Having a monopoly (in legal terms) is not, as many have pointed out, illegal, but it does constrain your behavior somewhat, and it does mean that the Justice Dept is probably going to want to keep an eye on you. I don't see anything in TFA suggesting that Google is going to be prosecuted--merely that they're going to be scrutinized, and frankly I think that's a good thing. I'm more worried about the suggestion that Microsoft is no longer a problem.
Intel and Cisco have both also been judged to have monopolies in their respective fields, but unlike Microsoft, they've (mostly) played by the rules, and haven't ended up in serious trouble. Doesn't mean the Justice Dept won't continue to keep an eye on them, though. I have no problem with Google being lumped in with Intel and Cisco. On the other hand, I don't want them lumped in with Microsoft until someone finds evidence of similar anti-competitive behavior. On the gripping hand, if evidence of anti-competitive behavior is found, I want them prosecuted, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for that day.
Begins!? Apple is the only major vendor to have been actively boycotted by the FSF for their efforts to obstruct freedom, force lock-in and undermine competition. Even Microsoft[*] hasn't managed to reach that high water mark. Of course, Apple has come a long way since then, and many of our younger readers may not even remember what they were like at their worst. ("Look-and-Feel" anyone?) Still, those of us who remember the bad old Apple keep a wary eye on the new-and-(mostly-)improved Apple.
[*] FSF members may not run MS OSes, but they do actively support building software to run under MS OSes, and will even accept patches to help their software run better on MS OSes.
Actually, I once "compiled" gcc with a C interpreter and used the result to (very slowly) recompile gcc itself. The result was byte-for-byte identical to a version of gcc built with a regular version of gcc. If you can't figure out what that demonstrates, then you're in the wrong line of work (assuming you're involved with software development).
You're using a Linux distro that comes with telnetd installed and enabled by default? Let us all know what it is so we can avoid it like the plague! (And maybe point and laugh--that's almost as bad as setting up the user to run as root by default, like Lindows/Linspire.) Not that I'd really refer to telnetd as "bloat", but it's still: Do Not Want!
I can guarantee that Gnome is not "dependent" on Mono, as I have a completely Mono-free Gnome desktop. And GTK is used by a whole lot more than just Gnome. Personally, I'd rather keep my systems free of both Mono and Qt as they are right now.
Aside from companies that insist on making their own custom chip sets (e.g. Apple), you'll have a hard time finding an ASIC that handles both MP3 and AAC but not Vorbis. There's a reason that second- and third-tier vendors like Samsung and Sansa support ogg vorbis, and it's not because they think that supporting that format will give them a bigger market share. It's because it's so cheap to do so that there's absolutely no reason not to.
The iPod seems to be a fairly rare exception as far as I can tell. Most recently-built devices I've tried do support ogg-vorbis, whether or not it's advertised on the packaging.
(Ogg-theora is, of course, another story entirely.)
A different crime from the legally-defined crime of theft, yes, but the common English word "theft" covers a wide variety of activities, including copyright infringement, some of which aren't even crimes in the first place. For example, lots of people steal from Shakespeare, but that theft is not a crime, nor a form of copyright infringement. It is, however, theft.
The whole thing is disgusting to me though. We're not living in any semblance of a free country when your neighbors can tell you what things you can and can't have on your property simply because they don't look pretty.
So where do you draw the line? Is it ok to slaughter hogs and leave the guts to ferment on your front yard? If your neighbor does that, then when the wind shifts you're probably going to be doing a little projectile vomiting. But no problem, it's a free country, right? Or (if you're worried about infection), just sprinkle undiluted putrescine around the place to get the same effect without being a serious biohazard, If that's not ok, then why is inflicting an unpleasant view on your neighbors ok? Isn't it just a matter of degree, and not, as you seem to think, some sort of absolute distinction between free and non-free?
It's the old Libertarian paradox: "your right to swing your fist ends where my face begins" means that someone can constrain the movement of your fist by where they place their face.
My mother arrives tomorrow from Scotland and if a technophobe, 64 year-old Weegie can figure out how to get on-line
<voice tone="sarcasm"> Oh gosh, she sure lives in the third world there, doesn't she. Does her village even have a well? Let alone a telephone? Yeah, the fact that some English-speaking granny from Scotland can cope proves that anybody, anywhere in the world has affordable Internet access and can navigate strange websites in foreign languages. There's surely no place where it might, say, take a full days travel and cost a couple of days wages just to get on-line so you can try to take advantage of the plane ticket your rich American nephew bought you. No, if you can accomplish something in Scotland, you can certainly do it anywhere. </voice>
Why? Because I try to judge people by their skills and talent rather than their age? If that would make me a terrible hiring manager, I'd be proud to be one! I've worked with too many people, young and old, who were amazing at software development (and too many people, young and old, who were terrible at it) to think that age is really any sort of factor in this field. There is a skill-and-experience factor, but it generally tends to be dwarfed by differences in sheer talent.
If you think I should overlook a brilliant youngster and hire a plodding old fart just because he's old, then I think it's more likely you that would make a terrible hiring manager. That's almost as bad as the idiots who refuse to hire anyone over 30 because they think us old farts can't keep up with the changes in the field.
Not necessarily. I'm well over 30, and I agree with him. Programming is a talent that people have or they don't, and age doesn't seem to be a big factor either way. Skill (as opposed to talent) can be acquired with age, but I'd rather have a 22 year old with great talent and instinct than a 40 year old stick-in-the-mud who's been dragging down his teams for the last 18 years. I'd even more rather have a 40 year old with great talent and instinct, but you take what you can get.
Or to put it another way--just because the schools often seem to miss out on teaching certain useful skills, that doesn't mean that someone fresh out of school can't have acquired them by other means. For example, a kid might know what a linker is because she's been hacking her dad's Linux box since she was in grade school. (I have strong hopes that this will end up being a valid description of at least one of my nieces.) The 22 year old just might have more real-world practical experience hacking Debian than the 40 year old who spent years doing nothing but generating reports with RPG, Access and VB "programming".
Cooperation is still not an instinctive behavior for us
*Bzzt*, thanks for playing. Cooperation is very much an instinctive behavior for us. Not, perhaps, as much as the urge to eat or reproduce, but still very strong indeed. We are social animals, more than most vertebrates, though far less than the social insects. It is, it's true, only one element of our complex nature, but it's as instinctive in us as the urge for dogs to sleep in piles.
I actually prefer w3m, but links is a very close second. Lynx is so far behind the curve it's not even funny. I only use lynx when I'm trying to bootstrap a system and nothing else is available.
I don't think it's a matter of lynx becoming too mainstream—far from it. I think it's more likely that the competent people have simply moved on to better text browsers like links or w3m, so lynx isn't as well maintained any more. But that's just a guess.
Oh, and Stallman doesn't use the web as far as I know, but if he did, he'd probably use the browser built into emacs!:)
I have always had a hard time believing in the business model of the Open Source community.
Actually, sounds more like you have a hard time understanding it. What it sounds like you're disbelieving is some sort of straw man you've invented.
as a business person, I have a hard time picturing a long term model where open source is a product I can make money off of.
Um, yeah, that's because OSS is something you make money with, not "off of". You can make money of off hardware or services, but software is increasingly becoming a tool for providing services rather than a product in itself.
He was saying (and I fully agree) that puns are a lower (much, IMO) form of humor than sarcasm.
Actually, what many people refer to as sarcasm is really irony or satire. Sarcasm implies scorn or contempt. It does not imply "saying the opposite of what you mean". That's a particular form of irony. It may be sarcasm if the intent is to wound or disparage, but if it's simply done in good humor, then it's not sarcasm at all.
Dry irony is actually one of my favorite forms of wit, although I tend to prefer when it's not too sarcastic.
Of course, we may be witnessing the evolution of language in action here. I'll be fascinated to see what the dictionaries say about sarcasm in another ten or twenty years.
Lex:It's a UNIX system! I know this! Me: NO ITS NOT!
Except it was--it was a 3d navigation system made for SGI. I believe the Linux port is called fsv or something like that, but don't quote me on that last.
I agree that Citadel looks very promising. I actually know people that used to use it back in the eighties--but, of course, it was a much different system back then. Still, it's one of the few proposed alternatives to Exchange that has actually been around longer than Exchange, and seems to offer more-or-less all of the same features (email, integrated calendaring & scheduling, groupware, IM, etc.). Of course, since its roots go back to before there was an Exchange, I suspect it's probably less of a drop-in replacement than other more recent systems--but those other systems still seem to be playing catch-up, while Citadel looks like it's more than caught up already.
All that, and it's GPL'd.
My biggest concern is that the IM doesn't seem to be based on XMPP (Jabber). Which is too bad, but then neither is MS-IM.:)
That's fine for hardware companies like Cisco and Nokia who mainly derive value from their hardware but I'm sure it'd kill a proprietary software company.
If their systems were so heavily dependent on Libre/Copyeft Software that they can't untangle it from their own work, perhaps it's a bit of a stretch to call them a "proprietary software company" in the first place. No matter what they may have deluded themselves into believing.
In any case, this is not limited to companies using Free Software. Over the years, I've known several small vertical-market companies who would basically bundle an illegal copy of DOS/Window/Netware/etc., along with generic hardware and their own specialty software. Bottom line--companies don't like paying for stuff, and will try to avoid it if they think they can get away with it. When this dislike causes them to cross the line into illegal activities, though, there may well be consequences they don't like. And...what? You want me to be sympathetic?
Slashdot Mirror
Having a monopoly (in legal terms) is not, as many have pointed out, illegal, but it does constrain your behavior somewhat, and it does mean that the Justice Dept is probably going to want to keep an eye on you. I don't see anything in TFA suggesting that Google is going to be prosecuted--merely that they're going to be scrutinized, and frankly I think that's a good thing. I'm more worried about the suggestion that Microsoft is no longer a problem.
Intel and Cisco have both also been judged to have monopolies in their respective fields, but unlike Microsoft, they've (mostly) played by the rules, and haven't ended up in serious trouble. Doesn't mean the Justice Dept won't continue to keep an eye on them, though. I have no problem with Google being lumped in with Intel and Cisco. On the other hand, I don't want them lumped in with Microsoft until someone finds evidence of similar anti-competitive behavior. On the gripping hand, if evidence of anti-competitive behavior is found, I want them prosecuted, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for that day.
I keep hoping that someday I'll read a Slashdot article headlined, "Is xxx doomed?" and the answer is... Yes!
Feel free to submit any or all of the following:
Is CP/M doomed?
Is Microsoft Word for OS/2 doomed?[*]
Is pets.com doomed?
Is the passenger pigeon doomed?
Is T-Rex doomed?
Is Shoemaker-Levy doomed?
Get any of these accepted, and your wish will come true. :)
[*] Note, I own a copy of this, but I still suspect it's pretty doomed.
Begins!? Apple is the only major vendor to have been actively boycotted by the FSF for their efforts to obstruct freedom, force lock-in and undermine competition. Even Microsoft[*] hasn't managed to reach that high water mark. Of course, Apple has come a long way since then, and many of our younger readers may not even remember what they were like at their worst. ("Look-and-Feel" anyone?) Still, those of us who remember the bad old Apple keep a wary eye on the new-and-(mostly-)improved Apple.
[*] FSF members may not run MS OSes, but they do actively support building software to run under MS OSes, and will even accept patches to help their software run better on MS OSes.
Actually, I once "compiled" gcc with a C interpreter and used the result to (very slowly) recompile gcc itself. The result was byte-for-byte identical to a version of gcc built with a regular version of gcc. If you can't figure out what that demonstrates, then you're in the wrong line of work (assuming you're involved with software development).
I don't need to telnet into my Linux box.
You're using a Linux distro that comes with telnetd installed and enabled by default? Let us all know what it is so we can avoid it like the plague! (And maybe point and laugh--that's almost as bad as setting up the user to run as root by default, like Lindows/Linspire.) Not that I'd really refer to telnetd as "bloat", but it's still: Do Not Want!
I can guarantee that Gnome is not "dependent" on Mono, as I have a completely Mono-free Gnome desktop. And GTK is used by a whole lot more than just Gnome. Personally, I'd rather keep my systems free of both Mono and Qt as they are right now.
Aside from companies that insist on making their own custom chip sets (e.g. Apple), you'll have a hard time finding an ASIC that handles both MP3 and AAC but not Vorbis. There's a reason that second- and third-tier vendors like Samsung and Sansa support ogg vorbis, and it's not because they think that supporting that format will give them a bigger market share. It's because it's so cheap to do so that there's absolutely no reason not to.
The iPod seems to be a fairly rare exception as far as I can tell. Most recently-built devices I've tried do support ogg-vorbis, whether or not it's advertised on the packaging.
(Ogg-theora is, of course, another story entirely.)
A different crime from the legally-defined crime of theft, yes, but the common English word "theft" covers a wide variety of activities, including copyright infringement, some of which aren't even crimes in the first place. For example, lots of people steal from Shakespeare, but that theft is not a crime, nor a form of copyright infringement. It is, however, theft.
I mean, as long as we're picking nits here.... :)
I'm confused. How are "Star Wars", "Serenity" and "The Matrix" racial epithets?
The whole thing is disgusting to me though. We're not living in any semblance of a free country when your neighbors can tell you what things you can and can't have on your property simply because they don't look pretty.
So where do you draw the line? Is it ok to slaughter hogs and leave the guts to ferment on your front yard? If your neighbor does that, then when the wind shifts you're probably going to be doing a little projectile vomiting. But no problem, it's a free country, right? Or (if you're worried about infection), just sprinkle undiluted putrescine around the place to get the same effect without being a serious biohazard, If that's not ok, then why is inflicting an unpleasant view on your neighbors ok? Isn't it just a matter of degree, and not, as you seem to think, some sort of absolute distinction between free and non-free?
It's the old Libertarian paradox: "your right to swing your fist ends where my face begins" means that someone can constrain the movement of your fist by where they place their face.
My mother arrives tomorrow from Scotland and if a technophobe, 64 year-old Weegie can figure out how to get on-line
<voice tone="sarcasm">
Oh gosh, she sure lives in the third world there, doesn't she. Does her village even have a well? Let alone a telephone? Yeah, the fact that some English-speaking granny from Scotland can cope proves that anybody, anywhere in the world has affordable Internet access and can navigate strange websites in foreign languages. There's surely no place where it might, say, take a full days travel and cost a couple of days wages just to get on-line so you can try to take advantage of the plane ticket your rich American nephew bought you. No, if you can accomplish something in Scotland, you can certainly do it anywhere.
</voice>
Then you'd be a terrible hiring manager.
Why? Because I try to judge people by their skills and talent rather than their age? If that would make me a terrible hiring manager, I'd be proud to be one! I've worked with too many people, young and old, who were amazing at software development (and too many people, young and old, who were terrible at it) to think that age is really any sort of factor in this field. There is a skill-and-experience factor, but it generally tends to be dwarfed by differences in sheer talent.
If you think I should overlook a brilliant youngster and hire a plodding old fart just because he's old, then I think it's more likely you that would make a terrible hiring manager. That's almost as bad as the idiots who refuse to hire anyone over 30 because they think us old farts can't keep up with the changes in the field.
Not necessarily. I'm well over 30, and I agree with him. Programming is a talent that people have or they don't, and age doesn't seem to be a big factor either way. Skill (as opposed to talent) can be acquired with age, but I'd rather have a 22 year old with great talent and instinct than a 40 year old stick-in-the-mud who's been dragging down his teams for the last 18 years. I'd even more rather have a 40 year old with great talent and instinct, but you take what you can get.
Or to put it another way--just because the schools often seem to miss out on teaching certain useful skills, that doesn't mean that someone fresh out of school can't have acquired them by other means. For example, a kid might know what a linker is because she's been hacking her dad's Linux box since she was in grade school. (I have strong hopes that this will end up being a valid description of at least one of my nieces.) The 22 year old just might have more real-world practical experience hacking Debian than the 40 year old who spent years doing nothing but generating reports with RPG, Access and VB "programming".
I think you just helped prove his point by misinterpreting "union" as modifying "set". See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugby_union for a hint. :)
Remember, the Solar System is only a theory, just like gravity and chemistry. We need to start teaching kids about the alternatives!
It's a grey area, which is why those who hack purely for the personal satisfaction, rather than for "good" or "bad" motives are called grey hats. :)
Cooperation is still not an instinctive behavior for us
*Bzzt*, thanks for playing. Cooperation is very much an instinctive behavior for us. Not, perhaps, as much as the urge to eat or reproduce, but still very strong indeed. We are social animals, more than most vertebrates, though far less than the social insects. It is, it's true, only one element of our complex nature, but it's as instinctive in us as the urge for dogs to sleep in piles.
I actually prefer w3m, but links is a very close second. Lynx is so far behind the curve it's not even funny. I only use lynx when I'm trying to bootstrap a system and nothing else is available.
I don't think it's a matter of lynx becoming too mainstream—far from it. I think it's more likely that the competent people have simply moved on to better text browsers like links or w3m, so lynx isn't as well maintained any more. But that's just a guess.
Oh, and Stallman doesn't use the web as far as I know, but if he did, he'd probably use the browser built into emacs! :)
I have always had a hard time believing in the business model of the Open Source community.
Actually, sounds more like you have a hard time understanding it. What it sounds like you're disbelieving is some sort of straw man you've invented.
as a business person, I have a hard time picturing a long term model where open source is a product I can make money off of.
Um, yeah, that's because OSS is something you make money with, not "off of". You can make money of off hardware or services, but software is increasingly becoming a tool for providing services rather than a product in itself.
**Whoosh!**
He was saying (and I fully agree) that puns are a lower (much, IMO) form of humor than sarcasm.
Actually, what many people refer to as sarcasm is really irony or satire. Sarcasm implies scorn or contempt. It does not imply "saying the opposite of what you mean". That's a particular form of irony. It may be sarcasm if the intent is to wound or disparage, but if it's simply done in good humor, then it's not sarcasm at all.
Dry irony is actually one of my favorite forms of wit, although I tend to prefer when it's not too sarcastic.
Of course, we may be witnessing the evolution of language in action here. I'll be fascinated to see what the dictionaries say about sarcasm in another ten or twenty years.
Lex:It's a UNIX system! I know this!
Me: NO ITS NOT!
Except it was--it was a 3d navigation system made for SGI. I believe the Linux port is called fsv or something like that, but don't quote me on that last.
I agree that Citadel looks very promising. I actually know people that used to use it back in the eighties--but, of course, it was a much different system back then. Still, it's one of the few proposed alternatives to Exchange that has actually been around longer than Exchange, and seems to offer more-or-less all of the same features (email, integrated calendaring & scheduling, groupware, IM, etc.). Of course, since its roots go back to before there was an Exchange, I suspect it's probably less of a drop-in replacement than other more recent systems--but those other systems still seem to be playing catch-up, while Citadel looks like it's more than caught up already.
All that, and it's GPL'd.
My biggest concern is that the IM doesn't seem to be based on XMPP (Jabber). Which is too bad, but then neither is MS-IM. :)
That's fine for hardware companies like Cisco and Nokia who mainly derive value from their hardware but I'm sure it'd kill a proprietary software company.
If their systems were so heavily dependent on Libre/Copyeft Software that they can't untangle it from their own work, perhaps it's a bit of a stretch to call them a "proprietary software company" in the first place. No matter what they may have deluded themselves into believing.
In any case, this is not limited to companies using Free Software. Over the years, I've known several small vertical-market companies who would basically bundle an illegal copy of DOS/Window/Netware/etc., along with generic hardware and their own specialty software. Bottom line--companies don't like paying for stuff, and will try to avoid it if they think they can get away with it. When this dislike causes them to cross the line into illegal activities, though, there may well be consequences they don't like. And...what? You want me to be sympathetic?
It's an old, old story: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy builds girl.
(Shamelessly stolen from my uncle the science fiction writer.)