I hope this software also inserts that unique "BSD eliteness" gene into your DNA. It seems too many BSD users have an unjustified superiority complex. The worst example I ever saw was on IRC; a jackass said "yeah, if you're stupid you should use Linux, but once you really understand UNIX you should use BSD". If only IRC had a/strangle command.
Just think, if it was about "upgrading" windows boxes to Linux it would not be considered flamebait. It would be applauded by the slashdot sheep.
Yeah, both of them. Unfortunately the applause would be drowned out by the stupid weenies like yourself who use every opportunity, no matter how strained, to bitch about Slashdot.
I can't agree that Slashdot has these "double standards" you dolts keep complaining about when your own comments available on Slashdot and moderated highly are attacking the double standards. It's self-defeating. It's like saying "this statement is false". By writing your comment you have disproven there is a double standard. Slashdot gave you EQUAL AIR TIME with the Microsoft-bashers and the Linux-cheerleaders.
The most excruciating bit is that comments like yours are repeated, over and over again, in every article even remotely related to Linux, and you still get moderated +5 Mother-Fucking Insightful every freaking time. Hint to moderators: it's not insightful the 10,000th time.
But then, Oracle shifted gears and now wanted to only support Red Hat's Advanced Server product, which was fine, except it cost $1000+. Then, we tried to buy support from Red Hat, and that ended up costing us >$10K. Now, they have dropped support for their free distro, which means that our customers who will use it will need to pay $1000+ for their version of Linux, which is probably a huge showstopper. This is supposed to be free?
The software is free. You get the source code. You can modify it for internal use. You can copy it onto as many computers as you like with no licensing fees or per-use royalties. There are no client-access licenses. You can redistribute it as much as you like. You can even sell a derivative work to somebody else. There are no restrictions on use.
All of your complaints were about the support costing money. Well, duh. Of course, support will cost money. You're paying for a person's time. They're not going to give you their time for free. You must have been pretty naive to think that a person was going to suddenly drop what they were doing, support you and your business, and then go on their merry way without charging you for it. You got the software for free. What more do you want?
When people like you complain that Linux isn't free because "I had to pay for support" or "I had to spend my time", it puts me in mind of somebody who complains that a free meal wasn't really free because they had to spend energy on the chewing.
it relies on a government granted monopoly called copyrights. There is a difference.
You are talking absolute nonsense. A government granted monopoly would imply that it was illegal to sell, say, a competing wordprocessor,
If he is talking absolute nonsense then he's in good company. Lawrence Lessig (Professor of Law at Stanford University) has used the same terminology in his own writings.
But it does mean that every system or category of copyright or patent should prove its worth. Before the monopoly should be permitted, there must be reason to believe it will do some good - for society, and not just for monopoly holders.
Lawrence Lessig -- Wired 2001
No disrespect intended, but I think you were wrong in saying this was "nonsense". If a Professor of Law can say that copyright is a government granted monopoly on publishing, then I don't think you have much standing to disagree.
Copyright does exist for a reason. It gives YOU the sole right to distribute something that YOU created. If you don't think that that is fair, then I'd love to hear your reasoning.
I don't think he was talking about fair vs unfair. He seemed to be talking about free markets vs artificially created monopolies. If there was no copyright then there would definitely be a free market. I agree it would not be fair to the company that originally wrote the software, but free markets aren't always fair.
Copyright is a government-enforced artificial monopoly. It exists for the primary goal of encouraging authors to produce a greater number of works. The idea was always to promote intellectual growth by providing an incentive to the authors. The governments recognised that a free market is unfair to creators of IP and copyrights are their attempt to restore the balance.
So while I can agree that copyrights are more fair than anarchy, I also believe that copyright is inherently anti-free-market. Not that I think that's a problem; I'm not a big believer in fully free markets. I think copyrights have their place though the current copyright extensions are maybe a bit excessive.
I actually do have an issue with software copyrights. The copyright acts (in the USA) were drafted when books and maps and poetry were the popular IP that needed protection. These works expose their "blueprint" to the general public. So when the copyright term expired (which was an acceptable 14 years back then) the public could freely copy the work. The publicly available IP wealth of the country was increased.
Fast forward to modern copyright. Not only is the term ludicrous (up to 140 years!) but software upsets the balance. The public only ever receives the binaries, not the source code! The source is kept hidden as a trade secret. Surely you can see the problem with this: when the term expires the intellectual wealth of the country will not be increased. The intellectual property stays with the company indefinitely (or until the trade secret is leaked).
So I think software companies are rorting the original intention of copyright. They get copyright protection for their software and they don't have to give anything of value to the public when their copyright term expires. That's not what the drafters of USA copyright intended. I would think a suitable remedy would be that all software binaries must come with source code. That would restore the balance.
Of course, any closed-source vendor will claim that opening up their source code would destroy their company. "The pirates! The pirates!" they'd cry. Of course, the pirates don't care about the source code, they just copy the binaries and sell them for $10 a disc in the Hong Kong blackmarket. The "evil hackers" might care about source code, but I'm fairly sure they already have it anyway. The only half-valid argument is to prevent other (unscrupulous) companies from reusing copyrighted code in their own products; but if all companies were required to open-source their products then such violations would be easily discovered.
Bear in mind I'm talking only about releasing the source code... NOT about forcing all companies to release their software with no fees or licensing. Microsoft can continue to charge $259 for XP and send in goons to audit companies who aren't paying their licensing fees. There's no change in their copyrights just because the source is out there. They wouldn't even have to change their licensing!
It's the same thing Microsoft did with Office: initially, they were an OS-only company.
Microsoft was initially a programming-language company. Their first product was BASIC for the Altair. They continued selling BASIC products to Apple and Commodore for many years before venturing into OS software with MS-DOS (which they bought rather than develop).
In August I built my new pc after 5 years of my Pentium 3 450 with a TNT2. It cost me $1000. The equivalent machine from dell cost $2500. That's a $1500 savings.
I find this difficult to believe. Dell is typically 20-25% more expensive than a whitebox. Your figures suggest 150% more expensive.
I suspect the whitebox you built was perhaps not exactly the same as the Dell.
Apple isn't expensive when you compare the price/performance ratio with Dell, HP or Sony. That's because they are all rediculously expensive compared to building it yourself.
There's no "e" in ridiculous.
Yes, the vendors are more expensive. No, I don't think they're ridiculously expensive. The price differences I find are about $200-$300 on a low-end system. I prefer building whiteboxes to save that $200-$300 but I wouldn't sneer at those people who couldn't be bothered.
But you and I both know that open-source developers are not starving, homeless, unclothed, unable to pay their bills. Strawman argument.
As was your original argument about feeding the world with one field of wheat.
It wasn't my original argument. You brought up the idea that open-source programmers should "also sew your own clothes and grow your own food". I pointed out the logical fallacy in your argument that software and material goods are not the same thing. I pointed out that the production costs of software are basically zero. I illustrated the logical fallacy in your argument by demonstrating how wonderful the world would be if production costs for clothes and food were zero. Basically I was showing, in a polite way, that your argument to equate "free software" with "free clothes and free food" is invalid.
Umm.. I think you're forgetting that Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, etc.. make their money off the sale of stock, not their salary. Revenues from the sale of software do not contribute significantly to the bank accounts of these people (in fact, Bill Gates draws one of the lowest salaries of any CEO in the industry.)
I didn't say salary. Where do you think the money comes from? The stockholders are making money, so it's not coming from them. The money is coming from the end-users when they pay their license fees. That means the billions of dollars of cash in Bill Gates wallet came from end-users. In other words, end-users have paid billions of dollars more than the actual development cost of the software.
The reality is that you don't know the value of the time and effort being contributed to Linux. You do the people that have contributed to it a great disservice by dismissing their contributions as "cheap". The fact of the matter is, you're enjoying the fruit of many *THOUSANDS* of man hours worth of effort, equaling many billions of dollars worth of work if all of those people were being paid.
The reality is that I do understand and you don't. I didn't say their [Linux developer's] contributions are cheap. I said the development cost of Linux is cheap. That's a simple fact. Compared to the cost of developing Windows or UNIX, the development cost of Linux has been a drop in the bucket. Yes, billions of dollars worth of man-years have been spent on Linux. This is still a tiny percentage of what has been spent on Windows or UNIX.
It's very easy to understand why open-source development is cheaper. An open-source project can build upon existing open-source projects. Open source is the perfect realisation of code re-use. Even if an open-source project dies, the code lives on. Contrast with the incredible amount of wasted and repeated effort in the proprietary world. Even with the redundant efforts in open-source - how many text editors are there? - it's nothing compared to the redundant effort in the proprietary world.
I didn't say it wouldn't. I said "good" software. Most software developed in-house is not good software, it tends to be "good enough" (if they're lucky) software. Since companies view internal software development as an expense, they want to pay as little as possible and will seldom pay for software to be perfect.
How do you think this is any different to externally developed software? Come back to the real world! Most software is shithouse. Your own company is infamous for the low-quality software it produces; the industry joke is to wait for Microsoft's third version because they might get it right by then. Your last sentence is bemusing; you say companies running internally developed projects "want to pay as little as possible and will seldom pay for software to be perfect". That sounds exactly like ALL software companies to me, both internal and external.
Even if it costed you your entire lifes work? And the lifes work of all your friends, co-workers, and thousands of their friends? Even when you have to figure out some way to pay your own bills, feed yourself, and clothe yourself while doing this?
But you and I both know that open-source developers are not starving, homeless, unclothed, unable to pay their bills. Strawman argument.
The part you seem to forget is that the cost develop software is monstrous. It takes thousands of man-years to develop something like the 2.6 kernel. It's great that these thousands of people are willing to give away their hard work for the profit of other companies, but that really doesn't mean that it's reasonable to expect that to be the norm in the world of software.
Yet Bill Gates has billions of dollars of cash. We have IT CEOs flying around in private jets. Is this where the money is going? It's not paying for developers; it's paying for junkets and jaunts and jollies for the Rich White Men in control.
The reality is that software isn't nearly as expensive as you think it is. The fact that Linux was built by volunteers in their spare time really says it all. The true cost of developing software is cheap; Linux proves that. It's the support and maintenance of software that is expensive.
In order for "good" software to be created there must either be a viable market for software amortized over the number of copies sold (ie, you need to sell enough copies at a cost people are willing to pay to make back what you've spent and provide enough money to expand) or you need to have an army of loyal followers catalyzed against a common foe that will work for you for free and not demand any of your profits in the perhaps futile hope that when the enemy is vanquished that the world will be a nice place.
Nice dichotomy. Such a shame that it's false.
Software development will always be in demand. If somebody codes software as an unpaid volunteer then that's great. But there will always be some software that nobody wants to write. If that software is in demand then capitalism says that money will appear and developers will be paid, even if the fruits of their labour are open-source. Write that down as cardinal rule #1.
Cardinal Rule #1: There will always be opportunities for paid software development.
The real question is: will there be more or less paid software development work than we have today and how will this translate into salaries and employee numbers. In any event, there are multiple reasons why software is developed. The idea that the only way of making money from software is by hiding the source and extracting a license-fee per copy of the binary is utter nonsense.
There is one thing that is fueling the vast majority of open source work these days: A combined concern about Microsoft and their products. I guarantee you that if MS did not exist, IBM, Sun, SGI, and most other corporate contributors wouldn't be doing so and Linux would still be in the stone ages of computing.
Linux was a best of breed UNIX before any of the "corporate contributors" paid the least attention. The KDE project delivered a usable desktop in 1997; that's an achievement the combined "might" of the UNIX vendors failed to deliver despite a decade headstart.
This leads to the inevitable question of, what happens when Microsoft is defeated? Well, likely the clans will turn on themselves and eat their young. Without a common enemny, the united forces will be reduced to bickering and infighting.
It's an unpleasant truth, but Bill Gates was right when he suggested that perfect bug-free, unexploitable code is impossible.
Yes, it is an unpleasant truth, but I hope you don't hold the mistaken belief that this idea is an original from Bill Gates. It's been common lore in the computer industry since before Microsoft came into being.
I'm sure since you value open source so highly, instead of being dependant on whatever is given to you, that you also sew your own clothes and grow your own food:)
The difference is that each item of clothing and each bushel of grain requires a repeated amount of effort. But with open source, the first instance requires effort and each subsequent copy requires no effort at all.
To put it another way, if by sewing a single shirt I could clothe the world's homeless, and by growing a single bushel of wheat I could feed the world's hungry, then I'd do both in an instant and I would never consider the cost to me. The benefit to the world is far greater than my personal loss.
You apparently think charity of this nature is something to sneer at.
Which papers would those be ? The ones that manage to not mention that FSF, Debian, and Gentoo all had their Root file distribution servers OWNED in the same year ?
Uhh, no they didn't. At least in Gentoo's case it was a single independent mirror that got owned. The root servers were not compromised. Pay attention to the phrase independent mirror.
In the Debian incident there were 4 servers compromised but none were "root file distribution servers" in the sense of main/contrib/non-free. From the newspapers:
The spokesman said the servers hosting the bug tracking system, the mailing lists, the web, CVS (concurrent versioning systems), security, non-US, web search, www-master, and QA had been compromised.
By the way, both Debian and Gentoo security incidents made the newspapers in Australia (both The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald).
Or, said another way - "not too much new ground to cover making a freeware clone of 25 years of operating system research!"
Ok, you didn't explicitly state it, but I'd like to ask if you'd be happier if Linux didn't build upon 25 years of OS research? Should Linux start from scratch? Reinvent decades of work?
If you're pissed off that Linux uses the UNIX API rather than invent an entirely new and obscure yet original API, then I'd like to know why.
If you're pissed off that Linux builds upon public domain research into SMP, scheduling, memory management, real-time processing, etc, then I'd also like to know why.
I was given (by a christian relative) an autobiography of christian golfer Bernhard Langer. A pretty poor attempt to turn me onto 'the right path'! Next year I'm going to buy them something by Richard Dawkins.
If you really want to prove the point, get them an English translation of The Koran.
Rez is one of the greatest things ever, in my opinion; I absolutely adore the game. However, I know that it sold pitifully small numbers,
Because they produced pitifully few copies of the game. I've been trying to get a copy of Rez - new or used - for over a year. The local stores received a single copy each when the game was released, which was sold in minutes, and they have never seen a used copy returned or traded.
That's a convincing argument! How shall I counter... hrm...
I got it! No, I'm not.
First, you didn't comment on
what I wrote,
Sure I did. I quoted you exactly. Are you going to disagree
when the historical record is right there?
You contrast several phrases taken out of context from my post with Pascal's Wager
Actually I contrasted only one sentence from your post to Pascal's Wager.
If there is no God, your professed belief in life certainly won't make a hoot of a difference after you are dead and gone, but if there is, perhaps it will matter to him
By the way, a "phrase" is a short expression and your wordy run-on sentence doesn't qualify.
Then you attack me
on a misspelling I made
Well, I wouldn't call a mere "[sic]" an attack, as such.
and try to discredit
me
Moi? Discredit you? You're doing such a fine job of that without my
assistance.
I made a simple psychological observation which was in part similar to
Pascal's Wager.
At least you now admit it. Game, Set, Match to me! Huzzah.
Try not to pop a blood vessel. Happy holidays. Have a nice day.
No, Pascal's wager is structured as an argument for theism over atheism. I am not arguing for theism, just explaining the American version of theism and what psychological factors I think lie behind it. Don't confuse normative statements with positive statements.
I don't care if you're arguing for theism. I didn't comment on your beliefs; only on what you wrote.
If there is no God, your professed belief in life certainly won't make a hoot of a difference after you are dead and gone, but if there is, perhaps it will matter to him
Contrast what you wrote with Pascal's Wager.
If you believe, and God exists, you gain everything. If you disbelieve, and God exists, you lose everything.
Far too similar for you to retrospectively claim innocence. The essential core of Pascal's Wager is a false dichotomy combined with entirely fabricated outcomes. That describes your earlier comment perfectly.
If you read various refutations of Pascal's wager, they seem to rely on "disproofs" of God's existance
I have apparently read more widely than you because there are dozens of refutations of Pascal's Wager that have nothing to do with "disproofs [sic] of God's existance [sic]".
BTW: I appreciate that you were not stating Pascal's Wager in an attempt to prove theism. I understood your point was to explain the "psychology" of people who do believe in such things. But that's irrelevant. Using Pascal's Wager is faulty logic whether it's to explain somebody elses belief or to explain your own.
3) The vast majority of environmental scientists have found data which supports the contrary argument, and present their data, both raw and refined, in support of those conclusions over many years, and to extensive review, both researchers in all fields.. Lombard has done no such research and merely picks and chooses among the data which supports his arguments and dismisses the majority that doesn't as false to support his alarmist argument that environmental regulations will be the ruination of us all.
I think the strongest argument against Lomborg is that the authors of articles he cites have said that Lomborg is either misquoting them or quoting out of context. Several authors have said that the papers they wrote are in direct contradiction to Lomborg's claims. This suggests to me that Lomborg is intellectually dishonest, if nothing else.
If there is no God, your professed belief in life certainly won't make a hoot of a difference after you are dead and gone, but if there is, perhaps it will matter to him
Isn't it depressing that people are still repeating Pascal's Wager.
It is quite easy, for us (20|30)-year olds to pass judgement on this man. But consider this:
Look, you've pushed a particular button of mine with this one.
* He is 73
Ok.
* He and his partially disabled wife needed the money
Ok.
* He comes from a simpler time, a different era
No, I strongly disagree with this. There seems to be this all-pervasive myth that you go back 70 years and everything was rosy. People left their doors unlocked. Everybody tipped their hats to ladies in the street. Con-artists didn't exist and policemen had nothing better to do than provide consolation to young toddlers who had temporarily lost their mothers while shopping.
It's a nonsense. Go back 70 years and there are drugs, crime and corruption on an incredible scale. The mafia rules several cities. Drive-by shootings are basically invented. Policemen are murdered in their homes. Con-artists swindle the entire population out of their money leading to a rather well known market crash; makes Enron look like a child's tantrum. Hollywood movie stars are involved in drug scandal after drug scandal. You have street gangs, street crime, etc.
You need to lose this rosy-coloured vision of your history. Simpler time? Don't be stupid.
Personally I've never been bothered by wires up above me. I'd rather have them up there and instantly accessible than deal with the crap of having lawn, road, path and other services dug up, just so a couple of people on the street can see the sky.
Above-ground wires do bother me. I live in an area with underground power, underground telephone and underground cable. The landscape looks great when there are no cables to obscure the view. I really notice the difference when I visit Sydney or Melbourne; their overhead cables are everywhere! It's very ugly.
Of course, I live in a neighbourhood where nearly everybody has a front garden and people take pride in the appearance of their homes. If you like to live in a techno-squalor then sure, it probably doesn't mean much to you.
Does anyone else here think that it may not be the best idea to publicly (on Slashdot and Groklaw at least) counter claims made against something that seems bound for court?
Yes, other people think that, but the majority of people think it's better to counter the FUD early than to let it stew in people's minds. Bear in mind that SCO can't retract statements that they've made. The press releases are in the public record and they will come back to haunt SCO in court. IBM has already submitted several SCO press releases as evidence.
Seriously though, as I'm sure many of these hackers/crackers will be heralded as (demi-)heroes by many visitors of Slashdot
Why would you think that? Whenever there's a Mitnick story on Slashdot the overwhelming majority of posts say "he got what he deserved" and "hackers are good, crackers are bad". I very rarely see anybody defend what Mitnick did; in fact, I don't think I've ever seen anybody defend what Mitnick did.
If anything, I would say the "Slashdot meme" is strongly opposed to criminal acts with computers.
Most of this $16 billion came from out of state, i.e., from your pocket. Do you think Boston residents who already command huge rents and appraisals should now be able to look out the window at a grassy knoll instead of elevated steel girders and command even higher rents and appraisals, and at your cost?
Yeah. Damn this whole "federation" thing to hell. What has it done for me, lately! My taxes should only benefit me. Mine Mine Mine. Gimme Gimme Gimme. Selfish Bostonian bastards, taking my tax dollars. I fought and died in the war for this country! All I want is a little respect... plus all my tax dollars paying for ME ME ME. I'll be damned to hell if my tax dollars are going to fund some evil democrats in Boston!
Sorry, for a second there you sounded like a 90-year old ingrate. At what point in your life did selfish greed overwhelm your sense of civic and national pride?
Hint: you could have simply said that the tunnel was overpriced without making a reference to the funding coming out of "your pocket".
Once this thing got started, no one in power was going to say, "STOP! It's costing too much!", both because it seemed irreversible and because the Dems in power in Boston
It's those damn democrats in power! Lousy democrats. Stealing my tax dollars and probably killing babies too. That's what democrats do.
Giggle. You sound just like a crank. I bet you ring up talkback radio and complain about those "damn young kids with their Rock And/Or Roll music".
Slashdot Mirror
I hope this software also inserts that unique "BSD eliteness" gene into your DNA. It seems too many BSD users have an unjustified superiority complex. The worst example I ever saw was on IRC; a jackass said "yeah, if you're stupid you should use Linux, but once you really understand UNIX you should use BSD". If only IRC had a /strangle command.
Yeah, both of them. Unfortunately the applause would be drowned out by the stupid weenies like yourself who use every opportunity, no matter how strained, to bitch about Slashdot.
I can't agree that Slashdot has these "double standards" you dolts keep complaining about when your own comments available on Slashdot and moderated highly are attacking the double standards. It's self-defeating. It's like saying "this statement is false". By writing your comment you have disproven there is a double standard. Slashdot gave you EQUAL AIR TIME with the Microsoft-bashers and the Linux-cheerleaders.
The most excruciating bit is that comments like yours are repeated, over and over again, in every article even remotely related to Linux, and you still get moderated +5 Mother-Fucking Insightful every freaking time. Hint to moderators: it's not insightful the 10,000th time.
This is what I love about Slashdot. You can hear straight from the people that make the news. No journalists. No misinterpretation. No censorship.
The software is free. You get the source code. You can modify it for internal use. You can copy it onto as many computers as you like with no licensing fees or per-use royalties. There are no client-access licenses. You can redistribute it as much as you like. You can even sell a derivative work to somebody else. There are no restrictions on use.
All of your complaints were about the support costing money. Well, duh. Of course, support will cost money. You're paying for a person's time. They're not going to give you their time for free. You must have been pretty naive to think that a person was going to suddenly drop what they were doing, support you and your business, and then go on their merry way without charging you for it. You got the software for free. What more do you want?
When people like you complain that Linux isn't free because "I had to pay for support" or "I had to spend my time", it puts me in mind of somebody who complains that a free meal wasn't really free because they had to spend energy on the chewing.
If he is talking absolute nonsense then he's in good company. Lawrence Lessig (Professor of Law at Stanford University) has used the same terminology in his own writings.
No disrespect intended, but I think you were wrong in saying this was "nonsense". If a Professor of Law can say that copyright is a government granted monopoly on publishing, then I don't think you have much standing to disagree.
I don't think he was talking about fair vs unfair. He seemed to be talking about free markets vs artificially created monopolies. If there was no copyright then there would definitely be a free market. I agree it would not be fair to the company that originally wrote the software, but free markets aren't always fair.
Copyright is a government-enforced artificial monopoly. It exists for the primary goal of encouraging authors to produce a greater number of works. The idea was always to promote intellectual growth by providing an incentive to the authors. The governments recognised that a free market is unfair to creators of IP and copyrights are their attempt to restore the balance.
So while I can agree that copyrights are more fair than anarchy, I also believe that copyright is inherently anti-free-market. Not that I think that's a problem; I'm not a big believer in fully free markets. I think copyrights have their place though the current copyright extensions are maybe a bit excessive.
I actually do have an issue with software copyrights. The copyright acts (in the USA) were drafted when books and maps and poetry were the popular IP that needed protection. These works expose their "blueprint" to the general public. So when the copyright term expired (which was an acceptable 14 years back then) the public could freely copy the work. The publicly available IP wealth of the country was increased.
Fast forward to modern copyright. Not only is the term ludicrous (up to 140 years!) but software upsets the balance. The public only ever receives the binaries, not the source code! The source is kept hidden as a trade secret. Surely you can see the problem with this: when the term expires the intellectual wealth of the country will not be increased. The intellectual property stays with the company indefinitely (or until the trade secret is leaked).
So I think software companies are rorting the original intention of copyright. They get copyright protection for their software and they don't have to give anything of value to the public when their copyright term expires. That's not what the drafters of USA copyright intended. I would think a suitable remedy would be that all software binaries must come with source code. That would restore the balance.
Of course, any closed-source vendor will claim that opening up their source code would destroy their company. "The pirates! The pirates!" they'd cry. Of course, the pirates don't care about the source code, they just copy the binaries and sell them for $10 a disc in the Hong Kong blackmarket. The "evil hackers" might care about source code, but I'm fairly sure they already have it anyway. The only half-valid argument is to prevent other (unscrupulous) companies from reusing copyrighted code in their own products; but if all companies were required to open-source their products then such violations would be easily discovered.
Bear in mind I'm talking only about releasing the source code... NOT about forcing all companies to release their software with no fees or licensing. Microsoft can continue to charge $259 for XP and send in goons to audit companies who aren't paying their licensing fees. There's no change in their copyrights just because the source is out there. They wouldn't even have to change their licensing!
Microsoft was initially a programming-language company. Their first product was BASIC for the Altair. They continued selling BASIC products to Apple and Commodore for many years before venturing into OS software with MS-DOS (which they bought rather than develop).
I find this difficult to believe. Dell is typically 20-25% more expensive than a whitebox. Your figures suggest 150% more expensive.
I suspect the whitebox you built was perhaps not exactly the same as the Dell.
There's no "e" in ridiculous.
Yes, the vendors are more expensive. No, I don't think they're ridiculously expensive. The price differences I find are about $200-$300 on a low-end system. I prefer building whiteboxes to save that $200-$300 but I wouldn't sneer at those people who couldn't be bothered.
It wasn't my original argument. You brought up the idea that open-source programmers should "also sew your own clothes and grow your own food". I pointed out the logical fallacy in your argument that software and material goods are not the same thing. I pointed out that the production costs of software are basically zero. I illustrated the logical fallacy in your argument by demonstrating how wonderful the world would be if production costs for clothes and food were zero. Basically I was showing, in a polite way, that your argument to equate "free software" with "free clothes and free food" is invalid.
I didn't say salary. Where do you think the money comes from? The stockholders are making money, so it's not coming from them. The money is coming from the end-users when they pay their license fees. That means the billions of dollars of cash in Bill Gates wallet came from end-users. In other words, end-users have paid billions of dollars more than the actual development cost of the software.
The reality is that I do understand and you don't. I didn't say their [Linux developer's] contributions are cheap. I said the development cost of Linux is cheap. That's a simple fact. Compared to the cost of developing Windows or UNIX, the development cost of Linux has been a drop in the bucket. Yes, billions of dollars worth of man-years have been spent on Linux. This is still a tiny percentage of what has been spent on Windows or UNIX.
It's very easy to understand why open-source development is cheaper. An open-source project can build upon existing open-source projects. Open source is the perfect realisation of code re-use. Even if an open-source project dies, the code lives on. Contrast with the incredible amount of wasted and repeated effort in the proprietary world. Even with the redundant efforts in open-source - how many text editors are there? - it's nothing compared to the redundant effort in the proprietary world.
How do you think this is any different to externally developed software? Come back to the real world! Most software is shithouse. Your own company is infamous for the low-quality software it produces; the industry joke is to wait for Microsoft's third version because they might get it right by then. Your last sentence is bemusing; you say companies running internally developed projects "want to pay as little as possible and will seldom pay for software to be perfect". That sounds exactly like ALL software companies to me, both internal and external.
But you and I both know that open-source developers are not starving, homeless, unclothed, unable to pay their bills. Strawman argument.
Yet Bill Gates has billions of dollars of cash. We have IT CEOs flying around in private jets. Is this where the money is going? It's not paying for developers; it's paying for junkets and jaunts and jollies for the Rich White Men in control.
The reality is that software isn't nearly as expensive as you think it is. The fact that Linux was built by volunteers in their spare time really says it all. The true cost of developing software is cheap; Linux proves that. It's the support and maintenance of software that is expensive.
Nice dichotomy. Such a shame that it's false. Software development will always be in demand. If somebody codes software as an unpaid volunteer then that's great. But there will always be some software that nobody wants to write. If that software is in demand then capitalism says that money will appear and developers will be paid, even if the fruits of their labour are open-source. Write that down as cardinal rule #1.
The real question is: will there be more or less paid software development work than we have today and how will this translate into salaries and employee numbers. In any event, there are multiple reasons why software is developed. The idea that the only way of making money from software is by hiding the source and extracting a license-fee per copy of the binary is utter nonsense.
Linux was a best of breed UNIX before any of the "corporate contributors" paid the least attention. The KDE project delivered a usable desktop in 1997; that's an achievement the combined "might" of the UNIX vendors failed to deliver despite a decade headstart.
Do you actually believe any of that nonsense?
Yes, it is an unpleasant truth, but I hope you don't hold the mistaken belief that this idea is an original from Bill Gates. It's been common lore in the computer industry since before Microsoft came into being.
The difference is that each item of clothing and each bushel of grain requires a repeated amount of effort. But with open source, the first instance requires effort and each subsequent copy requires no effort at all.
To put it another way, if by sewing a single shirt I could clothe the world's homeless, and by growing a single bushel of wheat I could feed the world's hungry, then I'd do both in an instant and I would never consider the cost to me. The benefit to the world is far greater than my personal loss.
You apparently think charity of this nature is something to sneer at.
Uhh, no they didn't. At least in Gentoo's case it was a single independent mirror that got owned. The root servers were not compromised. Pay attention to the phrase independent mirror.
In the Debian incident there were 4 servers compromised but none were "root file distribution servers" in the sense of main/contrib/non-free. From the newspapers:
By the way, both Debian and Gentoo security incidents made the newspapers in Australia (both The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald).
Ok, you didn't explicitly state it, but I'd like to ask if you'd be happier if Linux didn't build upon 25 years of OS research? Should Linux start from scratch? Reinvent decades of work?
If you're pissed off that Linux uses the UNIX API rather than invent an entirely new and obscure yet original API, then I'd like to know why.
If you're pissed off that Linux builds upon public domain research into SMP, scheduling, memory management, real-time processing, etc, then I'd also like to know why.
What, exactly, is the problem?
If you really want to prove the point, get them an English translation of The Koran.
Because they produced pitifully few copies of the game. I've been trying to get a copy of Rez - new or used - for over a year. The local stores received a single copy each when the game was released, which was sold in minutes, and they have never seen a used copy returned or traded.
That's a convincing argument! How shall I counter... hrm... I got it! No, I'm not.
Sure I did. I quoted you exactly. Are you going to disagree when the historical record is right there?
Actually I contrasted only one sentence from your post to Pascal's Wager.
By the way, a "phrase" is a short expression and your wordy run-on sentence doesn't qualify.
Well, I wouldn't call a mere "[sic]" an attack, as such.
Moi? Discredit you? You're doing such a fine job of that without my assistance.
At least you now admit it. Game, Set, Match to me! Huzzah.
Try not to pop a blood vessel. Happy holidays. Have a nice day.
I don't care if you're arguing for theism. I didn't comment on your beliefs; only on what you wrote.
Contrast what you wrote with Pascal's Wager.
Far too similar for you to retrospectively claim innocence. The essential core of Pascal's Wager is a false dichotomy combined with entirely fabricated outcomes. That describes your earlier comment perfectly.
I have apparently read more widely than you because there are dozens of refutations of Pascal's Wager that have nothing to do with "disproofs [sic] of God's existance [sic]".
BTW: I appreciate that you were not stating Pascal's Wager in an attempt to prove theism. I understood your point was to explain the "psychology" of people who do believe in such things. But that's irrelevant. Using Pascal's Wager is faulty logic whether it's to explain somebody elses belief or to explain your own.
I think the strongest argument against Lomborg is that the authors of articles he cites have said that Lomborg is either misquoting them or quoting out of context. Several authors have said that the papers they wrote are in direct contradiction to Lomborg's claims. This suggests to me that Lomborg is intellectually dishonest, if nothing else.
Isn't it depressing that people are still repeating Pascal's Wager.
Look, you've pushed a particular button of mine with this one.
Ok.
Ok.
No, I strongly disagree with this. There seems to be this all-pervasive myth that you go back 70 years and everything was rosy. People left their doors unlocked. Everybody tipped their hats to ladies in the street. Con-artists didn't exist and policemen had nothing better to do than provide consolation to young toddlers who had temporarily lost their mothers while shopping.
It's a nonsense. Go back 70 years and there are drugs, crime and corruption on an incredible scale. The mafia rules several cities. Drive-by shootings are basically invented. Policemen are murdered in their homes. Con-artists swindle the entire population out of their money leading to a rather well known market crash; makes Enron look like a child's tantrum. Hollywood movie stars are involved in drug scandal after drug scandal. You have street gangs, street crime, etc.
You need to lose this rosy-coloured vision of your history. Simpler time? Don't be stupid.
Above-ground wires do bother me. I live in an area with underground power, underground telephone and underground cable. The landscape looks great when there are no cables to obscure the view. I really notice the difference when I visit Sydney or Melbourne; their overhead cables are everywhere! It's very ugly.
Of course, I live in a neighbourhood where nearly everybody has a front garden and people take pride in the appearance of their homes. If you like to live in a techno-squalor then sure, it probably doesn't mean much to you.
Yes, other people think that, but the majority of people think it's better to counter the FUD early than to let it stew in people's minds. Bear in mind that SCO can't retract statements that they've made. The press releases are in the public record and they will come back to haunt SCO in court. IBM has already submitted several SCO press releases as evidence.
To be fair, if it had a whole 2 bits then it would have lasted a full 4 seconds before running out of time.
Why would you think that? Whenever there's a Mitnick story on Slashdot the overwhelming majority of posts say "he got what he deserved" and "hackers are good, crackers are bad". I very rarely see anybody defend what Mitnick did; in fact, I don't think I've ever seen anybody defend what Mitnick did.
If anything, I would say the "Slashdot meme" is strongly opposed to criminal acts with computers.
Yeah. Damn this whole "federation" thing to hell. What has it done for me, lately! My taxes should only benefit me. Mine Mine Mine. Gimme Gimme Gimme. Selfish Bostonian bastards, taking my tax dollars. I fought and died in the war for this country! All I want is a little respect... plus all my tax dollars paying for ME ME ME. I'll be damned to hell if my tax dollars are going to fund some evil democrats in Boston!
Sorry, for a second there you sounded like a 90-year old ingrate. At what point in your life did selfish greed overwhelm your sense of civic and national pride?
Hint: you could have simply said that the tunnel was overpriced without making a reference to the funding coming out of "your pocket".
It's those damn democrats in power! Lousy democrats. Stealing my tax dollars and probably killing babies too. That's what democrats do.
Giggle. You sound just like a crank. I bet you ring up talkback radio and complain about those "damn young kids with their Rock And/Or Roll music".