Perhaps you haven't heard yet, but it there are computers being sold today without Windows. There are even computers being sold on which Windows will not ever run.
Yes, you are correct that requiring a computer at all is perhaps unfair, although in reality most federal grant applicants will probably need to have a computer anyway. However, the ADDITIONAL requirement of having Windows is not merely unfair, but pointlessly so (as proven by the fact that many of the current systems this is supposed to replace are OS independent).
In raw numbers, I can buy a brand new, perfectly functional computer for $200. Putting Windows on it would cost me an additional $70, and provide me no meaningful additional functionality other than that I can now use this new federal grant application process. That's what the "Microsoft Tax" is, and it's quite reasonable to complain about it.
I don't know. Linspire is the primary OS on those $199 Walmart PCs.
And before you say only Linux people will buy those, you should consider that Clark Howard has one, and mentions how satisfied he is with it on a regular basis (he also talked up OpenOffice recently).
There are plenty of people in the world that never install anything on their computers beyond what it came with, and those are exactly the kind of people those cheap Linspire systems will appeal to. Should they really be left practically naked to the world like that?
It's been a few years since I stopped using their products. This is just another item on my list of reasons not to go back.
Of course, I can't say with any certainty that the TaxAct folks aren't doing something similar. I can only hope that they realize I'm voting with my wallet for a company that doesn't behave that way.
The problem is that they charge you a penalty for underpayment, so in the long run you actually do come out ahead if you overpay (unless, of course, you know exactly how much you'll be making this year and there's absolutely no possibility that you will make any more than that. I've never been in that situation.)
I agree. I don't live anywhere near Baltimore, but next time I have cause to buy something at Best Buy I will be swinging by the bank first to get some $2 bills.
It's a perfectly valid question (and my wife is a cop, so I am familiar with the concept).
Being arrested I can understand, though I think it's extreme in this case. Handcuffed to a pole, with leg restraints, is the kind of treatment normally reserved only for those who are violently resisting or likely to try and escape. I'd be interested in hearing their justification.
At my last job we had a bunch of old SCSI HDDs laying around with no real purpose, so we busted them open for the magnets (not sure if they're neodymium, but they're pretty powerful).
One guy thought it would be funny to wear a pair of them like clip-on earrings. He doesn't recommend trying it...
What you aren't taking into account is the info he didn't provide.
What you aren't taking into account is what information he did provide: specifically that whatever their current system is, it isn't sufficient to prevent or find lost packages.
My guess is the drivers log into them. Who's driving is solved.
No, who's logged in is solved. Who's driving is a whole different question. Perhaps it hasn't occured to you that material handling isn't generally a field sought after by the highly literate?
Maybe the driver some how logs when he drops something off, there goes loading, unloading and whether he has anything and all the other issues you mention.
If this was working, the question would never have been asked!
You are correct that adding RFID tags is a good solution. Where you are incorrect is that tracking the products position relative to a moving object (such as a forklift) is a good idea.
A much simpler solution is to track the product's position relative to something that doesn't move, such as your shelving. This leads to 2 possibilities:
The most certain, and probably most expensive, is to make the RFID scanners part of your shelves, and thus the shelves themselves keep track of what's on them. Expense would vary inversely with range.
Less expensive would be to put tags on the shelves as well, and have a mobile scanner which can then determine the position of any responding product tags relative the responding shelf tags. This solution leaves you open to the possibility of someone moving something by hand. This isn't that big of a problem as long if, as you pointed out, your forklift mounted scanner is continually mapping all the shelves it passes. But, if the particular misplaced product has been put in a little used corner of the warehouse, it could disappear for a long period of time. Note the literacy problem above: the person smart enough to think of looking in such a place is probably not the person who knows where those places are, and they almost never talk to each other.
Note also that with both of these solutions, questions like if the forklift is carrying anything, where it was picked up, or where it was dropped, off become irrelevant, since you know (with some reasonable amount of certainty, anyway) where the product is now, which is ultimately the only thing that matters. Both of these solutions allow you to track the position of the forklift, but that information is totally extraneous, since what we really care about is the position of the product (unless, of course, you've misplaced your forklift, but that isn't part of the problem statement).
Again, all of this should be obvious to anyone who has actually worked in a warehouse.
If Transmeta had done mass production of their evaluation board and sold it for $250 each, they'd have done well, even though that is way more than VIA's boards cost. Salespeople couldn't have changed that.
It's a chicken/egg problem. There's no point in mass production if you don't have a way to sell your product, which is of course the purpose of salespeople. OTOH, if you aren't mass producing, you don't need the kind of salespeople who sell mass produced product.
Hmm, maybe it's more of an inbreeding problem. Either way, the simultaneous lack of mass market vision and mass production feed off each other, creating a sort of vicious circle. A sufficient number of salespeople interested in mass marketing could certainly have changed that, though that really wasn't my point. My point was actually how little it would have cost them to hire a few people just to test the waters.
I probably would have bought one if they'd been available at a retail price.
And hey, if nobody wants to sell your product in Europe, sell it in Europe yourself. Honestly, how much does it cost to hire a couple of regional salesdrones? Just off the top of my head, one each in France, Germany, and England, strategically positioned near major industrial centers, would probably more than pay for themselves, even in the short term.
If he already knew that stuff, then the problem would already be solved. All he would have to do is extend his automatic item recognition to include locations, and from there it's a database problem.
The simple fact is that the position of the forklift is at best tertiary to the problem, and actually provides not a single bit of information relevant to finding packages. This much should be obvious to anyone who has ever done any kind of material handling.
SmallFurryCreature is right: aletterman is asking the wrong question, because he doesn't understand the problem.
Tracking the forklift gives you all the info that you need
No, tracking the forklift gives you all the information you need to find the forklift, and nothing more.
You might be able to make a good guess about where the goods are based on that information, but it's still a guess.
Tracking the position of the forklift does not tell you: Who's driving it; if it picks up or puts down a pallet, or if it's even carrying anything at all; what's on the pallet; if someone adds or removes items from a pallet, and what those items might be.
In short, it gives absolutely zero information that's relevant to the actual problem.
Even if I stoop to the level of using emotional, childish... Even if I totally descend to your level of debate
Please. Shooting slave owners on sight? Users enslaving themselves to software producers? BSDL producing a net loss of freedom? I never said any of those things. Every one is a strawman constructed entirely by you. If it's emotional, childish arguements you're looking for, I direct you to your own posts.
Clearly, both BSDL and GPL provide a net gain of freedom over the default state, which I will assume we can both agree is defined by US copyright law.
GPLed software, if it is worthwhile for anyone other than the origional author to do anything with it, always produces more free software. This is a gain over and above the origional free release, and it is precisely this cumulative gain that is the basis of my arguement. Indeed, this is the entire purpose of the GPL.
If the same software is instead released under the BSDL, it may produce more free software, but it is much more likely that any derivatives will be proprietary, thus the cumulative gain is greatly reduced in comparison to the GPLed version.
It's still a net gain when compared to the default state, but I supose you could say it's a net loss when compared to the GPL.
To be honest, I'm at a loss as to why the BSDL exists at all, at least in its current form. Without the advertising clause it's functionally no different from public domain. That's it's main weakness, in fact; it effectively becomes part of the commons, and is thus subject to the problems described in "The Tragedy of the Commons". (Clearly, the software itself isn't scarce, but the resources to create and improve it are.)
And don't think the irony of you declaring me the loser while invoking Godwin's Law on your own Hitler reference is lost on me. In keeping with Quirk's Exception, however, I will not be availing myself of your generousity. After all, for me to lose you would have had to address an arguement I actually made, and I'm curious to see if you will.
If part of the school's intent is to teach ethics, then carelessness in the security sense is a non-issue, as long as they: (a) have some method for detecting intrusions, (b) have a reliable system for reversing the changes, and (c) make sure the repercusions are well publicized.
I'm actually kinda suprised we don't hear about this sort of thing more often.
While shooting slave owners on sight may seem like an honorable thing to you, I still refuse to kill another human being.
If you're so smart, why do you have to resort to a straw man to refute my arguement? I asked which provides the greater amount of freedom, a question which you are apparently unable to answer.
I assert that banning slavery provides the greatest amount of freedom. Based on the same reasoning, I also assert that the GPL provides a greater amount of freedom than the BSDL, which allows the code to be "enslaved".
I said nothing about it being necessary, I simply stated that, if freedom can in fact be quantized, the GPL provides more of it than the BSDL.
If you want to insist that freedom only matters for the releaser of the code and those that recieve it directly from him, then you are a fool of limited vision. If you think you don't depend on others every day for everything you have, then you're even more foolish.
You're looking only at the short term, and not taking into account the long term consequences.
The BSDL only provides greater freedom to that narrow portion of the population which has an interest in producing proprietary software. There is no guarantee beyond that immediate payoff, since there is no incentive for derivatives to be free.
The GPL contains that incentive, resulting ultimately in more, and perhaps better, free software, as all derivatives must also be free. The freedom of the GPL thus has greater value to a greater number of people.
Which provides the greatest amount of freedom: allowing the freedom to own slaves, or banning slavery?
I'm simply applying that same reasoning the BSDL v GPL.
Imagine, for instance, a law putting a large insurance or auditing burdon on use of copyleft software.
If such a law applied only to a narrow subset of an industry, such as only copyleft software, I doubt it would be much more than a temporary inconvenience, as it wouldn't long survive the court challenge. I don't see the industry as a whole willingly taking on, let alone lobbying for, such a burden to their own profit margins just to hamper OSS.
No, it wouldn't make sense, but we are talking about politicians here, the kind of people who pass laws outlawing cheese.
Lucky for us the Founding Fathers took that into account when they wrote the Constitution. This is exactly why we have checks and balances.
To be fair, it is an extremely competitive niche market, but you're right about there being some serious money in it (otherwise it wouldn't be so competitive).
The particular Linux boxen mentioned here aren't a render farm, but rather a video server (think of it as a very expensive Tivo).
This particular box has a list price of $25k, and seems to be a strong competitor for other digital video tape recorder replacements, such as the Grass Valley M-Series (which IIRC starts at about $30k), and various other offerings from Sony, Leich, Pinnacle, etc. This is actually the bottom end of this market, which tops out with the Grass Valley Profile, at $75k+, depending on features.
If the school pays the bills and offers the service free
There's nothing free about it. He pays tuition, and a network connection is one of the services he's provided in return.
If you think that arguement won't fly in court, you're wrong. It will, and it has (I'm specifically thinking of CSU Humboldt, which got sued on that basis when their new library took to long to build. IIRC, the judgement against the school was a few million dollars).
It gives the licencee more options, hence it is a more free licence.
You have failed to understand my arguement, and you will continue to do so as long as you insist on defining freedom only in the simplest, most immediate terms. Which provides the greatest amount of freedom: allowing the freedom to own slaves, or abolishing slavery?
I am simply applying the same principles to BSDL v. GPL.
On the other hand, congrtess could pass a bill, or a judge make a decision, tomorrow which changed the impact of the GPL, say making the linux kernel unusable in commercial shops.
Since that would result in a fundamental change in the way copyright works in this country, I think the GPL being invalid would be the least of our worries. For that reason, this arguement seems little more than paranoid/delusional ranting.
Who do you think Bill would be more likely to manage to buy off, the FSF or some congresscritters?
Today, congresscritters is the obvious answer, but who can say what tomorrow will bring? Just look at Caldera/SCOX, and see what a difference a few years can make.
Freedom of people is the first thing to worry about, and BSDL gives more freedom.
I still disagree.
The GPL may grant less freedom to any given individual, but since derivative works created by others must also be free, that freedom has greater value as a whole, and thus the GPL is the more free license.
It's a matter of perspective. The BSDL is better only for people with an interest in creating proprietary software. For the rest of us, the GPL has far more value.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps you haven't heard yet, but it there are computers being sold today without Windows. There are even computers being sold on which Windows will not ever run.
Yes, you are correct that requiring a computer at all is perhaps unfair, although in reality most federal grant applicants will probably need to have a computer anyway. However, the ADDITIONAL requirement of having Windows is not merely unfair, but pointlessly so (as proven by the fact that many of the current systems this is supposed to replace are OS independent).
In raw numbers, I can buy a brand new, perfectly functional computer for $200. Putting Windows on it would cost me an additional $70, and provide me no meaningful additional functionality other than that I can now use this new federal grant application process. That's what the "Microsoft Tax" is, and it's quite reasonable to complain about it.
I was under the impression Suse (now part of Novell) distributed them on their installer cds
Nope, but their online update gives you the option of downloading the current Nvidia driver from Nvidia, and will then install it for you.
I don't know. Linspire is the primary OS on those $199 Walmart PCs.
And before you say only Linux people will buy those, you should consider that Clark Howard has one, and mentions how satisfied he is with it on a regular basis (he also talked up OpenOffice recently).
There are plenty of people in the world that never install anything on their computers beyond what it came with, and those are exactly the kind of people those cheap Linspire systems will appeal to. Should they really be left practically naked to the world like that?
its my computer, why cant i set it up the way i want to?
Because your spam-spewing zombie box is a problem for the rest of society. As they say: your right to swing your fist ends at my face.
Just because Larry's paranoid doesn't mean everyone isn't out to get him.
Yes it does, actually, by definition. If everyone really was out to get him, he wouldn't be paranoid.
Not to Intuit.
It's been a few years since I stopped using their products. This is just another item on my list of reasons not to go back.
Of course, I can't say with any certainty that the TaxAct folks aren't doing something similar. I can only hope that they realize I'm voting with my wallet for a company that doesn't behave that way.
The problem is that they charge you a penalty for underpayment, so in the long run you actually do come out ahead if you overpay (unless, of course, you know exactly how much you'll be making this year and there's absolutely no possibility that you will make any more than that. I've never been in that situation.)
I agree. I don't live anywhere near Baltimore, but next time I have cause to buy something at Best Buy I will be swinging by the bank first to get some $2 bills.
It's a perfectly valid question (and my wife is a cop, so I am familiar with the concept).
Being arrested I can understand, though I think it's extreme in this case. Handcuffed to a pole, with leg restraints, is the kind of treatment normally reserved only for those who are violently resisting or likely to try and escape. I'd be interested in hearing their justification.
At my last job we had a bunch of old SCSI HDDs laying around with no real purpose, so we busted them open for the magnets (not sure if they're neodymium, but they're pretty powerful).
One guy thought it would be funny to wear a pair of them like clip-on earrings. He doesn't recommend trying it...
What you aren't taking into account is the info he didn't provide.
What you aren't taking into account is what information he did provide: specifically that whatever their current system is, it isn't sufficient to prevent or find lost packages.
My guess is the drivers log into them. Who's driving is solved.
No, who's logged in is solved. Who's driving is a whole different question. Perhaps it hasn't occured to you that material handling isn't generally a field sought after by the highly literate?
Maybe the driver some how logs when he drops something off, there goes loading, unloading and whether he has anything and all the other issues you mention.
If this was working, the question would never have been asked!
You are correct that adding RFID tags is a good solution. Where you are incorrect is that tracking the products position relative to a moving object (such as a forklift) is a good idea.
A much simpler solution is to track the product's position relative to something that doesn't move, such as your shelving. This leads to 2 possibilities:
The most certain, and probably most expensive, is to make the RFID scanners part of your shelves, and thus the shelves themselves keep track of what's on them. Expense would vary inversely with range.
Less expensive would be to put tags on the shelves as well, and have a mobile scanner which can then determine the position of any responding product tags relative the responding shelf tags. This solution leaves you open to the possibility of someone moving something by hand. This isn't that big of a problem as long if, as you pointed out, your forklift mounted scanner is continually mapping all the shelves it passes. But, if the particular misplaced product has been put in a little used corner of the warehouse, it could disappear for a long period of time. Note the literacy problem above: the person smart enough to think of looking in such a place is probably not the person who knows where those places are, and they almost never talk to each other.
Note also that with both of these solutions, questions like if the forklift is carrying anything, where it was picked up, or where it was dropped, off become irrelevant, since you know (with some reasonable amount of certainty, anyway) where the product is now, which is ultimately the only thing that matters. Both of these solutions allow you to track the position of the forklift, but that information is totally extraneous, since what we really care about is the position of the product (unless, of course, you've misplaced your forklift, but that isn't part of the problem statement).
Again, all of this should be obvious to anyone who has actually worked in a warehouse.
If Transmeta had done mass production of their evaluation board and sold it for $250 each, they'd have done well, even though that is way more than VIA's boards cost. Salespeople couldn't have changed that.
It's a chicken/egg problem. There's no point in mass production if you don't have a way to sell your product, which is of course the purpose of salespeople. OTOH, if you aren't mass producing, you don't need the kind of salespeople who sell mass produced product.
Hmm, maybe it's more of an inbreeding problem. Either way, the simultaneous lack of mass market vision and mass production feed off each other, creating a sort of vicious circle. A sufficient number of salespeople interested in mass marketing could certainly have changed that, though that really wasn't my point. My point was actually how little it would have cost them to hire a few people just to test the waters.
Harsh, but true.
I probably would have bought one if they'd been available at a retail price.
And hey, if nobody wants to sell your product in Europe, sell it in Europe yourself. Honestly, how much does it cost to hire a couple of regional salesdrones? Just off the top of my head, one each in France, Germany, and England, strategically positioned near major industrial centers, would probably more than pay for themselves, even in the short term.
If he already knew that stuff, then the problem would already be solved. All he would have to do is extend his automatic item recognition to include locations, and from there it's a database problem.
The simple fact is that the position of the forklift is at best tertiary to the problem, and actually provides not a single bit of information relevant to finding packages. This much should be obvious to anyone who has ever done any kind of material handling.
SmallFurryCreature is right: aletterman is asking the wrong question, because he doesn't understand the problem.
Tracking the forklift gives you all the info that you need
No, tracking the forklift gives you all the information you need to find the forklift, and nothing more.
You might be able to make a good guess about where the goods are based on that information, but it's still a guess.
Tracking the position of the forklift does not tell you: Who's driving it; if it picks up or puts down a pallet, or if it's even carrying anything at all; what's on the pallet; if someone adds or removes items from a pallet, and what those items might be.
In short, it gives absolutely zero information that's relevant to the actual problem.
Even if I stoop to the level of using emotional, childish... Even if I totally descend to your level of debate
Please. Shooting slave owners on sight? Users enslaving themselves to software producers? BSDL producing a net loss of freedom? I never said any of those things. Every one is a strawman constructed entirely by you. If it's emotional, childish arguements you're looking for, I direct you to your own posts.
Clearly, both BSDL and GPL provide a net gain of freedom over the default state, which I will assume we can both agree is defined by US copyright law.
GPLed software, if it is worthwhile for anyone other than the origional author to do anything with it, always produces more free software. This is a gain over and above the origional free release, and it is precisely this cumulative gain that is the basis of my arguement. Indeed, this is the entire purpose of the GPL.
If the same software is instead released under the BSDL, it may produce more free software, but it is much more likely that any derivatives will be proprietary, thus the cumulative gain is greatly reduced in comparison to the GPLed version.
It's still a net gain when compared to the default state, but I supose you could say it's a net loss when compared to the GPL.
To be honest, I'm at a loss as to why the BSDL exists at all, at least in its current form. Without the advertising clause it's functionally no different from public domain. That's it's main weakness, in fact; it effectively becomes part of the commons, and is thus subject to the problems described in "The Tragedy of the Commons". (Clearly, the software itself isn't scarce, but the resources to create and improve it are.)
And don't think the irony of you declaring me the loser while invoking Godwin's Law on your own Hitler reference is lost on me. In keeping with Quirk's Exception, however, I will not be availing myself of your generousity. After all, for me to lose you would have had to address an arguement I actually made, and I'm curious to see if you will.
I agree.
If part of the school's intent is to teach ethics, then carelessness in the security sense is a non-issue, as long as they: (a) have some method for detecting intrusions, (b) have a reliable system for reversing the changes, and (c) make sure the repercusions are well publicized.
I'm actually kinda suprised we don't hear about this sort of thing more often.
While shooting slave owners on sight may seem like an honorable thing to you, I still refuse to kill another human being.
If you're so smart, why do you have to resort to a straw man to refute my arguement? I asked which provides the greater amount of freedom, a question which you are apparently unable to answer.
I assert that banning slavery provides the greatest amount of freedom. Based on the same reasoning, I also assert that the GPL provides a greater amount of freedom than the BSDL, which allows the code to be "enslaved".
I said nothing about it being necessary, I simply stated that, if freedom can in fact be quantized, the GPL provides more of it than the BSDL.
If you want to insist that freedom only matters for the releaser of the code and those that recieve it directly from him, then you are a fool of limited vision. If you think you don't depend on others every day for everything you have, then you're even more foolish.
You're looking only at the short term, and not taking into account the long term consequences.
The BSDL only provides greater freedom to that narrow portion of the population which has an interest in producing proprietary software. There is no guarantee beyond that immediate payoff, since there is no incentive for derivatives to be free.
The GPL contains that incentive, resulting ultimately in more, and perhaps better, free software, as all derivatives must also be free. The freedom of the GPL thus has greater value to a greater number of people.
Which provides the greatest amount of freedom: allowing the freedom to own slaves, or banning slavery?
I'm simply applying that same reasoning the BSDL v GPL.
Imagine, for instance, a law putting a large insurance or auditing burdon on use of copyleft software.
If such a law applied only to a narrow subset of an industry, such as only copyleft software, I doubt it would be much more than a temporary inconvenience, as it wouldn't long survive the court challenge. I don't see the industry as a whole willingly taking on, let alone lobbying for, such a burden to their own profit margins just to hamper OSS.
No, it wouldn't make sense, but we are talking about politicians here, the kind of people who pass laws outlawing cheese.
Lucky for us the Founding Fathers took that into account when they wrote the Constitution. This is exactly why we have checks and balances.
To be fair, it is an extremely competitive niche market, but you're right about there being some serious money in it (otherwise it wouldn't be so competitive).
The particular Linux boxen mentioned here aren't a render farm, but rather a video server (think of it as a very expensive Tivo).
This particular box has a list price of $25k, and seems to be a strong competitor for other digital video tape recorder replacements, such as the Grass Valley M-Series (which IIRC starts at about $30k), and various other offerings from Sony, Leich, Pinnacle, etc. This is actually the bottom end of this market, which tops out with the Grass Valley Profile, at $75k+, depending on features.
Yes, in this case it would be a Digital Disk Recorder (as opposed to Video Tape Recorder).
If the school pays the bills and offers the service free
There's nothing free about it. He pays tuition, and a network connection is one of the services he's provided in return.
If you think that arguement won't fly in court, you're wrong. It will, and it has (I'm specifically thinking of CSU Humboldt, which got sued on that basis when their new library took to long to build. IIRC, the judgement against the school was a few million dollars).
It gives the licencee more options, hence it is a more free licence.
You have failed to understand my arguement, and you will continue to do so as long as you insist on defining freedom only in the simplest, most immediate terms. Which provides the greatest amount of freedom: allowing the freedom to own slaves, or abolishing slavery?
I am simply applying the same principles to BSDL v. GPL.
On the other hand, congrtess could pass a bill, or a judge make a decision, tomorrow which changed the impact of the GPL, say making the linux kernel unusable in commercial shops.
Since that would result in a fundamental change in the way copyright works in this country, I think the GPL being invalid would be the least of our worries. For that reason, this arguement seems little more than paranoid/delusional ranting.
Who do you think Bill would be more likely to manage to buy off, the FSF or some congresscritters?
Today, congresscritters is the obvious answer, but who can say what tomorrow will bring? Just look at Caldera/SCOX, and see what a difference a few years can make.
Freedom of people is the first thing to worry about, and BSDL gives more freedom.
I still disagree.
The GPL may grant less freedom to any given individual, but since derivative works created by others must also be free, that freedom has greater value as a whole, and thus the GPL is the more free license.
It's a matter of perspective. The BSDL is better only for people with an interest in creating proprietary software. For the rest of us, the GPL has far more value.