Okay, mod me flamebait if you want, but I fail to see how Wine is any sort of win for the open source community. Wine is a pretty good open source implementation of an ugly, broken and virtually unimplementable API that really shows its age and irrelevance in an increasingly Internet-driven world.
No, you're not flamebait. The more applications that can work in Wine, the more options I have for migrating away from Windows. This year for the first time, I was able to get rid of my Windows box. Everything that I was keeping it for I can now run under Wine. I would say that Wine is a legacy layer that is continuously improving in a world that still needs it.
It's not caring about peoples' health - it's people caring about their own health. Laptops make much more sense for people who have a computer to occasionally browse the internet and check email. I sit at a desk with good ergonomics when I'm working. However, when I'm just enjoying myself, I prefer to be on the couch, or at the kitchen table while my wife is cooking, or in bed, or...etc...lots of bad ergonomics, but that's not what it's really about. I'm not doing my hardcore computing on a laptop, and I suspect that most people who caused these numbers to go up are doing very little hardcore computing at all.
Did I use to work with you? I got to experience this first hand once - I left when we had gone from 3 servers to 84. (our factor of capacity increase was a bit better, the first server supported about 25, the 84th about 15...)
How about a car analogy? If a thief walks onto a dealership and steals a car, the dealership is liable for it. If I purchase a car (sign for and take possession of it), and five minutes later, a thief steals it, can the dealership still bill me for the car?
To start, I agree 100% with the first half of your post. Company loyalty doesn't make sense (at present). The company is looking out for his bottom line - as an employee you should be doing the same (looking out for your own bottom line - which may or may not include more than just money).
I consider myself a free market type. To me, the free market represents the ability of individual entities to negotiate, between themselves, a fair (to both parties) exchange of goods and services. Unions are a way for one group to increase their bargaining power. I don't have a problem with this. I do have a problem when a union receives special government protections. I do have a problem when a business doesn't have the choice to NOT do business with a union.
As for corporations colluding to keep wages down - I think this is a problem. It takes away the ability of the free market to communicate value through price. However, I also don't think it's sustainable. Without some law requiring that these corporations keep wages at a set rate, the low rates will decrease the size of the workforce. As the size of the workforce decreases, it will become more difficult to hire good people. And, corporations will subsequently "break" their agreements and start paying a little bit more to lure the better workforce.
So...unions are great. When they're free. When both the business and the worker have the right to decide, based on the costs and benefits that the union brings, whether or not to associate with them.
The policy defines that too, although rather loosely:
âoeSmall set of recipientsâ means the size of individual-recipient address lists (To, CC, BCC fields) typical of most e-mails in common use, ranging from 1, to a few, to as many as may be involved in a large committee or work group (~20-30).
Rather subjective...but it looks like the general idea is "more than 20-30".
The major point here is that the current health care industry in this country is far from being a "free market". From the FDA to the AMA to all of the regulation and restrictions surrounding the operation of a hospital.
At this point, I'm not arguing that those are bad, but that they serve to create artificial shortages, socialize certain aspects of the industry, and create very high barriers to entry for some fields. The merits of this are open for discussion, but it certainly can't be considered a free market.
Then you sir, would be somewhat enlightened. Unlike most management that I've worked with (not all, just most). Now, I'll admit that I don't have a tremendous amount of experience with Notes, but the short amount of time I spent filling in as an admin for some Domino servers has cured me of ever wanting anything to do with Notes again. So, we're on the same page. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that the majority of people making purchasing decisions in the industry are.
I've experienced similar issues in a big "Oracle shop". Prior to that job, I never knew that Oracle produced such a multitude of applications. I think you're going to encounter similar issues anywhere that the tendency is to buy everything from the same vendor.
However, that same tendency could have positive effect to the open source world. This is just another example of a standard, mainstream company saying "You don't have to go with Microsoft. Here's an alternative." When businesses start seeing this sort of thing offered as a viable alternative from a company like IBM (Nobody was ever fired for choosing IBM, right?), it starts to become a viable alternative in their eyes. Proliferation of non-Windows use in the corporate world can only be beneficial.
It's proof that Government intervention is required in order to maintain a free market. The free market also relies on a voluntary exchange of goods or services - which requires government "regulation" to prevent theft and other involuntary exchange. Government is also needed to provide things such as tort resolution and contract enforcement.
Maybe I'm misreading yours of the GP's post, but there's nothing in the GPL to prevent you from doing what the GP says. Say I write a program and license it with the GPL. Assume that I have to do this because I have included previously GPL'd code. I am under no obligation to distribute this to anybody. The only people I am obligated to give the source code to is those people that I distribute the binary to. So now, I have customers who have paid me for my software, and have received source code. I am in full compliance.
The one potential snag is that my customers now have the right to redistribute the source code that I have given them. For whatever incentive they please. Therefore, in order to sustain this business model, I have to add value. That's the tricky part. See Redhat as one example - and CentOS as an example that this doesn't HAVE to be a problem.
And yet, surprisingly enough, Redhat still has a fairly successful business. There must be SOMETHING that people are willing to pay for on top of simply code (in source or binary form).
There are plenty of ways for programmers to make a living that don't involve boxing and selling a piece of software. Off the top of my head:
Customize software for businesses that need something slightly specialized.
Provide on demand bug fix support for a crucial piece of software.
Provide integration expertise.
I'm sure there are even more that I haven't thought of yet. The market spawns some incredible creativity. The catch however, is that the only programmers who are going to make money are the good ones. The rest are going to have to find another line of work. And I don't see the problem with that at all. And I'll add, as I've mentioned before, I am currently making quite a decent living writing nothing but open source software.
I think he was making the same point you are. ie. if they counted servers, cluster nodes, and routers, Windows would have been below 90% for quite some time.
I could be wrong on this, but it seems to me that as a virus writer it would be much more lucrative to target desktops of average home users (who seldom have a clue what they're doing) than to target servers run by admins who supposedly know what they're doing and are paid significant sums of money (and thus spending a significant amount of time) for the sole purpose of keeping these systems running properly.
Except the GP didn't say that it was easier to break into the system - he said that more people are going to try. I think he neglects to mention an underlying assumption that no software is perfect, and given enough time and effort, the chances of finding a security flaw that can be exploited is greater than zero in ANY piece of software. While this assumption won't always be true, it's completely reasonable for us to make it when considering the security of our systems - for we don't really have any way of disproving it for any particular piece of software.
Re:You keep using that word, but...
on
Censorship By Glut
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Except there's still the difference between not being allowed to say something, and everyone ignoring what you have to say. I'd say that's a HUGE difference. Is there a difference in the effect of what you say has on society? Probably not. But that doesn't change the fact that everyone ignoring you is drastically different from censorship.
Not to mention the convenience of being able to just turn on the radio and listen to music. I don't want to have to spend time, before I get in the car, downloading and copying music. And I especially don't want to have to plan what music I'm going to listen to before I start driving somewhere.
Actually, they do think they are paying the artists too much. They tried to reduce the mandatory amount of money per song they had to pay for royalties this summer as part of 'negotiations',
If by "too much" you mean "more than they think they can get away with" then I agree with you.
And it's not like the labels looked at digital downloads and said, well, this gets rid of pretty much all distribution, transportation and 'loss' from the ledger, so we can just divvy up that money between us, the songwriter and the performers. They did the opposite. They are keeping all the extra money. They continue to charge artists for so-called 'losses' (as a fixed percentage). They went over all their contracts, and picked out all the ones that were poorly worded, and then decided to pay those bands ZERO for digital downloads (songwriters still were paid, but not the performers).
So...you expected them to generate revenue from this new business stream, and, without any sort of contractual obligation, give it away? They didn't "decide" to pay the bands ZERO - the bands' contracted were written in such a way that they didn't owe them anything, therefore the expected behaviour is to not give them any money. I'm not saying the contracts are fair, or just, or a good idea...but they do exist.
I should add, I'm purposefully not considering any possibilities of fraud or similar illegal or tortious actions. These are outside any point I wish to made and should be dealt with appropriately.
Ethics in this situation are pretty subjective to which part of the issue you're seeing. However, I'd have to say that, no, people would not stop making things altogether. You'd have people producing as a hobby. You'd have new business models. Look at open source. Sure, it's software, rather than "art", but if you compare it as a business opportunity, it becomes obvious that there are viable business models out there that aren't destroyed by "piracy". And, I think that "funded from governments" would be more likely to stifle creative expression than influence it. However, going back to foundations and benefactors - that has potential.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, mod me flamebait if you want, but I fail to see how Wine is any sort of win for the open source community. Wine is a pretty good open source implementation of an ugly, broken and virtually unimplementable API that really shows its age and irrelevance in an increasingly Internet-driven world.
No, you're not flamebait. The more applications that can work in Wine, the more options I have for migrating away from Windows. This year for the first time, I was able to get rid of my Windows box. Everything that I was keeping it for I can now run under Wine. I would say that Wine is a legacy layer that is continuously improving in a world that still needs it.
A user entered password is not generally something that you want to modify - at all.
It's not caring about peoples' health - it's people caring about their own health. Laptops make much more sense for people who have a computer to occasionally browse the internet and check email. I sit at a desk with good ergonomics when I'm working. However, when I'm just enjoying myself, I prefer to be on the couch, or at the kitchen table while my wife is cooking, or in bed, or...etc...lots of bad ergonomics, but that's not what it's really about. I'm not doing my hardcore computing on a laptop, and I suspect that most people who caused these numbers to go up are doing very little hardcore computing at all.
Did I use to work with you? I got to experience this first hand once - I left when we had gone from 3 servers to 84. (our factor of capacity increase was a bit better, the first server supported about 25, the 84th about 15...)
Because you're responsible for your own property?
Once it crosses the meter, you've purchased it.
How about a car analogy? If a thief walks onto a dealership and steals a car, the dealership is liable for it. If I purchase a car (sign for and take possession of it), and five minutes later, a thief steals it, can the dealership still bill me for the car?
To start, I agree 100% with the first half of your post. Company loyalty doesn't make sense (at present). The company is looking out for his bottom line - as an employee you should be doing the same (looking out for your own bottom line - which may or may not include more than just money).
I consider myself a free market type. To me, the free market represents the ability of individual entities to negotiate, between themselves, a fair (to both parties) exchange of goods and services. Unions are a way for one group to increase their bargaining power. I don't have a problem with this. I do have a problem when a union receives special government protections. I do have a problem when a business doesn't have the choice to NOT do business with a union.
As for corporations colluding to keep wages down - I think this is a problem. It takes away the ability of the free market to communicate value through price. However, I also don't think it's sustainable. Without some law requiring that these corporations keep wages at a set rate, the low rates will decrease the size of the workforce. As the size of the workforce decreases, it will become more difficult to hire good people. And, corporations will subsequently "break" their agreements and start paying a little bit more to lure the better workforce.
So...unions are great. When they're free. When both the business and the worker have the right to decide, based on the costs and benefits that the union brings, whether or not to associate with them.
âoeSmall set of recipientsâ means the size of individual-recipient address lists (To, CC, BCC fields) typical of most e-mails in common use, ranging from 1, to a few, to as many as may be involved in a large committee or work group (~20-30).
Rather subjective...but it looks like the general idea is "more than 20-30".
The major point here is that the current health care industry in this country is far from being a "free market". From the FDA to the AMA to all of the regulation and restrictions surrounding the operation of a hospital.
At this point, I'm not arguing that those are bad, but that they serve to create artificial shortages, socialize certain aspects of the industry, and create very high barriers to entry for some fields. The merits of this are open for discussion, but it certainly can't be considered a free market.
Repeat after me, personal responsibility.
Then you sir, would be somewhat enlightened. Unlike most management that I've worked with (not all, just most). Now, I'll admit that I don't have a tremendous amount of experience with Notes, but the short amount of time I spent filling in as an admin for some Domino servers has cured me of ever wanting anything to do with Notes again. So, we're on the same page. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that the majority of people making purchasing decisions in the industry are.
I've experienced similar issues in a big "Oracle shop". Prior to that job, I never knew that Oracle produced such a multitude of applications. I think you're going to encounter similar issues anywhere that the tendency is to buy everything from the same vendor.
However, that same tendency could have positive effect to the open source world. This is just another example of a standard, mainstream company saying "You don't have to go with Microsoft. Here's an alternative." When businesses start seeing this sort of thing offered as a viable alternative from a company like IBM (Nobody was ever fired for choosing IBM, right?), it starts to become a viable alternative in their eyes. Proliferation of non-Windows use in the corporate world can only be beneficial.
It's proof that Government intervention is required in order to maintain a free market. The free market also relies on a voluntary exchange of goods or services - which requires government "regulation" to prevent theft and other involuntary exchange. Government is also needed to provide things such as tort resolution and contract enforcement.
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLRequireAvailabilityToPublic Your statement seems to only apply if I initially distribute binaries without source.
I know it's a bit late, but I just had to comment that I enjoyed that analogy. I'll have to keep it in mind for the future.
Maybe I'm misreading yours of the GP's post, but there's nothing in the GPL to prevent you from doing what the GP says. Say I write a program and license it with the GPL. Assume that I have to do this because I have included previously GPL'd code. I am under no obligation to distribute this to anybody. The only people I am obligated to give the source code to is those people that I distribute the binary to. So now, I have customers who have paid me for my software, and have received source code. I am in full compliance.
The one potential snag is that my customers now have the right to redistribute the source code that I have given them. For whatever incentive they please. Therefore, in order to sustain this business model, I have to add value. That's the tricky part. See Redhat as one example - and CentOS as an example that this doesn't HAVE to be a problem.
And yet, surprisingly enough, Redhat still has a fairly successful business. There must be SOMETHING that people are willing to pay for on top of simply code (in source or binary form).
There are plenty of ways for programmers to make a living that don't involve boxing and selling a piece of software. Off the top of my head:
I'm sure there are even more that I haven't thought of yet. The market spawns some incredible creativity. The catch however, is that the only programmers who are going to make money are the good ones. The rest are going to have to find another line of work. And I don't see the problem with that at all. And I'll add, as I've mentioned before, I am currently making quite a decent living writing nothing but open source software.
I think he was making the same point you are. ie. if they counted servers, cluster nodes, and routers, Windows would have been below 90% for quite some time.
I could be wrong on this, but it seems to me that as a virus writer it would be much more lucrative to target desktops of average home users (who seldom have a clue what they're doing) than to target servers run by admins who supposedly know what they're doing and are paid significant sums of money (and thus spending a significant amount of time) for the sole purpose of keeping these systems running properly.
Except the GP didn't say that it was easier to break into the system - he said that more people are going to try. I think he neglects to mention an underlying assumption that no software is perfect, and given enough time and effort, the chances of finding a security flaw that can be exploited is greater than zero in ANY piece of software. While this assumption won't always be true, it's completely reasonable for us to make it when considering the security of our systems - for we don't really have any way of disproving it for any particular piece of software.
Except there's still the difference between not being allowed to say something, and everyone ignoring what you have to say. I'd say that's a HUGE difference. Is there a difference in the effect of what you say has on society? Probably not. But that doesn't change the fact that everyone ignoring you is drastically different from censorship.
Not to mention the convenience of being able to just turn on the radio and listen to music. I don't want to have to spend time, before I get in the car, downloading and copying music. And I especially don't want to have to plan what music I'm going to listen to before I start driving somewhere.
Actually, they do think they are paying the artists too much. They tried to reduce the mandatory amount of money per song they had to pay for royalties this summer as part of 'negotiations',
If by "too much" you mean "more than they think they can get away with" then I agree with you.
And it's not like the labels looked at digital downloads and said, well, this gets rid of pretty much all distribution, transportation and 'loss' from the ledger, so we can just divvy up that money between us, the songwriter and the performers. They did the opposite. They are keeping all the extra money. They continue to charge artists for so-called 'losses' (as a fixed percentage). They went over all their contracts, and picked out all the ones that were poorly worded, and then decided to pay those bands ZERO for digital downloads (songwriters still were paid, but not the performers).
So...you expected them to generate revenue from this new business stream, and, without any sort of contractual obligation, give it away? They didn't "decide" to pay the bands ZERO - the bands' contracted were written in such a way that they didn't owe them anything, therefore the expected behaviour is to not give them any money. I'm not saying the contracts are fair, or just, or a good idea...but they do exist.
I should add, I'm purposefully not considering any possibilities of fraud or similar illegal or tortious actions. These are outside any point I wish to made and should be dealt with appropriately.
Sure there has been. That doesn't change the business model. It just means that they put in a little bit extra effort at some point - or got lucky.
Ethics in this situation are pretty subjective to which part of the issue you're seeing. However, I'd have to say that, no, people would not stop making things altogether. You'd have people producing as a hobby. You'd have new business models. Look at open source. Sure, it's software, rather than "art", but if you compare it as a business opportunity, it becomes obvious that there are viable business models out there that aren't destroyed by "piracy". And, I think that "funded from governments" would be more likely to stifle creative expression than influence it. However, going back to foundations and benefactors - that has potential.