I think your calculations are a bit off. For all the people licensed to use linux, you are going to need ~99.9999999833% of them to care about just one bug and have the ability and desire to fix it for the entire user base to benefit.
May not seem very efficient, but it is positive sum.
For the sake of argument, lets just say 100% of Americans care about health care and fiscal responsibility. Hmm... my bet is a couple high school students will do a science fair project that will successfully demonstrate safe clean nano scale cold fusion technology before Social Security and Medicare get a balanced budget that is properly secured for future obligations.
Of course, you say users don't care about open source in a practical way. Well duh; if they cared in a practical way, they wouldn't be called users, they would be called developers. So all you really need to ask yourself is 1) Do developers care about source code? and 2) Should users with a spark of intelligence and ambition have it within their ABILITY to become a developer?
Proprietary Software is akin to the scribe culture of long ago, where certain people read books to most people. Few people could read, and very few could write. Either way, paper was very expensive. When the printing press came along, and books started becoming cheap, books became open source; ordinary people, not just those of an elite class, began to read. Quickly came the age of enlightenment, as more people began to read, so did many people begin to write.
So I ask you, why do you need the source code to your books? Are you going to fix problems in stories and notify the author? Are you going to write a novel? Of the install base of books in homes, how many of those do you think have taken advantage of the open source nature of those books to write a book of their own outside of academic circles? Inexpensive open source books have been around for a few hundred years, though writing and libraries have been around for thousands. Digital computers have been around for about 70 years, but was restricted to a fairly elite class of people such as university students. Open source software in the 90's was much like the way scientists share their information with each other. Servers based on open source software became very popular with the birth of the Internet, and Linux for the non-geek really started to make an appearance about 2004 with OpenSuse followed by Fedora and Ubuntu. Non-geek / non-business people only just starting to get computers... early 90's? Computer literacy (basic usability) becomes mandatory at just about every job by the late 90's. With the Internet, and the human readability of html, everybody was making web pages with about much class and style as a 4 year old writing his first book half way into his kindergarten.
Computer literacy is VERY important. I would like to hope that everybody feels it is within their ability to learn and contribute to an open source project if they desired to. I have known adults that do not have basic reading comprehension. Some are embarrassed, but many just don't think it is important or relevant to their lives, though I think it has been at least 10 years since I have heard that argument from an adult. We can either have a class structure of producers and consumers, programmers and non-programmers with the programmer class picking who will move up to become a creator, and who will not, or we can recognise that good software does exist and improve for its own sake as it serves people.
You can either create a class system (proprietary), Give people the freedom to choose whether or not they want to support the class system (MIT/BSD), or fight the system with hostility and dogmatic ideology (GPL).
Most people don't care how their computer works any more than their care, their house, or even biological functions. But when it comes to using that as an excuse to keep that information away from people, I err on the side of hostile dogmatic ideology.
I am going to have to agree with the people that modded this troll, though personally, I think it is more like flame. You say that MS donated this code out of pure self interest as if it is different from any one else's contribution. Take the Wacom Driver project for example. Wacom only writes drivers for platforms they can "profit" from which they have determined are Windows and MacOSX. The Wacom Project Team has selfishly determined that isn't good enough for them AND that they have the necessary skill to remedy the situation. Why would a person who is greedy and selfish go out of their way to be inefficient and non-pragmatic about their approach? If what they desire is a driver, their greedy selfish desires are better met as an open source community project. The more people like them that want that driver sooner than later will selfishly commit resources towards improving the project. But keep in mind that their purpose is the driver. If they were producing the driver for money to sell to people that want support, it might make sense to keep it closed source and simply hire as many people necessary to slap together something together that looks good enough that will get people to buy it and sell updates as they implement new features to the best of their ability with the hope that nobody trys to compete against them. One thing I think may be different if such a company existed is that you would see drivers for more than just Wacom tablets, doesn't matter to them that people are buying inferior tablets.
To my understanding, one of the reasons why there is no support for any other tablet is that it would run their resources thin. They selfishly believe Wacom makes the best tablets despite the fact that there are likely a lot of people out there that can't afford the most expensive brand. So for now there is just one driver. So what? If it is worth it to someone to develop drivers for other brands, then it will happen, but I expect that for most people the difference in cost of the tablets does not justify the cost of development. (Oooh, those greedy developers!)
Just like any other code contribution, which is nothing more than information, people may or may not choose to review it, may or may not choose to fix it, may or may not choose to implement it, may or may not choose to maintain it, may or may not choose to extend it. That could be 1 person, a hundred people, or nobody. What you are doing is passing judgment on how other people should feels about it and calling for censorship, as if you need to protect people from how they choose to spend their time.
How altruistic of you.:)
Sorry, but I put your comments in the same category as the complainers on brainstorm.ubuntu.com that DEMAND (often in quite colorful language) their ideas that are highly rated by other non-programs be implemented by the development team. There have even been "resolutions" passed giving timelines in which developers must respond to their inquiries. WTF? These people obviously don't have the first clue about how people become "Official Ubuntu Developers", let alone how the dev process works. Personally, I might like to call Project Brainstorm a total flop and just get rid of it. On the other hand, evidently some people like it, sometimes devs respond. I'll just try to convince myself that it is a conspiracy to keep idiots off of launchpad. What I can do about this 'issue' is reserve the right not to go there.
As a side note, I guess, take a look at the number of open bugs with patches over a year old that nobody has bothered to take the few moments necessary to test and confirm so that it can be implemented. It is astounding! But somehow there is still rapid progress.
One of the arguments I make to promote GPL is that it is entirely selfish and meritocratic. It is economically inefficient for a person to produce a product that is not useful to the producer. For example, it is useful for doctors to know medicine whether or not they practice. Same is true of plumbers, carpenters, farmers, etc. It also applies to engineers, software or otherwise. Microsoft "produces" a product for the purpose of selling it. They must make the product something people want, or think they want (Oversimplified I know, but still true). By contrast, people producing GPL work are initially producing something strictly for themselves. With information distribution having reached a cost of effectively zero, and development cost covered (because the intent of the product was the product), all that can happen by releasing the code (assuming it is a tool and not a trade secret) is that other people will selfishly take the code, rather than reinvent the wheel, and change or improve the product for THEIR own purpose. From there, a somewhat natural evolution occurs; the software replicates as people find it useful, and it mutates as people find it worth their time to take what exists and improve it for their own purpose, and hopefully re-releasing it back into the wild.
So I think this whole argument is totally obnoxious. Whatever Microsoft's motivation for the release of their code may be, all you have is more information available for which anybody may do with as they please. I may be inclined to assume that Microsoft has put in the minimal effort to tease the community with information that could be useful in producing a useful product, and whether or not it is controversial to put in the effort to make the information useful to them doesn't take away from the fact that Microsoft has done NOTHING (this time) to harm the community. An ability or inability to rationalize a decision must be the sole responsibility of the person making that decision.
If Microsoft is trying to bait the community into doing work for them, who cares. It is either worth it, or isn't. Microsoft's hope is that they can get SOMEONE do do the rest of the work. It is a calculated risk. As far as the community goes, I see no hostility in informing Microsoft that their half-ass contribution isn't worth the effort of implementing, if that be the case, and Microsoft can recalculate their move.
The code isn't going to be deleted, it will either be commented out, or stored elsewhere and a line item added to a TO-DO list somewhere. This happens all the time. Last Ubuntu release (9.04) I put the majority of my time into two projects. Upon review for implementation, one was accepted and merged. The other, despite the fact I had managed to close out almost a dozen bug reports, was implemented incorrectly (for the sake of argument), and rejected. The days of work were not recoverable and basically wasted. Nobody picked up where I had left off, including myself. Those bugs are still open. It is just how things work. I wasn't offended, nor do I think the maintainer was rude for not accepting the work as is. I learned a lot from the experience and I still use my own version of the package.
The only thing notable this time is that the 'contribution' was made by Microsoft. If some sloppy hacker pieced this together by way of reverse engineering, threw it out there and walked away, who knows what would happen to the code. It might rouse some discussion on the mailing list with comments like "wow cool, but wtf? Anyone want to tackle this s***?" for awhile, but it certainly wouldn't make headline news, because in my observation, that is just another day in the life.
Judging from what people have posted (here and elsewhere), I think there are enough great schools out there that actually care about technology and education to serve a diverse community with quality cross-platform software that the rest can simply be disregarded. I think judging a school on its staff is perfectly reasonable. "Linux support" isn't something that exists in a bubble, but one of many things that should be warning signs about the environment.
Why didn't you just skip to the next article? I think the question was important to the person that posted it, and I think there are enough people here to help him, and maybe get an interesting discussion from the few people that still come here for that reason. Or do you believe he may hae been just as well served by using Yahoo Answers?
Education is something that you get for your life, not something that you get for your job. If you are getting an education for your job, then blind obedience is the most pragmatic way to approach a class so long as you make the grade and it enables you to perform a particular task. Sometimes going to school can be a requirement of parole. Often times just being in a school and being in the environment is better than sitting around at home playing video games. I even have friends that go to school because their parents require it if they are going to continue to pay their rent.
On the other hand, if you are getting an education for your life, not only can it help you in a career, but it helps you in every part of life you want to apply your education. That is a bit more of a challenge because there is more to consider. When you are looking for an education for your life, a school that matches your principles and values become important. Class size, diversity of staff, which federal programs they accept money from, non-discrimination policy, How good the Chinese food is, and the range of technology they embrace. Schools are ranked all the time by other peoples standards, and they are generally good guidelines. However, imho, one should check the data that is used to determine their ranking, but why not take it a step further and feel whether or not this is the type of environment you want to immerse yourself in that you hope will guide you for the rest of your life.
From what I have seen, a person that takes responsibility for their own education for themselves and on their own terms will be more successful in life and in their career, and likely to get better grades on top of that, than anyone that has gone to Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, MIT cause their parents told them they had to.
And if you are a wack-nut Linux fanboy RMS worshiping FOSS junkie, or just someone that has grown up Linux and take pleasure in being a part of the community on some small level, I believe one is going to be much happier and successful in an environment as important as college where your culture is going to be embraced.
This is really about any belief or ideal. If you can' stand up for what you believe in, just little selfish things that YOU want (keeping in mind this is you going to college, not anyone else when it comes down to your choices), how are you ever supposed to stand up for what you know once you are there, let alone later in life?
Of course if all this just sounds silly, then it probably doesn't matter which school you end up going to. (obligatory straw-man)
Actually, I would expect that this applies a whole lot less to species that reproduce asexually because while mutations still occur, you do not get an opportunity to see that mutation mix and match with other combinations of genes, only clones. For example, cell 1 with mutation A and cell 2 with mutation B isn't going to breed and in future generations possibly produce cells with mutation AB but by normal chance that both could occur at random.
Sounds like they simply confirmed with real data what before was simply believed to be extremely likely.
First of all, I don't think many microwaves are Turing Complete. If televisions are, it is a relatively new thing. To my understanding, most of the translating that goes on in a TV is hardcoded, and not really "processed". Decent DVD players use laptop parts past the drives with ONLY the parts necessary to get a proper signal out to a tv / amp. Those restrictions are NATURAL rather than unnatural. Engineers didn't take time and money to take a complete set of working hardware and figure out ways to make it not work. Many calculators make decent computers with respect to their hardware, especially if it has a full keyboard, but again, any restrictions there are natural, not artificial.
Further, Hardware accelerated X11 kernel extension for Linux on PS3 was released almost 2 years ago.
Sometimes hardware just is what it is and can do what it will do. Without artificial restrictions, hackers will easily be able to do what they want with the raw power of the device and bend it to their will. artificial restrictions just means it takes more time and effort which may or may not be worth it. Companies can also HELP by releasing information that can assist hackers in doing whatever they want. I would like to hope that Sony is just no longer doing a lot of the kind work to make it especially easy to install Linux; a complete 180 from providing hypervisor drivers to flat out DRM seems unlikely. I am sure the mod community will catch up in a few days.
all you are saying is that proprietary restrictions work both ways, which is exactly one of the issues brought up by FOSS promoters about proprietary software. The Commodore, Amiga, Atari, and others of their time were "computers" or "consoles" based on what was desired by the USER. Today, users PAY console / SDK developers to provide "protections" against open third party development to provide an incentive of non-competition to large gaming companies by ensuring that the only games / software is going to be on a shelf next to their own product released by other big game companies that also had to pay big licencing fees. Sony doesn't care how many games for their system are sold other then its relationship to potential future licencing agreements. Units sold tell game makers how large their market is to determine cost benefit of buying the licence and producing / porting a game.
So just because despite everything inside of it being the same as any other desktop / laptop mix of parts that happens to have an IBM Power7 CPU for which WINDOWS will never be ported doesn't change anything. Does something become a "PC" when MS whack pack signs the drivers?
But of course, many arcade machines still running today have worn out, been gutted, had their entrails replaced with a Linux Server running MAME. So maybe it would be most accurate to say that consoles are arcade machines with annoying unnecessary restrictions tacked on.
But well said; on the upside you could probably put something like that on your resume and get a job at Sony, or even Apple or Microsoft in no time. Hell, you could probably get elected to public office.
Maybe what has been revolutionary is the wide spread knowledge of how much we still don't know. A decade ago, I thought I knew a lot about computers. Today I can only hope in my lifetime I might hope to even begin to understand a small piece of what is possible.
I think revolutions are social, not technological. Technology seems really mystical to outsiders. Ever had a non-geek looking over your shoulder while composing a regular expression? We think of the lightbulb as having been amazingly revolutionary in its time, but (im guessing) it is only revolutionary in hindsight. In its time it was a mere novelty; from the time of its first invention by Sir Humphrey Davy in 1811 to Thomas Edison's version in 1880 it was utterly useless. That is three generations of people that said the lightbulb had no practical application, just geeky amusement, and in their lifetime, THEY WERE RIGHT![REF]
The Internet has enabled many people to do a lot of the same things faster, others have been able to do things never before possible where geographic distance between two people is arbitrary, and for the first time in history controlling that communication with a gun has become virtually impossible. Alfred Griswold would be proud that the Internet has ruled with an iron fist that "The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas". "Unfortunately", potential isn't revolutionary unto itself.
Hmm... I still think the fact that it was as easy as it was to do this, in addition to how stupid the victim looks trumps the "childish nature" of the prankster. The prank was both serious, and non-violent. I think the ambition of the people behind the cause is made more real is over all net affect. Actions like this change the rules of the game; you don't think that this will haunt that lawyer for the rest of his life and possibly damage his ability to get clients, or be taken seriously by judges?
Yeah, just submit to government and be grateful for whatever they decide you deserve. Your obedience is your only worthy offering to society. Opposing government can only get you in trouble because big government is obviously part of God's plan, and who are you to disrupt their divine right with your silly pranks.
If you would like a redress of grievances you need to apply for a permit and wait in line like everyone else and when it is your turn you will be given a date, time, place, appropriate method and approved material for protest, as well as the limit on the number of protesters you may have at your rally; this all assumes that there are enough officers available to ensure that your operation is peaceful and not subversive, distracting, offensive, or inconvenient to the public. This ensures that everyone gets a fair and equal turn to have their voice heard.
Hm,.. I was trying to come up with something sarcastic, but then I realised that really is the way it works in the US, and I really couldn't come up with anything more weird. *sigh*
Personally, firm non-violent and fully inconvenient pranks to address an issue is anything but childish. Geeks control the Internet and all these electronic systems. Bureaucrats are very effective at manipulating people with their versions of the truth. Governments can burn books and confiscate property and there is little to be done at gun point. But in a free information world, with the method and control so tightly integrated, a natural separation of power has been created that is very difficult to subvert with force. People, particularly governments, are using more and more technology where an understanding of the technology both unnecessary and difficult for end users.
Attack the Internet, and the Internet will fight back. What is going to happen here is that it will be far more expensive for the government to hunt down this individual than visa versa. Further, I expect that the "public outcry", people trying to wrap their heads around the issue, will expose the unnatural force of extreme corruption involved in the protection of the content distribution monopoly at the public's expense. Maybe not much, but I expect that the government is going to come out looking like a bit of a bully, and at least incompetent.
Why don't game publishers just get into the business of used games and compete like anyone else. Lots of other retail stores have tried to do the used game thing and have had very mixed results. I don't like GameStop personally, but I must admit they perfected their business beyond others. Game publishers would have a tremendous advantage because they could advertise on their own boxes. Games cost virtually nothing to print, so why not have some kind of system where if they return the game to the publisher they get points towards whatever they want that would be enough of incentive to keep the media off the used market.
They control the source of the distribution and they are complaining about inability to give customers a reason to extend value? How is this necessarily different than a car company complaining that customers don't come back to the manufacturer for maintenance, or better, that people aren't buying enough new cars because people keep getting their old car fixed?
While I can understand your argument in principle, I think you are overvaluing the royalties paid by the cable company to content providers as a portion of the cost to bring that content to you. For the most part the only cost to the cable company is channel integration. I would bet that maintenance of that database is nominal. Content providers make their money off of commercials, but after that, cable companies are pirates of that content. If I remember correctly, the settlement that came from those cases was that cable companies would be required to provide some number of public broadcasting channels for some number of stations they pirate. So after they have built this giant content pipe, they regulate who does and does not connect to their giant data stream in a very simple way, on or off, with very little exception. The exceptions are 1) content where per channel royalties exist (HBO, Cinemax, Encore, whatever), and 2) per program royalties channels(pay-per-view). I would expect that there is some speculation going on and the cable companies pay bulk block rates, bringing the channels cheaper to you (assuming you could even get them some other way) and likely making decent money on the side. BUT, the real business of the cable company is not the content, but the pipe. So cable companies pay for almost nothing but the initial infrastructure cost (plus the bureaucracy involved in that), then customer service, billing, and technicians and the such. One product and one price means low overhead and extremely competitive. One the cost of the infrastructure is paid off, then the money is REALLY good.
So what you pay now is a per month connection fee that for the most part is a portion of the cost to build the system that brings the content to you. Now al a carte is a request to take a very simple system and make it relatively very complicated. More equipment to control and regulate what each customer gets, these systems would of course be much more software based compared to the very dumb light switch service=on/off situation right now. The number of switches now is one per customer, based on did they pay the bill. You are proposing changing that to a number of switches equal to the number of possible customers multiplied by the number of possible channels they ever hope for the system to support (needs to be scalable). The handling of the switches would need to be related an exponentially more complicated billing system very likely bringing in security issues. Think Sigma6, in general, more things involved is always more thing to go wrong. No offense to anyone who works as a technician for a cable company, but at present it really doesn't take much of a rocket scientist to operate these networks, and even if you would disagree, you are talking about increasing the level of technical knowledge by a maintenance exponentially, meaning significantly more training, and significantly higher salaries.
So an exponentially more complicated system that personally I can only imagine would be exponentially more expensive to operate so they can more carefully micromanage their billing scheme based on something that doesn't even impact them. The only cost thing they really pay for and bill you for is infrastructure and maintenance! Why should they care at all which channels you watch? If anything, just for the sake of simplicity alone, they should just meter the time you spend watching tv per television. I think that would correlate much better than which stations you watch with regard to what costs are actually incurred by the cable company, and just embed that into the cost of the installation and you end of with a system that isn't any more expensive on the whole across the entire customer base.
Is $30 really so much? You think it would even be possible to design and implement a system where it would even be reasonable to bring you one channel for < $30/month? I would bet that an al a carte system would have a surcharge of at least $30/month before you even get any channels. The reality is tha
And I wish I had a job where I could blame others for problems that only affect me, or where simply finding another person who is having the same problem establishes a pattern of behavior to justify throwing blame as I please.
Guess we can't have everything. Oh well.
Maybe instead of the problem being slashdot, it is a secret spy plane or UFO reading the information on your brain from space and it is having a hard time distinguishing between you and your computer causing interference. You could test this hypothesis by reinstalling from scratch (to get the aliens out), after wrapping your computer in aluminum foil. If the problem goes away, then you can know it was the UFOs or government spy planes.
Stupid aliens always trying to mess with out brains./sarcastic rant
Have you tried another browser, particularly in a virtual machine to track down where the corruption is taking place? Have you looked at the source you are receiving to identify where the bug is?
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
And don't forget embedded taxes including cost of compliance and other "employer paid" taxes that obviously can't make the product cheaper. VAT is just the most obvious tax that drives up the price paid by the consumer. I would love to be wrong cause a VAT is being proposed in the US right now, but VAT isn't the only taxes companies are required to pay, right? They still have corporate income taxes, payroll taxes, and the variety of taxes called "insurance policies", which all become part of the cost of doing business, and so of course become a part of the unit price for any product, which is always bought with money the consumer has after their own taxes are paid.
Of course, just adding things up, of course not criticizing it necessarily, because those taxes are going towards government programs that make the world a better place for everybody, right?
I think the availability of information has been good. It is the ability to filter through it today that has become the challenge. Not that you need to read everything and draw an opinion, but just that there is every type of information out there to sort through AS YOU DESIRE makes for a great intellectual experience. Sometimes it is useful to see a wide range of bad articles on a subject to gather an idea of where a large number of people get confused.
Poor organization of information is a great defeat, not an over abundance of information. The opinions always existed, now you simply have the opportunity to experience them as you desire. The rest takes personal responsibility. If you are going to let someone else filter the information, why not just let them draw the conclusions and make decisions in your life for you? Of course that isn't as bad as it sounds, that is all what business and politics is about anyway; how much responsibility do you want to have over your own life? I just have an issue with other people asking whether or not I own and take responsibility for MY life.
Personally, while I often get overwhelmed by the volumes of information online (particularly so much not worth reading) I am grateful for the ability to do so. I may be able to grow my own food, but I choose to not take responsibility for that. I instead take responsibility for picking foods that others have produced. Of course I typically just trust that the store provides quality food... or not. I don't read about a lot of things, but I do read. What I don't get is how I could possibly benefit from less availability of information. I am grateful for Google greatly assisting in the ability to sort through the info, even if they don't make it too easy:)
This reminds me of a conclusion I came to recently; the line between fiction and non-fiction is silly. My wife reads a lot of fiction, and I read mostly non-fiction, but I do read fiction every once in awhile. She proposed a question and it got me to thinking, "What motivates me to read fiction?". What it came down to is that I pick books based on the level of insight they may provide and how much it may challenge what I currently think or believe. For the most part, I find that in non-fiction, but every once in awhile I find it in fiction. Most often this is classics that have stood the test of time.
Random blogs can be interesting or inspiring. The value isn't in what they say, but in how much they make you think or question things. Poorly written or researched opinions rare contain insight or thought provoking questions (as is suggestion FTA). I would prefer that if an article is short to state a problem and propose difficult to answer questions, then leave the reader to search for the answer, because the necessary information to answer clearly is rarely the scope of a blog.
Some people read something and want to read more, others either forget, or just consider it all they need to do to affirm their opinion. This is why I get upset at people that generally criticize wikipedia as a whole. It is great for what it is, and a good place to start to get an idea of what you can learn. If all you ever read is the wiki article on something, then you are going to have the same issue as you would have with any subject for which you only read two pages on. Wiki is what it is and is great, for the thinker, and the non-thinker. Criticize a non-thinker for not thinking, not for the sources. I really liked what the author said about confidence of knowledge and opinions.
Slashdot Mirror
I think your calculations are a bit off. For all the people licensed to use linux, you are going to need ~99.9999999833% of them to care about just one bug and have the ability and desire to fix it for the entire user base to benefit.
May not seem very efficient, but it is positive sum.
For the sake of argument, lets just say 100% of Americans care about health care and fiscal responsibility. Hmm... my bet is a couple high school students will do a science fair project that will successfully demonstrate safe clean nano scale cold fusion technology before Social Security and Medicare get a balanced budget that is properly secured for future obligations.
Of course, you say users don't care about open source in a practical way. Well duh; if they cared in a practical way, they wouldn't be called users, they would be called developers. So all you really need to ask yourself is 1) Do developers care about source code? and 2) Should users with a spark of intelligence and ambition have it within their ABILITY to become a developer?
Proprietary Software is akin to the scribe culture of long ago, where certain people read books to most people. Few people could read, and very few could write. Either way, paper was very expensive. When the printing press came along, and books started becoming cheap, books became open source; ordinary people, not just those of an elite class, began to read. Quickly came the age of enlightenment, as more people began to read, so did many people begin to write.
So I ask you, why do you need the source code to your books? Are you going to fix problems in stories and notify the author? Are you going to write a novel? Of the install base of books in homes, how many of those do you think have taken advantage of the open source nature of those books to write a book of their own outside of academic circles? Inexpensive open source books have been around for a few hundred years, though writing and libraries have been around for thousands. Digital computers have been around for about 70 years, but was restricted to a fairly elite class of people such as university students. Open source software in the 90's was much like the way scientists share their information with each other. Servers based on open source software became very popular with the birth of the Internet, and Linux for the non-geek really started to make an appearance about 2004 with OpenSuse followed by Fedora and Ubuntu. Non-geek / non-business people only just starting to get computers... early 90's? Computer literacy (basic usability) becomes mandatory at just about every job by the late 90's. With the Internet, and the human readability of html, everybody was making web pages with about much class and style as a 4 year old writing his first book half way into his kindergarten.
Computer literacy is VERY important. I would like to hope that everybody feels it is within their ability to learn and contribute to an open source project if they desired to. I have known adults that do not have basic reading comprehension. Some are embarrassed, but many just don't think it is important or relevant to their lives, though I think it has been at least 10 years since I have heard that argument from an adult. We can either have a class structure of producers and consumers, programmers and non-programmers with the programmer class picking who will move up to become a creator, and who will not, or we can recognise that good software does exist and improve for its own sake as it serves people.
You can either create a class system (proprietary), Give people the freedom to choose whether or not they want to support the class system (MIT/BSD), or fight the system with hostility and dogmatic ideology (GPL).
Most people don't care how their computer works any more than their care, their house, or even biological functions. But when it comes to using that as an excuse to keep that information away from people, I err on the side of hostile dogmatic ideology.
I guess it can depend on who you mean
I am going to have to agree with the people that modded this troll, though personally, I think it is more like flame. You say that MS donated this code out of pure self interest as if it is different from any one else's contribution. Take the Wacom Driver project for example. Wacom only writes drivers for platforms they can "profit" from which they have determined are Windows and MacOSX. The Wacom Project Team has selfishly determined that isn't good enough for them AND that they have the necessary skill to remedy the situation. Why would a person who is greedy and selfish go out of their way to be inefficient and non-pragmatic about their approach? If what they desire is a driver, their greedy selfish desires are better met as an open source community project. The more people like them that want that driver sooner than later will selfishly commit resources towards improving the project. But keep in mind that their purpose is the driver. If they were producing the driver for money to sell to people that want support, it might make sense to keep it closed source and simply hire as many people necessary to slap together something together that looks good enough that will get people to buy it and sell updates as they implement new features to the best of their ability with the hope that nobody trys to compete against them. One thing I think may be different if such a company existed is that you would see drivers for more than just Wacom tablets, doesn't matter to them that people are buying inferior tablets.
:)
To my understanding, one of the reasons why there is no support for any other tablet is that it would run their resources thin. They selfishly believe Wacom makes the best tablets despite the fact that there are likely a lot of people out there that can't afford the most expensive brand. So for now there is just one driver. So what? If it is worth it to someone to develop drivers for other brands, then it will happen, but I expect that for most people the difference in cost of the tablets does not justify the cost of development. (Oooh, those greedy developers!)
Just like any other code contribution, which is nothing more than information, people may or may not choose to review it, may or may not choose to fix it, may or may not choose to implement it, may or may not choose to maintain it, may or may not choose to extend it. That could be 1 person, a hundred people, or nobody. What you are doing is passing judgment on how other people should feels about it and calling for censorship, as if you need to protect people from how they choose to spend their time.
How altruistic of you.
Sorry, but I put your comments in the same category as the complainers on brainstorm.ubuntu.com that DEMAND (often in quite colorful language) their ideas that are highly rated by other non-programs be implemented by the development team. There have even been "resolutions" passed giving timelines in which developers must respond to their inquiries. WTF? These people obviously don't have the first clue about how people become "Official Ubuntu Developers", let alone how the dev process works. Personally, I might like to call Project Brainstorm a total flop and just get rid of it. On the other hand, evidently some people like it, sometimes devs respond. I'll just try to convince myself that it is a conspiracy to keep idiots off of launchpad. What I can do about this 'issue' is reserve the right not to go there.
As a side note, I guess, take a look at the number of open bugs with patches over a year old that nobody has bothered to take the few moments necessary to test and confirm so that it can be implemented. It is astounding! But somehow there is still rapid progress.
Which is why it works :)
One of the arguments I make to promote GPL is that it is entirely selfish and meritocratic. It is economically inefficient for a person to produce a product that is not useful to the producer. For example, it is useful for doctors to know medicine whether or not they practice. Same is true of plumbers, carpenters, farmers, etc. It also applies to engineers, software or otherwise. Microsoft "produces" a product for the purpose of selling it. They must make the product something people want, or think they want (Oversimplified I know, but still true). By contrast, people producing GPL work are initially producing something strictly for themselves. With information distribution having reached a cost of effectively zero, and development cost covered (because the intent of the product was the product), all that can happen by releasing the code (assuming it is a tool and not a trade secret) is that other people will selfishly take the code, rather than reinvent the wheel, and change or improve the product for THEIR own purpose. From there, a somewhat natural evolution occurs; the software replicates as people find it useful, and it mutates as people find it worth their time to take what exists and improve it for their own purpose, and hopefully re-releasing it back into the wild.
So I think this whole argument is totally obnoxious. Whatever Microsoft's motivation for the release of their code may be, all you have is more information available for which anybody may do with as they please. I may be inclined to assume that Microsoft has put in the minimal effort to tease the community with information that could be useful in producing a useful product, and whether or not it is controversial to put in the effort to make the information useful to them doesn't take away from the fact that Microsoft has done NOTHING (this time) to harm the community. An ability or inability to rationalize a decision must be the sole responsibility of the person making that decision.
If Microsoft is trying to bait the community into doing work for them, who cares. It is either worth it, or isn't. Microsoft's hope is that they can get SOMEONE do do the rest of the work. It is a calculated risk. As far as the community goes, I see no hostility in informing Microsoft that their half-ass contribution isn't worth the effort of implementing, if that be the case, and Microsoft can recalculate their move.
The code isn't going to be deleted, it will either be commented out, or stored elsewhere and a line item added to a TO-DO list somewhere. This happens all the time. Last Ubuntu release (9.04) I put the majority of my time into two projects. Upon review for implementation, one was accepted and merged. The other, despite the fact I had managed to close out almost a dozen bug reports, was implemented incorrectly (for the sake of argument), and rejected. The days of work were not recoverable and basically wasted. Nobody picked up where I had left off, including myself. Those bugs are still open. It is just how things work. I wasn't offended, nor do I think the maintainer was rude for not accepting the work as is. I learned a lot from the experience and I still use my own version of the package.
The only thing notable this time is that the 'contribution' was made by Microsoft. If some sloppy hacker pieced this together by way of reverse engineering, threw it out there and walked away, who knows what would happen to the code. It might rouse some discussion on the mailing list with comments like "wow cool, but wtf? Anyone want to tackle this s***?" for awhile, but it certainly wouldn't make headline news, because in my observation, that is just another day in the life.
Judging from what people have posted (here and elsewhere), I think there are enough great schools out there that actually care about technology and education to serve a diverse community with quality cross-platform software that the rest can simply be disregarded. I think judging a school on its staff is perfectly reasonable. "Linux support" isn't something that exists in a bubble, but one of many things that should be warning signs about the environment.
Why didn't you just skip to the next article? I think the question was important to the person that posted it, and I think there are enough people here to help him, and maybe get an interesting discussion from the few people that still come here for that reason. Or do you believe he may hae been just as well served by using Yahoo Answers?
If their email is MS Outlook, and their web interface is written in ActiveX, then you're screwed
I think you over qualified your statement. Fixed it for ya.
Education is something that you get for your life, not something that you get for your job. If you are getting an education for your job, then blind obedience is the most pragmatic way to approach a class so long as you make the grade and it enables you to perform a particular task. Sometimes going to school can be a requirement of parole. Often times just being in a school and being in the environment is better than sitting around at home playing video games. I even have friends that go to school because their parents require it if they are going to continue to pay their rent.
On the other hand, if you are getting an education for your life, not only can it help you in a career, but it helps you in every part of life you want to apply your education. That is a bit more of a challenge because there is more to consider. When you are looking for an education for your life, a school that matches your principles and values become important. Class size, diversity of staff, which federal programs they accept money from, non-discrimination policy, How good the Chinese food is, and the range of technology they embrace. Schools are ranked all the time by other peoples standards, and they are generally good guidelines. However, imho, one should check the data that is used to determine their ranking, but why not take it a step further and feel whether or not this is the type of environment you want to immerse yourself in that you hope will guide you for the rest of your life.
From what I have seen, a person that takes responsibility for their own education for themselves and on their own terms will be more successful in life and in their career, and likely to get better grades on top of that, than anyone that has gone to Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, MIT cause their parents told them they had to.
And if you are a wack-nut Linux fanboy RMS worshiping FOSS junkie, or just someone that has grown up Linux and take pleasure in being a part of the community on some small level, I believe one is going to be much happier and successful in an environment as important as college where your culture is going to be embraced.
This is really about any belief or ideal. If you can' stand up for what you believe in, just little selfish things that YOU want (keeping in mind this is you going to college, not anyone else when it comes down to your choices), how are you ever supposed to stand up for what you know once you are there, let alone later in life?
Of course if all this just sounds silly, then it probably doesn't matter which school you end up going to. (obligatory straw-man)
Actually, I would expect that this applies a whole lot less to species that reproduce asexually because while mutations still occur, you do not get an opportunity to see that mutation mix and match with other combinations of genes, only clones. For example, cell 1 with mutation A and cell 2 with mutation B isn't going to breed and in future generations possibly produce cells with mutation AB but by normal chance that both could occur at random.
Sounds like they simply confirmed with real data what before was simply believed to be extremely likely.
Have you opened one?
First of all, I don't think many microwaves are Turing Complete. If televisions are, it is a relatively new thing. To my understanding, most of the translating that goes on in a TV is hardcoded, and not really "processed". Decent DVD players use laptop parts past the drives with ONLY the parts necessary to get a proper signal out to a tv / amp. Those restrictions are NATURAL rather than unnatural. Engineers didn't take time and money to take a complete set of working hardware and figure out ways to make it not work. Many calculators make decent computers with respect to their hardware, especially if it has a full keyboard, but again, any restrictions there are natural, not artificial.
Further, Hardware accelerated X11 kernel extension for Linux on PS3 was released almost 2 years ago.
Sometimes hardware just is what it is and can do what it will do. Without artificial restrictions, hackers will easily be able to do what they want with the raw power of the device and bend it to their will. artificial restrictions just means it takes more time and effort which may or may not be worth it. Companies can also HELP by releasing information that can assist hackers in doing whatever they want. I would like to hope that Sony is just no longer doing a lot of the kind work to make it especially easy to install Linux; a complete 180 from providing hypervisor drivers to flat out DRM seems unlikely. I am sure the mod community will catch up in a few days.
You aren't very familiar with Sony, are you?
all you are saying is that proprietary restrictions work both ways, which is exactly one of the issues brought up by FOSS promoters about proprietary software. The Commodore, Amiga, Atari, and others of their time were "computers" or "consoles" based on what was desired by the USER. Today, users PAY console / SDK developers to provide "protections" against open third party development to provide an incentive of non-competition to large gaming companies by ensuring that the only games / software is going to be on a shelf next to their own product released by other big game companies that also had to pay big licencing fees. Sony doesn't care how many games for their system are sold other then its relationship to potential future licencing agreements. Units sold tell game makers how large their market is to determine cost benefit of buying the licence and producing / porting a game.
So just because despite everything inside of it being the same as any other desktop / laptop mix of parts that happens to have an IBM Power7 CPU for which WINDOWS will never be ported doesn't change anything. Does something become a "PC" when MS whack pack signs the drivers?
But of course, many arcade machines still running today have worn out, been gutted, had their entrails replaced with a Linux Server running MAME. So maybe it would be most accurate to say that consoles are arcade machines with annoying unnecessary restrictions tacked on.
But well said; on the upside you could probably put something like that on your resume and get a job at Sony, or even Apple or Microsoft in no time. Hell, you could probably get elected to public office.
Maybe what has been revolutionary is the wide spread knowledge of how much we still don't know. A decade ago, I thought I knew a lot about computers. Today I can only hope in my lifetime I might hope to even begin to understand a small piece of what is possible.
I think revolutions are social, not technological. Technology seems really mystical to outsiders. Ever had a non-geek looking over your shoulder while composing a regular expression? We think of the lightbulb as having been amazingly revolutionary in its time, but (im guessing) it is only revolutionary in hindsight. In its time it was a mere novelty; from the time of its first invention by Sir Humphrey Davy in 1811 to Thomas Edison's version in 1880 it was utterly useless. That is three generations of people that said the lightbulb had no practical application, just geeky amusement, and in their lifetime, THEY WERE RIGHT![REF]
The Internet has enabled many people to do a lot of the same things faster, others have been able to do things never before possible where geographic distance between two people is arbitrary, and for the first time in history controlling that communication with a gun has become virtually impossible. Alfred Griswold would be proud that the Internet has ruled with an iron fist that "The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas". "Unfortunately", potential isn't revolutionary unto itself.
Hmm... I still think the fact that it was as easy as it was to do this, in addition to how stupid the victim looks trumps the "childish nature" of the prankster. The prank was both serious, and non-violent. I think the ambition of the people behind the cause is made more real is over all net affect. Actions like this change the rules of the game; you don't think that this will haunt that lawyer for the rest of his life and possibly damage his ability to get clients, or be taken seriously by judges?
Playground rules always apply.
so you are saying that non-violence is not just ineffective, but also confusing?
Yeah, just submit to government and be grateful for whatever they decide you deserve. Your obedience is your only worthy offering to society. Opposing government can only get you in trouble because big government is obviously part of God's plan, and who are you to disrupt their divine right with your silly pranks.
If you would like a redress of grievances you need to apply for a permit and wait in line like everyone else and when it is your turn you will be given a date, time, place, appropriate method and approved material for protest, as well as the limit on the number of protesters you may have at your rally; this all assumes that there are enough officers available to ensure that your operation is peaceful and not subversive, distracting, offensive, or inconvenient to the public. This ensures that everyone gets a fair and equal turn to have their voice heard.
Hm,.. I was trying to come up with something sarcastic, but then I realised that really is the way it works in the US, and I really couldn't come up with anything more weird. *sigh*
Personally, firm non-violent and fully inconvenient pranks to address an issue is anything but childish. Geeks control the Internet and all these electronic systems. Bureaucrats are very effective at manipulating people with their versions of the truth. Governments can burn books and confiscate property and there is little to be done at gun point. But in a free information world, with the method and control so tightly integrated, a natural separation of power has been created that is very difficult to subvert with force. People, particularly governments, are using more and more technology where an understanding of the technology both unnecessary and difficult for end users.
Attack the Internet, and the Internet will fight back. What is going to happen here is that it will be far more expensive for the government to hunt down this individual than visa versa. Further, I expect that the "public outcry", people trying to wrap their heads around the issue, will expose the unnatural force of extreme corruption involved in the protection of the content distribution monopoly at the public's expense. Maybe not much, but I expect that the government is going to come out looking like a bit of a bully, and at least incompetent.
Why don't game publishers just get into the business of used games and compete like anyone else. Lots of other retail stores have tried to do the used game thing and have had very mixed results. I don't like GameStop personally, but I must admit they perfected their business beyond others. Game publishers would have a tremendous advantage because they could advertise on their own boxes. Games cost virtually nothing to print, so why not have some kind of system where if they return the game to the publisher they get points towards whatever they want that would be enough of incentive to keep the media off the used market.
They control the source of the distribution and they are complaining about inability to give customers a reason to extend value? How is this necessarily different than a car company complaining that customers don't come back to the manufacturer for maintenance, or better, that people aren't buying enough new cars because people keep getting their old car fixed?
???
While I can understand your argument in principle, I think you are overvaluing the royalties paid by the cable company to content providers as a portion of the cost to bring that content to you. For the most part the only cost to the cable company is channel integration. I would bet that maintenance of that database is nominal. Content providers make their money off of commercials, but after that, cable companies are pirates of that content. If I remember correctly, the settlement that came from those cases was that cable companies would be required to provide some number of public broadcasting channels for some number of stations they pirate. So after they have built this giant content pipe, they regulate who does and does not connect to their giant data stream in a very simple way, on or off, with very little exception. The exceptions are 1) content where per channel royalties exist (HBO, Cinemax, Encore, whatever), and 2) per program royalties channels(pay-per-view). I would expect that there is some speculation going on and the cable companies pay bulk block rates, bringing the channels cheaper to you (assuming you could even get them some other way) and likely making decent money on the side. BUT, the real business of the cable company is not the content, but the pipe. So cable companies pay for almost nothing but the initial infrastructure cost (plus the bureaucracy involved in that), then customer service, billing, and technicians and the such. One product and one price means low overhead and extremely competitive. One the cost of the infrastructure is paid off, then the money is REALLY good.
So what you pay now is a per month connection fee that for the most part is a portion of the cost to build the system that brings the content to you. Now al a carte is a request to take a very simple system and make it relatively very complicated. More equipment to control and regulate what each customer gets, these systems would of course be much more software based compared to the very dumb light switch service=on/off situation right now. The number of switches now is one per customer, based on did they pay the bill. You are proposing changing that to a number of switches equal to the number of possible customers multiplied by the number of possible channels they ever hope for the system to support (needs to be scalable). The handling of the switches would need to be related an exponentially more complicated billing system very likely bringing in security issues. Think Sigma6, in general, more things involved is always more thing to go wrong. No offense to anyone who works as a technician for a cable company, but at present it really doesn't take much of a rocket scientist to operate these networks, and even if you would disagree, you are talking about increasing the level of technical knowledge by a maintenance exponentially, meaning significantly more training, and significantly higher salaries.
So an exponentially more complicated system that personally I can only imagine would be exponentially more expensive to operate so they can more carefully micromanage their billing scheme based on something that doesn't even impact them. The only cost thing they really pay for and bill you for is infrastructure and maintenance! Why should they care at all which channels you watch? If anything, just for the sake of simplicity alone, they should just meter the time you spend watching tv per television. I think that would correlate much better than which stations you watch with regard to what costs are actually incurred by the cable company, and just embed that into the cost of the installation and you end of with a system that isn't any more expensive on the whole across the entire customer base.
Is $30 really so much? You think it would even be possible to design and implement a system where it would even be reasonable to bring you one channel for < $30/month? I would bet that an al a carte system would have a surcharge of at least $30/month before you even get any channels. The reality is tha
And I wish I had a job where I could blame others for problems that only affect me, or where simply finding another person who is having the same problem establishes a pattern of behavior to justify throwing blame as I please.
/sarcastic rant
Guess we can't have everything. Oh well.
Maybe instead of the problem being slashdot, it is a secret spy plane or UFO reading the information on your brain from space and it is having a hard time distinguishing between you and your computer causing interference. You could test this hypothesis by reinstalling from scratch (to get the aliens out), after wrapping your computer in aluminum foil. If the problem goes away, then you can know it was the UFOs or government spy planes.
Stupid aliens always trying to mess with out brains.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
Who uses an option base of one for binary?
Do you have the same problem controlling your hand with your brain walking down the street?
Is it 10% of the home value, or 10% of the appreciation + capital gains based on income?
And don't forget embedded taxes including cost of compliance and other "employer paid" taxes that obviously can't make the product cheaper. VAT is just the most obvious tax that drives up the price paid by the consumer. I would love to be wrong cause a VAT is being proposed in the US right now, but VAT isn't the only taxes companies are required to pay, right? They still have corporate income taxes, payroll taxes, and the variety of taxes called "insurance policies", which all become part of the cost of doing business, and so of course become a part of the unit price for any product, which is always bought with money the consumer has after their own taxes are paid.
Of course, just adding things up, of course not criticizing it necessarily, because those taxes are going towards government programs that make the world a better place for everybody, right?
I think the availability of information has been good. It is the ability to filter through it today that has become the challenge. Not that you need to read everything and draw an opinion, but just that there is every type of information out there to sort through AS YOU DESIRE makes for a great intellectual experience. Sometimes it is useful to see a wide range of bad articles on a subject to gather an idea of where a large number of people get confused.
:)
Poor organization of information is a great defeat, not an over abundance of information. The opinions always existed, now you simply have the opportunity to experience them as you desire. The rest takes personal responsibility. If you are going to let someone else filter the information, why not just let them draw the conclusions and make decisions in your life for you? Of course that isn't as bad as it sounds, that is all what business and politics is about anyway; how much responsibility do you want to have over your own life? I just have an issue with other people asking whether or not I own and take responsibility for MY life.
Personally, while I often get overwhelmed by the volumes of information online (particularly so much not worth reading) I am grateful for the ability to do so. I may be able to grow my own food, but I choose to not take responsibility for that. I instead take responsibility for picking foods that others have produced. Of course I typically just trust that the store provides quality food... or not. I don't read about a lot of things, but I do read. What I don't get is how I could possibly benefit from less availability of information. I am grateful for Google greatly assisting in the ability to sort through the info, even if they don't make it too easy
This reminds me of a conclusion I came to recently; the line between fiction and non-fiction is silly. My wife reads a lot of fiction, and I read mostly non-fiction, but I do read fiction every once in awhile. She proposed a question and it got me to thinking, "What motivates me to read fiction?". What it came down to is that I pick books based on the level of insight they may provide and how much it may challenge what I currently think or believe. For the most part, I find that in non-fiction, but every once in awhile I find it in fiction. Most often this is classics that have stood the test of time.
Random blogs can be interesting or inspiring. The value isn't in what they say, but in how much they make you think or question things. Poorly written or researched opinions rare contain insight or thought provoking questions (as is suggestion FTA). I would prefer that if an article is short to state a problem and propose difficult to answer questions, then leave the reader to search for the answer, because the necessary information to answer clearly is rarely the scope of a blog.
Some people read something and want to read more, others either forget, or just consider it all they need to do to affirm their opinion. This is why I get upset at people that generally criticize wikipedia as a whole. It is great for what it is, and a good place to start to get an idea of what you can learn. If all you ever read is the wiki article on something, then you are going to have the same issue as you would have with any subject for which you only read two pages on. Wiki is what it is and is great, for the thinker, and the non-thinker. Criticize a non-thinker for not thinking, not for the sources. I really liked what the author said about confidence of knowledge and opinions.