and the server wars, where Apache and IIS have pretty much put it out of the running
That's incorrect. Apache has more servers by number, but Apache also has a larger fraction of the piddly little iconsequential servers. If you survey major web sites, you'll find Netscape is doing quite well compared to Apache and IIS.
Example of how a web bulletin board can influence lives. A company is in the quiet period before filing an IPO. Some information about the anticipated stock price leaks, and is put on a web bulletin board. That violates SEC rules, and they disallow the IPO, which delays it by a year or so.
A small company doing an IPO to finance expansion could be completely destroyed by such a thing.
Note: I'm not saying the stuff on Yahoo could have had that kind of impact--just pointing out that web bulletin boards can have impact on many people who don't use them directly.
A) Property in general is an artificial invention of the state.
B) Patents (and copyright) have everything to do with a free market. You can't have a free market in information-based things without an artificial monopoly, because the marginal cost is zero. Free markets only work when the goods in the market have certain properties, and software does not have those properties. If you want to use a free market to determine how software production resources should be allocated, rather than, say, having the government decide it by funding software development with a tax on something, you've got to artificially give software the properties that real property has.
Actually, hardware companies do make money from the drivers. For a distressingly large number of cards nowadays, the difference between the cheap model, the mid-range model, and the top-of-the-line model is just the firmware downloaded to the DSP or CPU on the card.
For the non-cheap cards from such manufacturers, it is the drivers that are making them the money.
A woman just like you wouldn't be there for you when you wanted a hug. She'd be obsessively coding or posting on Slashdot herself, and would brush you off when you needed her.
Wait a second. What about when she needs a hug? If a geek guy can break away from his coding to provide a hug to a non-geek wife, why wouldn't a geek girl be able to take a hug break for a geek husband?
Men involved in activities that demand long periods of intense concentration (programmers, artists, writers, musicians, etc.) need women who will respect what they do and help them do it well, not women who compete with them.
I don't view geek activities as competitive. There's nothing I enjoy more in the world then spending time with my best friend, who is a fellow geek. Besides doing a zillion geeky things together, we also watch movies, talk about books we've read, listen to music, discuss current affairs, etc.. We don't compete: we cooperate and share. You haven't advanced any convincing reason why such a relationship would not be possible with a girl.
I don't think I could love a girl like you describe--love (true love) requires a degree of mental compatibility that I could not have with a non-geek, not because there is anything wrong with non-geeks, but rather because anyone who is mentally compatible with me on a deep level will be a geek--that comes with the territory. Frankly, and I don't mean this in a negative or insulting way, it sounds like what you are describing is not a wife, but a servant/concubine, that one can love much the way one can love a cat or a dog.
I love my best friend. I'm not going to settle for a wife that I can't love at least as much as I love him. Love without sex is better than sex without love.
Slashdot Mirror
That's incorrect. Apache has more servers by number, but Apache also has a larger fraction of the piddly little iconsequential servers. If you survey major web sites, you'll find Netscape is doing quite well compared to Apache and IIS.
Ever heard of a thing called a "taxi"? According to ATM manufacturers, a fair number of blind people do take taxis to drive up ATMs.
A small company doing an IPO to finance expansion could be completely destroyed by such a thing.
Note: I'm not saying the stuff on Yahoo could have had that kind of impact--just pointing out that web bulletin boards can have impact on many people who don't use them directly.
B) Patents (and copyright) have everything to do with a free market. You can't have a free market in information-based things without an artificial monopoly, because the marginal cost is zero. Free markets only work when the goods in the market have certain properties, and software does not have those properties. If you want to use a free market to determine how software production resources should be allocated, rather than, say, having the government decide it by funding software development with a tax on something, you've got to artificially give software the properties that real property has.
For the non-cheap cards from such manufacturers, it is the drivers that are making them the money.
Wait a second. What about when she needs a hug? If a geek guy can break away from his coding to provide a hug to a non-geek wife, why wouldn't a geek girl be able to take a hug break for a geek husband?
Men involved in activities that demand long periods of intense concentration (programmers, artists, writers, musicians, etc.) need women who will respect what they do and help them do it well, not women who compete with them.
I don't view geek activities as competitive. There's nothing I enjoy more in the world then spending time with my best friend, who is a fellow geek. Besides doing a zillion geeky things together, we also watch movies, talk about books we've read, listen to music, discuss current affairs, etc.. We don't compete: we cooperate and share. You haven't advanced any convincing reason why such a relationship would not be possible with a girl.
I don't think I could love a girl like you describe--love (true love) requires a degree of mental compatibility that I could not have with a non-geek, not because there is anything wrong with non-geeks, but rather because anyone who is mentally compatible with me on a deep level will be a geek--that comes with the territory. Frankly, and I don't mean this in a negative or insulting way, it sounds like what you are describing is not a wife, but a servant/concubine, that one can love much the way one can love a cat or a dog.
I love my best friend. I'm not going to settle for a wife that I can't love at least as much as I love him. Love without sex is better than sex without love.