I would ask why the barrier to entry is as high as it is. Why does it cost over 300,000$ to get a taxicab liscence in New York City, for instance? The (government-set) number seems fairly arbitrary to me, given how the costs for my car get nowhere near that high.
I don't know, but I would wager that a hack license is an element of the tourist industry and necessary transportation infrastructure in NY. If they lowered the price, then any numbnuts would get one, and likely this would degrade the quality of service because you've got a lot of people who don't take the job very seriously. Easily acquired, easily dismissed, you know. By setting the bar high, the government makes an attempt to guarantee the quality of service to both residents and tourists, because only people interested in doing a serious job would lay out the initial cash.
I will admit that I do not follow. If a company beats its competition, then its product would have to be competitive in some form against its competitors; consumers would get the benefit from that.
It would be... until the competition disappears. Then what are they competing with?
On the other hand, what if an ISP wants to be built around being "family-friendly", and would automatically censor pornography and other kid-unsafe websites? They could advertise themselves to religious families as "family-friendly". I have a hard time saying that said ISP should not exist because it does not follow a net neutrality position. Though it should be upfront about its censorship.
So long as it religiously routed porn packets to other parts of the net and screened only for its customers who have opted in to its service, then I'd have a hard time saying that too. However since services already exist which allow this, and I really have a hard time with the idea that you'd trust the censors to know what's family-friendly and what isn't, I'd really question the sanity of anyone who would subscribe to such a service. The old conundrum about prurience being in the eyes of the individual rears its ugly head when that website on Darwin was blocked because the ISP is run by a bunch of ID fundies.
But that's not what the revocation of net neutrality is. That's a filled niche into the existing infrastructure. Net neutrality gives companies the ability to play favorites depending who's paid into their services (which they've already paid into). It gives them the opportunity to reroute requests and just generally control the user's experience, even exert a political voice by censoring sites which may be critical of its practices.
In regards to the fox and the chicken and the trustworthiness of the government vs. the company, the government is incipiently really no more or less trustworthy... but it is better in this regard because WE have oversight. Do we have oversight of the company?
If you must know, I would compare the government as a misbehaved, yet domesticated animal, like a poorly trained dog on a leash. Just because we don't yank the chain often enough to prevent it from getting into trouble is immaterial. That is OUR fault. But a fox is a wild animal which has no control. We defend against its interloping by siccing the dog on it. Sometimes the dog responds to direction, other time it gets distracted by a passing butterfly. But it is still under OUR control. The same cannot be said of the fox, which would make fools out of anyone who trusts the fox to act unfoxlike.
Of course, if the government really does know best, as can be concluded by the fact that it must regulate, why don't we just let the government control and run everything? That way, you wouldn't even need to worry about regulations because then there are no companies to regulate: the government can regulate itself, and the government is all-good.
If you're going to be this facile, I don't want to play anymore. The government does know best about a lot
What is the purpose of this plane that our existing arsenal is ill-equipped for? In other words, we should be prepared for... what, in your estimation?
This is the only thing for which a plane like this might have purpose. I mean, assuming they left their photon torpedoes in their other ships.
I appreciate the interesting engineering in this, but in a world which you don't have any real conventional armies to use it against that couldn't be easily decimated with our existing aircraft... well, I guess I just wonder if there wasn't anything else we could've spent the dough on.
I'll set aside the general obtuseness of that remark and just say that a company's customers are more numerous than their stockholders generally by an order of magnitude, and usually quite a bit more. Yes, they are people, but you miss the point. While a company exists to pursue profit, to do so, it must present a product to a base of individuals or other aggregate entities of significant enough number to turn that profit, while enticing them to purchase that product with a statement of fair value. To do this implies a level of fairness in the unwritten contract between the consumer and the producer.
I will concede that on a certain level, the free market is a philosophical concept, rather than a reality. Though I will not concede that a purely free market "allows" anything at the expense of the consumer; the word choice is setting me up to put my foot in my mouth.
Actually, your lack of a concession that a purely free market allows anything at the expense of the consumer is where the foot ended up in an oral entanglement. A purely free market allows EVERYTHING, including those things which are detrimental to the consumer. Whether or not those things come about is a function of the quality and health of the aforementioned gentleman's agreement between the consumer and the producer.
In a free market, yes, it is possible for a company to produce a good and charge far more than that product is worth. However, if the deal is really that bad, then another company will produce that good at a "more reasonable" price. Perhaps the original company can underprice and lose money, since it has more in its coffers. Eventually (which may, admittedly, be long off), that will be damaging to the company. The original company may also engage in various unethical practices to create a stranglehold on the market. I am not condoning these practices. I am advocating a free market, not an anarchy.
Well a free market is precisely that, an anarchy. Which, incidentally, is why we don't have one and why we shouldn't be wishing for one. Of course, your presumptions seem to be based upon primary economic theories rather than the rather banal realities we all deal with on a day to day basis. Using your example, you state that if the deal is really that bad, then another company will produce that good at a "more reasonable" price. You seem pretty sure. I'd like to know why. You see, you seem to be insinuating that companies just spring up to fill these vacuums and niches. Well, what happens when the barrier to entry for producing this product is rather high, and the original company is well established? Is the competition you speak of so highly automatically to appear? And you are right, the original company may underprice because it may have huge war chests. You are wrong that this will harm the company, because they can simply overcharge later to manage the shortfall, having crushed the nascent competition. It is the nature of the free market to make sure that the big players stay big and the little players get crushed out of existence or otherwise absorbed.
You're right, in many places, there's not cable competition. Right now. But here's the real question: why is there no competition?
I suspect if you research that, you'll find that it eventually comes back to the government. Remember, our government gave 47 billion dollars in subsidies to companies in 2005. That's a hell of a lot of money that the government gets to decide what company wins for me.
Obtuse in the other direction:
Funny, I thought the people were the government...
Actually, the reason that cable companies don't compete is because it is their contention that it is their infrastructure, therefore they decide who gets to play on it. Many have decided to provide their own services rather than open up to competition from outside parties. From a purely free market sense, this is not only justifiable, but savvy. Bel
It appears to me that you trust governments, but not companies. Yet, both are organizations run by people who are ultimately accountable to the people.
Well, not really. One should be, but isn't. The other is directly accountable only to the stockholders, not the customers.
The free market is neither free, nor a market. A market has choices. A purely free market allows anticompetitive practice and profiteering at the expense of the consumer. How many areas have cable competition, really? Not mine, I can tell you that. So I can either put up an aerial or pay through the nose. This, in no universe, constitutes a choice.
Please do us all a big fat favor and put away the bells tolling for the virtue of unfettered capitalism, because it's precisely bunk and you know it.
Possible, yes. Necessary?
I have to say that legal solutions to non-issues are part of the problem. Is the fact that there are bugs in software such an enormous problem to the industries that choose to use them enough to warrant the warranty? The fact is that the AS-IS, caveat emptor contract only only seems to bother those who've been burned by it and now are looking for someone besides themselves to offset their losses. There's nothing inherently broken about it that requires fixing
From your link, you say:
No matter how you slice it, bugs (software or hardware, Microsoft or General Motors) *will* cause real financial (and otherwise;health, property, whatever) damage
Yes. It will. It doesn't mean that the person who wrote the software should be liable for that loss. Seems to me that if you put a piece of code out there, and by out there, I mean anywhere that it is accessible, a person has a choice to use or not use a piece of software. That person can choose to use it for mission critical affairs even if the design of the software is inappropriate to that purpose. When you're dealing with software, you are relying upon the user to exhibit a certain level of expertise to avoid damage. If you give the onus of liability to the developer, you've just shifted the burden from the end user back to the developer, making the developer responsible for the end user's behavior. I don't think there are many developers who are comfortable with that arrangement, regardless of how you limit the tort possibilities. Ergo, less motivation to develop software.
Two protocols which have grown beyond their initial specifications.
SMTP was never meant to be any of the following:
1) Secure
2) Secure
3) Secure
HTTP was never meant to do anything but display documents.
Look at the both of them today. To try to implement security into a technology that was never meant to secure transmitted data and defeat spoofing is the same problem with implementing executable script and code-behind technologies into documents. Both were ideas which predate their abuses, when the 'net was more populated with people who benefitted from a general white-hat attitude and at the time had no need for rigorous secure technologies.
That's no longer the case, and any technology which assumes it is technically out-of-date.
While I'm sure that anyone who has "purchased" any 1.0 version of software (and by purchased I mean either spent money on it or downloaded something freeware or shareware) which contains bugs which hobble its purported functionality or its security has had the knee-jerk, road-rage desire to see those people responsible for that inconvenience held liable in some way.
However, the reason why we don't have this sort of "consumer protection" already in place is quite simple: any increase in the liability for a producer of any consumer or commercial product is a decrease in the motivation to produce that product. All software of any reasonable complexity has bugs. To hold a software company or the open source community responsible either through update or, if loss is involved, compensation (how you'd manage this is anyone's guess) would ultimately break even with the income produced by the software.
This is particularly of concern with freeware.
For example, let's suppose someone makes a freeware product which some company decides to use for some aspect of its business. Unfortunately, this product is immature upon 1.0 release, and bugs lose data, files, or are prone to security risk which causes that company material loss. Theoretically, that person could be sued for that loss, which is a damn bummer because there is no profit with which to ameliorate whatever damages are brought to bear. Of course, one would be a fool to sue someone who could never pay up, but the mere statement of legal entanglement is enough to take most garage shoppers off the market.
It also introduces a number of other interesting quandaries.
1. It creates a sort of intellectual property servitude. Since the intellectual property lasts longer than potentially the individuals who created it, does that mean that even after the product(s) are out of production, are those who created it are still liable for its upkeep? Can they still be sued for material loss? What's next after that? A Chapter 11 intellectual property bankruptcy backdoor for people who now regret ever writing that damn spreadsheet code?
2. In the case of open-source and freeware, who gets nailed if the consumer gets litigious?
3. What about misuse of the software? Who'd ever write a disk utility of any sort knowing full well that the very tool itself in its proper operation is an invitation for less-than-knowledgeable people to harm their file system? Bug or idiot? Who decides? A legal system which already has very little computer savvy?
4. That brings up the point of any type of "expert" software, what purpose is their in even giving experts software that can do harm, whether from a bug or from inappropriate use? How would you screen these sorts? Even an expert can make mistakes anyway? Why would you as a developer want the liability?
In fact the reason for the "as-is" clause is one of the few common sense statements in any EULA you look at. Without it, you would have defacto liability and we all know how litigious a world we live in. If anything, the "tough luck sweetheart" clause is the most basic protection to continued software innovation, by protecting it from the occasional mishap and the liability which can issue therefrom.
You must be one of those smelly, booger-eating, hamster-IQ'd (w/o the 'p', naturally) Slashdotters he mentioned. He seems to like bowing. Are you bowing?
Traditional utility companies want to build them -- and thus the traditional environmental movement (which supports wind energy) has produced a handful of untraditional splinter groups that are trying to stop them.
Putting aside for the moment that names are not named, this is the only indicator that some environmentalists are anti-wind. That statement, in and of itself, while possibly true, is highly suspect, and thus requires factual backing. I see none here. Wind power is an environmentalists wet dream and I seriously doubt that any real environmentalist would oppose it.
I think you've been spin-flammed (the fact that it's WaPo tends to lend itself to this). These anti-wind people are either NIMBYs or BANANAs or whatever trying to protect their pristine home values under the guise of aesthetic concerns, or they're big energy plants stirring the NIMBYs to keep money flowing to traditional energy sources.
Environmentalists against wind power. Next you're going to claim Linux developers are against open source.
is that they only do their jobs as intended if every car, truck, or whatever on the road uses them. Case in point: the anti-lock braking systems or ABS. In parts of the country in which it snows regularly, owners see them as a boon... and everyone else shits their pants as they frantically try to stop behind drivers who are traveling too fast and using similar stopping patterns as they might use in rain or even dry pave.
The problem with driving today has very little to do with the fact that the act of driving an automobile is inherently unsafe... it is. Duh. However, rather than calling upon the driver to use more cautious, less agressive driving habits in middling to poor road conditions, all of these driver assist options seem to make people think they can drive more recklessly with greater survivability. Driver assist is no excuse for poor driving, but people being what they are, that was the first application they set it to.
So what this article is really trying to say is that if I sit in front of a computer for 8-16 hours a day without getting exercise, I'll get back pain and probably a really fat ass?
Well what can I say, but DERRRRRRRRRRR.
I'm so glad that dude is here to tell us these things.
This must be something known amongst Slashdotters, then, because you act like it is common knowledge, but I'm afraid I didn't get the memo and I do more during the day than surf for the latest OS opinion pieces. Well, thanks for the heads up:
Daniel Lyons is a known Microsoft shill.
So noted.
Just FYI, I have no vested interest in the OS wars that go on here at Slashdot. Personally, I think it's hands down the stupidest thing any person at ALL serious about technology can engage in. Seems to me, it's just a choice. I'll leave the idiocy up to the fanboys and get to better matters.
Anyway, the idiot comment was quite lovely, even though logic dictates (in the obvious vacuum of pop opinion about Daniel Lyons I seem to be in) that maybe he's not the shill you think he is.
Off topic here, but who's Rob Enderle? Wait, nevermind, I just don't care.
But they all say either one of two things and both are true, too bad they are at cross purposes.
1) Iconoclasm and a dissatisfaction with the status quo (with purpose) is what created Linux into what it is. As such, in the context of development it is a prime mover in the community and keeps it a powerful creative force.
2) Businesses do look at professionalism when making decisions, and they decide what professionalism means. Today it means that the interface with the end user must project that professionalism which means suit and tie. Someone mentioned about how some of those with their hands on the IT purse strings are impressed by the dissheveled geek mystique, but I would really question how often this is really true.
The fact is that the business world operates quite a bit off of appearances, maybe more than we'd all like, but if you want widespread Linux acceptance, you're playing on their court. No one's asking a Linux developer to trade in the ability to dress him/herself (or lack thereof) or attend his/her own hygiene any more or less than previously, but if you want to make inroads to the commercial desktop, you've got to play the game a little.
Sell out or buy in... call it what you will... I call it necessary for the promulgation of Linux to commercial desktop acceptance.
... and expecting otherwise is the real travesty.
I've always kind of thought we just kind of patted promotion on the head and said "how precocious", you know annoying, but of no real substance. Some people actually buy this, though. Yikes.
This dude hides nothing about being anti-MS, which is fine by me. I've got a bazillion reasons to be annoyed with MS. What I am amazed by is how he, in not so many words, just does not get why the masses aren't rising up to CRUSH MICROSOFT (emphasis his)! Where's the righteous rage, where are the sit-ins and love-ins and the fuming invective and the placards and the riots?! Kill the monster! Kill the monster!
I dunno, maybe we're not as angry as he is. Maybe we don't want to crush Microsoft. I know that's hard to believe, but it's an operating system, not a political stand.
And if it is SimEarth 2.0, will it suck twice as much? I have that old SNES cart somewhere, and from what I remember, the only real control you had was to move sliders and watch. It became very easy to advance your non-civilized organisms to civilization mode just by increasing the advance slider (mutations increase, I suppose).
The only real thing you had complete control over was the terraform of Mars, but this was near impossible to do in the time allotted.
At least screen savers can be entertaining.
I never thought I'd hear myself say that. As the head of a media conglomerate which could be seen as part of the problem (cookie cutter content, ratings over hard news, sensationalism over journalism, etc., etc., ad nauseam), he's completely and totally correct. The prime plaintiffs in recent intellectual property skirmishes (RIAA, MPAA) simply fail to realize that the market is changing and people want pliability in media type without paying two and three times for the same content. Since the business model is one of repackaging and resale of old product, obviously the plaintiffs are going to fight this sort of pliability tooth and nail, hiding behind the great oak of outdated copyright precedent for as long as the tree still stands.
Of course, inertia is the prime offender in this case, and too many people make too much cash over the current system of production and distribution. Too many people are employed in positions which contribute nothing material to the product itself, too many industries are set up around the distribution of product. And that's what these associations fear, that even though the producers of product could eliminate a great amount of the cost of delivering product to the consumer simply by changing the distribution model, the distribution chain employs so many people and so many are taking a cut that resistance is primarily being pushed from that area.
Of course, I do disagree about print media. There's just something comforting about grabbing breakfast at the local diner and sitting down with a paper. That's just me, I guess.
1. Private information is power and control over those individuals to whom that information directly applies.
2. All private information relinquished to the public domain will be used and for whatever purpose and at whatever time as the collector sees fit. The likelihood of that information being used increases the more ardently the collector states that it will not be used. The likelihood of that information being used for nefarious or damaging purposes increases the more ardently the collector states that it will not be used for nefarious or damaging purposes.
3. Private information made public may be rendered inaccurate or irrelevant (by moving, changing phone number, etc.) but may never be assumed to be destroyed.
With these three rules in hand, it is easy to see why governmental authority wishes to have more of your personally identifiable information available at every point where anonymity might be possible:
Censure and threat.
There is no easier way to make people step and fetch than if you intimate that their words may be used against them. There is no better way to coerce rebellious elements of the society into cowed silence than by taking away their anonymous avenues to lambasting the status quo.
Of course, most people don't realize that this sort of law won't protect politicians from remarks such as these. It is a long established precedent that public figures, especially those in the elected service to the people are not protected equally from libel or slanderous speech as private citizens.
My question would be, which do you claim never existed? The comfortable part or the reclining part. I'll believe the first because that's just a matter of taste, however they were infinitely more comfortable than today's stadium seating (which often completely lack any adjustment ability whatsoever). However, prior to the advent of stadium seating in recent times, even multiplexes sacrificed screen quantity for larger theater sizes and seats that slid forward into a reclining position. The point is that a 12-plex fits into the space once occupied by a 6-plex, sacrificing comfort and amenities and delivering a less "majestic" experience in the process.
Slashdot Mirror
Off topic... just wanted to comment on your sig. Pi in Roman Numerals... I like it.
deserve precise answers... so here are yours.
I would ask why the barrier to entry is as high as it is. Why does it cost over 300,000$ to get a taxicab liscence in New York City, for instance? The (government-set) number seems fairly arbitrary to me, given how the costs for my car get nowhere near that high.
I don't know, but I would wager that a hack license is an element of the tourist industry and necessary transportation infrastructure in NY. If they lowered the price, then any numbnuts would get one, and likely this would degrade the quality of service because you've got a lot of people who don't take the job very seriously. Easily acquired, easily dismissed, you know. By setting the bar high, the government makes an attempt to guarantee the quality of service to both residents and tourists, because only people interested in doing a serious job would lay out the initial cash.
I will admit that I do not follow. If a company beats its competition, then its product would have to be competitive in some form against its competitors; consumers would get the benefit from that.
It would be... until the competition disappears. Then what are they competing with?
On the other hand, what if an ISP wants to be built around being "family-friendly", and would automatically censor pornography and other kid-unsafe websites? They could advertise themselves to religious families as "family-friendly". I have a hard time saying that said ISP should not exist because it does not follow a net neutrality position. Though it should be upfront about its censorship.
So long as it religiously routed porn packets to other parts of the net and screened only for its customers who have opted in to its service, then I'd have a hard time saying that too. However since services already exist which allow this, and I really have a hard time with the idea that you'd trust the censors to know what's family-friendly and what isn't, I'd really question the sanity of anyone who would subscribe to such a service. The old conundrum about prurience being in the eyes of the individual rears its ugly head when that website on Darwin was blocked because the ISP is run by a bunch of ID fundies.
But that's not what the revocation of net neutrality is. That's a filled niche into the existing infrastructure. Net neutrality gives companies the ability to play favorites depending who's paid into their services (which they've already paid into). It gives them the opportunity to reroute requests and just generally control the user's experience, even exert a political voice by censoring sites which may be critical of its practices.
In regards to the fox and the chicken and the trustworthiness of the government vs. the company, the government is incipiently really no more or less trustworthy... but it is better in this regard because WE have oversight. Do we have oversight of the company?
If you must know, I would compare the government as a misbehaved, yet domesticated animal, like a poorly trained dog on a leash. Just because we don't yank the chain often enough to prevent it from getting into trouble is immaterial. That is OUR fault. But a fox is a wild animal which has no control. We defend against its interloping by siccing the dog on it. Sometimes the dog responds to direction, other time it gets distracted by a passing butterfly. But it is still under OUR control. The same cannot be said of the fox, which would make fools out of anyone who trusts the fox to act unfoxlike.
Of course, if the government really does know best, as can be concluded by the fact that it must regulate, why don't we just let the government control and run everything? That way, you wouldn't even need to worry about regulations because then there are no companies to regulate: the government can regulate itself, and the government is all-good.
If you're going to be this facile, I don't want to play anymore. The government does know best about a lot
What is the purpose of this plane that our existing arsenal is ill-equipped for? In other words, we should be prepared for... what, in your estimation?
This is the only thing for which a plane like this might have purpose. I mean, assuming they left their photon torpedoes in their other ships.
I appreciate the interesting engineering in this, but in a world which you don't have any real conventional armies to use it against that couldn't be easily decimated with our existing aircraft... well, I guess I just wonder if there wasn't anything else we could've spent the dough on.
Last I checked, shareholders were people.
I'll set aside the general obtuseness of that remark and just say that a company's customers are more numerous than their stockholders generally by an order of magnitude, and usually quite a bit more. Yes, they are people, but you miss the point. While a company exists to pursue profit, to do so, it must present a product to a base of individuals or other aggregate entities of significant enough number to turn that profit, while enticing them to purchase that product with a statement of fair value. To do this implies a level of fairness in the unwritten contract between the consumer and the producer.
I will concede that on a certain level, the free market is a philosophical concept, rather than a reality. Though I will not concede that a purely free market "allows" anything at the expense of the consumer; the word choice is setting me up to put my foot in my mouth.
Actually, your lack of a concession that a purely free market allows anything at the expense of the consumer is where the foot ended up in an oral entanglement. A purely free market allows EVERYTHING, including those things which are detrimental to the consumer. Whether or not those things come about is a function of the quality and health of the aforementioned gentleman's agreement between the consumer and the producer.
In a free market, yes, it is possible for a company to produce a good and charge far more than that product is worth. However, if the deal is really that bad, then another company will produce that good at a "more reasonable" price. Perhaps the original company can underprice and lose money, since it has more in its coffers. Eventually (which may, admittedly, be long off), that will be damaging to the company. The original company may also engage in various unethical practices to create a stranglehold on the market. I am not condoning these practices. I am advocating a free market, not an anarchy.
Well a free market is precisely that, an anarchy. Which, incidentally, is why we don't have one and why we shouldn't be wishing for one. Of course, your presumptions seem to be based upon primary economic theories rather than the rather banal realities we all deal with on a day to day basis. Using your example, you state that if the deal is really that bad, then another company will produce that good at a "more reasonable" price. You seem pretty sure. I'd like to know why. You see, you seem to be insinuating that companies just spring up to fill these vacuums and niches. Well, what happens when the barrier to entry for producing this product is rather high, and the original company is well established? Is the competition you speak of so highly automatically to appear? And you are right, the original company may underprice because it may have huge war chests. You are wrong that this will harm the company, because they can simply overcharge later to manage the shortfall, having crushed the nascent competition. It is the nature of the free market to make sure that the big players stay big and the little players get crushed out of existence or otherwise absorbed.
You're right, in many places, there's not cable competition. Right now. But here's the real question: why is there no competition? I suspect if you research that, you'll find that it eventually comes back to the government. Remember, our government gave 47 billion dollars in subsidies to companies in 2005. That's a hell of a lot of money that the government gets to decide what company wins for me.
Obtuse in the other direction:
Funny, I thought the people were the government...
Actually, the reason that cable companies don't compete is because it is their contention that it is their infrastructure, therefore they decide who gets to play on it. Many have decided to provide their own services rather than open up to competition from outside parties. From a purely free market sense, this is not only justifiable, but savvy. Bel
It appears to me that you trust governments, but not companies. Yet, both are organizations run by people who are ultimately accountable to the people.
Well, not really. One should be, but isn't. The other is directly accountable only to the stockholders, not the customers. The free market is neither free, nor a market. A market has choices. A purely free market allows anticompetitive practice and profiteering at the expense of the consumer. How many areas have cable competition, really? Not mine, I can tell you that. So I can either put up an aerial or pay through the nose. This, in no universe, constitutes a choice. Please do us all a big fat favor and put away the bells tolling for the virtue of unfettered capitalism, because it's precisely bunk and you know it.
Possible, yes. Necessary? I have to say that legal solutions to non-issues are part of the problem. Is the fact that there are bugs in software such an enormous problem to the industries that choose to use them enough to warrant the warranty? The fact is that the AS-IS, caveat emptor contract only only seems to bother those who've been burned by it and now are looking for someone besides themselves to offset their losses. There's nothing inherently broken about it that requires fixing
From your link, you say: No matter how you slice it, bugs (software or hardware, Microsoft or General Motors) *will* cause real financial (and otherwise;health, property, whatever) damage Yes. It will. It doesn't mean that the person who wrote the software should be liable for that loss. Seems to me that if you put a piece of code out there, and by out there, I mean anywhere that it is accessible, a person has a choice to use or not use a piece of software. That person can choose to use it for mission critical affairs even if the design of the software is inappropriate to that purpose. When you're dealing with software, you are relying upon the user to exhibit a certain level of expertise to avoid damage. If you give the onus of liability to the developer, you've just shifted the burden from the end user back to the developer, making the developer responsible for the end user's behavior. I don't think there are many developers who are comfortable with that arrangement, regardless of how you limit the tort possibilities. Ergo, less motivation to develop software.
Two protocols which have grown beyond their initial specifications. SMTP was never meant to be any of the following: 1) Secure 2) Secure 3) Secure HTTP was never meant to do anything but display documents. Look at the both of them today. To try to implement security into a technology that was never meant to secure transmitted data and defeat spoofing is the same problem with implementing executable script and code-behind technologies into documents. Both were ideas which predate their abuses, when the 'net was more populated with people who benefitted from a general white-hat attitude and at the time had no need for rigorous secure technologies. That's no longer the case, and any technology which assumes it is technically out-of-date.
While I'm sure that anyone who has "purchased" any 1.0 version of software (and by purchased I mean either spent money on it or downloaded something freeware or shareware) which contains bugs which hobble its purported functionality or its security has had the knee-jerk, road-rage desire to see those people responsible for that inconvenience held liable in some way.
However, the reason why we don't have this sort of "consumer protection" already in place is quite simple: any increase in the liability for a producer of any consumer or commercial product is a decrease in the motivation to produce that product. All software of any reasonable complexity has bugs. To hold a software company or the open source community responsible either through update or, if loss is involved, compensation (how you'd manage this is anyone's guess) would ultimately break even with the income produced by the software.
This is particularly of concern with freeware.
For example, let's suppose someone makes a freeware product which some company decides to use for some aspect of its business. Unfortunately, this product is immature upon 1.0 release, and bugs lose data, files, or are prone to security risk which causes that company material loss. Theoretically, that person could be sued for that loss, which is a damn bummer because there is no profit with which to ameliorate whatever damages are brought to bear. Of course, one would be a fool to sue someone who could never pay up, but the mere statement of legal entanglement is enough to take most garage shoppers off the market.
It also introduces a number of other interesting quandaries.
1. It creates a sort of intellectual property servitude. Since the intellectual property lasts longer than potentially the individuals who created it, does that mean that even after the product(s) are out of production, are those who created it are still liable for its upkeep? Can they still be sued for material loss? What's next after that? A Chapter 11 intellectual property bankruptcy backdoor for people who now regret ever writing that damn spreadsheet code?
2. In the case of open-source and freeware, who gets nailed if the consumer gets litigious?
3. What about misuse of the software? Who'd ever write a disk utility of any sort knowing full well that the very tool itself in its proper operation is an invitation for less-than-knowledgeable people to harm their file system? Bug or idiot? Who decides? A legal system which already has very little computer savvy?
4. That brings up the point of any type of "expert" software, what purpose is their in even giving experts software that can do harm, whether from a bug or from inappropriate use? How would you screen these sorts? Even an expert can make mistakes anyway? Why would you as a developer want the liability?
In fact the reason for the "as-is" clause is one of the few common sense statements in any EULA you look at. Without it, you would have defacto liability and we all know how litigious a world we live in. If anything, the "tough luck sweetheart" clause is the most basic protection to continued software innovation, by protecting it from the occasional mishap and the liability which can issue therefrom.
You know I've heard of this before... Oh yeah, "open-ended RPG" is just another name for this other thing called "life", or was it "Grand Theft Auto"?
They had plenty of original ideas... of course you have to go back to 1982-1989 to find them all.
You must be one of those smelly, booger-eating, hamster-IQ'd (w/o the 'p', naturally) Slashdotters he mentioned. He seems to like bowing. Are you bowing?
Traditional utility companies want to build them -- and thus the traditional environmental movement (which supports wind energy) has produced a handful of untraditional splinter groups that are trying to stop them.
Putting aside for the moment that names are not named, this is the only indicator that some environmentalists are anti-wind. That statement, in and of itself, while possibly true, is highly suspect, and thus requires factual backing. I see none here. Wind power is an environmentalists wet dream and I seriously doubt that any real environmentalist would oppose it.
I think you've been spin-flammed (the fact that it's WaPo tends to lend itself to this). These anti-wind people are either NIMBYs or BANANAs or whatever trying to protect their pristine home values under the guise of aesthetic concerns, or they're big energy plants stirring the NIMBYs to keep money flowing to traditional energy sources.
Environmentalists against wind power. Next you're going to claim Linux developers are against open source.
Netflix envelope! Too bad everything past the first slide is a 404. Now whatever shall I do?
is that they only do their jobs as intended if every car, truck, or whatever on the road uses them. Case in point: the anti-lock braking systems or ABS. In parts of the country in which it snows regularly, owners see them as a boon... and everyone else shits their pants as they frantically try to stop behind drivers who are traveling too fast and using similar stopping patterns as they might use in rain or even dry pave.
The problem with driving today has very little to do with the fact that the act of driving an automobile is inherently unsafe... it is. Duh. However, rather than calling upon the driver to use more cautious, less agressive driving habits in middling to poor road conditions, all of these driver assist options seem to make people think they can drive more recklessly with greater survivability. Driver assist is no excuse for poor driving, but people being what they are, that was the first application they set it to.
So what this article is really trying to say is that if I sit in front of a computer for 8-16 hours a day without getting exercise, I'll get back pain and probably a really fat ass?
Well what can I say, but DERRRRRRRRRRR.
I'm so glad that dude is here to tell us these things.
This must be something known amongst Slashdotters, then, because you act like it is common knowledge, but I'm afraid I didn't get the memo and I do more during the day than surf for the latest OS opinion pieces. Well, thanks for the heads up:
Daniel Lyons is a known Microsoft shill.
So noted.
Just FYI, I have no vested interest in the OS wars that go on here at Slashdot. Personally, I think it's hands down the stupidest thing any person at ALL serious about technology can engage in. Seems to me, it's just a choice. I'll leave the idiocy up to the fanboys and get to better matters.
Anyway, the idiot comment was quite lovely, even though logic dictates (in the obvious vacuum of pop opinion about Daniel Lyons I seem to be in) that maybe he's not the shill you think he is.
Off topic here, but who's Rob Enderle? Wait, nevermind, I just don't care.
But they all say either one of two things and both are true, too bad they are at cross purposes.
1) Iconoclasm and a dissatisfaction with the status quo (with purpose) is what created Linux into what it is. As such, in the context of development it is a prime mover in the community and keeps it a powerful creative force.
2) Businesses do look at professionalism when making decisions, and they decide what professionalism means. Today it means that the interface with the end user must project that professionalism which means suit and tie. Someone mentioned about how some of those with their hands on the IT purse strings are impressed by the dissheveled geek mystique, but I would really question how often this is really true.
The fact is that the business world operates quite a bit off of appearances, maybe more than we'd all like, but if you want widespread Linux acceptance, you're playing on their court. No one's asking a Linux developer to trade in the ability to dress him/herself (or lack thereof) or attend his/her own hygiene any more or less than previously, but if you want to make inroads to the commercial desktop, you've got to play the game a little.
Sell out or buy in... call it what you will... I call it necessary for the promulgation of Linux to commercial desktop acceptance.
... and expecting otherwise is the real travesty. I've always kind of thought we just kind of patted promotion on the head and said "how precocious", you know annoying, but of no real substance. Some people actually buy this, though. Yikes.
Opinion pieces like this crack me up.
This dude hides nothing about being anti-MS, which is fine by me. I've got a bazillion reasons to be annoyed with MS. What I am amazed by is how he, in not so many words, just does not get why the masses aren't rising up to CRUSH MICROSOFT (emphasis his)! Where's the righteous rage, where are the sit-ins and love-ins and the fuming invective and the placards and the riots?! Kill the monster! Kill the monster!
I dunno, maybe we're not as angry as he is. Maybe we don't want to crush Microsoft. I know that's hard to believe, but it's an operating system, not a political stand.
And if it is SimEarth 2.0, will it suck twice as much? I have that old SNES cart somewhere, and from what I remember, the only real control you had was to move sliders and watch. It became very easy to advance your non-civilized organisms to civilization mode just by increasing the advance slider (mutations increase, I suppose). The only real thing you had complete control over was the terraform of Mars, but this was near impossible to do in the time allotted. At least screen savers can be entertaining.
I never thought I'd hear myself say that. As the head of a media conglomerate which could be seen as part of the problem (cookie cutter content, ratings over hard news, sensationalism over journalism, etc., etc., ad nauseam), he's completely and totally correct. The prime plaintiffs in recent intellectual property skirmishes (RIAA, MPAA) simply fail to realize that the market is changing and people want pliability in media type without paying two and three times for the same content. Since the business model is one of repackaging and resale of old product, obviously the plaintiffs are going to fight this sort of pliability tooth and nail, hiding behind the great oak of outdated copyright precedent for as long as the tree still stands.
Of course, inertia is the prime offender in this case, and too many people make too much cash over the current system of production and distribution. Too many people are employed in positions which contribute nothing material to the product itself, too many industries are set up around the distribution of product. And that's what these associations fear, that even though the producers of product could eliminate a great amount of the cost of delivering product to the consumer simply by changing the distribution model, the distribution chain employs so many people and so many are taking a cut that resistance is primarily being pushed from that area.
Of course, I do disagree about print media. There's just something comforting about grabbing breakfast at the local diner and sitting down with a paper. That's just me, I guess.
1. Private information is power and control over those individuals to whom that information directly applies.
2. All private information relinquished to the public domain will be used and for whatever purpose and at whatever time as the collector sees fit. The likelihood of that information being used increases the more ardently the collector states that it will not be used. The likelihood of that information being used for nefarious or damaging purposes increases the more ardently the collector states that it will not be used for nefarious or damaging purposes.
3. Private information made public may be rendered inaccurate or irrelevant (by moving, changing phone number, etc.) but may never be assumed to be destroyed.
With these three rules in hand, it is easy to see why governmental authority wishes to have more of your personally identifiable information available at every point where anonymity might be possible: Censure and threat. There is no easier way to make people step and fetch than if you intimate that their words may be used against them. There is no better way to coerce rebellious elements of the society into cowed silence than by taking away their anonymous avenues to lambasting the status quo. Of course, most people don't realize that this sort of law won't protect politicians from remarks such as these. It is a long established precedent that public figures, especially those in the elected service to the people are not protected equally from libel or slanderous speech as private citizens.
My question would be, which do you claim never existed? The comfortable part or the reclining part. I'll believe the first because that's just a matter of taste, however they were infinitely more comfortable than today's stadium seating (which often completely lack any adjustment ability whatsoever). However, prior to the advent of stadium seating in recent times, even multiplexes sacrificed screen quantity for larger theater sizes and seats that slid forward into a reclining position. The point is that a 12-plex fits into the space once occupied by a 6-plex, sacrificing comfort and amenities and delivering a less "majestic" experience in the process.
The comfortable or the reclining?