas I mean are those where the margin price is way off from the fixed costs (one, two, five orders of magnitude), and you're at the margin when i=2. That is to say, the first unit is costly to make, the rest are essentially free.
One such area is information; mathematical proofs, investigative journalism, music, movies, software, works of reference (encyclopaedias, dictionaries, ...), scientific publications, etc.
(I think pharmacy is similar: very high fixed costs in generating a useful, correct, FDA-approved chemical formula; at that point, the formula is free to copy and cheap, per unit, to put to use by making drugs using the formula.)
Since information is essentially free to copy (or at least close enough to free as to be, practically speaking, abundant), we as a society lose out if we deny anyone a copy of published information.
On the other hand, some kinds of information take financial incentives (i.e. money) to produce, or at least to produce well.
The real trick questions are these: how do you send money towards the people who are creating the no-cost-copy products? How do you make sure that they produce what the people at large most wants to consume? How do you weigh up providing big incentives versus those of making widespread use of what already exists?
Is copyright the right system at all? Is the duration right? Is the scope right? Should every different kind of right be monopolized for equally long periods of time?
Just some questions to get you thinking :)
You have viewed your 30 days allowance of 2 free articles.
That sounds like a good rule for /.: only read 2 articles every 30 days. How many of us already abide by it? ;-)
Drain the bottle if there's an actual feature that makes Windows 7 so much better than sticking with XP that you'll spend actual money to get it.
In that circumstance, I'd prefer the drink to be of such a concentration that the recommended dose is lethal :(
"Come on. Europeans do it all the time. It's no big deal."
It's funny because over here in Europe we tell that same story about Americans ;-)
Butt in the end, it's all a load of ASCRAP...
Hu?
What if companies respected laws as reflecting regional morals rather than lobbying with all their power for whatever is best for them?
You're a funny person, I like that :)
But to sincerely answer your questions, I would go down into my basement, grab all the cages, put them out on the street, and unleash my genetically engineered winged pigs.
I can think about PageRank [wikipedia.org] all day long and accomplish nothing. But if I apply PageRank to pages on the internet and use it to optimize searches, then it becomes a patentable invention [google.com].
So you're only restricted from using it if you actually use it?
What is patentable is, according to the Federal Circuit, the use of an algorithm tied to a particular machine to accomplish a useful result.
From what I hear, "a general-purpose computer" counts as a particular machine. Maybe if you implement a patented algorithm in mechanical logic using a contraption of wood blocks, water buckets and strips of wire in your back yard it won't count, but any useful implementation...
its quite nice [...] a 42incher.
That's what she said...
Actually I'm genuinely curious: Who uses the Wii browser and for what?
Browsing the web on a very bright 42" monitor is kinda' cool :)
With a wiimote, it means you'll have neither of: a hot laptop on your ball sack; or a desk between the couch and your TV.