They would, if they could. But the GPL only applies to the work that's licensed under it, and derived works - not "mere aggregrations". Not because the FSF decided that, but because that's how they believe the law works.
As far as I've seen, there isn't that much actually new in RoR. But it's obvious that someone has had a great idea how a whole bunch of known stuff should fit together, in a way that encourages best practices (like a lot of testing, and code reuse). It has near perfect design.
The language Ruby wasn't new; Active Record wasn't new, nor was the idea, but it fits with Ruby really well. MVC was old, but the tiny bits of boilerplate needed makes it look like magic now and then. Everybody knows testing is essential, but I hadn't seen it integrated into a web framework so well before. The idea of "sensible defaults" can't have been new, but the switch from reams of XML (in Java web programming) to near invisible config is great. The object-oriented Javascript libraries it uses weren't new, nor are template languages, but the way in which they're added together is pretty seamless. Et cetera.
No wonder every web programming language community out there is rushing to put together it's own version of Rails... but the libraries don't always fit together as seamlessly. I think that Hansson's main achievements are recognizing that all the known best practices can be put together really well, and that Ruby and its libraries were a great fit for that.
Meh. I turn 32 in a few weeks. It's like... 'any moment now, any moment now... decay is going to set in any moment now...' while nothing is actually happening.
The OSS team needs to realise...that the _real world_ does not share their view that politics is the most important thing in software... Functionality is...
Stupidest type of argument ever, claiming that the large number of people who prefer OSS licenses do not live in the "real world".
There are people, and companies, out there in the "real world", that consider an OSS license an important requirement for software they're going to use - whether you like it or not.
China these days isn't communistic at all, it's very free market. And they try to keep the country together and the Party in charge by brutally suppressing any unwelcome ideas. The two are perfectly compatible.
What they have on you is that a huge proportion of their population is still poor, so a job paying very low wages is a step up. The US is being outcompeted on price by just about the entire other 95% of the world, but especially by China, since they're also quite competent.
Plus the currencies are skewed, obviously - the yuan should be way higher compared to the dollar. But who wants that? It'd slow China's growth and it'd lower Americans' buying power. Nobody wants that... So the bubble keeps growing.
I'm aware that the only real reason why 98% of the readership of this site believe that making money from software is evil is because Richard Stallman said so...not because they themselves actually have a reason for said belief.
Eh? RMS would never say such a thing, he's not opposed to making money.
The reason 98% of the readership here believes making money is evil, is that they like getting things for free. Nothing special.
Just as a random remark, but this week I got an error message from OpenOffice as well, that it couldn't create a backup file. Turns out that I had to create the directory that holds them by hand.
The directory is buried somewhere in OOo's hidden directory in your home dir, by default, the exact path is somewhere in the preferences screens. It didn't create the directory by itself. So possibly SMB was not related to your problem at all.
Let the clueless use Windows, I don't care. Just don't say that that is the entire measure of what constitutes "ready for the desktop".
Personally I don't feel at ease in Windows because there _isn't_ a simple text file I can edit by hand to make something do exactly what I want.
At the software company I work for, 80%+ of the people run Linux on their desktops, and it works fine. Just that the clueless need something limited, doesn't mean that the more complex stuff out there is bad. It just means it's not for the clueless.
Another way he could have gone about it was the thing he actually did: on the question of whether he had sex with Lewinsky, he asked for a definition of having sex, and when the definition the lawyers of the opposition gave did not include receiving oral sex - he could answer perfectly truthfully that he didn't have sex with her using that definition.
On the contrary; maybe having the economy dragged to a standstill is the only way to let the politicians realize the folly of the 'everything's patentable' world. If it would lead to change, the temporary stagnation might be worth it.
The way I see it, without this whole IP/patent business, the situation is as follows:
Cost of production in the US is far higher than anywhere else
With education improving around the world, the US is losing any advantages on that front it used to have
Despite that, US insists on buying much much more than it sells
Consequence: dollar plunges, new equilibrium as a much poorer US
Politicians noticed that a long time ago, and try to fix it like this:
Invent a new form of property, "intellectual property", mostly consisting of banal ideas protected by law, that is "produce" from thin air
Give US companies a big headstart in acquiring it
Try to get laws passed around the world that protect this "IP"
Profit! An actual revenue stream for the US!
It's a rip off, it probably won't work in the long term, it wreaks havoc within the US on the short term, and it's counter productive as a whole - but the alternative is a lower standard of living for the whole US, and they're trying to postpone that.
(not an economist, and describing a view from Europe)
A "Media center PC" that doesn't work with as many existing formats as possible is doomed anyway. That's the whole point of using a PC for a media center, isn't it?
In my experience, it's never that clear cut. "Programmers" make classes, objects, etc on the fly, as needed, or they'll put in a lot more functionality into previously clean methods on classes - based on what they need the system to do today; requirements change all the time, systems evolve. If the "Architect" wants to maintain a good design not just at the start of implementation, but years into the project, he'd better be one of the programmers.
What's needed are software engineers. To make a change into an existing system, you refactor it so the design stays clean and the change becomes easy... the design changes over time just like the implementation does, and it's usually the same people doing the changes. Better be good at both.
I'm not aware of any anti-spyware, virus etc issues with Ajax that wouldn't also impact a normal http get request or other Javascript.
With Ajax, using it to update a part of a page instead of the whole page, you get less load on both the server, the connection and the client. I like it, in principle. Some effects just aren't possible to do in a usable way if you need to re-generate and transfer the whole page for every little update.
It certainly has problems, though - it messes with conventional navigation (like reload a page and you're back to where you were, the 'back' button doesn't work the way you want, bookmarking doesn't work), and also on some pages you don't get enough feedback, you don't realize that your click has any effect at all until the thing updates. Of course there are also issues with accessibility, etc.
Of course there are also issues with accessibility, etc. But all in all, I prefer Ajax to abuses of Flash, and I think that's the choice.
Be that as it may, the statement "even though CO2 levels to 550+ ppm in the next few decades, this will not change the climate" is also a model, and likely a much poorer one than the current best scientific efforts.
The one thing history has shown time and time again is companies only do what's in their best financial interest.
What is good for companies is not good for the country (and the world) as a whole. The companies do not carry the financial and human burden of pollution, they just reap the rewards of low cost production. They rape citizens, precisely because it's in their best financial interest.
Let them pay the cost, and they'll change rather quickly.
Perhaps. The other problem with companies is that they're even more short-sighted than humans, they'll always prefer short term gain over bigger long term gains.
Would the US also get a pass if we ratified this treaty and then completely ignored it?
Of course! I don't think any industrialized country that signed the treaty is going to reach the target, but they all got a number of years of pointing at the US out of it. That, plus nobody really cares about it either, since everybody is reasoning "well, if the biggest polluter of all isn't joining in, why would we..."
Mind you, gas in the Netherlands (one of the most expensive places to buy it in the world, the Dutch government likes to try to use tax as a way to influence people) is currently around 1.40 euro per liter - or about $6.40 per gallon, according to Google. And even though income is generally lower here, it's not really changing any habits - people are stubborn.
Personally I'm pretty libertarian, I believe in free open market capitalism. Governments should not try to make up the minds of citizens. Therefore there shouldn't be any extra taxes on gas, but instead the price of everything should include the cost of removing its negative effects from the environment. Once that happens, people will make greener choices - or not, in which case there will be a large amount of money available for removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Either way, people are free, markets do their work, without us messing up the planet.
You haven't described anything that should be eligible for patenting. You don't get patents for making a widget that does X, you get a patent for the particular way in which it achieves doing X.
So ok, 30 second skip is a useful idea, it was new, I'm not going to debate if it's an idea or not. It doesn't matter - a valid patent would be one for the particular way they achieved doing a 30 second skip. And although I have no idea how the Tivo works, I don't believe their method of achieving that was unobvious. In fact, I bet that forwarding a MPEG-2 video by an arbitrary number of seconds was already well known, and they probably used a method that was already common.
It seems that the Tivo did some pretty cool things that were new at the time, however, none of the underlying specific technology was patent-worthy or even new.
Actually, "cancer" is an umbrella name for a large group of different diseases with different causes and symptoms. More and more of them are curable or at least treatable.
But yeah, quitting smoking would be a good idea for a number of reasons, of course...
Slashdot Mirror
They would, if they could. But the GPL only applies to the work that's licensed under it, and derived works - not "mere aggregrations". Not because the FSF decided that, but because that's how they believe the law works.
As far as I've seen, there isn't that much actually new in RoR. But it's obvious that someone has had a great idea how a whole bunch of known stuff should fit together, in a way that encourages best practices (like a lot of testing, and code reuse). It has near perfect design.
The language Ruby wasn't new; Active Record wasn't new, nor was the idea, but it fits with Ruby really well. MVC was old, but the tiny bits of boilerplate needed makes it look like magic now and then. Everybody knows testing is essential, but I hadn't seen it integrated into a web framework so well before. The idea of "sensible defaults" can't have been new, but the switch from reams of XML (in Java web programming) to near invisible config is great. The object-oriented Javascript libraries it uses weren't new, nor are template languages, but the way in which they're added together is pretty seamless. Et cetera.
No wonder every web programming language community out there is rushing to put together it's own version of Rails... but the libraries don't always fit together as seamlessly. I think that Hansson's main achievements are recognizing that all the known best practices can be put together really well, and that Ruby and its libraries were a great fit for that.
Meh. I turn 32 in a few weeks. It's like... 'any moment now, any moment now... decay is going to set in any moment now...' while nothing is actually happening.
The OSS team needs to realise...that the _real world_ does not share their view that politics is the most important thing in software... Functionality is...
Stupidest type of argument ever, claiming that the large number of people who prefer OSS licenses do not live in the "real world".
There are people, and companies, out there in the "real world", that consider an OSS license an important requirement for software they're going to use - whether you like it or not.
China these days isn't communistic at all, it's very free market. And they try to keep the country together and the Party in charge by brutally suppressing any unwelcome ideas. The two are perfectly compatible.
What they have on you is that a huge proportion of their population is still poor, so a job paying very low wages is a step up. The US is being outcompeted on price by just about the entire other 95% of the world, but especially by China, since they're also quite competent.
Plus the currencies are skewed, obviously - the yuan should be way higher compared to the dollar. But who wants that? It'd slow China's growth and it'd lower Americans' buying power. Nobody wants that... So the bubble keeps growing.
I'm aware that the only real reason why 98% of the readership of this site believe that making money from software is evil is because Richard Stallman said so...not because they themselves actually have a reason for said belief.
Eh? RMS would never say such a thing, he's not opposed to making money.
The reason 98% of the readership here believes making money is evil, is that they like getting things for free. Nothing special.
Just as a random remark, but this week I got an error message from OpenOffice as well, that it couldn't create a backup file. Turns out that I had to create the directory that holds them by hand.
The directory is buried somewhere in OOo's hidden directory in your home dir, by default, the exact path is somewhere in the preferences screens. It didn't create the directory by itself. So possibly SMB was not related to your problem at all.
Let the clueless use Windows, I don't care. Just don't say that that is the entire measure of what constitutes "ready for the desktop".
Personally I don't feel at ease in Windows because there _isn't_ a simple text file I can edit by hand to make something do exactly what I want.
At the software company I work for, 80%+ of the people run Linux on their desktops, and it works fine. Just that the clueless need something limited, doesn't mean that the more complex stuff out there is bad. It just means it's not for the clueless.
It must get worse before it can get better... web 2.1: server side blink.
Another way he could have gone about it was the thing he actually did: on the question of whether he had sex with Lewinsky, he asked for a definition of having sex, and when the definition the lawyers of the opposition gave did not include receiving oral sex - he could answer perfectly truthfully that he didn't have sex with her using that definition.
On the contrary; maybe having the economy dragged to a standstill is the only way to let the politicians realize the folly of the 'everything's patentable' world. If it would lead to change, the temporary stagnation might be worth it.
The way I see it, without this whole IP/patent business, the situation is as follows:
Politicians noticed that a long time ago, and try to fix it like this:
It's a rip off, it probably won't work in the long term, it wreaks havoc within the US on the short term, and it's counter productive as a whole - but the alternative is a lower standard of living for the whole US, and they're trying to postpone that.
(not an economist, and describing a view from Europe)
I think a real practical problem for Linux is that competent staff for it is really hard to find in sufficient numbers.
A "Media center PC" that doesn't work with as many existing formats as possible is doomed anyway. That's the whole point of using a PC for a media center, isn't it?
In my experience, it's never that clear cut. "Programmers" make classes, objects, etc on the fly, as needed, or they'll put in a lot more functionality into previously clean methods on classes - based on what they need the system to do today; requirements change all the time, systems evolve. If the "Architect" wants to maintain a good design not just at the start of implementation, but years into the project, he'd better be one of the programmers.
What's needed are software engineers. To make a change into an existing system, you refactor it so the design stays clean and the change becomes easy... the design changes over time just like the implementation does, and it's usually the same people doing the changes. Better be good at both.
I'm not aware of any anti-spyware, virus etc issues with Ajax that wouldn't also impact a normal http get request or other Javascript.
With Ajax, using it to update a part of a page instead of the whole page, you get less load on both the server, the connection and the client. I like it, in principle. Some effects just aren't possible to do in a usable way if you need to re-generate and transfer the whole page for every little update.
It certainly has problems, though - it messes with conventional navigation (like reload a page and you're back to where you were, the 'back' button doesn't work the way you want, bookmarking doesn't work), and also on some pages you don't get enough feedback, you don't realize that your click has any effect at all until the thing updates. Of course there are also issues with accessibility, etc.
Of course there are also issues with accessibility, etc. But all in all, I prefer Ajax to abuses of Flash, and I think that's the choice.
Isn't that why tags were introduced? So you can skip reading the entire headline?
Be that as it may, the statement "even though CO2 levels to 550+ ppm in the next few decades, this will not change the climate" is also a model, and likely a much poorer one than the current best scientific efforts.
The one thing history has shown time and time again is companies only do what's in their best financial interest.
What is good for companies is not good for the country (and the world) as a whole. The companies do not carry the financial and human burden of pollution, they just reap the rewards of low cost production. They rape citizens, precisely because it's in their best financial interest.
Let them pay the cost, and they'll change rather quickly.
Perhaps. The other problem with companies is that they're even more short-sighted than humans, they'll always prefer short term gain over bigger long term gains.
Would the US also get a pass if we ratified this treaty and then completely ignored it?
Of course! I don't think any industrialized country that signed the treaty is going to reach the target, but they all got a number of years of pointing at the US out of it. That, plus nobody really cares about it either, since everybody is reasoning "well, if the biggest polluter of all isn't joining in, why would we..."
Mind you, gas in the Netherlands (one of the most expensive places to buy it in the world, the Dutch government likes to try to use tax as a way to influence people) is currently around 1.40 euro per liter - or about $6.40 per gallon, according to Google. And even though income is generally lower here, it's not really changing any habits - people are stubborn.
Personally I'm pretty libertarian, I believe in free open market capitalism. Governments should not try to make up the minds of citizens. Therefore there shouldn't be any extra taxes on gas, but instead the price of everything should include the cost of removing its negative effects from the environment. Once that happens, people will make greener choices - or not, in which case there will be a large amount of money available for removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Either way, people are free, markets do their work, without us messing up the planet.
You haven't described anything that should be eligible for patenting. You don't get patents for making a widget that does X, you get a patent for the particular way in which it achieves doing X.
So ok, 30 second skip is a useful idea, it was new, I'm not going to debate if it's an idea or not. It doesn't matter - a valid patent would be one for the particular way they achieved doing a 30 second skip. And although I have no idea how the Tivo works, I don't believe their method of achieving that was unobvious. In fact, I bet that forwarding a MPEG-2 video by an arbitrary number of seconds was already well known, and they probably used a method that was already common.
It seems that the Tivo did some pretty cool things that were new at the time, however, none of the underlying specific technology was patent-worthy or even new.
Eh? Puzzle Pirates has been doing the MMOArrrrPG joke to death, it's been going for years... So how can the next one be the first?!
Actually, "cancer" is an umbrella name for a large group of different diseases with different causes and symptoms. More and more of them are curable or at least treatable.
But yeah, quitting smoking would be a good idea for a number of reasons, of course...
So why I get fined for speeding, can I argue that it's my money and I don't have to hand it over...?
They're just whining.
Hey, I can play that game!
Windows without OS X on general x86 = Software revenue for Microsoft
Window with OS X on general x86 = Software revenue for Microsoft and Apple!
Explain why this is a good argument?