This LinuxOne looks like a bad idea waiting to happen. For the purposes of this comment I'm going to assume it crashes and burns. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this is a necessary thing.
You may have heard the saying "all publicity is good publicity." What is going to happen if LinuxOne turns out to be a terrible company and a ton of investors get burned on a shoddy distribution? LinuxOne is going to get bad publicity. Most of it will be from the traditional media, many of whom still think all Linux is the same thing, and therefore the bigger a flop LinuxOne becomes, the bigger a black mark against "Linux/OpenSource."
This blanketing attitude is changing, though; even CBS can tell the difference between a RedHat and a VA. And if LinuxOne burns some people, it will be our opportunity to turn bad news into good. We need to represent LinuxOne as the Yin to our Yang. We need to say, "This is what happens when you do it wrong," in addition to, "This over here is what happens when you do it right."
Over time, this will add news media credibility to our store. It will make it possible for people to tell the difference between a good Linux distribution and a bad one, and as a point of comparison it will clarify some issues in peoples' heads over why Open Source is a good idea, and why it is successful.
These businesses are clearly looking to cut costs and every dollar counts, so RedHat (which got a top rating, and allows you to repackage their OS and resell it) is your target distro. Download the ISO. Burn it, label it "My RedHat 6.1 OS," and sell it for $1 less than what they're currently selling it for. Don't provide support or make it easier to configure or anything; companies are only concerned about that $1 a copy. You'll be a multimillionaire in no time the way these companies are cutting costs. One wonders how Microsoft sells any of those $1000 Windows NT Server licenses. Must be to newbies.
That's why you never, ever make your spy^H^H^Hnetwork monitoring tool self-replicating. Take the time to install it by hand, and Norton will never get a copy of it.
of the XFree representative sitting on that board and glaring down at the peon members of the other companies from her throne, then suddenly wielding her terrible power to punish the recalcitrant corporations for their slowness in appeasing the mighty beast that is Open Source . . .
The Unix vendors are bringing XFree86 in because the need inexpensive workstations to manage the Unix machines. X's distributed nature makes a Linux machine an ideal platform. Additionally, after watching XFree86 on my friend's Solaris x86 machine, maybe the Unix vendors are planning to get out of the X-server market, letting XFree86 pick up that entire R&D tab.
You're spot-on here, but you're actually understating the case. The Unix vendors are planning to get out of the Unix market too! Most of them consider themselves hardware vendors, not OS vendors, hence Compaq, IBM, HP all throwing development dollars at Linux. The faster Linux gets accepted and is able to run on their hardware, the faster they ditch their software development budgets and spend money where it really counts, designing hardware that they can beat each other up with.
No, you're just the only one posting here who will admit it. Most of these people are just flamebait... commenting on something they know nothing about.
This requires all databases to be registered, along with a list of their structure,
Why do the misinformed posts always get moderated up? They aren't collecting a database of information about people. It says that in the article. They have a unique identifier with nothing to pin it to. Have you ever downloaded Comet cursors? They don't ask you any personal questions, they just send you the cursors. Based on that, they couldn't even get your IP address.
Oh, you mean a database about most of the people who go to work in this country? Grow up - these databases already contain information about the "invaders" and their "top-workers". In fact, the CEO's, being rich, are probably in there more times than any of their employees or the so-called "other" people.
BTW, anyone who doesn't work for a company that keeps information on its customers probably doesn't work at all (a few self-employed people excepted). And since they don't work at all, they don't buy, and therefore they aren't in the database.
Privacy to me is about people. I don't want people to read my private information on the web, come to my house, and try to kill me or harm me or sell something to me. But the truth is, mostly, nobody tries to kill you. The people who want to already know where you live. You're most likely to deny in some anonymous way, like cancer or car accident, and though there might be a person at fault in your death, it won't be considered an invasion of your privacy, it'll be considered a tragedy that you died in such a pointless fashion.
Which brings me the problem of having my private information online, or in a database sold by the Australian government to Macy's. Sure, I hate getting mailers and catalogs. They drive me nuts, and since we have a trash can by our mail kiosk, they go straight from the mailbox into the garbage 99% of the time. This isn't an invasion of my privacy, but of my time. (There are ways you can legally force egregious catalog-senders to stop sending, btw, but that's another topic altogether.)
So what about this database? Has any human being ever read my personal information? Well, except for phone solicitors, no. (There are techno-fixes for that particular problem though; for example, you can put blocks on all numbers or specific types of callers.) Will anyone see it after it gets sold by the Australian Gov't? (I'm not an Aussie, but if I were...) No. Does anyone have access to it that might peep in my bedroom window to get his jollies or attack my wife and I at our door? No - no-one who wouldn't already know where I live. It's computers talking to computers, folks.
The computer you're staring at right now has tons of personal information stored on you. For most of us, our computers contain information that could get us fired or divorced or publicly embarrassed, if taken in the wrong context. These databases don't. Unless you went to prison (in which case it's public record anyway, and you're already required to divulge it to most of the people who would care), no corporate database is going to contain embarrassing or incriminating information about you. No human will ever see it, just another computer, printing another automatic mailer, writing your address on it and sending it in the mail, to be deposited straight into the trash.
I feel sorry for the pulp trees, but I have a hard time mustering any rage against the machine for these corporate databases.
if WordPerfect Suite were FREE, then all the people who started with good old WordPerfect in the 80's would (hopefully) convert,
This assumes MS Office is the premier office suite because of price pressure. Since it's the most expensive office suite, and still the best selling, I don't see why making WP free would help all that much (although assuredly it would help a little).
I have issues with his arguments. He makes two in particular:
I. Imagine that you and I and a couple of other people are successfully interconnected via brain chips. We might look cool with sockets and plugs adorning our heads. But we wouldn't be able to start or sustain a single thought: Everybody else's thoughts would be distracting us, screaming for attention within our heads.
II. A general distrust of invasive procedures evident in humanity at large.
Ok problems with point 1. Isn't that what network protocols are for? Mr. Dertouzos appears not to understand fundamental concepts of networking. While nobody's talking about interbrain communication yet, when they do, they'll apply the concepts of traditional networking to it, and achieve success.
Problems with point 2. This point is valid in the context of the current state of the technology. For reasons why this won't be a valid argument in say 20, 30 years: ever had an infected appendix? Would you think twice about having your stomach cut open and having it removed if your doctor told you it needed to be done? Do you know anyone who would? The only reason we don't all have it done (literally) is cost. Having it removed pre-emptively would be the safest thing to do, since there would then be no chance of infection. The same can be applied to brain implants, say 30 years from now: when it's cheap enough, and serves a useful purpose (if, say, it becomes as important as spoken language in whatever society exists at that time), people will probably have it done at birth.
Someone ought to acquire the information that scientologists charge so much for (now available many places on the net, unless the Cult of Scientology has changed their quack secret documents recently), and just start emailing it to everyone on the net. Start a chain letter, via anonymous remailer if you have to. Get it posted to every usenet newsgroup. At the least, you would save some would-be brainwashees some money. At best, you might prompt the Cult's legal department to attempt to sue everyone on the net, effectively draining their coffers for good.
Nanotechnology is just the science of making very small things. Do you know how many very small things are in that CPU you take for granted? These are just a little smaller.
Do you really think that just because they're going to be very small, they're dangerous? The "ramifications" are that electrical engineering can be done cheaper and smaller.
Don't insult Linux by calling MS a monopoly
on
Everything Microsoft
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· Score: 1
A monopoly has no significant competition and barriers to entry for new competitors. Why is Microsoft not a monopoly? Because Linux becomes more significant with every passing day and every passing sale of Redhat (or choose-your-own-distro) to a corporate customer, and every installation by a do-it-yourselfer who puts a distro on her home PC. MS started grabbing server market share largely because they already had a large mindshare on the desktop. True, management tends to turn a deaf ear to the techies, but even managers own home PCs, and those PC's mostly had Windows on them, so NT Server became an easy sale. So shall it also be with Linux, and therefore Linux is a significant competitor to Windows. So is MacOS. Even BeOS is making a few converts. And all of these operating systems are available in stores near you (if they aren't, indeed, available as free downloads on the web). Also: The judge mentions significant barriers to entry. This is not Ma Bell, where in order to be a competitor you would have had to build a multibillion dollar telephone infrastructure of your own, and in order to use a competitor you would have had to move to another country. Barriers to entry? Linus wrote Linux on, I presume, a text editor. The barrier to entry in the OS market is therefore the cost of one college student and one text editor, and maybe a hard disk to hold your sources and your free compiler. Even if you wanted to get a serious product to market in a year or two, the barriers to entry would be the cost of a small business, which can hire the talent it needs by hiring disgruntled MacOS programmers (as BeOS did). In conclusion, Microsoft, while certainly unethical and guilty of many despicable anti-competitive acts, is not a monopoly. Don't call it one, because by doing so you're also calling Linux insignificant.
As long as you're not suggesting he actually comply with their demands. As another poster pointed out, that would remove his protected status -- it would make him responsible for the content he hosts, and therefore vulnerable to legal action.
This is true -- they risk the dilution and loss of their trademark. This says more about their decision to trademark WORDS IN THE DICTIONARY than about anyone's alleged legal misdeeds. 15 U.S.C. s 1125(c) governing dilution provides at subsection (4)(B): "The following shall not be actionable under this section: . . . Noncommercial use of a mark."
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You may have heard the saying "all publicity is good publicity." What is going to happen if LinuxOne turns out to be a terrible company and a ton of investors get burned on a shoddy distribution? LinuxOne is going to get bad publicity. Most of it will be from the traditional media, many of whom still think all Linux is the same thing, and therefore the bigger a flop LinuxOne becomes, the bigger a black mark against "Linux/OpenSource."
This blanketing attitude is changing, though; even CBS can tell the difference between a RedHat and a VA. And if LinuxOne burns some people, it will be our opportunity to turn bad news into good. We need to represent LinuxOne as the Yin to our Yang. We need to say, "This is what happens when you do it wrong," in addition to, "This over here is what happens when you do it right."
Over time, this will add news media credibility to our store. It will make it possible for people to tell the difference between a good Linux distribution and a bad one, and as a point of comparison it will clarify some issues in peoples' heads over why Open Source is a good idea, and why it is successful.
These businesses are clearly looking to cut costs and every dollar counts, so RedHat (which got a top rating, and allows you to repackage their OS and resell it) is your target distro. Download the ISO. Burn it, label it "My RedHat 6.1 OS," and sell it for $1 less than what they're currently selling it for. Don't provide support or make it easier to configure or anything; companies are only concerned about that $1 a copy. You'll be a multimillionaire in no time the way these companies are cutting costs. One wonders how Microsoft sells any of those $1000 Windows NT Server licenses. Must be to newbies.
That's why you never, ever make your spy^H^H^Hnetwork monitoring tool self-replicating. Take the time to install it by hand, and Norton will never get a copy of it.
of the XFree representative sitting on that board and glaring down at the peon members of the other companies from her throne, then suddenly wielding her terrible power to punish the recalcitrant corporations for their slowness in appeasing the mighty beast that is Open Source . . .
You're spot-on here, but you're actually understating the case. The Unix vendors are planning to get out of the Unix market too! Most of them consider themselves hardware vendors, not OS vendors, hence Compaq, IBM, HP all throwing development dollars at Linux. The faster Linux gets accepted and is able to run on their hardware, the faster they ditch their software development budgets and spend money where it really counts, designing hardware that they can beat each other up with.
I didn't realize cats were supposed to land on their noses. All my cats have been doing it wrong.
No, you're just the only one posting here who will admit it. Most of these people are just flamebait... commenting on something they know nothing about.
Why do the misinformed posts always get moderated up? They aren't collecting a database of information about people. It says that in the article. They have a unique identifier with nothing to pin it to. Have you ever downloaded Comet cursors? They don't ask you any personal questions, they just send you the cursors. Based on that, they couldn't even get your IP address.
BTW, anyone who doesn't work for a company that keeps information on its customers probably doesn't work at all (a few self-employed people excepted). And since they don't work at all, they don't buy, and therefore they aren't in the database.
Which brings me the problem of having my private information online, or in a database sold by the Australian government to Macy's. Sure, I hate getting mailers and catalogs. They drive me nuts, and since we have a trash can by our mail kiosk, they go straight from the mailbox into the garbage 99% of the time. This isn't an invasion of my privacy, but of my time. (There are ways you can legally force egregious catalog-senders to stop sending, btw, but that's another topic altogether.)
So what about this database? Has any human being ever read my personal information? Well, except for phone solicitors, no. (There are techno-fixes for that particular problem though; for example, you can put blocks on all numbers or specific types of callers.) Will anyone see it after it gets sold by the Australian Gov't? (I'm not an Aussie, but if I were...) No. Does anyone have access to it that might peep in my bedroom window to get his jollies or attack my wife and I at our door? No - no-one who wouldn't already know where I live. It's computers talking to computers, folks.
The computer you're staring at right now has tons of personal information stored on you. For most of us, our computers contain information that could get us fired or divorced or publicly embarrassed, if taken in the wrong context. These databases don't. Unless you went to prison (in which case it's public record anyway, and you're already required to divulge it to most of the people who would care), no corporate database is going to contain embarrassing or incriminating information about you. No human will ever see it, just another computer, printing another automatic mailer, writing your address on it and sending it in the mail, to be deposited straight into the trash.
I feel sorry for the pulp trees, but I have a hard time mustering any rage against the machine for these corporate databases.
This assumes MS Office is the premier office suite because of price pressure. Since it's the most expensive office suite, and still the best selling, I don't see why making WP free would help all that much (although assuredly it would help a little).
I have issues with his arguments. He makes two in particular:
I. Imagine that you and I and a couple of other people are successfully interconnected via brain chips. We might look cool with sockets and plugs adorning our heads. But we wouldn't be able to start or sustain a single thought: Everybody else's thoughts would be distracting us, screaming for attention within our heads.
II. A general distrust of invasive procedures evident in humanity at large.
Ok problems with point 1. Isn't that what network protocols are for? Mr. Dertouzos appears not to understand fundamental concepts of networking. While nobody's talking about interbrain communication yet, when they do, they'll apply the concepts of traditional networking to it, and achieve success.
Problems with point 2. This point is valid in the context of the current state of the technology. For reasons why this won't be a valid argument in say 20, 30 years: ever had an infected appendix? Would you think twice about having your stomach cut open and having it removed if your doctor told you it needed to be done? Do you know anyone who would? The only reason we don't all have it done (literally) is cost. Having it removed pre-emptively would be the safest thing to do, since there would then be no chance of infection. The same can be applied to brain implants, say 30 years from now: when it's cheap enough, and serves a useful purpose (if, say, it becomes as important as spoken language in whatever society exists at that time), people will probably have it done at birth.
Someone ought to acquire the information that scientologists charge so much for (now available many places on the net, unless the Cult of Scientology has changed their quack secret documents recently), and just start emailing it to everyone on the net. Start a chain letter, via anonymous remailer if you have to. Get it posted to every usenet newsgroup. At the least, you would save some would-be brainwashees some money. At best, you might prompt the Cult's legal department to attempt to sue everyone on the net, effectively draining their coffers for good.
Do you really think that just because they're going to be very small, they're dangerous? The "ramifications" are that electrical engineering can be done cheaper and smaller.
A monopoly has no significant competition and barriers to entry for new competitors. Why is Microsoft not a monopoly? Because Linux becomes more significant with every passing day and every passing sale of Redhat (or choose-your-own-distro) to a corporate customer, and every installation by a do-it-yourselfer who puts a distro on her home PC. MS started grabbing server market share largely because they already had a large mindshare on the desktop. True, management tends to turn a deaf ear to the techies, but even managers own home PCs, and those PC's mostly had Windows on them, so NT Server became an easy sale. So shall it also be with Linux, and therefore Linux is a significant competitor to Windows. So is MacOS. Even BeOS is making a few converts. And all of these operating systems are available in stores near you (if they aren't, indeed, available as free downloads on the web). Also: The judge mentions significant barriers to entry. This is not Ma Bell, where in order to be a competitor you would have had to build a multibillion dollar telephone infrastructure of your own, and in order to use a competitor you would have had to move to another country. Barriers to entry? Linus wrote Linux on, I presume, a text editor. The barrier to entry in the OS market is therefore the cost of one college student and one text editor, and maybe a hard disk to hold your sources and your free compiler. Even if you wanted to get a serious product to market in a year or two, the barriers to entry would be the cost of a small business, which can hire the talent it needs by hiring disgruntled MacOS programmers (as BeOS did). In conclusion, Microsoft, while certainly unethical and guilty of many despicable anti-competitive acts, is not a monopoly. Don't call it one, because by doing so you're also calling Linux insignificant.
Nah. Give it 20 years, we'll all have them on our desktops.
Correction: you CAN be sued. Anyone can be sued for anything. Winning or losing the suit is another matter, but either way it costs you money baby...
As long as you're not suggesting he actually comply with their demands. As another poster pointed out, that would remove his protected status -- it would make him responsible for the content he hosts, and therefore vulnerable to legal action.
This is true -- they risk the dilution and loss of their trademark. This says more about their decision to trademark WORDS IN THE DICTIONARY than about anyone's alleged legal misdeeds. 15 U.S.C. s 1125(c) governing dilution provides at subsection (4)(B): "The following shall not be actionable under this section: . . . Noncommercial use of a mark."
Well a company that publishes so many books for Dummies would of necessity employ many dummies, or risk missing their target demographic.