It's pretty easy to find the answer to the relationship between Rob Malda, Blockstackers, and Andover.Net. The way you find it is to search the SEC EDGAR database for documents related to Andover.Net.
For those of you not familiar with EDGAR, this is the on-line database that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission provides so that investors have access to the legally required filings of companies that have gone public.
I played around with it today, and this is the most effective query that I could compose. You should be able to just click the following link and see all of the documents related to Andover. Some of these documents discuss the how nature of Rob's contract with Andover, the relationship between Andover and Blockstackers, and related subjects.
In books I've read and movies I've watched, you are characterized as the most idealistic of Apple's founders. By this I mean that you were the most interested in the technical excellence of Apple products, and least interested in making a profit from the technology. If there is some truth to this, how do you feel about the commercialization of OpenSource software?
I am particularly interested in your views on the composition of corporate leadership, if the executives had nothing to do with the original development of the software they are commercializing. Also, I would like to know how you feel about the tendency of the commercial OpenSource companies, like RedHat, to offer stock to key developers before an initial public offering.
Thanks for everything you've done to contribute to the developement of the personal computer industry.
I certainly did mean that MassLinux may have been negligent. But, another possible explanation is that the provider that reportedly cut MassLinux off has an internal security problem. Or, one of the banks involved in paying the checks did not proof the person who presented the checks for payment.
Why should MassLinux be bankrupted if they acted responsibly? Don't the employees and officers of that company deserve to have their names cleared, if they did nothing wrong?
In any event, how would anyone involved in the process ever know the truth? If MassLinux were to sue its provider in a civil case, it would probably be settled with an agreement to not disclose any of the details of the case or the settlement.
In that case, all MassLinux's customers would ever know is that somebody probably did something wrong. What I'm saying is that all of the parties involved, including this community, don't have to accept that. --
No need to get personal with me. It's to Masslinux's credit if they are able to refund their customers' money. But, there should still be a full accounting of the situation.
If Masslinux truly got shafted by their provider, then there provider should be made to answer for the inconvenience it has caused Masslinux's customers. --
I don't know what really happened here, but, it is a serious miscalculation on the part of the people from MassLinux to try to head off customer complaints this way. They are only hurting themselves by going out on to places like LinuxToday and Slashdot, and telling such an unbelievable story.
I am not a Masslinux customer, but if I were, this is what I would do:
1) If I were a resident of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I would contact the Department of Telecommunication and Energy. Calling them on the phone at (800) 392-6066, their complaint line, is probably the best approach. My question would be whether they are the correct place to launch an investigation at the state level.
2) I would call my (Massachusetts) assemblyman and ask for assistance. This will probably require a letter sent by US Mail documenting the loss of service and the lack of business-to-customer communication.
3) Regardless of where I lived and worked, I would contact the Federal Communications Commission and ask which federal agency ought to be involved in an investigation. I would go to the Federal Government because they have some jurisdiction over anyone participating in interstate commerce.
No one should accept heresay and innuendo. These people represented themselves as a business and they took payment from customers for services. Masslinux customers have a right to a complete and thorough explanation, including a determination of ultimate responsibility for the disruption.
Anyone who accepts less because there is no recourse in the "New Ecomomy" doesn't understand their rights as American citizens.
I wish I didn't feel this way, but part of me thinks that the community should stop meaningless political actions like boycotting Amazon.com and start using its passion and determination to get to the bottom of this incredible situation. --
From an idealistic standpoint, I have some problems with the way Amazon is pursuing its case against Barnes and Noble. But, for the other 275 million Americans out there, our friends and neighbors who only visit Slashdot when they talk to us, people like Bezos really have made a splash this year.
My father, a retired school teacher who lives in New Jersey, made his first on-line purchase this year. This is a man who does not own a computer, still does not have e-mail, and doesn't seem to be phased by it.
He bought a book from Amazon.com as a gift for my uncle's birthday. Now, he has no idea about any patent disputes. He could care less about Amazon's reported tendency to SPAM people -- the people who annoy him most are the people who solicit charitable donations by phone between 6 and 9 PM.
He just wanted to be able to order a gift for my uncle quickly and know that it would be delivered giftwrapped with his message on the card. He didn't have to call anyone. The whole process took a little over 5 minutes, and would have taken less time if he had ever used a mouse before.
When someone like my father knows enough to go on-line and buy something from a place they heard about called Amazon, and he feels comfortable enough to do it himself, the impact of millions of similar transactions really can be considered a major change.
So, you can pooh-pooh this all you want. But, the on-line shopping capability will be considered as revolutionary as the introduction of catalog / mail order shopping was in the 1800s.
Once Time Magazine decided that this is the idea that best represents change in the year 1999, they simply had to pick a person that best represented the concept to the average person. I think they picked Bezos because the average consumer in North America or Western Europe had not heard of him, but had been exposed to the company that he created.
Why does this bother so many people so much?
BTW, I think Linus Torvalds would have been an excellent choice as well, because he represents the maturation of the non-Microsoft technology base. But, if you think about who Time Magazine's audience is, it's not really surprising that they picked Steve Jobs as a runner up to Bezos instead of Linus.
Another point that I would like to touch on briefly is that Jobs resonates more with Time than Linus does because the average consumer does not buy technology -- they buy the products and services that are delivered via technology. So, as momentus as Linux and the OpenSource movement is from our perspective, it has not really exploded in the public's mind as much as the applications of OpenSource (i.e. the Internet and Internet delivered applications, like shopping) have. --
Entrust's primary business is creating entire Private Key Infrastructure systems (PKIs) for Fortune 500 businesses. These are the systems that allow companies to issue and revoke their own certificates. Entrust has a big business in large corporations with thousands of employees.
In certain circles in industry (like financial services), Verisign was primarily looked at as a service bureau who was willing to deal with small businesses. I realize that from the perspective of the consumer and small ISP they look like the only game in town. But, this was never the case at the high end.
I think this is a good acquisition for Verisign. It solidifies their position in the small and mid-sized business marketplace. This also creates an opportunity for a competitor, although it may not be a small company that tries to enter this market.
Use Taxes are on the books in many states. These are unevenly enforced at best. The cynic in me feels that compliance with Use Tax reporting is like compliance with the posted speed limit on Interstate highways -- anyone who does get busted would logically conclude that they were the victim of highly selective enforcement.
What's next, a quota system for NC State Department of Taxation auditors?
I think the Charlotte News & Observer got it partly right in the article when they said:
The consumer use tax is not new. Most states have one. In fact, it's been on the books in North Carolina for more than 60 years.
It's never been aggressively enforced on individual consumers, Collins said, because it's difficult to chase down who bought what. The Internet has changed that, though, making most purchases as easy to track as scanning a credit card bill. And by adding a mention on the tax form, the state can penalize consumers who refuse to 'fess up.
One really obvious bogus statement in this article is that the Internet has eased the process of determining Use Tax violations in the event of an audit. Anyone who lives in the Northeast where states are geographically small, or shops by mail order or while on vacation has had their lack of compliance documented for years. Why say something so obviously wrong and ruin an otherwise useful article?
A small criticism of the "Slashdot Powers that Be". I realize it's a holiday week and we're all partying, but.... next time, insight should be applied to the analysis of the article before it hits the Slashdot home page. It would have been much more useful to have characterized this step taken by North Carolina as an attempt to increase awareness of their existing Use Tax among consumers who do some shopping on-line or through traditional mail order. That's not nearly as exciting to most people as the headline lead you to believe, but it would have been more accurate.
The big question about these sorts of efforts, in my opinion, is where will the states come up with the money to enforce this law? This is where the analogy to the speed limit really works. You could pull over a lot more speeders if you wanted to put a lot more police in cars with radar and laser speed detection devices. But, then a whole new set of questions will arise.
I expect the states to do little to increase enforcement of Use Tax reporting. Some over-zealous states will probably pick a couple of cases to really screw-over some taxpayers in a public way. This will get press in the newspaper and on TV in a way that will be designed to scare people. This actually serves both the media's and the government's interests.
I read the article on Linux Today and I have one question for RMS:
Why don't you use your Bully Pulpit to demand congressional hearings on software patents?
This is the only approach that I see having the potential to achieve any meaningful progress toward our ultimate goal.
I would love to see the leaders of the OpenSource movement before Congress making the case for a more rational approach to software patents. I would love to be able to see the different factions within this community present their views on C-SPAN. We don't all agree about the specifics, but we can agree that the patents granted in the past couple of years are the product of a process which does not comprehend the current and future state of the Internet.
I wonder who would sit at the other table and oppose us? And, what would Congress do if they were confronted with thousands of constiuent calls and e-mails demanding a review of the process? --
I have to admit from the outset of this post that I am not qualified to judge the technical worth of ECMA as an organization. So, I ask the Slashdot community:
Is ECMA a legitimate standards body? Are they producing standards that help to advance the state of the art?
The reason I ask this is because my only previous knowledge of ECMA is the certification that JavaScript (aka ECMAscript) went through. If memory serves, the ECMA group was chosen over other more well known standards organizations because it was thought to be easier to influence, thereby orchestrating the outcome. Ever since then, I have wondered about this organization.
Now, ECMA is in the news again. But, this time, a Slashdot community member posts a link to the ECMA Web Site. So I have the opportunity to check out the roster of member companies. If you look at them, you will note that practically every one is a multinational that is not based in Europe.
I guess that this point, in itself, doesn't say much. Except that there must have been a much bigger number of true European companies in ECMA back when it was founded in 1961. But, then I notice that at least one European computer manufacturer that I know of, Bull isn't a member. Neither is Nokia, although Ericsson is.
There is an organizing body in the sport of boxing known as the IBF. It was created as an alternative to the WBA and WBC, and seems to exist for the sole purpose of having an alternate slate of champions who can challenge one of the more established sanctioning bodies' champions.
So, my ultimate question is, does ECMA serve the same role in the technology world that the IBF appears to serve in the boxing world? --
How many of you, if asked, can repeat the copyright notice that is read over the air on every NFL game? Something about any presentation of the:
...pictures, descriptions, or accounts of these games without the express permission of {insert home team name here} and the National Football League is expressly prohibited.
Well anyway, you get the idea. What did icravetv.com think was going to happen, if the NFL goes to such great lengths to warn you not to rebroadcast their games? And, this is only one of the major copyright holders that has been infringed upon.
For those of you who might want to flame me, I am in favor of OpenSource, but only if the developer of the product in question grants those rights of his/her own free will. Icrave's CEO's comments indicate that they have no such agreements with anyone.
I don't think there's any question that the Canadian justice system's response will be swift and that they will side with the broadcasters on this one.
I also agree with the technology analyst that is quoted in the CBC piece when he says that the TV networks and cable channels themselves should be putting their own content on-line using one or more multimedia formats like RealMedia, QuickTime, or Windows Media Player (yuck).
Most of the major network affiliates in radio are on-line already through Yahoo! Broadcast or Go Radio. That seems like a good solution for everybody so far. --
If you break a story on a major security hole that most people don't know about on a weekend, most people are still not going to know about it.
I realize that this is not your intent, but, keep in mind that this is one of the oldest tricks in the book at newspapers like the New York Times. When there's an unfavorable story about the Clinton Administration, quite often the Times waits until Saturday, when no one is reading the paper, to break it.
You got 150 posts on this topic, but, I suggest you would have gotten a lot more on Monday. More importantly, lots more people would have assessed their exposure to the potential risks. --
Of course you could do IP address lookups and find someone who was committing apparently illegal acts. That's just a technical capability issue. What I'm interested in is whether the Federal courts in the United States will have savvy necessary to comprehend what's going on in an on-line community like Slashdot. --
One thing I think about occasionally when I read decisions like this is, how would courts deal with a situation where an Anonymous Coward commits slander or libel? This is the same kind of thing that people like Yahoo! and fool.com have to deal with in their financial bulletin board areas.
I guess one of the reasons that this has come up with respect to those sites is that losses are sometimes more immediate and quantifyable.
I think it is clear that Applixware has far more automation potential than Office 97, particularly when combined with the strength of its database interfaces. Sure Office 97 has these features, but putting something really sophisticated together is cludgy at best.
The $64,000 question has always been file format compatibility. A lot of people really want an alternative office suite to save documents in files that are indistinguishable from Excel 97 and Word 97. For my purposes, Excel 4.0 compatibility is more than enough, but not every potential user of Applixware (or StarOffice or Corel) is going to feel that way.
IMHO, discussion of file interchangeability with Office 97 would have made this review even better.
Finally, I read a report from Forrester Research the other day that said that Office 2000 would be a great Web publishing environment for non-technical people, because it is able to maintain formatting through the roundtrip between Office and the Web Server. The key to this, apparently, is the encapsulation of style information in XML.
If this is truly the case, then it is also going to get a lot easier for competing office suites like Applixware to exchange documents with Office. Similarly, it will make it easier for *nix users like us to get our work done with tools we like.
(Sorry for the lack of a link to the Forrester report. I think it is one of those that Fortune 500 companies pay big bucks to get access to.)
A 224M Postscript file sounds really bad to me too. However, I would be interested to know how big the.ps file would be if we forced Word 2000 to produce it under Windows. I suspect the.ps file on Windows would also be huge.
Optimizing the size of a Postscript print stream sounds much easier to me than figuring out the undocumented portions of the Office 97 file formats.
I got one of these about 2 or 3 months ago, and it is the ideal accessory for Webheads on the go. I wanted it because I do most of my work on client sites, and I need a means to get to my e-mail when I am enroute to a client or in-between two offices.
BellSouth Wireless Data provides service in the United States. Cantel provides service in Canada. Service is quite good in large cities and along major highways. YMMV, but it works in about 90% of the metropolitan areas in the USA.
You can get service for US$24.95 per month and up. The only thing I think most people will find upsetting is that service is metered unless you want to pay around $100 per month.
I use it for wireless e-mail, but it can also be used for some sort of wireless Internet access. I think the provider of that service is GoAmerica.
FWIW, I looked at the market and decided that the Blackberry pager was more practical than the Palm VII, and then I took the plunge. It would be a cool gift, but it is definitely for the CEO type or the geek who has everything.
NBC has a lot of technology to protect against Y2K incompatibility. I hope that they are sure that they and all of their affiliates are totally Y2K compliant. Imagine what kind of criticism they will get from technology circles if any aspect of their network is interrupted at the end of next month.
Also, I'd think twice about running such a neo-Luddite movie, if I were an executive at a broadcast network. Wouldn't this increase the risk of the Script Kiddies attacking them?
I read most of the posts that have a score of +1 or higher. My reaction is that the Slashdot community has difficulty dealing with death. That's par for the course in the larger society, at least in North America.
BTW, we might want to informally agree to separate Church and Slashdot. This just doesn't feel like the right forum to discuss spirituality.
Next, we'll find out that the USPTO has granted a patent to a Fortune 100 company for using the novel technique of authoring their HTML in a new Web Authoring environment called "vi" which is somehow integrated into the UNIX operating system.
Serious comments:
The more patents they grant on these sorts of processes, the less enforceable all patents become. Recent developments indicate that the USPTO is totally out of their depth when it comes to the Web.
Look for the video clip that is labeled "Fighting Back" on the right hand side of the window. The video clip misses the first 3 sentences of his statement, but it's still almost 4 minutes long.
Sorry, I would provide the URL for the video stream itself, but they are supporting multiple media formats and multiple connection speeds, and the link would not have been right for a lot of people.
1) How does the entertainment industry deal with the installed base of DVD software? Recalling it all under the technicalities of a personal use license would result in about as much compliance as state "use tax" self assessments.
2) Does anyone really expect that people in rural China, who pay 25 cents for each bootleg DVD disk, to bring their players back to the dealer for an unneeded firmware upgrade? If not, then how do you expect to get knowledgeable American consumers to do it?
3) Imagine the number of class action suits if the entertainment industry got together and decided to release a disk encoding scheme that was different enough to require a firmware upgrade. The lawyers would argue that such a format change would be an illegal restraint of trade because the industry presumed that the owner of every DVD intended to violate the copyright law.
Not even the automobile industry makes such sweeping assumptions about the behavior of their customers. If they did, wouldn't they just set governors on all cars destined for the US market so that they would not go any faster than 80 miles per hour?
4) Isn't this a great example of why the commercial software vendors should release Linux versions of their software? If you accept the main point of the article, the Linux community would not have reverse-engineered the DVD player software if someone like RealNetworks had released one, right?
5) Maybe Xing / RealNetworks intended for their DVD key to be discovered so that they could run a worldwide sting operation on all the bootleggers that exploited their unencrypted key.
My company started using Perl 2 years ago. The reasons we did it are:
Works on both UNIX and NT with no changes,
Scripts can be written to render Web pages, or automate tasks at the operating system level,
Adapts to a huge number of tasks due to the availability of a wide variety of tested and well documented modules,
Outstanding string and text stream manipulation capabilities,
Documented in print and on the Internet better than any other scripting language,
Large base of developers, and
Rapid cycle time, due to lack of formal compile / make step that is normally present in C, C++, and Java.
There are a number of other, more esoteric reasons why Perl is a good choice. It's hard not to adopt the Larry Wall Programming Philosophy (there's more than one way to do it) when using Perl. As a result, Perl has given me a healthier respect for the strengths of other environments.
I would not use Perl at the exclusion of all other programming languages. But, if I had to learn CGI programming over again, I would definitely choose to learn how to do it in Perl, at least until I got to a basic level of competency. Once you get to that point, you can make informed decisions about the strengths and weaknesses of the other languages / programming environments that you know for the tasks at hand.
Too often, I have found myself saying, "This is a minor infraction and the company should be commended for responding so quickly." Now, I am convinced that the only way people concerned about their privacy will be satisfied is if there is an informed concent law with respect to on-line registration and update of software.
For instance, I have no idea what information is being exchanged between my Windows PC and the server when I use Symantec's or Netscape's Smart Update features. Shouldn't I be concerned about this as well?
The difficulty I see in creating legislation about this sort of thing would be in differentiating between session tracking devices (like cookies) which often do not compromise user privacy, and more invasive data capture techniques like the one documented in the RealJukebox situation. We can also be sure that any bill would be loaded with all sorts of amendments which would attempt to cater to cyber-Luddites and busybodies who want to control what other people see and do with their computers.
For the record, I am the president of a small Web integration firm. There is no doubt in my mind that calling for legislation of the kind I am suggesting puts us at the top of a slippery slope. But, I believe that this example is only the beginning of a long line of surreptitious personal data grabs.
Slashdot Mirror
For those of you not familiar with EDGAR, this is the on-line database that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission provides so that investors have access to the legally required filings of companies that have gone public.
I played around with it today, and this is the most effective query that I could compose. You should be able to just click the following link and see all of the documents related to Andover. Some of these documents discuss the how nature of Rob's contract with Andover, the relationship between Andover and Blockstackers, and related subjects.
http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/sr ch-edgar?ANDOVER+ADJ+NET
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Dave Aiello
I am particularly interested in your views on the composition of corporate leadership, if the executives had nothing to do with the original development of the software they are commercializing. Also, I would like to know how you feel about the tendency of the commercial OpenSource companies, like RedHat, to offer stock to key developers before an initial public offering.
Thanks for everything you've done to contribute to the developement of the personal computer industry.
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Dave Aiello
Why should MassLinux be bankrupted if they acted responsibly? Don't the employees and officers of that company deserve to have their names cleared, if they did nothing wrong?
In any event, how would anyone involved in the process ever know the truth? If MassLinux were to sue its provider in a civil case, it would probably be settled with an agreement to not disclose any of the details of the case or the settlement.
In that case, all MassLinux's customers would ever know is that somebody probably did something wrong. What I'm saying is that all of the parties involved, including this community, don't have to accept that.
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Dave Aiello
If Masslinux truly got shafted by their provider, then there provider should be made to answer for the inconvenience it has caused Masslinux's customers.
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Dave Aiello
I am not a Masslinux customer, but if I were, this is what I would do:
1) If I were a resident of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I would contact the Department of Telecommunication and Energy. Calling them on the phone at (800) 392-6066, their complaint line, is probably the best approach. My question would be whether they are the correct place to launch an investigation at the state level.
2) I would call my (Massachusetts) assemblyman and ask for assistance. This will probably require a letter sent by US Mail documenting the loss of service and the lack of business-to-customer communication.
3) Regardless of where I lived and worked, I would contact the Federal Communications Commission and ask which federal agency ought to be involved in an investigation. I would go to the Federal Government because they have some jurisdiction over anyone participating in interstate commerce.
No one should accept heresay and innuendo. These people represented themselves as a business and they took payment from customers for services. Masslinux customers have a right to a complete and thorough explanation, including a determination of ultimate responsibility for the disruption.
Anyone who accepts less because there is no recourse in the "New Ecomomy" doesn't understand their rights as American citizens.
I wish I didn't feel this way, but part of me thinks that the community should stop meaningless political actions like boycotting Amazon.com and start using its passion and determination to get to the bottom of this incredible situation.
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Dave Aiello
My father, a retired school teacher who lives in New Jersey, made his first on-line purchase this year. This is a man who does not own a computer, still does not have e-mail, and doesn't seem to be phased by it.
He bought a book from Amazon.com as a gift for my uncle's birthday. Now, he has no idea about any patent disputes. He could care less about Amazon's reported tendency to SPAM people -- the people who annoy him most are the people who solicit charitable donations by phone between 6 and 9 PM.
He just wanted to be able to order a gift for my uncle quickly and know that it would be delivered giftwrapped with his message on the card. He didn't have to call anyone. The whole process took a little over 5 minutes, and would have taken less time if he had ever used a mouse before.
When someone like my father knows enough to go on-line and buy something from a place they heard about called Amazon, and he feels comfortable enough to do it himself, the impact of millions of similar transactions really can be considered a major change.
So, you can pooh-pooh this all you want. But, the on-line shopping capability will be considered as revolutionary as the introduction of catalog / mail order shopping was in the 1800s.
Once Time Magazine decided that this is the idea that best represents change in the year 1999, they simply had to pick a person that best represented the concept to the average person. I think they picked Bezos because the average consumer in North America or Western Europe had not heard of him, but had been exposed to the company that he created.
Why does this bother so many people so much?
BTW, I think Linus Torvalds would have been an excellent choice as well, because he represents the maturation of the non-Microsoft technology base. But, if you think about who Time Magazine's audience is, it's not really surprising that they picked Steve Jobs as a runner up to Bezos instead of Linus.
Another point that I would like to touch on briefly is that Jobs resonates more with Time than Linus does because the average consumer does not buy technology -- they buy the products and services that are delivered via technology. So, as momentus as Linux and the OpenSource movement is from our perspective, it has not really exploded in the public's mind as much as the applications of OpenSource (i.e. the Internet and Internet delivered applications, like shopping) have.
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Dave Aiello
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Dave Aiello
In certain circles in industry (like financial services), Verisign was primarily looked at as a service bureau who was willing to deal with small businesses. I realize that from the perspective of the consumer and small ISP they look like the only game in town. But, this was never the case at the high end.
I think this is a good acquisition for Verisign. It solidifies their position in the small and mid-sized business marketplace. This also creates an opportunity for a competitor, although it may not be a small company that tries to enter this market.
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Dave Aiello
What's next, a quota system for NC State Department of Taxation auditors?
I think the Charlotte News & Observer got it partly right in the article when they said:
One really obvious bogus statement in this article is that the Internet has eased the process of determining Use Tax violations in the event of an audit. Anyone who lives in the Northeast where states are geographically small, or shops by mail order or while on vacation has had their lack of compliance documented for years. Why say something so obviously wrong and ruin an otherwise useful article?
A small criticism of the "Slashdot Powers that Be". I realize it's a holiday week and we're all partying, but.... next time, insight should be applied to the analysis of the article before it hits the Slashdot home page. It would have been much more useful to have characterized this step taken by North Carolina as an attempt to increase awareness of their existing Use Tax among consumers who do some shopping on-line or through traditional mail order. That's not nearly as exciting to most people as the headline lead you to believe, but it would have been more accurate.
The big question about these sorts of efforts, in my opinion, is where will the states come up with the money to enforce this law? This is where the analogy to the speed limit really works. You could pull over a lot more speeders if you wanted to put a lot more police in cars with radar and laser speed detection devices. But, then a whole new set of questions will arise.
I expect the states to do little to increase enforcement of Use Tax reporting. Some over-zealous states will probably pick a couple of cases to really screw-over some taxpayers in a public way. This will get press in the newspaper and on TV in a way that will be designed to scare people. This actually serves both the media's and the government's interests.
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Dave Aiello
Why don't you use your Bully Pulpit to demand congressional hearings on software patents?
This is the only approach that I see having the potential to achieve any meaningful progress toward our ultimate goal.
I would love to see the leaders of the OpenSource movement before Congress making the case for a more rational approach to software patents. I would love to be able to see the different factions within this community present their views on C-SPAN. We don't all agree about the specifics, but we can agree that the patents granted in the past couple of years are the product of a process which does not comprehend the current and future state of the Internet.
I wonder who would sit at the other table and oppose us? And, what would Congress do if they were confronted with thousands of constiuent calls and e-mails demanding a review of the process?
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Dave Aiello
Is ECMA a legitimate standards body?
Are they producing standards that help to advance the state of the art?
The reason I ask this is because my only previous knowledge of ECMA is the certification that JavaScript (aka ECMAscript) went through. If memory serves, the ECMA group was chosen over other more well known standards organizations because it was thought to be easier to influence, thereby orchestrating the outcome. Ever since then, I have wondered about this organization.
Now, ECMA is in the news again. But, this time, a Slashdot community member posts a link to the ECMA Web Site. So I have the opportunity to check out the roster of member companies. If you look at them, you will note that practically every one is a multinational that is not based in Europe.
I guess that this point, in itself, doesn't say much. Except that there must have been a much bigger number of true European companies in ECMA back when it was founded in 1961. But, then I notice that at least one European computer manufacturer that I know of, Bull isn't a member. Neither is Nokia, although Ericsson is.
There is an organizing body in the sport of boxing known as the IBF. It was created as an alternative to the WBA and WBC, and seems to exist for the sole purpose of having an alternate slate of champions who can challenge one of the more established sanctioning bodies' champions.
So, my ultimate question is, does ECMA serve the same role in the technology world that the IBF appears to serve in the boxing world?
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Dave Aiello
Well anyway, you get the idea. What did icravetv.com think was going to happen, if the NFL goes to such great lengths to warn you not to rebroadcast their games? And, this is only one of the major copyright holders that has been infringed upon.
For those of you who might want to flame me, I am in favor of OpenSource, but only if the developer of the product in question grants those rights of his/her own free will. Icrave's CEO's comments indicate that they have no such agreements with anyone.
I don't think there's any question that the Canadian justice system's response will be swift and that they will side with the broadcasters on this one.
I also agree with the technology analyst that is quoted in the CBC piece when he says that the TV networks and cable channels themselves should be putting their own content on-line using one or more multimedia formats like RealMedia, QuickTime, or Windows Media Player (yuck).
Most of the major network affiliates in radio are on-line already through Yahoo! Broadcast or Go Radio. That seems like a good solution for everybody so far.
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Dave Aiello
If you break a story on a major security hole that most people don't know about on a weekend, most people are still not going to know about it.
I realize that this is not your intent, but, keep in mind that this is one of the oldest tricks in the book at newspapers like the New York Times. When there's an unfavorable story about the Clinton Administration, quite often the Times waits until Saturday, when no one is reading the paper, to break it.
You got 150 posts on this topic, but, I suggest you would have gotten a lot more on Monday. More importantly, lots more people would have assessed their exposure to the potential risks.
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Dave Aiello
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Dave Aiello
I guess one of the reasons that this has come up with respect to those sites is that losses are sometimes more immediate and quantifyable.
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Dave Aiello
The $64,000 question has always been file format compatibility. A lot of people really want an alternative office suite to save documents in files that are indistinguishable from Excel 97 and Word 97. For my purposes, Excel 4.0 compatibility is more than enough, but not every potential user of Applixware (or StarOffice or Corel) is going to feel that way.
IMHO, discussion of file interchangeability with Office 97 would have made this review even better.
Finally, I read a report from Forrester Research the other day that said that Office 2000 would be a great Web publishing environment for non-technical people, because it is able to maintain formatting through the roundtrip between Office and the Web Server. The key to this, apparently, is the encapsulation of style information in XML.
If this is truly the case, then it is also going to get a lot easier for competing office suites like Applixware to exchange documents with Office. Similarly, it will make it easier for *nix users like us to get our work done with tools we like.
(Sorry for the lack of a link to the Forrester report. I think it is one of those that Fortune 500 companies pay big bucks to get access to.)
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Dave Aiello
Optimizing the size of a Postscript print stream sounds much easier to me than figuring out the undocumented portions of the Office 97 file formats.
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Dave Aiello
I got one of these about 2 or 3 months ago, and it is the ideal accessory for Webheads on the go. I wanted it because I do most of my work on client sites, and I need a means to get to my e-mail when I am enroute to a client or in-between two offices.
BellSouth Wireless Data provides service in the United States. Cantel provides service in Canada. Service is quite good in large cities and along major highways. YMMV, but it works in about 90% of the metropolitan areas in the USA.
You can get service for US$24.95 per month and up. The only thing I think most people will find upsetting is that service is metered unless you want to pay around $100 per month.
I use it for wireless e-mail, but it can also be used for some sort of wireless Internet access. I think the provider of that service is GoAmerica.
FWIW, I looked at the market and decided that the Blackberry pager was more practical than the Palm VII, and then I took the plunge. It would be a cool gift, but it is definitely for the CEO type or the geek who has everything.
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Dave Aiello
Also, I'd think twice about running such a neo-Luddite movie, if I were an executive at a broadcast network. Wouldn't this increase the risk of the Script Kiddies attacking them?
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Dave Aiello
BTW, we might want to informally agree to separate Church and Slashdot. This just doesn't feel like the right forum to discuss spirituality.
Serious comments:
The more patents they grant on these sorts of processes, the less enforceable all patents become. Recent developments indicate that the USPTO is totally out of their depth when it comes to the Web.
http://www.foxmarketwire.com/1106 99/microsoft.sml
Look for the video clip that is labeled "Fighting Back" on the right hand side of the window. The video clip misses the first 3 sentences of his statement, but it's still almost 4 minutes long.
Sorry, I would provide the URL for the video stream itself, but they are supporting multiple media formats and multiple connection speeds, and the link would not have been right for a lot of people.
1) How does the entertainment industry deal with the installed base of DVD software? Recalling it all under the technicalities of a personal use license would result in about as much compliance as state "use tax" self assessments.
2) Does anyone really expect that people in rural China, who pay 25 cents for each bootleg DVD disk, to bring their players back to the dealer for an unneeded firmware upgrade? If not, then how do you expect to get knowledgeable American consumers to do it?
3) Imagine the number of class action suits if the entertainment industry got together and decided to release a disk encoding scheme that was different enough to require a firmware upgrade. The lawyers would argue that such a format change would be an illegal restraint of trade because the industry presumed that the owner of every DVD intended to violate the copyright law.
Not even the automobile industry makes such sweeping assumptions about the behavior of their customers. If they did, wouldn't they just set governors on all cars destined for the US market so that they would not go any faster than 80 miles per hour?
4) Isn't this a great example of why the commercial software vendors should release Linux versions of their software? If you accept the main point of the article, the Linux community would not have reverse-engineered the DVD player software if someone like RealNetworks had released one, right?
5) Maybe Xing / RealNetworks intended for their DVD key to be discovered so that they could run a worldwide sting operation on all the bootleggers that exploited their unencrypted key.
Hmmm....
Works on both UNIX and NT with no changes,
Scripts can be written to render Web pages, or automate tasks at the operating system level,
Adapts to a huge number of tasks due to the availability of a wide variety of tested and well documented modules,
Outstanding string and text stream manipulation capabilities,
Documented in print and on the Internet better than any other scripting language,
Large base of developers, and
Rapid cycle time, due to lack of formal compile / make step that is normally present in C, C++, and Java.
There are a number of other, more esoteric reasons why Perl is a good choice. It's hard not to adopt the Larry Wall Programming Philosophy (there's more than one way to do it) when using Perl. As a result, Perl has given me a healthier respect for the strengths of other environments.
I would not use Perl at the exclusion of all other programming languages. But, if I had to learn CGI programming over again, I would definitely choose to learn how to do it in Perl, at least until I got to a basic level of competency. Once you get to that point, you can make informed decisions about the strengths and weaknesses of the other languages / programming environments that you know for the tasks at hand.
For instance, I have no idea what information is being exchanged between my Windows PC and the server when I use Symantec's or Netscape's Smart Update features. Shouldn't I be concerned about this as well?
The difficulty I see in creating legislation about this sort of thing would be in differentiating between session tracking devices (like cookies) which often do not compromise user privacy, and more invasive data capture techniques like the one documented in the RealJukebox situation. We can also be sure that any bill would be loaded with all sorts of amendments which would attempt to cater to cyber-Luddites and busybodies who want to control what other people see and do with their computers.
For the record, I am the president of a small Web integration firm. There is no doubt in my mind that calling for legislation of the kind I am suggesting puts us at the top of a slippery slope. But, I believe that this example is only the beginning of a long line of surreptitious personal data grabs.