"Why should some dried-up old man living in Boca Raton shouting orders at his nurse be your boss when he's got eight layers of bosses between you and him, sucking cash out of your production?"
Apparently the idea of quality is selling rather better than just quality.
There are a few rewards you can choose from:
1) 150 US$ per hour for a lousy product. 2) The feeling of a job well done. 3) 150 US$ per hour for a good product and the feeling of a job well done.
Once you have chosen your reward, there are two courses of action:
1) You go about achieving your reward. 2) You go to Slashdot and start whining.
"The 'stealing' term can be applied both ways, and if there weren't big patent interests lobbying, then it would be 'stealing' to enact patents, because it's an unfair restriction on what companies can produce or use."
You can only steal ideas by regulating them (that is: by introducing so-called intellectual property laws). Infriging on patents is not theft.
But the parent is right that it will be called theft so as not to have to reverse these laws.
"The idea of allowing a market for ideas isnt inheritly bad."
That's why it shouldn't be killed by introducing software patents. The current market for ideas (where ideas compete with each other on the basis of their relative merits) is doing just fine.
"In my opinion, Linux is for security conscious, knowledgeable IT professionals who want to save money by choosing a better and less expensive product."
Saving money is only important to businesses with share holders, because money saved can be dividend paid.
All other businesses, assuming they have actual turnover, don't care about spending a couple thou, because expenses are tax deductable.
The reason I use FOSS in my company, is because a) it works out of the box, b) I can adapt it, and c) no hassle with EULAs and licenses. I remember having to install Windows SBS 2003 somewhere: it took me over 16 hours to figure out what license options were available, and 4 hours to install the software. Now repeat this for every proprietary product you use.
Time is money, but what's even more important to me is that I prefer focussing on the computing aspects instead of the legal ones. In the end, the great thing about Linux is its deployability.
[Australians are careful and prefer to buy from established American suppliers]
If your reasoning is correct, then IBM's Linux services should be a hit in Australia.
Also, the article mentioned the Australasian region, not just Australia. I thought the different countries making up the region often have vastly differing attitudes? Are there common cultural traits "down under," and if so, what are they?
"GPS receivers for civilian use are limited in their resolution. Its worse than 10 metres, cerntainly not enough to land a plane (planes use GPS for general navigation, ILS for landing)."
I have heard wild stories of airplane pilots looking at altimeters or even, you'll laugh!, out of a window. I guess these stories can be relegated to the realm of fairy-tales?
It is easy to fault the submitter for posting this flame bait, but it is Zonk's fault for letting it through. And I suspect this is not the first time Zonk has done something like this, and CmdrTaco has let him.
"...or to distribute copies, or link to libraries, or produce derivative works. the reason for the up-front presentation of the GPL, like any license, is so that folks know what the is or is not allowed in a given case."
Nonsense! Copyright law forbids you to do any of these things. If you want to do them nonetheless, you better make sure you have permission from the copyright owner, who is the only one entitled to give you that permission. Perhaps he wrote a general public license? But you have to agree to nothing.
Criticisms of journalism and its practicioners often revolve around factual correctness, the strive for objectivity, truth, and the methods required to achieve these lofty goals.
Sometimes the matter of topicality gets snowed under. Why is this an interesting article? It is not. The author is spouting platitudes. Nobody believes that open source is a community or a movement, because everybody knows that open source is a development methodology at most, and at the very least a label designed by a fat, facetious, and not overly smart gun nut who felt obliged to obfuscate the true drive behind free software as much as possible.
What? Not everybody knows that? In that case it would have been interesting to collect the opinions of developers and business people alike, and see what people really think open source is.
"This article irritates me in the way that most news media coverage irritates me: they purposefully polarize an issue, then present two exaggerated extremes, and try to figure out which one is correct. In the real world, neither is correct, and the truth is somewhere in between."
In case you're interested, you're describing a logical fallacy that is called a false dichotomy (or false dilemma). It's very popular with the press, presumably because you need dialogue to uproot it, as the speaker may have inadvertently forgotten to name the other sides of the argument.
"--"critics are already predicting the Reader's success."
Yeah yeah.
These are the people that have been predicting e-books would take off now for how long?"
Er, no, this is the single opinion of a single person who contributed on the well-chosen name "anonymous coward", made larger than life by a Slashdot editor who trusts his sources without verifying their claims.
Please show me a single objective, authorative critic who has predicted the success of the Sony Reader so far.
"Paper has too many advantages and too few disadvantages to be in danger."
Nobody would have predicted the extinction of the dinosaur, but they died out nevertheless. Paper will die, not because it cannot beat electronic devices in many areas hands down, but because it cannot keep beating them forever in the areas that count. This has little to do with the paper-like qualities an electronic device cannot emulate, and everything with the device-like qualities that paper cannot emulate.
So, you won't be buying a polymer-based ebook reading device in the near future. But perhaps you will get a clock based on the material, then an electronic picture frame (so much nicer to have a photo on your desk of Allison Hanigan with a Wife Switch), and in a couple of years your boss will have you take notes on a Star Trek-like PADD, so that everybody present at the meeting will get them delivered right away using WiFi, including the doodles that your bored colleagues are making absent-mindedly.
I'd prefer to wait with my opinion until the Sony Reader, Jinke Hanlin and Philips Iliad are all available, so that I could compare the three. Still, it would be pretty unlikely that I would go with the product of a known lawbreaker like Sony. Who knows what they have in store this time?
It can be quite that simple. In Germany, a lawyer is known for threatening citizens with legal action for breaking trademark law on behalf of companies that are not aware or supportive, unless these citizens cough up. And in the USA, 30% of all DMCA take-down notices are estimated to be improper and possibly illegal.
The initiators of these actions (or extortions, if you like) get away with it because the cost of paying up outweighs the risk of losing. And the reason for that is because in these cases the governments involved are sympathetic to parties that claim to be victims, but are not really.
"This thing has gone so far that now every time when someone mentions anything related to the UN, the most vocal part of the crowd will yell things about food for oil program and how the UN is The Great Evil. I don't know, how common this negative attitude is overall, but it's clear that the age-old attitude against the UN is raising its head again."
Oh, but there is a way to make these lard-eating cousin-humpers turn as quickly as a politician in... in..., well, just as a politician: just let the world suggest that it wants more control over the UN, and suddenly you'll hear these same Americans go on about "our UN", "we started it", et cetera.
Slashdot Mirror
"I'm not whining."
Unlike what you may believe, the world does not revolve around you. I was not talking about you.
"Why should some dried-up old man living in Boca Raton shouting orders at his nurse be your boss when he's got eight layers of bosses between you and him, sucking cash out of your production?"
Apparently the idea of quality is selling rather better than just quality.
There are a few rewards you can choose from:
1) 150 US$ per hour for a lousy product.
2) The feeling of a job well done.
3) 150 US$ per hour for a good product and the feeling of a job well done.
Once you have chosen your reward, there are two courses of action:
1) You go about achieving your reward.
2) You go to Slashdot and start whining.
"Right, the guy's a total loser for being an employee."
Your words, not mine.
"As you work, remember who's creating the value, and who's getting paid for it without creating value."
Also remember that if you are creating value without getting a reward, you are a loser. And if you complain about it on a website, you are a wanker.
"As others have pointed out, they'll try again and again, and they only have to win once. We have to win every time."
If that bothers you, you might as well have fun fighting them.
"The 'stealing' term can be applied both ways, and if there weren't big patent interests lobbying, then it would be 'stealing' to enact patents, because it's an unfair restriction on what companies can produce or use."
You can only steal ideas by regulating them (that is: by introducing so-called intellectual property laws). Infriging on patents is not theft.
But the parent is right that it will be called theft so as not to have to reverse these laws.
"The idea of allowing a market for ideas isnt inheritly bad."
That's why it shouldn't be killed by introducing software patents. The current market for ideas (where ideas compete with each other on the basis of their relative merits) is doing just fine.
"In my opinion, Linux is for security conscious, knowledgeable IT professionals who want to save money by choosing a better and less expensive product."
Saving money is only important to businesses with share holders, because money saved can be dividend paid.
All other businesses, assuming they have actual turnover, don't care about spending a couple thou, because expenses are tax deductable.
The reason I use FOSS in my company, is because a) it works out of the box, b) I can adapt it, and c) no hassle with EULAs and licenses. I remember having to install Windows SBS 2003 somewhere: it took me over 16 hours to figure out what license options were available, and 4 hours to install the software. Now repeat this for every proprietary product you use.
Time is money, but what's even more important to me is that I prefer focussing on the computing aspects instead of the legal ones. In the end, the great thing about Linux is its deployability.
[Australians are careful and prefer to buy from established American suppliers]
If your reasoning is correct, then IBM's Linux services should be a hit in Australia.
Also, the article mentioned the Australasian region, not just Australia. I thought the different countries making up the region often have vastly differing attitudes? Are there common cultural traits "down under," and if so, what are they?
"If that wasn't clear"
It wasn't.
"GPS receivers for civilian use are limited in their resolution. Its worse than 10 metres, cerntainly not enough to land a plane (planes use GPS for general navigation, ILS for landing)."
I have heard wild stories of airplane pilots looking at altimeters or even, you'll laugh!, out of a window. I guess these stories can be relegated to the realm of fairy-tales?
Oh, wow, modded down, what a surprise!
It is easy to fault the submitter for posting this flame bait, but it is Zonk's fault for letting it through. And I suspect this is not the first time Zonk has done something like this, and CmdrTaco has let him.
"...or to distribute copies, or link to libraries, or produce derivative works. the reason for the up-front presentation of the GPL, like any license, is so that folks know what the is or is not allowed in a given case."
Nonsense! Copyright law forbids you to do any of these things. If you want to do them nonetheless, you better make sure you have permission from the copyright owner, who is the only one entitled to give you that permission. Perhaps he wrote a general public license? But you have to agree to nothing.
Criticisms of journalism and its practicioners often revolve around factual correctness, the strive for objectivity, truth, and the methods required to achieve these lofty goals.
Sometimes the matter of topicality gets snowed under. Why is this an interesting article? It is not. The author is spouting platitudes. Nobody believes that open source is a community or a movement, because everybody knows that open source is a development methodology at most, and at the very least a label designed by a fat, facetious, and not overly smart gun nut who felt obliged to obfuscate the true drive behind free software as much as possible.
What? Not everybody knows that? In that case it would have been interesting to collect the opinions of developers and business people alike, and see what people really think open source is.
It's all Zonk's fault, really.
"Somebody better tell Stallman this."
Why? What's Stallman got to do with Open Source?
"This article irritates me in the way that most news media coverage irritates me: they purposefully polarize an issue, then present two exaggerated extremes, and try to figure out which one is correct. In the real world, neither is correct, and the truth is somewhere in between."
In case you're interested, you're describing a logical fallacy that is called a false dichotomy (or false dilemma). It's very popular with the press, presumably because you need dialogue to uproot it, as the speaker may have inadvertently forgotten to name the other sides of the argument.
"Or maybe wait until someone besides Sony makes something comparable."
Someone like Philips or Jinke perhaps?
"Similarily, when reading a long HTML document I add the line
BODY BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#FFFFFF" LINK="#9690CC"
to get white characters on a black background. I wish slashdot had this option."
Most webbrowsers allow you to use a user style sheet, so that you can always have this setting if you wish.
Also, if you download the Developer plugin for Firefox, you can change colours on the spot with the CSS menu.
Everything s/he says, except that I have a Palm PDA, and that I would not mind if the epaper screen were foldable or rollable.
"--"critics are already predicting the Reader's success."
Yeah yeah.
These are the people that have been predicting e-books would take off now for how long?"
Er, no, this is the single opinion of a single person who contributed on the well-chosen name "anonymous coward", made larger than life by a Slashdot editor who trusts his sources without verifying their claims.
Please show me a single objective, authorative critic who has predicted the success of the Sony Reader so far.
"Paper has too many advantages and too few disadvantages to be in danger."
Nobody would have predicted the extinction of the dinosaur, but they died out nevertheless. Paper will die, not because it cannot beat electronic devices in many areas hands down, but because it cannot keep beating them forever in the areas that count. This has little to do with the paper-like qualities an electronic device cannot emulate, and everything with the device-like qualities that paper cannot emulate.
So, you won't be buying a polymer-based ebook reading device in the near future. But perhaps you will get a clock based on the material, then an electronic picture frame (so much nicer to have a photo on your desk of Allison Hanigan with a Wife Switch), and in a couple of years your boss will have you take notes on a Star Trek-like PADD, so that everybody present at the meeting will get them delivered right away using WiFi, including the doodles that your bored colleagues are making absent-mindedly.
I'd prefer to wait with my opinion until the Sony Reader, Jinke Hanlin and Philips Iliad are all available, so that I could compare the three. Still, it would be pretty unlikely that I would go with the product of a known lawbreaker like Sony. Who knows what they have in store this time?
"I realize that it's not quite that simple"
It can be quite that simple. In Germany, a lawyer is known for threatening citizens with legal action for breaking trademark law on behalf of companies that are not aware or supportive, unless these citizens cough up. And in the USA, 30% of all DMCA take-down notices are estimated to be improper and possibly illegal.
The initiators of these actions (or extortions, if you like) get away with it because the cost of paying up outweighs the risk of losing. And the reason for that is because in these cases the governments involved are sympathetic to parties that claim to be victims, but are not really.
Thank you once again, Slashdot editors, for misrepresenting the issue entirely.
"This thing has gone so far that now every time when someone mentions anything related to the UN, the most vocal part of the crowd will yell things about food for oil program and how the UN is The Great Evil. I don't know, how common this negative attitude is overall, but it's clear that the age-old attitude against the UN is raising its head again."
... in ..., well, just as a politician: just let the world suggest that it wants more control over the UN, and suddenly you'll hear these same Americans go on about "our UN", "we started it", et cetera.
Oh, but there is a way to make these lard-eating cousin-humpers turn as quickly as a politician in