I think you hit the nail on the head with your comment. After all, not everyone in Debian are the smartest coder.
Firefox actually want the 'smartest coders' that work with their codebase.
While it is certainly elitist, it makes sure that only the elite (dedication plus skill) get to work on their branch of the browser. If that ends up making it work faster, more robustly and more efficiently, then all to the better.
A small team of highly skilled individuals can often achieve more than a large pool of medium skilled people, and usually far more than a huge team of mediocrely skilled people.
Everyone they compete with (corporate entities, such as MS and Opera) is pretty much guaranteed to be elitist (they'll hire the best coders and designers they can at interview), so why shouldn't the firefox team?
Of course, as has been noted, if you think you can do better with your choice of team recruitment, then fork the project, and see which one survives.
IP is not physical property, but it is as real as money.
No, it's not. The piece of paper in your hand is something that someone had to lose/give up in order for you to obtain it. Which means it is a part of scarcity. It holds it's value because there is only so much of it in circulation (if the government doubled the amount of it in circulation in a given economy, it's real value would fall). It's a token of exchange. One person gains, another forfeits.
Now, intellectual property can be passed on while still being retained. If you could still hold onto your hundred dollar bill, while still passing it on to someone else, what would it be worth?
That being said, I wholeheartedly believe in recompensing anyone who creates a work of art/science/whatever to the tune of whatever it's worth. However, I disagree with extent that society at large is being restricted, simply to keep ideas in the hands of a priveliged few. This is exactly the state of affairs before the printing press, where copying was hard, thus the transmission of ideas was expensive, and restricted. That sustained the feudal structures quite happily (where the peasantry was fed whatever the feudal lords/clergy wanted them to believe, and anything more was denied), until the printing press came about, and literacy became widespread, and lo and behold, technology roared ahead, with innovation increasing at a rate unheard of before.
Now, people with lots of money have discovered that ideas are the fundamental root of power (read 1984 very carefully, Orwell was quite insightful about ideas/information and what their careful control meant), and once again want to restrict it wherever they can, by moving as much media as possible to the digital domain, where, by law, distribution of the ideas can be a criminal offense.
Europe dismissed Software patent laws, which was a huge step in keeping innovation going. There is still copyright to keep the software houses going strong. If you think what would have happened if we'd had those patent laws in place 25 years back, we'd still be using a single user OS with absolutely terrible performance. Why? Because there would have been little incentive to develop anything better. First person to get a working software interface to a disk patents it. For 25 years, they say who can write an OS that talks to a disk drive (or maybe even any peripheral!). First person to write a network protocol gets to say who can write a network driver (thus protocol stack. All covered under a patent!), which may itself have fallen foul to the preceeding patent on talking to a peripheral outside the main processor.
Put patents on software (certainly this early in the game), and you stand the possibility of stagnating yourself out of the game. The US became such an economic giant by NOT having all the IP laws in place, and grabbing tech from the rest of the world wholesale. It only put them in place over the last 40-50 years (well, strongly anyhow), once it was in the lead, and is now trying to get the world to follow behind it, and stymie their own innovation, to stop them catching up and overtaking.
As for resisting change to old ideas, hey, why not overturn the laws on murder, and then make it a capital crime to feed any cat? Simple. Some ideas work. Some don't. If something can be made better, then make it better, but it's usually a bad idea to take something that's working well, and break it, which is what you seem to be suggesting.
In the article, it explicitly mentions his take on that. He saw the potential, but knew he couldn't afford to back the production/licensing of it at that time. And rather than sit back and have patent he can use to screw the industry out of a viable technology, he chose to have a company produce it.
And I prefer the words "Copyright Infringement", as that's what it is, not stealing. Theft is removing an item or service from someone, so that the owner is deprived of it. Copyright infringement is duplication of an item or service. Copyright infringement doesn't even mean a sale would have been made even if the copy weren't made. But that topic's been done to death everywhere in/.. And personally, I don't "Infringe Copyright" because I can afford to pay for the services I want. So I pay for what I want/need. What really pisses me off is people calling copyright infringement "Stealing". If only because the two phrases have entirely different definitions.
In relevance to the article, I don't think most people round here would have given a rats ass if someone had said "This guy's given his mates a few copies of code I wrote!". They would have been behind him if it was posted to a Warez site.. What really pissed people off was that the other vendor actually took his product (Copyright Infringement) and changed a couple of icons and SOLD it as his own. Now, that latter part does constitute theft (as it's denying the author a sale which was actually made), and fraud. That's the bit that'll piss most/.ers off, and land them squarely behind the guy.
It requires a personal liability against the Directors if they've been acting inappropriately/illegally (if I remember aright). So, the big brass could be in danger of losing houses etc. if they screw up, and lose all the money, and end up owing the courts. Bankruptcy, of course, gets them out of owing millions at the end of selling everything.. But it's still a hit to take.
I think he meant the application is open source. If he gives the source to the application, then it is open source, no matter what language you use to develop it.
Yes, but getting the right number of people in there at the start to make sure that the project is on time is one of the primary responsibilities of the project manager.
You don't set one person to work on a hydroelectric dam across a large river and expect it complete in two years.
It's meant to mean that when you've already screwed the project up to the point that it's late (i.e. you miscalculated earlier), adding more people to it at that point only serves to soak up more time (skills transfer), making the project later.
If the projects always run into crunch, then the project managers aren't doing their job/are incompetent. Sack them, and get ones that DO the job they're paid for.
I take it you mean they pump out 100x more lines of code than another person. Were you taking into account that the 'low producer' may well be doing far more complex work than the 'high producer'?
Yes and no. The idea is to have components that all work together, so that you can achieve the aim seamlessly.
The aim is not to have one company insert things into the OS that force a de facto monopoly on one application.
Any system is most robust when it's heterogenous, but co-operative (i.e. wide variety of systems that understand each other and can happily transact between each other). This way, something designed to compromise one system will at most break only a part of the whole.
MS want everything homogenous. One break kills all. This isn't a great mechanism to follow.
Now, if they left it out of the OS, as a download (not a nag alert every time you start a session when it's not installed), then I'm all for it. Let them play on a level playing field, and they'll make a better product than if they'd leveraged Windows to get it out there. And they'd give other players a chance.
Things are already simple to do, inside suites that are engineered to be homogenous. What would really restore a little faith would be to see MS producing something that would happily work well with other components.
They're probably using something like Novadigms's Radia. And instead of linking the correct 7 PCs, they linked to all of them (misconfigured group). In that case, it's not a case if installing a patch that is installed using the new mechanisms, the "Patch Manager" simply dumps the files to all the machines that connect up using it's client, and force an overwrite.
Given, they should actually have an install script that checks the OS before it actually dumps the install package on there, but hey.
Not normally an MS apologist, but this isn't really Microsoft's problem. It's the contracted company that made the update package failing to ascribe it to the right download group.
So, the analogy. It's like some perfectly good system being installed, and someone presses the button marked 'open all doors' instead of simply open door 7. I don't see anyone really blaming the door manufacturer here (Microsoft or the contractors), although I'd hazard a guess that the person who skipped over the part of the process that said 'double check the groups you assign this patch to' will be sorely chastised...
Cost.. Cheap. Easy to look up on the net. Yes, I've driven one. One of my friends owns one, and I was sceptical about it when I first saw it.
After getting in, it feels very spacious, and comfortable. Quite zippy for the engine size. Everything is well laid out. Stable on corners, good acceleration, and good braking.
Superb city drive, although I prefer my Saab 9000 for motorways and long drives, but, when in the city looking for somewhere to park, or just counting petrol costs for start/stop driving, you can bet that I'm missing that smart car.:)
Actually, I feel wronged. I bought the DVD. I spent about 4 hours trying to install the damn thing (including installing it, getting to the steam account setup page, and being told there was an error, and the install had failed. Retry install.) Not selecting to install the counterstrike also messed up the install. Had to reinstall from scratch. Bloody confusing, it was. And I deal with tech. Had to google search to find the root of some of the problems, until I found out what was going on.
Then, the necessity of having to put in the DVD EVERY time I play the game. Right. So, having bought a store copy, I'm somehow less 'trusted' than someone who bought online. Why shouldn't I put a no-dvd crack on it if I want to archive my shiny DVD on my shelf (that has over 200 store bought games on it, all in good, unscratched condition, and playable after a good ten years). If it were about copy protection (note, not stealing, or piracy, which are entirely different issues), then they wouldn't have a no-cd version available as a download.
I've heard someone say 'get a CD wallet'. So that's more money you have to pay to be able to support their request for having the CD in the drive. The inconvenience of swapping things in and out (every time I put certain music or other game CDs back in, they hit the auto play and take about a minute for me to just tell the damn thing I want it to quit, and never wanted to play in the first place. Inserting the CD didn't mean I wanted to play. I just meant I wanted it in the drive!).
So, the initial experience of Steam was very negative. It took 4 hours of my time, doing something I didn't want to do (i.e. dealing with their inability to get the install done correctly, and finding the remedy). The cost for people to get me to do research, or work that makes me that stressed for that amount of time far eclipses the cost of the game I bought.
Put bluntly, I'll actually go along with those people that have been saying "It's just a game, you don't have to play it.". Valve had my money this time round. I went through the experience. I didn't like it. So, I chalk it up to experience. They got me this time. Doesn't mean I'll give them the chance to do it again.
Actually, it got there by Marketing, pure and simple. The workgrouping was done by Novell servers, by and large, well before MS was anywhere in that league.
That was tried and true tech, so, by your argument, it should have held that market.
MS advertised to the management structure (not the tech staff) that anyone could administer an NT server. So, many companies took this challenge, and stripped out the Novell servers to put in NT, and got rid of the old Novell admins, to try and save money having basic staff administer NT. When things went awry (which they usually did, as general staff didn't really understand what was going on, just hoped clicking buttons would give the right answer), MS informed them that anyone could administer an NT box at the basic level, but if you really want it to run properly, you need to get an MCSE certified Admin. For the same price you'd had your old Novell Admin.
Now, the choice is, going back to your old system and trying to rehire admins you've got rid of, or cutting your losses, and staying with the new system.
Unsurprisingly, people were unwilling to pay loads of cash for no perceived extra benefit (both systems need admins.
The switch originally came about because of a perceived benefit that wasn't actually there. But once it was made, and discovered, it was too late to go back.
So, if Linux needs to do the same as MS to get into the market, it needs to turn round and say in adverts that you'd never need to admin it, it'll run magically and even make you your coffee and polish your car, do everything that Windows does and have a rep drop round every so often to take your managers out to lunch.
MS made a lot of claim that almost every tech that read it exclaimed "Bullshit". They used adverts with wording that skirted on the edge of allowable, hyped vaporware that never appeared (or worked) and so on.
That being said, MS were a boon in getting computers to be a home commodity item, and standardising on the PC. They were great when they were actually doing something new. Now, they're pretty much resting on laurels, and using Lawyers to maintain the business base and stifle any competition, and certainly prevent anyone doing what they did.
If anyone else now made the claims that MS did back then, I can guarantee they'd be sued out of existence.
"Or finally had the US foolishly decided that sanctions and "containment" were really (despite the evidence to suggest otherwise) working"
Actually, all the evidence said it was working. And that evidence, after the invasion of Iraq was proved to be correct. The "War" was instigated on forgeries (which the politicians were warned about, but studiously ignored the warnings), tenuous at that (the bulk of evidence and intelligence pointed to sanctions and containment having worked, with only one small (forged) document supporting a cause to invasion).
The resolutions were pretty much upheld, with an odd bit of leniency for humanitarian reasons. Iraq paid dearly for it's invasion of Kuwait. Oddly, the US and UK now expect adulation for performing exactly the same kind of action upon the Iraqis that Iraq performed on the Kuwaitis. Well, not the US and the UK, just their politicians.
So, the foolishness and sticking the head ostrich-like into the ground was what actually caused the invasion, not prevented it.
Also, the comments about Israel in the grandparent, I suspect, are being linked to a wider picture that's linked to Iraq, but not, perhaps in the main frame of this debate. There again, I don't really know enough on that to comment much, I just read both sides of it in interest, and follow up research on it later.
Software patents, aren't in themselves bad. The thing that isn't addressed is their timespan.
Patents for physical things took into account the fact that they needed to be drawn, engineered, factories built to create them, distribute them, have them installed where necessary, and then cover them through a fair lifespan.
Take, for example, valves on a chemical plant. A new and innovative one could be thought of and patented. Then, the factories set up to produce it (say a year from patent perhaps, now safe to give the designs under contract, as it's patent protected), then it needs to be marketed, so, perhaps 2 years from inception to starting to get used. Initial tests and usage in industry, say, 4-5 years until it really starts to be used industry wide. Lifetime of a valve, perhaps 10 years if they're in a harsh environment, more if not. So, you get in one round of replacement of the same thing. But, the timescale there for a physical item that's supposed to last 20, 30 or more years isn't terrible. It's still VERY useful in 30-40 years.
Now, software, protected for the same duration. Patent is drawn up. Software out the door days later, as there are no real tooling and production costs (relatively speaking). It's possible for sales to ramp up and reach market saturation within a year, if it's something innovative and useful. Industry acceptance and having it treated as 'old and established' within 2. Within about 5 years, it's (usually) classified as obsolete. So, for the next 20 years after being obsolete, it's holding back the market from developing it's successor, because it's patent encumbered, and license fees need be paid on it. So, the next generation flounders.
If Patents took into account the average obsolescence period of the market, and allowed a patent for the given period, things would work nicely. Once it's in the 'getting a little old and clunky' period, anyone can then make a free implementation of it, or perhaps design it's successor based on the original. OR a proprietary new version, or whatever! But it keeps things moving, which is what patents were meant to do all along.
5 years for a software patent? Sure, that sounds fine. Maybe 7 or 8 at a push. If you've not made money off an idea in that time with a captive market in the tech game, you're probably not going to. But the 5 years is enough to allow something to prosper, while ensuring that you keep thinking of the next idea, or allowing someone else to. And perhaps it would stop all these patent shops churning out nothing in the knowledge that they've got 20 odd years to sit on it and hope someone comes up with something they can shoehorn into what they've got on their papers.
5 years is a lot less time, enough, really, to say "If you're not going to use it, then you've had your chance to, now let someone else actually do something good with the idea"..
Not exactly a straight analogy there. For some reason, a lot of people seem to be drawing an analogy between filesharing (or cheap online web sales) and outsourcing to another country in a job/role.
In the music business, the jobs are all held in the originating country. A middleman makes a HUGE profit, and usually ties up most, if not all of the rights of the artist to themselves as part of the deal. They sell at VASTLY inflated prices, and attempt to prevent any fair use of a bought item (CD) at the far end.
End result, the CD is useless (can't make copies to chuck on your MP3 player or whatever), so people buy, where possible, the format that they'll end up using, for a little less quality (compressed), a little more risk (losing/corrupting license key is a bad thing in DRM'd files), but having it in the format they'll use most.
Note, suppliers of music (Distribution chain/artist) STILL make shed loads of money (no real distribution cost per track, with about $1 per track price tag). Physical distribution chain for the CD item suffers. Note the article talked about people going to buy cheaper through websites, not just P2P fileshare.
Outsourcing jobs now, that's ceding to another country entirely highly skilled jobs, that provide revenue for the country as a whole (tax on the job comes back to provide revenue, rather than paying out some kind of unemployment payment, which costs the government money). If/when outsourcing takes over properly, then skills in that area decline, and they no longer become a point of study. Fewer and fewer will persue a degree (which is the base of research, not just commercial monkeying with code) if they're unable to get paid at the end of it. Which, over a decade or so, will result in that area becoming an aside in the country, and form a dependancy on a foreign power. Outsourcing costs the government money, which increases taxes, which everyone pays. Websites which sell music cheaper than a retail store cost retail outlets money, which doesn't make that much difference nationally at all. Retail jobs are FAR easier to swap and change than highly skilled tech jobs/skilled industrial jobs. The truth of outsourcing is that the government IS bailing out the corporate method of business (providing benefits for the jobs pushed out elsewhere, at the tax payer's cost, not the corporate cost, and later shouldering the lack of tax income from a previously vibrant sector).
Your comparison really is comparing apples and oranges. They're very very different beasts indeed.
I spent a fair old while doing enterprise automated software delivery design for British Telecom. DLL hell was a MAJOR nightmare. Especially the changes with VB written code. Various DLLs did randomly break packages (depending on which you loaded first. Once the DLL was loaded, some packages compatible with that DLL worked fine, and others that used a different version didn't. Load them the other way round, and you could use a different bunch of apps). Installing and removing software for 10 years and not meeting DLL hell says you haven't installed a wide range of software. You'll never meet it installing and removing office for ten years. You will working in a varied and highly flexible workplace. And yes, it is an issue for both operating systems. And when you encounter it, it really does make you want to tear out your hair.
Re:It's called IP for a reason
on
Is IP Property?
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· Score: 1
Interesting. You try publishing a book without a large publisher behind you. It's another of those lock in things at the moment. You want advertising, you pay big money to reach the big audience (otherwise they won't hear about you), and sign away your rights (otherwise you won't be distributed to the large audience). So, you either have what may be your life's work languishing gathering dust in obscurity, or you sign it's rights away to a corporation.
And as for a great work of mine falling to the public on my death? Sure! What else am I going to do with it when I'm dead? While I'm alive, my work brings in money, which, if I invest it well, pays for kids education (which lets them create in their time), and my own bills. When I'm dead.. Don't have that many continuing bills... Then, at that point (or maybe a few extra years, pay back those funeral expenses you know), then let the public do what they will with it. The public domain is there to feed the ideas back into a wide audience over time. To fuel the creative ideas for the next generation. The extensions to copyright that are happening at the moment are in danger of stymying that creative flow, and locking it back into the idea of having a group that have money able to educate themselves (they're the only ones able to afford to access the vast content needed to study, and there are no recent public domain works to keep up to date with for free anymore), and all the rest will be locked into the life of the uneducated, no longer a threat to the powered. Which is pretty much like Feudal times, except you switch the lords for corporations. Yep, I want things of mine to educate the next generation after I die.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you hit the nail on the head with your comment.
After all, not everyone in Debian are the smartest coder.
Firefox actually want the 'smartest coders' that work with their codebase.
While it is certainly elitist, it makes sure that only the elite (dedication plus skill) get to work on their branch of the browser. If that ends up making it work faster, more robustly and more efficiently, then all to the better.
A small team of highly skilled individuals can often achieve more than a large pool of medium skilled people, and usually far more than a huge team of mediocrely skilled people.
Everyone they compete with (corporate entities, such as MS and Opera) is pretty much guaranteed to be elitist (they'll hire the best coders and designers they can at interview), so why shouldn't the firefox team?
Of course, as has been noted, if you think you can do better with your choice of team recruitment, then fork the project, and see which one survives.
Actually, many people have.. Usually Game developers, who want to play sound streams, and not have to pay a license fee for the MP3 decoder.
IP is not physical property, but it is as real as money.
No, it's not. The piece of paper in your hand is something that someone had to lose/give up in order for you to obtain it. Which means it is a part of scarcity. It holds it's value because there is only so much of it in circulation (if the government doubled the amount of it in circulation in a given economy, it's real value would fall). It's a token of exchange. One person gains, another forfeits.
Now, intellectual property can be passed on while still being retained. If you could still hold onto your hundred dollar bill, while still passing it on to someone else, what would it be worth?
That being said, I wholeheartedly believe in recompensing anyone who creates a work of art/science/whatever to the tune of whatever it's worth. However, I disagree with extent that society at large is being restricted, simply to keep ideas in the hands of a priveliged few. This is exactly the state of affairs before the printing press, where copying was hard, thus the transmission of ideas was expensive, and restricted. That sustained the feudal structures quite happily (where the peasantry was fed whatever the feudal lords/clergy wanted them to believe, and anything more was denied), until the printing press came about, and literacy became widespread, and lo and behold, technology roared ahead, with innovation increasing at a rate unheard of before.
Now, people with lots of money have discovered that ideas are the fundamental root of power (read 1984 very carefully, Orwell was quite insightful about ideas/information and what their careful control meant), and once again want to restrict it wherever they can, by moving as much media as possible to the digital domain, where, by law, distribution of the ideas can be a criminal offense.
Europe dismissed Software patent laws, which was a huge step in keeping innovation going. There is still copyright to keep the software houses going strong. If you think what would have happened if we'd had those patent laws in place 25 years back, we'd still be using a single user OS with absolutely terrible performance. Why? Because there would have been little incentive to develop anything better. First person to get a working software interface to a disk patents it. For 25 years, they say who can write an OS that talks to a disk drive (or maybe even any peripheral!). First person to write a network protocol gets to say who can write a network driver (thus protocol stack. All covered under a patent!), which may itself have fallen foul to the preceeding patent on talking to a peripheral outside the main processor.
Put patents on software (certainly this early in the game), and you stand the possibility of stagnating yourself out of the game. The US became such an economic giant by NOT having all the IP laws in place, and grabbing tech from the rest of the world wholesale. It only put them in place over the last 40-50 years (well, strongly anyhow), once it was in the lead, and is now trying to get the world to follow behind it, and stymie their own innovation, to stop them catching up and overtaking.
As for resisting change to old ideas, hey, why not overturn the laws on murder, and then make it a capital crime to feed any cat? Simple. Some ideas work. Some don't. If something can be made better, then make it better, but it's usually a bad idea to take something that's working well, and break it, which is what you seem to be suggesting.
Justification of Tyranny #90559885334.
Semantic Word Play
In the article, it explicitly mentions his take on that.
He saw the potential, but knew he couldn't afford to back the production/licensing of it at that time.
And rather than sit back and have patent he can use to screw the industry out of a viable technology, he chose to have a company produce it.
And I prefer the words "Copyright Infringement", as that's what it is, not stealing. /..
/.ers off, and land them squarely behind the guy.
Theft is removing an item or service from someone, so that the owner is deprived of it.
Copyright infringement is duplication of an item or service. Copyright infringement doesn't even mean a sale would have been made even if the copy weren't made.
But that topic's been done to death everywhere in
And personally, I don't "Infringe Copyright" because I can afford to pay for the services I want. So I pay for what I want/need.
What really pisses me off is people calling copyright infringement "Stealing". If only because the two phrases have entirely different definitions.
In relevance to the article, I don't think most people round here would have given a rats ass if someone had said "This guy's given his mates a few copies of code I wrote!". They would have been behind him if it was posted to a Warez site..
What really pissed people off was that the other vendor actually took his product (Copyright Infringement) and changed a couple of icons and SOLD it as his own.
Now, that latter part does constitute theft (as it's denying the author a sale which was actually made), and fraud.
That's the bit that'll piss most
It requires a personal liability against the Directors if they've been acting inappropriately/illegally (if I remember aright). So, the big brass could be in danger of losing houses etc. if they screw up, and lose all the money, and end up owing the courts.
Bankruptcy, of course, gets them out of owing millions at the end of selling everything.. But it's still a hit to take.
I think he meant the application is open source. If he gives the source to the application, then it is open source, no matter what language you use to develop it.
Ahhh.. Saw that one pop out of the thread on the spelling of 'Grammar'.. Yer dead right. Need more caffeine before posting.
Nope - we Brits spell it 'er' as well.
I take it you're talking about 'Grammar'. We Brits spell it with 'ar', according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Yes, but getting the right number of people in there at the start to make sure that the project is on time is one of the primary responsibilities of the project manager.
You don't set one person to work on a hydroelectric dam across a large river and expect it complete in two years.
It's meant to mean that when you've already screwed the project up to the point that it's late (i.e. you miscalculated earlier), adding more people to it at that point only serves to soak up more time (skills transfer), making the project later.
If the projects always run into crunch, then the project managers aren't doing their job/are incompetent. Sack them, and get ones that DO the job they're paid for.
I take it you mean they pump out 100x more lines of code than another person.
Were you taking into account that the 'low producer' may well be doing far more complex work than the 'high producer'?
Yes and no. The idea is to have components that all work together, so that you can achieve the aim seamlessly.
The aim is not to have one company insert things into the OS that force a de facto monopoly on one application.
Any system is most robust when it's heterogenous, but co-operative (i.e. wide variety of systems that understand each other and can happily transact between each other). This way, something designed to compromise one system will at most break only a part of the whole.
MS want everything homogenous. One break kills all. This isn't a great mechanism to follow.
Now, if they left it out of the OS, as a download (not a nag alert every time you start a session when it's not installed), then I'm all for it. Let them play on a level playing field, and they'll make a better product than if they'd leveraged Windows to get it out there. And they'd give other players a chance.
Things are already simple to do, inside suites that are engineered to be homogenous. What would really restore a little faith would be to see MS producing something that would happily work well with other components.
They're probably using something like Novadigms's Radia. And instead of linking the correct 7 PCs, they linked to all of them (misconfigured group). In that case, it's not a case if installing a patch that is installed using the new mechanisms, the "Patch Manager" simply dumps the files to all the machines that connect up using it's client, and force an overwrite.
Given, they should actually have an install script that checks the OS before it actually dumps the install package on there, but hey.
Not normally an MS apologist, but this isn't really Microsoft's problem. It's the contracted company that made the update package failing to ascribe it to the right download group.
So, the analogy. It's like some perfectly good system being installed, and someone presses the button marked 'open all doors' instead of simply open door 7.
I don't see anyone really blaming the door manufacturer here (Microsoft or the contractors), although I'd hazard a guess that the person who skipped over the part of the process that said 'double check the groups you assign this patch to' will be sorely chastised...
Cost.. Cheap. Easy to look up on the net.
:)
Yes, I've driven one. One of my friends owns one, and I was sceptical about it when I first saw it.
After getting in, it feels very spacious, and comfortable. Quite zippy for the engine size. Everything is well laid out.
Stable on corners, good acceleration, and good braking.
Superb city drive, although I prefer my Saab 9000 for motorways and long drives, but, when in the city looking for somewhere to park, or just counting petrol costs for start/stop driving, you can bet that I'm missing that smart car.
Actually, I feel wronged. I bought the DVD.
I spent about 4 hours trying to install the damn thing (including installing it, getting to the steam account setup page, and being told there was an error, and the install had failed. Retry install.)
Not selecting to install the counterstrike also messed up the install. Had to reinstall from scratch.
Bloody confusing, it was. And I deal with tech. Had to google search to find the root of some of the problems, until I found out what was going on.
Then, the necessity of having to put in the DVD EVERY time I play the game.
Right. So, having bought a store copy, I'm somehow less 'trusted' than someone who bought online.
Why shouldn't I put a no-dvd crack on it if I want to archive my shiny DVD on my shelf (that has over 200 store bought games on it, all in good, unscratched condition, and playable after a good ten years).
If it were about copy protection (note, not stealing, or piracy, which are entirely different issues), then they wouldn't have a no-cd version available as a download.
I've heard someone say 'get a CD wallet'. So that's more money you have to pay to be able to support their request for having the CD in the drive. The inconvenience of swapping things in and out (every time I put certain music or other game CDs back in, they hit the auto play and take about a minute for me to just tell the damn thing I want it to quit, and never wanted to play in the first place. Inserting the CD didn't mean I wanted to play. I just meant I wanted it in the drive!).
So, the initial experience of Steam was very negative. It took 4 hours of my time, doing something I didn't want to do (i.e. dealing with their inability to get the install done correctly, and finding the remedy). The cost for people to get me to do research, or work that makes me that stressed for that amount of time far eclipses the cost of the game I bought.
Put bluntly, I'll actually go along with those people that have been saying "It's just a game, you don't have to play it.".
Valve had my money this time round. I went through the experience.
I didn't like it.
So, I chalk it up to experience. They got me this time. Doesn't mean I'll give them the chance to do it again.
Actually, it got there by Marketing, pure and simple.
The workgrouping was done by Novell servers, by and large, well before MS was anywhere in that league.
That was tried and true tech, so, by your argument, it should have held that market.
MS advertised to the management structure (not the tech staff) that anyone could administer an NT server. So, many companies took this challenge, and stripped out the Novell servers to put in NT, and got rid of the old Novell admins, to try and save money having basic staff administer NT.
When things went awry (which they usually did, as general staff didn't really understand what was going on, just hoped clicking buttons would give the right answer), MS informed them that anyone could administer an NT box at the basic level, but if you really want it to run properly, you need to get an MCSE certified Admin. For the same price you'd had your old Novell Admin.
Now, the choice is, going back to your old system and trying to rehire admins you've got rid of, or cutting your losses, and staying with the new system.
Unsurprisingly, people were unwilling to pay loads of cash for no perceived extra benefit (both systems need admins.
The switch originally came about because of a perceived benefit that wasn't actually there. But once it was made, and discovered, it was too late to go back.
So, if Linux needs to do the same as MS to get into the market, it needs to turn round and say in adverts that you'd never need to admin it, it'll run magically and even make you your coffee and polish your car, do everything that Windows does and have a rep drop round every so often to take your managers out to lunch.
MS made a lot of claim that almost every tech that read it exclaimed "Bullshit".
They used adverts with wording that skirted on the edge of allowable, hyped vaporware that never appeared (or worked) and so on.
That being said, MS were a boon in getting computers to be a home commodity item, and standardising on the PC. They were great when they were actually doing something new.
Now, they're pretty much resting on laurels, and using Lawyers to maintain the business base and stifle any competition, and certainly prevent anyone doing what they did.
If anyone else now made the claims that MS did back then, I can guarantee they'd be sued out of existence.
Like they say, "many a truth is spoken in jest..."
"Or finally had the US foolishly decided that sanctions and "containment" were really (despite the evidence to suggest otherwise) working"
Actually, all the evidence said it was working. And that evidence, after the invasion of Iraq was proved to be correct. The "War" was instigated on forgeries (which the politicians were warned about, but studiously ignored the warnings), tenuous at that (the bulk of evidence and intelligence pointed to sanctions and containment having worked, with only one small (forged) document supporting a cause to invasion).
The resolutions were pretty much upheld, with an odd bit of leniency for humanitarian reasons. Iraq paid dearly for it's invasion of Kuwait. Oddly, the US and UK now expect adulation for performing exactly the same kind of action upon the Iraqis that Iraq performed on the Kuwaitis. Well, not the US and the UK, just their politicians.
So, the foolishness and sticking the head ostrich-like into the ground was what actually caused the invasion, not prevented it.
Also, the comments about Israel in the grandparent, I suspect, are being linked to a wider picture that's linked to Iraq, but not, perhaps in the main frame of this debate. There again, I don't really know enough on that to comment much, I just read both sides of it in interest, and follow up research on it later.
This include the 2.4 billion 'broken' songs they're supposed to be putting out to 'dissuade' file sharers?
Software patents, aren't in themselves bad. The thing that isn't addressed is their timespan.
Patents for physical things took into account the fact that they needed to be drawn, engineered, factories built to create them, distribute them, have them installed where necessary, and then cover them through a fair lifespan.
Take, for example, valves on a chemical plant. A new and innovative one could be thought of and patented.
Then, the factories set up to produce it (say a year from patent perhaps, now safe to give the designs under contract, as it's patent protected), then it needs to be marketed, so, perhaps 2 years from inception to starting to get used. Initial tests and usage in industry, say, 4-5 years until it really starts to be used industry wide.
Lifetime of a valve, perhaps 10 years if they're in a harsh environment, more if not. So, you get in one round of replacement of the same thing.
But, the timescale there for a physical item that's supposed to last 20, 30 or more years isn't terrible. It's still VERY useful in 30-40 years.
Now, software, protected for the same duration.
Patent is drawn up. Software out the door days later, as there are no real tooling and production costs (relatively speaking). It's possible for sales to ramp up and reach market saturation within a year, if it's something innovative and useful. Industry acceptance and having it treated as 'old and established' within 2.
Within about 5 years, it's (usually) classified as obsolete.
So, for the next 20 years after being obsolete, it's holding back the market from developing it's successor, because it's patent encumbered, and license fees need be paid on it. So, the next generation flounders.
If Patents took into account the average obsolescence period of the market, and allowed a patent for the given period, things would work nicely.
Once it's in the 'getting a little old and clunky' period, anyone can then make a free implementation of it, or perhaps design it's successor based on the original. OR a proprietary new version, or whatever! But it keeps things moving, which is what patents were meant to do all along.
5 years for a software patent? Sure, that sounds fine. Maybe 7 or 8 at a push. If you've not made money off an idea in that time with a captive market in the tech game, you're probably not going to.
But the 5 years is enough to allow something to prosper, while ensuring that you keep thinking of the next idea, or allowing someone else to.
And perhaps it would stop all these patent shops churning out nothing in the knowledge that they've got 20 odd years to sit on it and hope someone comes up with something they can shoehorn into what they've got on their papers.
5 years is a lot less time, enough, really, to say "If you're not going to use it, then you've had your chance to, now let someone else actually do something good with the idea"..
Not exactly a straight analogy there.
For some reason, a lot of people seem to be drawing an analogy between filesharing (or cheap online web sales) and outsourcing to another country in a job/role.
In the music business, the jobs are all held in the originating country. A middleman makes a HUGE profit, and usually ties up most, if not all of the rights of the artist to themselves as part of the deal.
They sell at VASTLY inflated prices, and attempt to prevent any fair use of a bought item (CD) at the far end.
End result, the CD is useless (can't make copies to chuck on your MP3 player or whatever), so people buy, where possible, the format that they'll end up using, for a little less quality (compressed), a little more risk (losing/corrupting license key is a bad thing in DRM'd files), but having it in the format they'll use most.
Note, suppliers of music (Distribution chain/artist) STILL make shed loads of money (no real distribution cost per track, with about $1 per track price tag). Physical distribution chain for the CD item suffers.
Note the article talked about people going to buy cheaper through websites, not just P2P fileshare.
Outsourcing jobs now, that's ceding to another country entirely highly skilled jobs, that provide revenue for the country as a whole (tax on the job comes back to provide revenue, rather than paying out some kind of unemployment payment, which costs the government money).
If/when outsourcing takes over properly, then skills in that area decline, and they no longer become a point of study. Fewer and fewer will persue a degree (which is the base of research, not just commercial monkeying with code) if they're unable to get paid at the end of it. Which, over a decade or so, will result in that area becoming an aside in the country, and form a dependancy on a foreign power.
Outsourcing costs the government money, which increases taxes, which everyone pays.
Websites which sell music cheaper than a retail store cost retail outlets money, which doesn't make that much difference nationally at all.
Retail jobs are FAR easier to swap and change than highly skilled tech jobs/skilled industrial jobs.
The truth of outsourcing is that the government IS bailing out the corporate method of business (providing benefits for the jobs pushed out elsewhere, at the tax payer's cost, not the corporate cost, and later shouldering the lack of tax income from a previously vibrant sector).
Your comparison really is comparing apples and oranges. They're very very different beasts indeed.
Only one copy protection mechanism to overcome, and then it's time to go back to freely backing up you data again.
I spent a fair old while doing enterprise automated software delivery design for British Telecom.
DLL hell was a MAJOR nightmare.
Especially the changes with VB written code.
Various DLLs did randomly break packages (depending on which you loaded first. Once the DLL was loaded, some packages compatible with that DLL worked fine, and others that used a different version didn't. Load them the other way round, and you could use a different bunch of apps).
Installing and removing software for 10 years and not meeting DLL hell says you haven't installed a wide range of software.
You'll never meet it installing and removing office for ten years.
You will working in a varied and highly flexible workplace.
And yes, it is an issue for both operating systems. And when you encounter it, it really does make you want to tear out your hair.
Interesting. You try publishing a book without a large publisher behind you. It's another of those lock in things at the moment. You want advertising, you pay big money to reach the big audience (otherwise they won't hear about you), and sign away your rights (otherwise you won't be distributed to the large audience).
So, you either have what may be your life's work languishing gathering dust in obscurity, or you sign it's rights away to a corporation.
And as for a great work of mine falling to the public on my death? Sure! What else am I going to do with it when I'm dead?
While I'm alive, my work brings in money, which, if I invest it well, pays for kids education (which lets them create in their time), and my own bills.
When I'm dead.. Don't have that many continuing bills...
Then, at that point (or maybe a few extra years, pay back those funeral expenses you know), then let the public do what they will with it.
The public domain is there to feed the ideas back into a wide audience over time. To fuel the creative ideas for the next generation.
The extensions to copyright that are happening at the moment are in danger of stymying that creative flow, and locking it back into the idea of having a group that have money able to educate themselves (they're the only ones able to afford to access the vast content needed to study, and there are no recent public domain works to keep up to date with for free anymore), and all the rest will be locked into the life of the uneducated, no longer a threat to the powered.
Which is pretty much like Feudal times, except you switch the lords for corporations.
Yep, I want things of mine to educate the next generation after I die.