I expect this to be as significant as the Internet.
I disagree. Utility is very low factor in the sale of most items, and something us geeks focus on more then most. For example, the shopping categories from the shapeways.com website is almost all toys and trinkets.
* Holiday Gift Guide
* Featured
* Art
* Gadgets
* Home Decor
* Jewelry
* Hobby
Marketing and branding is a major hurdle opposed to the home creation of small items. There's an industry that will marginalize such items as 'cheap' and 'purely utilitarian' (meaning they lack emotion!?) and 'poor quality' and 'poor design' and on and on.
I use Chrome when logged into Google, and Firefox otherwise. I can't help but think of Chrome as a proprietary client. It's in Googles long term interests to have an open web platform, but their tracking is working against this.
You're right that patent trolls can't be stopped by playing the patent game, but If we assume that "IBM *owns* the US patent system" why aren't we seeing competitors bribing politicians to change the rules? The lack of large companies demanding change suggests they're OK with the current system, but where's their payoff?
If you think IBM isn't getting paid a ton licensing its war chest of patents you're crazy.
Licensing fees paid will be in proportion to the number of patents and lawyers, but other large companies have to pay those fees, so why aren't they fighting to get the patent system fixed? Unless IBM (et al.) are extorting foreign companies, the system isn't a boon for the USA, and we should be seeing serious efforts to get the system fixed.
The real reason to go for as many patents as possible is to have as many legal weapons as possible to bludgeon and gut any up and comers with a competing product.
Protection for the largest companies against new start-ups is one advantage, but they get that protection from the politicians *much* cheaper then the current patent system.
Protection against patent trolls is just an effect of the system, but how does the system payoff for IBM or the USA? Protection for IBM could also be bought by paying a few politicians to change patent law, but that isn't happening. So where's the payoff?
The payoff is selling it as part of a portfolio of patents to cover other equally obvious stuff, like they're doing with Google now.
Selling to the next sucker is one way to get paid, but that happens in every market and isn't special to patents. Maybe it's just momentum that keeps the system running: we've spent so much on patents we can't stop now! Like the housing boom where the market prices reinforce the system, and it doesn't stop until enough people say the emperor has no clothes, then it all crashes at once.
You have to offer a framework for the content providers to make money...
Google is afraid of defining the market, and Apple isn't. Neither strategy has overcome. Cable was defined by the technology, and the business changes (pay TV, channels that are bundled/premium/rebroadcast, etc..) were forced on the industry because of what the technology would allow.
The next major change (Internet TV) will be a software change, and software doesn't enforce any particular business arrangements. So what Google needs to do is create a system that both allows the content providers to make money and restricts the major industry players from dominating the new players, both developers and new content providers.
There is only one way to protect the new creators, and that's to define and enforce the flow of money. Apple made a clear choice: all money goes to them and some is redistributed to the content providers. Google made the opposite choice: take our software and do whatever you want, we ask for nothing. Googles play is like Bill Gates giving away DOS; with an installed base comes developers and providers, but TV is an established industry not a new market. Google needs to take the Cable approach: Google TV has fair rules enforced by software that protect the established and new creators alike.
Where's the payoff for the avalanche of poor patents? IBM isn't getting paid, the USPTO isn't better off, so are the politicians getting paid? Why is this system continuing? Two reasons I can see: protection for the largest companies against new start-ups, and getting foreign countries to adopt US Patent laws and extort their corporations. But is that really it, is that the whole game? IBM isn't full of idiots and the politicians are (always) working an angle, so why this continued patent madness?
I am dealing with 2 disjoint sites, 4 data centers, managing all flavors of Unix, windows, networking, storage, VMware etc. Along with that I have HOWTO guides, cheatsheets, contracts, licensing, projects, proposals and other things that typically exist in a enterprise.
Sadly, quitting is the right answer for this problem. If you're "pretty much the IT systems guy" this company doesn't care about IT, and is likely going to fail or undergo some major change soon. Management that only cares about a specific problem (or two) despite disaster looming all around them (IMHO) are always expecting firings. When they're worried about their own job, they'll ignore your concerns and let you do anything, only insisting on the project that will cover their ass if they survive.
The real issues lie elsewhere, which is why "pirate party" is a *really* bad name for this group. I really think they ought to agree on a different name that puts the emphasis on the groups of people who *would* benefit from their proposals (mostly, "pirates" wouldn't).
Using the name "Pirate" is an attempt to reclaim it from the haters, like "Gay", "Nerd" or "Nigger", although those are often still used as pejoratives. Industry, government and the media happily call them "Pirates", abusing language to their advantage, just like they say "Stealing" instead of copyright violation, implying criminal action instead of civil and per-judging the morality. By calling themselves the Pirate Party the negative implications are directly challenged. Maybe in England they should call themselves the "Robin Hood Party" to confront the accusations of "Stealing".
Even worse, Tyler Nichols contradicts his own argument. If you read through the comments on his blog you find that he eventually admits that nearly 100% of his paying customers tried the free version before paying, thus the first part of his premise is wrong.... His biggest problem seems to be that his unsolicited marketing email was marked as spam (because it is spam).
So.. use FREE to get paying customers, then SPAM and RANT to get PUBLICITY and justify dropping FREE. The rant doesn't have to make any sense. It's just an unreasonable demand for attention, like the spam.
Very true of the older generation. My thoughts on why they're like this:
(1) Personal morality and social standards were the main issue in the past, not technology or law. The copying could be done technically, but was restrained by society and viewed as a moral issue of stealing. I remember being shocked that my father copied software; it seemed immoral. With the internet copying is much more about what's technically possible, and what the law says. When Homer Simpson got free cable TV, the technology and law weren't the issue.
(2) Individuals stealing vs. Societies rights. The older generation (like most people) focuses on the individual, not the broader society/culture/economic system. Limited monopolies are viewed as an unchanging fact of life, not an idea to be considered or revised for the benefit of society. Slashdot discusses technology changing economic markets and business strategies, but most people view things like Hollywood as a force of nature.
(3) Change is always disliked. The RIAA-industries want to create the same environment as the past; where copying is technically possible but time consuming and lower quality. Radio could be taped, Macrovision could be bypassed, but they generally weren't. DRM should be viewed in this light: an older generation of decision makers who want to make copying rare, difficult and viewed as immoral. They don't care if its ultimately impossible and fails often, they want the old environment back.
... it's going to be completely ineffective at what it aims to do!
Phew! I was worried about that for a second, and then you mentioned it would be ineffective at what it aims to do. I guess I have nothing to worry about then!
The War on Drugs is ineffective at stopping drugs. That doesn't mean it's without consequences, or should be ignored.
You didn't mention the biggest benefit: no deployment hassles! Imagine taking a C/C++ app your company depends on and won't let go of, recompiling it to work with NaCl, and it's instantly distributed to all clients. Nighty changes would be easy for everyone. Caching is built-in. Troubleshooting an install is dead simple; clear the cache and click the link again.
Like most hardware manufacturers, they are trying to get out of updating and maintaining software since it's a loss for them. Unlocking lets the whiners who notice or care about updates go play and leave HTC alone to abandon the handsets after ~12 months post release.
Divide and conquer: complain when it's locked; complain when it's unlocked. If their update process is the problem, why are you complaining about unlocking the boot loader, which lets you update when you want? Your problem isn't fixed by this change, so you're complaining about this change?
I want to *own* and control the hardware I buy. Unlocking is about more then just an update schedule.
Maybe the "need" is something non-IT people don't know about? Do they need backups/helpdesk/security/app maintenance/etc...? Bring in a firm to audit/consultant on IT issues (and make it clear they won't become the IT dept. regardless of their review.)
Insurance will only set the baseline standard, and will prevent further advances for the industry as a whole. Home and Car locks have been stagnant technology for 50+ years because the remaining risk is managed with insurance/laws/police. You can buy better locks and alarms, but they aren't being widely adopted because insurance (and a risk mitigation attitude) has removed the incentive.
Twenty years from now what do we want cyber-security to look like? It should still be an ongoing effort, aggressive and widely distributed. Tying the financial costs of Sony's failure to insurance will raise their efforts to a baseline (set by insurance companies) and remove any motivation to do better. In fact, it will *prevent* Sony from doing better security, because they will need to do what the insurance companies have specified and nothing else, lest they interfere with the program specified by the the insurance companies.
Should insurance companies dictate security? Doctors don't let them dictate treatments because health care is so important and hard to get right. Do you want insurance companies telling you which language to use, which libraries to use, how to log/audit/test/deploy etc...? The insurance companies and financial managers are there to make money, not to create new things or do things better.
One of the ideas in the story was not proposed in reality until 2002. This is the idea that the FBI and Microsoft will keep the root passwords for your personal computers, and not let you have them.
The proponents of this scheme have given it names such as “trusted computing” and “Palladium”. We call it “treacherous computing”...
The 1997 prediction, proposed in 2002, is reality in 2011. The big surprise is that the implementation isn't a technical DRM/TC scheme, but a fundamental change in corporations retaining ownership and control of items after they've been sold. Who could have predicted that?
You might get all you ask for except for your walled garden. Microsoft is not going to go to the effort of troubleshooting a hypervisor so that you can install a competing operating system.
What if the pre-installed 'other OS' is the desktop version of Windows Phone, and the Hypervisor is Hyper-v, and it's really easy to install Windows 8 but a pain to install Linux?
I think you're wrong about what roll websites would have if all advertising was self hosted: they wouldn't have any roll because they'd simply be running a server side advertising system written by the advertising companies. Google Adds would simply require a PHP script you drop into your site -- not a script you would create or could change. Users can already easily tell websites they don't like the advertising, but the Adblock Plus change will let us tell the _advertisers_ what's going to far.
Nothing stops websites from sharing tracking info with advertisers. If we block all advertising that isn't self hosted, we'll get server-side systems that automatically copy adds from advertisers servers and then share tracking info back to the advertiser. With advertisers hosting their own adds, it's practical for Adblock Plus to influence the industry.
Agreed. Letting the end users, rather then the devs, communicate what's acceptable is the key to getting advertisers to change. The advertising industry isn't going to be dictated to by a few devs, but millions of end users will convince them.
I'm going to *start* using Adblock Plus because of this. Advertisers need to be told where the line is, and this is the first practical way to communicate that too them. They should have even more checkbox options so users can decide what's acceptable rather than the devs. People don't use Adblock Plus often because they don't want to deny funding to websites, but a reasonable and practical compromise could kill intrusive advertising and tracking, just like popup blockers (mostly) killed popup adds.
As to Doublespeak, it's called Adblock *Plus* - it blocks adds plus tells advertisers what's what.
Slashdot Mirror
I expect this to be as significant as the Internet.
I disagree. Utility is very low factor in the sale of most items, and something us geeks focus on more then most. For example, the shopping categories from the shapeways.com website is almost all toys and trinkets.
* Holiday Gift Guide
* Featured
* Art
* Gadgets
* Home Decor
* Jewelry
* Hobby
Marketing and branding is a major hurdle opposed to the home creation of small items. There's an industry that will marginalize such items as 'cheap' and 'purely utilitarian' (meaning they lack emotion!?) and 'poor quality' and 'poor design' and on and on.
I use Chrome when logged into Google, and Firefox otherwise. I can't help but think of Chrome as a proprietary client. It's in Googles long term interests to have an open web platform, but their tracking is working against this.
You're right that patent trolls can't be stopped by playing the patent game, but If we assume that "IBM *owns* the US patent system" why aren't we seeing competitors bribing politicians to change the rules? The lack of large companies demanding change suggests they're OK with the current system, but where's their payoff?
If you think IBM isn't getting paid a ton licensing its war chest of patents you're crazy.
Licensing fees paid will be in proportion to the number of patents and lawyers, but other large companies have to pay those fees, so why aren't they fighting to get the patent system fixed? Unless IBM (et al.) are extorting foreign companies, the system isn't a boon for the USA, and we should be seeing serious efforts to get the system fixed.
The real reason to go for as many patents as possible is to have as many legal weapons as possible to bludgeon and gut any up and comers with a competing product.
Protection for the largest companies against new start-ups is one advantage, but they get that protection from the politicians *much* cheaper then the current patent system.
Protection against patent trolls is just an effect of the system, but how does the system payoff for IBM or the USA? Protection for IBM could also be bought by paying a few politicians to change patent law, but that isn't happening. So where's the payoff?
The payoff is selling it as part of a portfolio of patents to cover other equally obvious stuff, like they're doing with Google now.
Selling to the next sucker is one way to get paid, but that happens in every market and isn't special to patents. Maybe it's just momentum that keeps the system running: we've spent so much on patents we can't stop now! Like the housing boom where the market prices reinforce the system, and it doesn't stop until enough people say the emperor has no clothes, then it all crashes at once.
You have to offer a framework for the content providers to make money ...
Google is afraid of defining the market, and Apple isn't. Neither strategy has overcome. Cable was defined by the technology, and the business changes (pay TV, channels that are bundled/premium/rebroadcast, etc..) were forced on the industry because of what the technology would allow.
The next major change (Internet TV) will be a software change, and software doesn't enforce any particular business arrangements. So what Google needs to do is create a system that both allows the content providers to make money and restricts the major industry players from dominating the new players, both developers and new content providers.
There is only one way to protect the new creators, and that's to define and enforce the flow of money. Apple made a clear choice: all money goes to them and some is redistributed to the content providers. Google made the opposite choice: take our software and do whatever you want, we ask for nothing. Googles play is like Bill Gates giving away DOS; with an installed base comes developers and providers, but TV is an established industry not a new market. Google needs to take the Cable approach: Google TV has fair rules enforced by software that protect the established and new creators alike.
Where's the payoff for the avalanche of poor patents? IBM isn't getting paid, the USPTO isn't better off, so are the politicians getting paid? Why is this system continuing? Two reasons I can see: protection for the largest companies against new start-ups, and getting foreign countries to adopt US Patent laws and extort their corporations. But is that really it, is that the whole game? IBM isn't full of idiots and the politicians are (always) working an angle, so why this continued patent madness?
I am dealing with 2 disjoint sites, 4 data centers, managing all flavors of Unix, windows, networking, storage, VMware etc. Along with that I have HOWTO guides, cheatsheets, contracts, licensing, projects, proposals and other things that typically exist in a enterprise.
Sadly, quitting is the right answer for this problem. If you're "pretty much the IT systems guy" this company doesn't care about IT, and is likely going to fail or undergo some major change soon. Management that only cares about a specific problem (or two) despite disaster looming all around them (IMHO) are always expecting firings. When they're worried about their own job, they'll ignore your concerns and let you do anything, only insisting on the project that will cover their ass if they survive.
The real issues lie elsewhere, which is why "pirate party" is a *really* bad name for this group. I really think they ought to agree on a different name that puts the emphasis on the groups of people who *would* benefit from their proposals (mostly, "pirates" wouldn't).
Using the name "Pirate" is an attempt to reclaim it from the haters, like "Gay", "Nerd" or "Nigger", although those are often still used as pejoratives. Industry, government and the media happily call them "Pirates", abusing language to their advantage, just like they say "Stealing" instead of copyright violation, implying criminal action instead of civil and per-judging the morality. By calling themselves the Pirate Party the negative implications are directly challenged. Maybe in England they should call themselves the "Robin Hood Party" to confront the accusations of "Stealing".
Even worse, Tyler Nichols contradicts his own argument. If you read through the comments on his blog you find that he eventually admits that nearly 100% of his paying customers tried the free version before paying, thus the first part of his premise is wrong. ... His biggest problem seems to be that his unsolicited marketing email was marked as spam (because it is spam).
So.. use FREE to get paying customers, then SPAM and RANT to get PUBLICITY and justify dropping FREE. The rant doesn't have to make any sense. It's just an unreasonable demand for attention, like the spam.
Very true of the older generation. My thoughts on why they're like this:
(1) Personal morality and social standards were the main issue in the past, not technology or law. The copying could be done technically, but was restrained by society and viewed as a moral issue of stealing. I remember being shocked that my father copied software; it seemed immoral. With the internet copying is much more about what's technically possible, and what the law says. When Homer Simpson got free cable TV, the technology and law weren't the issue.
(2) Individuals stealing vs. Societies rights. The older generation (like most people) focuses on the individual, not the broader society/culture/economic system. Limited monopolies are viewed as an unchanging fact of life, not an idea to be considered or revised for the benefit of society. Slashdot discusses technology changing economic markets and business strategies, but most people view things like Hollywood as a force of nature.
(3) Change is always disliked. The RIAA-industries want to create the same environment as the past; where copying is technically possible but time consuming and lower quality. Radio could be taped, Macrovision could be bypassed, but they generally weren't. DRM should be viewed in this light: an older generation of decision makers who want to make copying rare, difficult and viewed as immoral. They don't care if its ultimately impossible and fails often, they want the old environment back.
... it's going to be completely ineffective at what it aims to do!
Phew! I was worried about that for a second, and then you mentioned it would be ineffective at what it aims to do. I guess I have nothing to worry about then!
The War on Drugs is ineffective at stopping drugs. That doesn't mean it's without consequences, or should be ignored.
You didn't mention the biggest benefit: no deployment hassles! Imagine taking a C/C++ app your company depends on and won't let go of, recompiling it to work with NaCl, and it's instantly distributed to all clients. Nighty changes would be easy for everyone. Caching is built-in. Troubleshooting an install is dead simple; clear the cache and click the link again.
Like most hardware manufacturers, they are trying to get out of updating and maintaining software since it's a loss for them. Unlocking lets the whiners who notice or care about updates go play and leave HTC alone to abandon the handsets after ~12 months post release.
Divide and conquer: complain when it's locked; complain when it's unlocked. If their update process is the problem, why are you complaining about unlocking the boot loader, which lets you update when you want? Your problem isn't fixed by this change, so you're complaining about this change?
I want to *own* and control the hardware I buy. Unlocking is about more then just an update schedule.
Maybe the "need" is something non-IT people don't know about? Do they need backups/helpdesk/security/app maintenance/etc...? Bring in a firm to audit/consultant on IT issues (and make it clear they won't become the IT dept. regardless of their review.)
My first thought was that this could be "easy money" for any company that buys such an insurance.
You want me to break something else? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkkM9YAJ-Ts
Insurance will only set the baseline standard, and will prevent further advances for the industry as a whole. Home and Car locks have been stagnant technology for 50+ years because the remaining risk is managed with insurance/laws/police. You can buy better locks and alarms, but they aren't being widely adopted because insurance (and a risk mitigation attitude) has removed the incentive.
Twenty years from now what do we want cyber-security to look like? It should still be an ongoing effort, aggressive and widely distributed. Tying the financial costs of Sony's failure to insurance will raise their efforts to a baseline (set by insurance companies) and remove any motivation to do better. In fact, it will *prevent* Sony from doing better security, because they will need to do what the insurance companies have specified and nothing else, lest they interfere with the program specified by the the insurance companies.
Should insurance companies dictate security? Doctors don't let them dictate treatments because health care is so important and hard to get right. Do you want insurance companies telling you which language to use, which libraries to use, how to log/audit/test/deploy etc...? The insurance companies and financial managers are there to make money, not to create new things or do things better.
In-case anyone hasn't read the Richard Stallman story: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
From the authors notes:
One of the ideas in the story was not proposed in reality until 2002. This is the idea that the FBI and Microsoft will keep the root passwords for your personal computers, and not let you have them.
The proponents of this scheme have given it names such as “trusted computing” and “Palladium”. We call it “treacherous computing” ...
The 1997 prediction, proposed in 2002, is reality in 2011. The big surprise is that the implementation isn't a technical DRM/TC scheme, but a fundamental change in corporations retaining ownership and control of items after they've been sold. Who could have predicted that?
The Paparazzi will save us by abusing this in every way possible. The rich and famous have no choice but to tell the politicians to change the laws.
You might get all you ask for except for your walled garden. Microsoft is not going to go to the effort of troubleshooting a hypervisor so that you can install a competing operating system.
What if the pre-installed 'other OS' is the desktop version of Windows Phone, and the Hypervisor is Hyper-v, and it's really easy to install Windows 8 but a pain to install Linux?
I think you're wrong about what roll websites would have if all advertising was self hosted: they wouldn't have any roll because they'd simply be running a server side advertising system written by the advertising companies. Google Adds would simply require a PHP script you drop into your site -- not a script you would create or could change. Users can already easily tell websites they don't like the advertising, but the Adblock Plus change will let us tell the _advertisers_ what's going to far.
Nothing stops websites from sharing tracking info with advertisers. If we block all advertising that isn't self hosted, we'll get server-side systems that automatically copy adds from advertisers servers and then share tracking info back to the advertiser. With advertisers hosting their own adds, it's practical for Adblock Plus to influence the industry.
Agreed. Letting the end users, rather then the devs, communicate what's acceptable is the key to getting advertisers to change. The advertising industry isn't going to be dictated to by a few devs, but millions of end users will convince them.
I'm going to *start* using Adblock Plus because of this. Advertisers need to be told where the line is, and this is the first practical way to communicate that too them. They should have even more checkbox options so users can decide what's acceptable rather than the devs. People don't use Adblock Plus often because they don't want to deny funding to websites, but a reasonable and practical compromise could kill intrusive advertising and tracking, just like popup blockers (mostly) killed popup adds.
As to Doublespeak, it's called Adblock *Plus* - it blocks adds plus tells advertisers what's what.