Well, there used to be. But the time of the romantic Sicilian mafioso is long gone and we are now in the era of the ruthless backstabbing russian gangbangers running corporate multinational. So I guess the one with honor are somewhere at the bottom of lake Michigan or in a retirement pension.:)
The mistake of the journalist was to assume that any network at all is secure.
They were lucky their account info were only stolen for "fun", I doubt anyone else would have had the decency to tell them they had been compromised.
I will side with the people who think that if you attend a "black hat" conference and dare use a) a computer that you don't own, b) on a network that you don't know, c) to access unencrypted private information, you are fair game.
IMHO:
1/ The journalists that were "hacked" don't deserve writing about a topic they can't seem to grasp.
2/ The black hat organizer should be begging for pardon to be so grossly incompetent they have set up a network which is either plugged in a hub or with a router so lame that arp spoofing is still an option. The "hack" is not detailed and I assume that by "proper separation of the workstation" they mean "Plugged everyone on a hub".
3/ Finally, because there is two side to a coin, those "hacker" journalist were in clear breach of the journalist ethos which is to report the news and not create the news. There is enough bad journalist around and I don't think those will be missed.
4/ In the AP news The EFF sounds like a bunch trigger happy hirsute lawyers ready to sue anyone for any reason whatsoever just to get their name in a press release.
It looks like any other amateurish RSS/atom/blah reader with three pane view and a "newspaper" view only not finished.
The plugin page even says it barely a prototype and that storage and features will be broken in the next iteration.
The roadmap clearly state that they have not much clue where to go next. My suggestion would be to look at software who are already trying to do the same and figure out their strong ideas and mistakes. e.g.: http://www.jetbrains.com/omea/
If I needed information about unreliable software implementing 5 years old concept I'd be browsing sourceforge not slashdot.
-5 Flamebait
It is indeed silly from an image point of view but it could make sense I think.
He doesn't have to buy carbon credit as an individual as far as I know. He's doing it out of interest to look good or true belief in his cause. That doesn't matter.
He could buy the credit from any company for the same price. Unless of course his company is selling him the credit below market price or waiving commission fees which then is unfair.
The company could sell the same credit for the same amount to someone else.
Gore would have the same amount of money removed and the company the same amount of money added Hence the same profit for Gore the chairman. I theory it wouldn't change anything if he were to buy from someone else. In theory of course.
IMHO carbon credit are probably worse than the supermarket plastic bag as a false solution to a real problem.
Fact: We (the human) generate to much pollution as it is now. If not for global warming at least for our own health.
Obvious solution: Generate less polution. Duh!
Economist solution: Lets give every company a "right to pollute" and highly polluting industries will have to buy enough rights from less polluting company if they want to keep polluting. This will create an incentive for polluting company to pollute less. The free market will do the rest as it had always done to help make the world a better place. (see: Africa).
Result: The free market will do it's job perfectly well: the cost carbon credits will balance itself to stay just at the right spot to be cheaper than upgrading and investing in more efficient technology. Why? Because if it ever becomes cheaper to upgrade than to buy credit, less credit will be bought and the price would drop. Seller will sell at the maximum possible price to have the highest profit without crashing the market which is just before it become interesting for the buyers to upgrade or change their ways. And the incentive goes down the drain.
This kind of mental masturbation is a load of crap. Regulation should be passed to force the various industries to pollute less. period. Not play with numbers in a spreadsheet and say: "Look Ma! My Jumbo Jet is carbon neutral since I bought carbon credit from that doctor's office in Jersey." 50 tons of CO2 released in the atmosphere is just that. Doesn't matter how the fuck you count it.
... there is no less plastic bag... ignore the bag that I buy, this is indeed my very own problem:
-1 plastic bag not given for free
+1 plastic bag bought from store to use as trash
------------ 0 Total gain in plastic quantity used in the household. Carbon Offset == 0.
I don't care about paying for the bags. I was noting that the "green" argument is crap. Let the supermarkets tell me that free bags make a 200,000USD dent in their budget every month and due to diminishing margin and increased food price they can't afford to do it anymore. That's fine. I run a business and I can understand. Just don't try to tell me it's going to save the planet.
I did my very small part with energy saving bulbs, tap water thingy supposed to save water, sorting my garbage between paper, plastic, glass and the rest and setting up global switch so I don't have dozen of electronic equipment sucking power while idling. And I dutifully pay my premium on "fair trade" products even though I don't believe it is a good solution nor that the money really goes where it should.
Even my washing machine was almost twice as expensive because of the 5 start energy rating and water saving feature. That investment paid for itself though.
Finally I don't think that asking people to "go green" is any solution. Government should coerce companies and people to do "the right thing" through taxes and incentives.
I am one of the few here to be happy about the current gas price, I understand the pain it is causing worldwide especially in under-developed nations but I sincerly hope it will double again and increase even more the incentive for govs and private companies to start looking at alternatives. A little jump in price and even BMW announces electric cars... double it and we might get the few millions investment we need to get decent solar panel mass produced at competitive rate. It might even become a requirement in future zoning law who knows...
You want to save the planet? Use a bike and vote for officials who will actually enforce environmental policies.
I collect them it seems:). All fifty of them have been very useful last time I moved into another flat. They are very tough and I managed to pack a lot of stuff in them...
I live in a european city, I do not own a car, I buy my groceries as I need two or three times a week on my way back home or when time permits because I like my vegetable and meat fresh. I don't know if I will or not go shopping when I leave in the morning or if I will have dinner outside or pull an all nighter at work and eat take away.
My point was just that even if I were to reuse the bags, all that it would do good for Mother Nature would be offset by the plastic trash bag I now buy to replace the bag they are not giving for free anymore. I can't see where it helps the environment.
Did anyone try to patent the act of patenting something stupid?
Abstract:
A system to provide a set of exclusive rights, hereafter referred as rights, granted by a state, hereafter referred as state, to an INVENTOR, hereafter referred as a retard, or his assignee, hereafter referred as an assignee, for a fixed period of time, hereafter referred as time, in exchange for a disclosure, hereafter referred as disclosure, of something, hereafter referred as a nothing, completely useless that makes people comment on how absurd it is when they hear about it in the PAST, PRESENT or FUTUR, with or without the help of PAST, PRESENT, NOT YET CONCEIVED, or PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE Technology or PAST PRESENT OR FUTURE LANGUAGE and COMMUNICATION DEVICE NOT LIMITED TO HUMAN FORM. USING WORD included in, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, the Merriam and Webster between page 0 and 9999 in PAST, PRESENT AND ALL FUTUR EDITION.
I used to reuse the plastic bag as trash bag like everyone else. Now I have to buy my grocery bag almost everytime I go shopping and buy additional trash bags which seems to be made of thicker plastic than the shopping bags I had before.
Carbon neutrality or disguised corporate greed? You choose.
Maybe they don't due to the fact that medical equipment and lunar probes have a much more limited feature set than say Microsoft Word and they cost orders of magnitude more money to put together.
If you are ready to have a fairly limited in scope operating system running on "state of the art" hardware(read: created somewhere in the 1970) there are some option for you if you have the cash.
But of course you probably don't and you expect your operating system to run your crappy non fault-tolerant hardware, 20 bucks usb printer, subsidized phone with and half compliant bluetooth stack, play "stolen" music and video in 200 different codec, all the while browsing the web and playing flash games and maybe another 50 or so other applications Microsoft and Linus Thorvald have limited control over.
To put it in perspective again, your highly sensitive medical device, has been designed with custom hardware, most probably redundant , run on dedicated chipset with under 10k LOC, when it's not purely mechanical. It is rarely networked if ever and you will NOT be AUTHORIZED to use or service them without a Biomedical Equipment Technology Training. Imagine how much you'd spend just to get one over to clean your keyboard from breadcrumb...
And.. it does fail from time to time as you can see here: http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfTopic/medicaldevicesafety/mds.cfm?page=2&sort=2
When your average defibrillator or PET scan can browse youtube and play britney spear latest album I'll consider your "medical" arguments.
Trillions of dollars? I believe that low cost computers and softwares, including Microsoft's, have helped generate trillions of trillions of dollars through increased productivity. Just think about trying to design a modern airbus or a car without a computer. I am pretty sure that overall the profit/loss ratio due to microsoft/linux crashes is still in the five nine range.
I am almost certain that trying to enter or get close to any subway, airport, train station or even walking around in the street will get whoever is pushing the cart shot.
I see I didn't realize the rift was so strong in the Open Source World. In the current scenario, the Apache Foundation has decided that their code would be available for everyone to use in every way they please. If that means re-releasing it as a closed source application with mods as IBM it seem to be withing the term of the license the owner of the code has decided to use.
If that doesn't work for the Apache Foundation, it's up to them to choose another license. But my bet is that they already gave some thought about it and decided that the benefit of that license outweight the negative side. Obsviously you think it does not.
It's a bit unfair on your part to put the blame on Microsoft. They have always been clear cut on the fact they would not go anywhere near the GPL as they have no intention of risking having to release their core assets which are office and windows source.
They (and me) are probably waiting for you to publish a clear cut guide on how to make money running a software dev company producing software you can't sell because everyone can copy and redistribute, bypassing therefore your eventual licensing process. And don't point me out marginal example based on positive externalities of a strong closed source market. Most successful open source project ran by private software company are used as publicity generators and paid out of the marketing budget not revenue generators while the money still comes out of selling license for their closed source products, or the closed source "advanced/business/professional" version. IBM would come to mind first of course. Then MySQL, Jboss, sugarCRM, Digium, etc.
I think we're past the time of the endless ideologic rant against Microsoft, IBM and the other Open Source leecher. You may have done it already, or not, but I believe you should be using your contacts and position to provide solutions instead of just pointing at things and declaring them bad.
Assume I want to start a software house. How on earth am I going to earn money producing open source software, pay my employees, turn a profit? What is viable business model without resorting to the the "fake open source" model of the aforementioned? Hook up with economist, lawyers, MBA's, write us a how-to because apparently not many have figured that out yet. Certainly IBM and Microsoft did not. Yet?!?
Since you replied to me I had to read your piece which I had not since I usually avoid reading open source politic activist and their corporate counterparts. The arguments have been the same since your manifesto or since Stallman (PBUH) started rewriting driver for his printer. (That was the ignition point right?)
Very quickly so you can locate me on a map: I work for a company who design a couple of software for a niche market. I used to be developing said software and I am now paid to "develop" powerpoints and talk to senior executives into to paying our high per user license and maintenance contract.
I have a ready made speech against them downloading open source software instead of buying into our products which has always worked pretty well when the question popped up. In truth we have few competitors, none of them is open source. I've seen a few open source project appearing and disappearing over the last 10 years and none of them grew enough to generate any kind of traction or support.
None of us "vendors" respects any kind of standard, we all have our proprietary interfaces, file format, protocol etc. The "industry" tried a few years back to propose a standardization of some key components and our company even started some work to support it. There was absolutely zero demands from customers and the project died. None of our competitor went much further than us. Lots of initial support, pledge to support and then a massive coordinated failure to deliver.
Now for my beliefs, I strongly admire your devotion and I believe firmly that you and the other evangelists are a useful lobbying force. I believe in software that are useful, I am not religious in that matter and will use the best tool for the job, whether open or close. Whether produced by Microsoft or the FSF. I have reused BSD licensed code in proprietary project, even LGPLed libraries. Which in some case saved us a lot of time.
I believe that before the end of my professional life, most if not all software will become a cheap commodity and that consultancy services, support will be where the money will be made. But there is still some time before that happens. How fast mostly depends on how good you area at your job:)
IBM (which I worked with) uses of open source, linux and java is nothing more than a marketing ploy to sell their products, none of which in the "Tivoli" category are open source, interoperable of even cheap. I am still wondering why they keep getting the "open source friend" badge over and over when they are in fact one of the biggest leech around.
Anyway, it seems to me that your article should have been directed at BSD style licenses and not at Microsoft who so far did nothing wrong to the Apache project and I don't think a few hundred thousand dollars will have much sway on the projects direction and as you said yourself, if Microsoft wanted the code, it was already there, free for all.
Why is it that free software advocates can't stop whining when someone plays by their own rules?
It seems that Apache license allows you to modify and re-distribute without giving back the source. I bet the Apache foundation people gave a bit of thought about something like that happening before they chose the license and obviously they decided it wasn't that important.
Do people really think Microsoft will suddenly manage to destroy the Apache foundation because they said they wanted to contribute? I would suspect their sponsorship is going to strengthen Apache Foundation's capacity to penetrate more corporate entities. In some places the open source argument does mean anything to the decision makers but vendor support and an IBM/Microsoft backing certainly does.
Others like IBM have been doing just that and no one seemed to care. (http://www-306.ibm.com/software/webservers/httpservers/).
There are two versions of IBM HTTP Server, based in turn on 1.3 and 2.0 versions of open source Apache, but with small alterations to allow IBM to attach extra features. The code bases are maintained inside IBM, where IBM keeps them up to date by selectively picking up and applying bug fixes from the open source Apache CVS repository.
Go get your IBM httpd trial and see if you get any source with it. (I didn't check because I don't really care).
I'm also pretty sure that amongst all the project of the Apache Foundation, the Apache httpd server is probably not the most interesting for them.
It's in the association of words and proposition of related topics. For example my search on "hot boiled potato" gave me a category box with the only obviously related topic "German Sausage". Now I know I want to try a "LandjÃger" with my potatoes.
Yup, same here, did a quick search on "oil" the category box on the side gave me plenty of categories to choose from.
"oil comparison" and "motor oil review" gave me many results. I don't know if any where really good though.
It's too bad their set up can't handle the load though. I guess they didn't expect a slashdot Q&A testing today. Sad mistake on their part as they will leave a bad first impression to potential early adopter.
All in all it seems like a very interesting options for my non-tech savvy relatives. The output is more readable than Google's and the "Explore by category" box will help them realize that they should try the same search with different keywords. Something they almost never do.
And from someone who still work in the "VoIP industry" I just want to note that SIP replacement of H323, which was its goal, has simplified the life of many people. That protocol deserves to die and I wish Cisco certified tarts would stop using it as a default for their routers. seriously.
I don't see anything that skype (the client) does that a decent SIP UA can not do and a quick lookup on "skype protocol interop" didn't return much aside from a guy who use virtual sound card to "hook up" skype clients running in virtual machine to his asterisk.. way to go. Reminds me of all those people "piloting" Excel to generate spreadsheet on their webservers... Skype is microsoft office document format lock-in all over again and I sure hope it will die or go ISO.
I'll give you that when skype came out it was ahead of any competition in ease of setup and functionality.
It's purpose is that. Teach a kid how to use a computer and eventually do some programming, it's there right on the website:
We will support five programming environments on the laptop: (1) Python, from which we have built our user interface and our activity model; (2) Javascript for browser-based scripting; (3) Csound, a programmable music and audio environment; (4) Squeak, a version of Smalltalk embedded into a media-rich authoring environment; and (5) Logo. We will also provide some support for Java and Flash.
You may have to relocate in a bario outside of Rio to get one though.:)
Well, for some unknown reason with the default settings my xbox 360 managed to acquire the public IP given by my ISP instead of a local IP through a DHCP lease of the WRT54G.
The POS router was perfectly happy with that and the xbox had no issue connecting to xbox live service or msn while no one else in the house could connect anywhere anymore.
I replaced the POS with a WRT54GL+dd-wrt firmware and since then everything is fine, the xbox gets a private lan IP and other people can still access the internet.
I don't know if it crashes, the policy at home it to press the big power switch at night. It turns off all of those devices that like to be idling wasting power. That includes the router, tv, dvd player, cable tv box, tivo, xbox, wii, stereo and a bunch of other stuff that I don't need when I sleep.
Try that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioship
I mean someone has to program the bio-organism main nerves center to calculate FTL jump properly right?
ok, joke aside, this is the list of book I built and that we give to new recruits around here.
The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master (ISBN-10: 020161622X)
Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series) (ISBN-10: 0201633612)
AntiPatterns: Refactoring Software, Architectures, and Projects in Crisis (Paperback)
(ISBN-10: 0471197130)
Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code (The Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series) (ISBN-10: 0201485672)
Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis in Java or C++
(Java: ISBN-10: 0201357542)
Art of Computer Programming, Volume 1: Fundamental Algorithms (3rd Edition) (Art of Computer Programming Volume 1)
(ISBN-10: 0201896834)
Internetworking with TCP/IP, Vol 1 (5th Edition)
(ISBN-10: 0131876716)
The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems
(ISBN-10: 0201379376 )
Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties: Advanced SQL Programming
(ISBN-10: 1558605762)
Database Systems: The Complete Book (GOAL Series)
(ISBN-10: 0130319953)
C Programming Language (2nd Edition)
(ISBN-10: 0131103628)
JavaScript: The Definitive Guide
(ISBN-10: 0596000480)
Please discuss. I'd love to know what other people would add to that list.
To the original question I would answer: Did you ask your future teachers? They teach physics for a living they should be able to tell you what background you need to understand their courses. They should know what book they use in class better than the hippies like me who troll slashdot instead of working.
Otherwise why don't you go look at the MIT opencourseware and see how the curriculum are organized. (http://ocw.mit.edu/).
If you're a little bit geeky it would make sens to chose your language by the number of people you would be able to communicate with.
Since you already speak English, which is the de-facto international language both for business and technical communication you can try:
1. Mandarin Chinese (1.12 billion)
2. English (480 million)
3. Spanish (320 million)
4. Russian (285 million)
5. French (265 million)
6. Hindi/Urdu (250 million)
7. Arabic (221 million)
8. Portuguese (188 million)
9. Bengali (185 million)
10. Japanese (133 million)
11. German (109 million)
My personal list would go like that:
1. English (Mandatory. period.)
2. Arabic (Huge opportunities in the Arab world although speaking Arabic is not required a basic level will give you a strong competitive edge and people will love you for trying)
2b. Mandarin Chinese (Will eventually co-rule the world along US/Euro and Indian. You can make a small fortune there if you can understand what's going on. It's probably one of the most difficult language to learn due to complex pronunciation and writing)
3. Spanish (Most of South America and Spain, I wouldn't know if it is useful for business but for travel it's sure practical. I've also heard it's useful to communicate with the maid if you live in the US)
4. French (Not really useful, unless you want to go to France and as Spanish it can be a bitch to learn, but as a US citizen speaking French you'd score lots of point with French chicks if the USD goes back up enough so that you can afford to travel there. A bunch of ex french colony still use broken french as second language, but most of them would understand English anyway.)
5. Japanese (Unless you plan to go there to use your 10 words to impress girls don't. Japanese is useless outside of Japan and there is not that many of them.)
6. Russian (If you want to work there it is almost mandatory, like Russia few people speaks English
7. Hindi/Urdu and other "Indian" dialect. (Completely useless! Despite the shear number of Indian/Pakistani/Bengladeshi who can understand Hindi/Urdu few speak it natively. There are hundreds of different dialects in that part of the world and you'd be lost in translation most of the time anyway. Work language there is English.
Slashdot Mirror
I sincerely hope you're only failing at being funny and not implying that the former is better than the later....
I'd mod you up if I had not already posted a similar answer :)
Well, there used to be. But the time of the romantic Sicilian mafioso is long gone and we are now in the era of the ruthless backstabbing russian gangbangers running corporate multinational. So I guess the one with honor are somewhere at the bottom of lake Michigan or in a retirement pension. :)
The mistake of the journalist was to assume that any network at all is secure.
They were lucky their account info were only stolen for "fun", I doubt anyone else would have had the decency to tell them they had been compromised.
I will side with the people who think that if you attend a "black hat" conference and dare use a) a computer that you don't own, b) on a network that you don't know, c) to access unencrypted private information, you are fair game.
IMHO:
1/ The journalists that were "hacked" don't deserve writing about a topic they can't seem to grasp.
2/ The black hat organizer should be begging for pardon to be so grossly incompetent they have set up a network which is either plugged in a hub or with a router so lame that arp spoofing is still an option. The "hack" is not detailed and I assume that by "proper separation of the workstation" they mean "Plugged everyone on a hub".
3/ Finally, because there is two side to a coin, those "hacker" journalist were in clear breach of the journalist ethos which is to report the news and not create the news. There is enough bad journalist around and I don't think those will be missed.
4/ In the AP news The EFF sounds like a bunch trigger happy hirsute lawyers ready to sue anyone for any reason whatsoever just to get their name in a press release.
It looks like any other amateurish RSS/atom/blah reader with three pane view and a "newspaper" view only not finished.
The plugin page even says it barely a prototype and that storage and features will be broken in the next iteration.
The roadmap clearly state that they have not much clue where to go next. My suggestion would be to look at software who are already trying to do the same and figure out their strong ideas and mistakes. e.g.: http://www.jetbrains.com/omea/
If I needed information about unreliable software implementing 5 years old concept I'd be browsing sourceforge not slashdot. -5 Flamebait
Because they are supposed to be reusable and not easily bio-degradable. I would feel even more wasteful using those as trash.
It is indeed silly from an image point of view but it could make sense I think.
He doesn't have to buy carbon credit as an individual as far as I know. He's doing it out of interest to look good or true belief in his cause. That doesn't matter.
He could buy the credit from any company for the same price. Unless of course his company is selling him the credit below market price or waiving commission fees which then is unfair.
The company could sell the same credit for the same amount to someone else.
Gore would have the same amount of money removed and the company the same amount of money added Hence the same profit for Gore the chairman. I theory it wouldn't change anything if he were to buy from someone else. In theory of course.
IMHO carbon credit are probably worse than the supermarket plastic bag as a false solution to a real problem.
Fact: We (the human) generate to much pollution as it is now. If not for global warming at least for our own health.
Obvious solution: Generate less polution. Duh!
Economist solution: Lets give every company a "right to pollute" and highly polluting industries will have to buy enough rights from less polluting company if they want to keep polluting. This will create an incentive for polluting company to pollute less. The free market will do the rest as it had always done to help make the world a better place. (see: Africa).
Result: The free market will do it's job perfectly well: the cost carbon credits will balance itself to stay just at the right spot to be cheaper than upgrading and investing in more efficient technology. Why? Because if it ever becomes cheaper to upgrade than to buy credit, less credit will be bought and the price would drop. Seller will sell at the maximum possible price to have the highest profit without crashing the market which is just before it become interesting for the buyers to upgrade or change their ways. And the incentive goes down the drain.
This kind of mental masturbation is a load of crap. Regulation should be passed to force the various industries to pollute less. period. Not play with numbers in a spreadsheet and say: "Look Ma! My Jumbo Jet is carbon neutral since I bought carbon credit from that doctor's office in Jersey." 50 tons of CO2 released in the atmosphere is just that. Doesn't matter how the fuck you count it.
(It's a very slow work day)
... there is no less plastic bag... ignore the bag that I buy, this is indeed my very own problem:
:)
-1 plastic bag not given for free
+1 plastic bag bought from store to use as trash
------------
0 Total gain in plastic quantity used in the household. Carbon Offset == 0.
I don't care about paying for the bags. I was noting that the "green" argument is crap. Let the supermarkets tell me that free bags make a 200,000USD dent in their budget every month and due to diminishing margin and increased food price they can't afford to do it anymore. That's fine. I run a business and I can understand. Just don't try to tell me it's going to save the planet.
I did my very small part with energy saving bulbs, tap water thingy supposed to save water, sorting my garbage between paper, plastic, glass and the rest and setting up global switch so I don't have dozen of electronic equipment sucking power while idling. And I dutifully pay my premium on "fair trade" products even though I don't believe it is a good solution nor that the money really goes where it should.
Even my washing machine was almost twice as expensive because of the 5 start energy rating and water saving feature. That investment paid for itself though.
Finally I don't think that asking people to "go green" is any solution. Government should coerce companies and people to do "the right thing" through taxes and incentives.
I am one of the few here to be happy about the current gas price, I understand the pain it is causing worldwide especially in under-developed nations but I sincerly hope it will double again and increase even more the incentive for govs and private companies to start looking at alternatives. A little jump in price and even BMW announces electric cars... double it and we might get the few millions investment we need to get decent solar panel mass produced at competitive rate. It might even become a requirement in future zoning law who knows...
You want to save the planet? Use a bike and vote for officials who will actually enforce environmental policies.
Cheers
I collect them it seems :). All fifty of them have been very useful last time I moved into another flat. They are very tough and I managed to pack a lot of stuff in them...
I live in a european city, I do not own a car, I buy my groceries as I need two or three times a week on my way back home or when time permits because I like my vegetable and meat fresh. I don't know if I will or not go shopping when I leave in the morning or if I will have dinner outside or pull an all nighter at work and eat take away.
My point was just that even if I were to reuse the bags, all that it would do good for Mother Nature would be offset by the plastic trash bag I now buy to replace the bag they are not giving for free anymore. I can't see where it helps the environment.
Abstract: A system to provide a set of exclusive rights, hereafter referred as rights, granted by a state, hereafter referred as state, to an INVENTOR, hereafter referred as a retard, or his assignee, hereafter referred as an assignee, for a fixed period of time, hereafter referred as time, in exchange for a disclosure, hereafter referred as disclosure, of something, hereafter referred as a nothing, completely useless that makes people comment on how absurd it is when they hear about it in the PAST, PRESENT or FUTUR, with or without the help of PAST, PRESENT, NOT YET CONCEIVED, or PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE Technology or PAST PRESENT OR FUTURE LANGUAGE and COMMUNICATION DEVICE NOT LIMITED TO HUMAN FORM. USING WORD included in, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, the Merriam and Webster between page 0 and 9999 in PAST, PRESENT AND ALL FUTUR EDITION.
Too many prior arts I guess.
I used to reuse the plastic bag as trash bag like everyone else. Now I have to buy my grocery bag almost everytime I go shopping and buy additional trash bags which seems to be made of thicker plastic than the shopping bags I had before.
Carbon neutrality or disguised corporate greed? You choose.
Maybe they don't due to the fact that medical equipment and lunar probes have a much more limited feature set than say Microsoft Word and they cost orders of magnitude more money to put together.
If you are ready to have a fairly limited in scope operating system running on "state of the art" hardware(read: created somewhere in the 1970) there are some option for you if you have the cash.
But of course you probably don't and you expect your operating system to run your crappy non fault-tolerant hardware, 20 bucks usb printer, subsidized phone with and half compliant bluetooth stack, play "stolen" music and video in 200 different codec, all the while browsing the web and playing flash games and maybe another 50 or so other applications Microsoft and Linus Thorvald have limited control over.
To put it in perspective again, your highly sensitive medical device, has been designed with custom hardware, most probably redundant , run on dedicated chipset with under 10k LOC, when it's not purely mechanical. It is rarely networked if ever and you will NOT be AUTHORIZED to use or service them without a Biomedical Equipment Technology Training.
Imagine how much you'd spend just to get one over to clean your keyboard from breadcrumb...
And.. it does fail from time to time as you can see here: http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfTopic/medicaldevicesafety/mds.cfm?page=2&sort=2
When your average defibrillator or PET scan can browse youtube and play britney spear latest album I'll consider your "medical" arguments.
Trillions of dollars? I believe that low cost computers and softwares, including Microsoft's, have helped generate trillions of trillions of dollars through increased productivity. Just think about trying to design a modern airbus or a car without a computer. I am pretty sure that overall the profit/loss ratio due to microsoft/linux crashes is still in the five nine range.
Cheers.
I am almost certain that trying to enter or get close to any subway, airport, train station or even walking around in the street will get whoever is pushing the cart shot.
Come the end of the game and everyone will see it's just a roundabout...
I see I didn't realize the rift was so strong in the Open Source World. In the current scenario, the Apache Foundation has decided that their code would be available for everyone to use in every way they please. If that means re-releasing it as a closed source application with mods as IBM it seem to be withing the term of the license the owner of the code has decided to use.
If that doesn't work for the Apache Foundation, it's up to them to choose another license. But my bet is that they already gave some thought about it and decided that the benefit of that license outweight the negative side. Obsviously you think it does not.
It's a bit unfair on your part to put the blame on Microsoft. They have always been clear cut on the fact they would not go anywhere near the GPL as they have no intention of risking having to release their core assets which are office and windows source.
They (and me) are probably waiting for you to publish a clear cut guide on how to make money running a software dev company producing software you can't sell because everyone can copy and redistribute, bypassing therefore your eventual licensing process. And don't point me out marginal example based on positive externalities of a strong closed source market. Most successful open source project ran by private software company are used as publicity generators and paid out of the marketing budget not revenue generators while the money still comes out of selling license for their closed source products, or the closed source "advanced/business/professional" version. IBM would come to mind first of course. Then MySQL, Jboss, sugarCRM, Digium, etc.
I think we're past the time of the endless ideologic rant against Microsoft, IBM and the other Open Source leecher. You may have done it already, or not, but I believe you should be using your contacts and position to provide solutions instead of just pointing at things and declaring them bad.
Assume I want to start a software house. How on earth am I going to earn money producing open source software, pay my employees, turn a profit? What is viable business model without resorting to the the "fake open source" model of the aforementioned? Hook up with economist, lawyers, MBA's, write us a how-to because apparently not many have figured that out yet. Certainly IBM and Microsoft did not. Yet?!?
Since you replied to me I had to read your piece which I had not since I usually avoid reading open source politic activist and their corporate counterparts. The arguments have been the same since your manifesto or since Stallman (PBUH) started rewriting driver for his printer. (That was the ignition point right?) Very quickly so you can locate me on a map: I work for a company who design a couple of software for a niche market. I used to be developing said software and I am now paid to "develop" powerpoints and talk to senior executives into to paying our high per user license and maintenance contract.
:)
I have a ready made speech against them downloading open source software instead of buying into our products which has always worked pretty well when the question popped up. In truth we have few competitors, none of them is open source. I've seen a few open source project appearing and disappearing over the last 10 years and none of them grew enough to generate any kind of traction or support.
None of us "vendors" respects any kind of standard, we all have our proprietary interfaces, file format, protocol etc. The "industry" tried a few years back to propose a standardization of some key components and our company even started some work to support it. There was absolutely zero demands from customers and the project died. None of our competitor went much further than us. Lots of initial support, pledge to support and then a massive coordinated failure to deliver.
Now for my beliefs, I strongly admire your devotion and I believe firmly that you and the other evangelists are a useful lobbying force. I believe in software that are useful, I am not religious in that matter and will use the best tool for the job, whether open or close. Whether produced by Microsoft or the FSF. I have reused BSD licensed code in proprietary project, even LGPLed libraries. Which in some case saved us a lot of time.
I believe that before the end of my professional life, most if not all software will become a cheap commodity and that consultancy services, support will be where the money will be made. But there is still some time before that happens. How fast mostly depends on how good you area at your job
IBM (which I worked with) uses of open source, linux and java is nothing more than a marketing ploy to sell their products, none of which in the "Tivoli" category are open source, interoperable of even cheap. I am still wondering why they keep getting the "open source friend" badge over and over when they are in fact one of the biggest leech around.
Anyway, it seems to me that your article should have been directed at BSD style licenses and not at Microsoft who so far did nothing wrong to the Apache project and I don't think a few hundred thousand dollars will have much sway on the projects direction and as you said yourself, if Microsoft wanted the code, it was already there, free for all.
It seems that Apache license allows you to modify and re-distribute without giving back the source. I bet the Apache foundation people gave a bit of thought about something like that happening before they chose the license and obviously they decided it wasn't that important.
Do people really think Microsoft will suddenly manage to destroy the Apache foundation because they said they wanted to contribute? I would suspect their sponsorship is going to strengthen Apache Foundation's capacity to penetrate more corporate entities. In some places the open source argument does mean anything to the decision makers but vendor support and an IBM/Microsoft backing certainly does.
Others like IBM have been doing just that and no one seemed to care. (http://www-306.ibm.com/software/webservers/httpservers/).
There are two versions of IBM HTTP Server, based in turn on 1.3 and 2.0 versions of open source Apache, but with small alterations to allow IBM to attach extra features. The code bases are maintained inside IBM, where IBM keeps them up to date by selectively picking up and applying bug fixes from the open source Apache CVS repository.
Go get your IBM httpd trial and see if you get any source with it. (I didn't check because I don't really care).
I'm also pretty sure that amongst all the project of the Apache Foundation, the Apache httpd server is probably not the most interesting for them.
It's in the association of words and proposition of related topics. For example my search on "hot boiled potato" gave me a category box with the only obviously related topic "German Sausage". Now I know I want to try a "LandjÃger" with my potatoes.
Isn't that Cuil/kweel/cool/bleh?
For real search there is always google...
Yup, same here, did a quick search on "oil" the category box on the side gave me plenty of categories to choose from.
"oil comparison" and "motor oil review" gave me many results. I don't know if any where really good though.
It's too bad their set up can't handle the load though. I guess they didn't expect a slashdot Q&A testing today. Sad mistake on their part as they will leave a bad first impression to potential early adopter.
All in all it seems like a very interesting options for my non-tech savvy relatives. The output is more readable than Google's and the "Explore by category" box will help them realize that they should try the same search with different keywords. Something they almost never do.
Something that Google should have ZERO issue implementing if they ever bothered graduating that project out their lab:
http://labs.google.com/sets?hl=en&q1=harry&q2=hermione&q3=&q4=&q5=&btn=Large+Set
And from someone who still work in the "VoIP industry" I just want to note that SIP replacement of H323, which was its goal, has simplified the life of many people. That protocol deserves to die and I wish Cisco certified tarts would stop using it as a default for their routers. seriously.
I don't see anything that skype (the client) does that a decent SIP UA can not do and a quick lookup on "skype protocol interop" didn't return much aside from a guy who use virtual sound card to "hook up" skype clients running in virtual machine to his asterisk.. way to go. Reminds me of all those people "piloting" Excel to generate spreadsheet on their webservers... Skype is microsoft office document format lock-in all over again and I sure hope it will die or go ISO.
I'll give you that when skype came out it was ahead of any competition in ease of setup and functionality.
It's purpose is that. Teach a kid how to use a computer and eventually do some programming, it's there right on the website:
You may have to relocate in a bario outside of Rio to get one though. :)
Well, for some unknown reason with the default settings my xbox 360 managed to acquire the public IP given by my ISP instead of a local IP through a DHCP lease of the WRT54G.
The POS router was perfectly happy with that and the xbox had no issue connecting to xbox live service or msn while no one else in the house could connect anywhere anymore.
I replaced the POS with a WRT54GL+dd-wrt firmware and since then everything is fine, the xbox gets a private lan IP and other people can still access the internet.
I don't know if it crashes, the policy at home it to press the big power switch at night. It turns off all of those devices that like to be idling wasting power. That includes the router, tv, dvd player, cable tv box, tivo, xbox, wii, stereo and a bunch of other stuff that I don't need when I sleep.
Try that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioship I mean someone has to program the bio-organism main nerves center to calculate FTL jump properly right?
ok, joke aside, this is the list of book I built and that we give to new recruits around here.
Please discuss. I'd love to know what other people would add to that list.
To the original question I would answer: Did you ask your future teachers? They teach physics for a living they should be able to tell you what background you need to understand their courses. They should know what book they use in class better than the hippies like me who troll slashdot instead of working.
Otherwise why don't you go look at the MIT opencourseware and see how the curriculum are organized. (http://ocw.mit.edu/).
Sorry but you have misspelled "corel painter". :)
If you're a little bit geeky it would make sens to chose your language by the number of people you would be able to communicate with.
Since you already speak English, which is the de-facto international language both for business and technical communication you can try:
1. Mandarin Chinese (1.12 billion)
2. English (480 million)
3. Spanish (320 million)
4. Russian (285 million)
5. French (265 million)
6. Hindi/Urdu (250 million)
7. Arabic (221 million)
8. Portuguese (188 million)
9. Bengali (185 million)
10. Japanese (133 million)
11. German (109 million)
My personal list would go like that:
1. English (Mandatory. period.)
2. Arabic (Huge opportunities in the Arab world although speaking Arabic is not required a basic level will give you a strong competitive edge and people will love you for trying)
2b. Mandarin Chinese (Will eventually co-rule the world along US/Euro and Indian. You can make a small fortune there if you can understand what's going on. It's probably one of the most difficult language to learn due to complex pronunciation and writing)
3. Spanish (Most of South America and Spain, I wouldn't know if it is useful for business but for travel it's sure practical. I've also heard it's useful to communicate with the maid if you live in the US)
4. French (Not really useful, unless you want to go to France and as Spanish it can be a bitch to learn, but as a US citizen speaking French you'd score lots of point with French chicks if the USD goes back up enough so that you can afford to travel there. A bunch of ex french colony still use broken french as second language, but most of them would understand English anyway.)
5. Japanese (Unless you plan to go there to use your 10 words to impress girls don't. Japanese is useless outside of Japan and there is not that many of them.)
6. Russian (If you want to work there it is almost mandatory, like Russia few people speaks English 7. Hindi/Urdu and other "Indian" dialect. (Completely useless! Despite the shear number of Indian/Pakistani/Bengladeshi who can understand Hindi/Urdu few speak it natively. There are hundreds of different dialects in that part of the world and you'd be lost in translation most of the time anyway. Work language there is English.