I could have called that in my sleep. It's been plain to me for quite some time that the Free Software movement is just another plank in the Left Wing Extremist platform of the Democratic Party.
On the one hand, this disturbs me because there is the possibility that politicly savvy advocates could foist the GPL on an uneducated American populace.
On the other hand, I am happy to see more people (especially those outside the tech industry) exposed to the Free Software philosophy. When I explained it to my father, he exclaimed "that's communism!" without any leading from me. My father never touches a computer, but he was exposed to Socialist rabble-rousers in the 1930s, he saw the Nazis rise and fall, and he knows radical political bull**** when he sees it. You don't need to be an expert in order to understand what this is all about (in fact, being an expert can cloud your judgement). You just have to be an ordinary American with common sense. The true core of the Free Software movement won't stand the light of day. Ultimately, it's limited by the same factors that limit other attempts by Leftists to foist their ways on us. Even if you actually succeed in forcing taxpayers to fund GPL more than we already do, you will have to maintain your dominance. That would divert resources from the effort to maintain Unions (in steady decline since the Japanese started skunking us in autos), Public Education (beginning to crumble, and likely to erode further due to a recent landmark Supreme Court ruling), etc. So, in a strange way, I am sad that you won't be speaking out and attracting attention to your point of view.
As long as they give you the source after you buy the software, they are not in violation. So, requiring payment before you can access CVS is perfectly acceptable under the GPL. Strange but true. I bet even RMS would agree with my interpretation. This is one of those times where free doesn't mean gratis--the GPL was never intended to imply gratis, it just works out that way 99.999...% of the time.
I'm not impressed, but I'll have to "age myself" too to explain why. I knew people back in highschool who recorded stuff off the air, and never labeled their tapes. They just knew the music by the brand of the tape, how dirty or scratched the plastic was, where it was thrown last, etc. I've seen that done with collections of 100 or more tapes. OK, it's not quite as impressive, but the leap to different patterns in the vinyl isn't that great.
Why not just use two small curved mirrors 100 meters apart? You don't get the light-gathering ability, but you don't really need it because the moon is so bright. You should be able to get the effective resolution of a 100-meter scope right? It seems to me like the biggest challenge is building a big frame that won't wobble too much, and coping with the differences in atmospheric "seeing" between the two mirrors. However, it probably isn't too much more difficult than running the MMT, which has 6 large synchronized mirrors. Maybe I'm missing something...
In my early 20s I worked as a courier. We had radios in our cars. No full duplex. You had to key the mike and "capture" the channel. On more than one occasion, I was asked to change routes, rendezvous with other drivers, or even take a different exit while driving. This was an inherently dangerous and stressful business. I had two accidents, neither of which I attribute directly to use of the radio.
The first one was caused by speeding and an oil slick. The lady I rear-ended even slipped on the oil as she got out of her SUV and commented about it. Damage to my beat-up little 4-cylinder Mustang? $600. Damage to her SUV? $600.
The second time I was going through a parking lot and this woman backed out. She said I was speeding, I said she was an idiot not to look back before reversing. Insurance said neither party was at fault, so I had no access to her damage figure. Mine was $1100 because she scraped 3 side panels.
Although I wasn't talking on the radio during either of these accidents, the stress of the job pushed me to drive in an unsafe manner. The radio was part of that stress. Since I no longer do that job, I have had no moving violations and more importantly, no accidents.
Runs Linux for network admin types (imagine a few of these suckers in your business - $200 for a Staroffice/web browsing/java running machine).
Call the sales rep from IBM and say "no". If he asks why, explain to him that $2000/seat for fully supported workstations is too much. We decided to use the guy with blue hair, a bolt through his nose, and a minivan full of cracked $200 game consoles.
Re:At $100, this could be a good platform
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An R2 Of Your Own
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· Score: 2
I think Hasbro has overestimated the Star Wars appeal. Or are there really that many/. readers out there so enamored of the Star Wars universe that $100 seems reasonable for a glorified beer-fetcher?
Yes. I think The Simpsons said it best:
Skinner: Here's Ralph Wiggum's entry... Pre-packaged "Star Wars" characters, still in their display box? Are those the limited-edition action figures? Ralph: What's a diarama?
Whenever I see one of these, I just have to picture it stopping too fast for an 18-wheeler. Either that, or I flash back to that film they showed us in drivers ed where small cars collided with big cars. Corbin Sparrow vs. 1972 Cadillac. I can just picture it. Of course, plenty of people ride motorcycles. The Sparrow is like, all of the danger of a motorcycle without any of the cool factor.
...is that the experimenters didn't create environmental conditions that would evolve what they thought should evolve. They simply created conditions that favored the development of circuits that oscillate. They failed to create conditions that favored the development of circuits that oscillate independantly.
Others have said that GA algorithms "cheat". I prefer to think that they take things into account that humans don't. I recall reading about another experiment like this. The end result only worked when the temperature was within a very narrow range.
Yuck. Where are you supposed to run your circuits? In a room where the temperature, radiation, vibration, humidity, and barometric pressure are all held to design conditions?
That's why evolution takes so long. The "creatures" have to experience a wide range of conditions in combination. I think a better way to approach such designs is to simulate them in software, because we know that programs are deterministic. Hopefully, we can then check every "function" of such designs using some automated testing software to be sure it won't crash on us.
Of course, doing GA for circuits in the "real world" will produce more exciting results, but more pitfalls too.
You have to be really careful about that. Do it wrong, and you send thousands of white-hot rocks down into the middle of California in the middle of July. Oops! Just kindled all the redwood forests.
If the asteroid is big enough, you could even heat the atmosphere and/or spread enough space dust around to influence the weather in wierd ways. That's not as bad as sending a 1000-foot wave around the Pacific rim, but it's still less than optimal.
That said, it would be nice if we had enough lead-time to send up something that could pulverize it into little chunks and disperse them widely enough to create a nice annual meteor shower.
The question you have to ask for all this is: How long would it take us to turn a planet-killer into lots of little pebbles and scatter them widely enough?
Also, how much energy would that take, and where would it come from? I wager the answer is "a lot" and "from nothing we have right now".
I think the most practical answer for the time being is going to be "nuke it". Of course that won't turn it into pebbles, but hopefully the chunks will split wide enough to miss us.
Lead time is everything. We really need as much effort as possible going into detection so we can get as much lead-time as possible. 50 years lead time and we can mine the thing. 5 days lead time and we are the next dinosaurs.
Fine. A test to see what happens to a country that does this. Smart countries considering such a plan will hold off to "wait and see" what kind of impact this has. Unfortunately, the very nature of long term effects is that they will take... well... a long term to take effect. The short-term impacts (learning curve, etc.) are already well known. However, at least a few years from now we can say "let's look at V and see what people are saying".
Argh! You're right. After posting my usual snide remarks, I decided to download the article and read it. Right there on the first few pages is Apache's market share graph. That Apache isn't GPL'd (and that claiming it for the GPL camp is one of the oldest lies in the Free Software advocate's handbook) is bad enough. What's even sadder is that it plainly shows Apache to have "peaked" and lost ground to IIS (note, I'm not saying that's good or bad, it's simply an observation).
I stopped reading the essay when I saw that.
So, for once I am not going to offer any calm objective arguments to follow my bombast. I stand by the troll.
How whip cream fosters weight loss, how unfettered immigration promotes security, and how adultry prevents AIDS.
Sure there are people who eat all they want, live next door to strangers from Iran, screw all the time and don't end up as fat disease bags screaming in a pool of their own blood at a bombed-out supermarket. However, the smart money says "why chance it?".
If government-produced software is GPL'd, then I, as a citizen, am being denied the right to use the government work in a way I see fit. The GPL is *not* public domain. Allowing MSFT to repackage PD material does no harm to anybody, because the PD material is still there. At this point, I have to hit you with one of my classic zingers:
A Free Software wacko is somebody who believes that intellectual property can't be stolen--except when a proprietary software company uses something from the Public Domain.
The Free Software wackos (like Rush Limbaugh's environmentalist wackos) don't care about Freedom, Liberty, Technical merit, or any other system of values. They simply choose to identify with value systems when it suits their purpose. Sooner or later, they can be caught in a glaring inconsistancy. With the environmentalist wackos it's preferring to let forests burn rather than allow logging companies to thin them. With Free Software wackos it's extolling technical merit in one breath, and then arguing that freedom is more important in the next breath, and then arguing that some people have to give up their freedom in the next breath. It's also saying "IP" can't be stolen and then turning around and objecting when *their* IP is stolen.
So, what values do these sibling wacko movements really hold dear? Political power and self importance. That's it. That's all. Not everybody mind you, there are many people in both these movements who are not aware of it. True believers. Every once in a while they wake up and have a "conversion". I'm not aware of anybody doing this from the Free Software movement, but give it time. It's a bit younger than the environmentalist movement, and hasn't become as political... yet.
how on earth can a government releasing a "free gpl'ed software" be a monopoly in that area?
Because the existance of such software tends to drive out low-cost proprietary alternatives leaving us with high-end proprietary and GPL'd "distributions". The compiler market is a good example of a place where "the middle" is stagnating because of this.
Read the GPL --- you have the right to do what you want to do with the source, as long as you don't take away others' rights to do what they want to do with the new source.
In other words, you can only propogate the GPL, and if the government throws its hefty weight into a particular market, it would create a monopoly by driving out proprietary competitors. The damage would be proportional to the quality of the product. If the product were really poor, it would produce little damage. If it breaks into the realm of "good but lacking some features" It will destroy the low end of the market. If it becomes the best-in-class it will destroy the entire market. Then, the government is free to sit on its collective ass and let what was once best-in-class slowly erode. The proprietary versions won't come back because the threat of increased government funding and restoration is ever-present.
Where exactly in there do you see the government who may have written the sourc-code, exerting a monopolistic control over you?
I think I've made it pretty clear. Although there wouldn't be an explicit government monopoly, there would be a defacto monopoly. The proprietary software industry would be effectively destroyed, which RMS freely admits is the purpose of the GPL. However, most customers want the choice. If people were properly educated and the issue were put to a vote, most would not want this to happen. Unfortunately, most people are not properly educated due to the Left's prior victories in education.
My standard answer to the "MSFT can't do XXX" argument is "Who is going to stop them?"
Apple, Sun, Palm (if they can survive), Any other corporation that can please people for whom control really matters, and last but not least--the Free Software and Open Source movements.
I actually like the fact that they exist as independant players in the market. What I object to is them being enshrined as part of the government, because when government gives something away for free there is potential for serious inequity. The public schools are the best example of this. Poor kids can only use public schools. Rich people may choose private. Vouchers are a good solution, but the Left fights it tooth and nail. Now, imagine if everybody can run free government Linux systems but if you want the features missing from that you have to pay $1500 for Windows or MacOS. Would that really be good?
Viewed in this light, FS / OS desktops present a perfect match for Government investment. Free desktops provide a boundless, publically-available resource which results not only in large financial savings to its citizens, but also protects and enhances citizen privacy, freedom and choice. Moreover, because Government investment in free software development can be made locally, such support stimulates the nation's or locality's technology sector. In the longer-term view, such investment eventually operates to sizably reduce the outflow of hard currency to other countries, something especially critical for developing nations but also a factor no Government cannot seriously consider. What responsible Government would prefer its citizens pay a large international tax to a foreign corporation over creating high-tech jobs in its local economy?
Folks, this meme has been in the Free Software community from the earliest days of the FSF. Just read some of RMS's early essays and you'll see the same ideas. It's bunk. They just want us to exchange a private monopoly for a government monopoly. Private monopolies can be defeated when customers become so disatisfied that they choose alternatives. Private monopolies can be defunded because when customers stop buying they lose money. Public monopolies are much harder to defeat because they just confiscate money in the form of taxes. Almost all products produced by governments are inferior. This long-winded interview is just loaded with Leftist scare tactics. MSFT is not capable of preventing you from viewing your own creations unless you are stupid enough to let them. Don't let the government take care of you--do it yourself. You'll be much better off in the long run.
Re:Any Text Editor That Needs A Book...
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Vi IMproved -- Vim
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But does that mean that, at the end of the day, the MSVC++ editor is easier to use than vi? I don't think so. For example, if I want to delete 8 lines of text in vi, I simply type "8dd". Now, you might say "Well, all I have to do is take the mouse, highlight those eight lines, and choose Edit->Cut or press Delete or Control-C or Control-X or whatever", and you'd be right. And this may be more intuitive and familiar then pressing "8dd", but you'd have a difficult time convincing me that it's easier, and it is most certainly not faster.
I don't use MSVC like that. If I want to delete 8 lines of text in MSVC, all I have to do is hold down shift, move up 8 lines (with the cursor, not the mouse), and hit backspace. However, seldom do I want to delete "8 lines of text". It's far more likely that I want to delete "the foo function". If it were 8 lines, typing 8dd might not be so bad, but what if it's 17? How long does it take you to figure out how many lines it is? What if it's off edge of the screen?
Of course, this is just one example. Maybe someday I will see a savings in *using* vi and it will outweigh the cost of *learning* vi for me, but I've never found myself in a position where I was just totally cursing out the editor because it lacked a feature. Maybe I've just never been asked to do certain types of text processing. I dunno.
One thing is sure though; the last part of your post is golden, and should probably be in the FAQ for any group where editor flamewars break out on a routine basis.
Re:Any Text Editor That Needs A Book...
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Vi IMproved -- Vim
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How about easy binding keys::map <f1> <f12>
OK, if it can map the cursor keys to the requisite command sequence for moving the cursor; if it can map the return key to splitting the line like most other editors; if it can map ctrl-C to cut and paste, etc... in other words, if it can map out a more familiar and intuitive set of shortcuts than I wouldn't care so much to find an alternative. If somebody has a script that does that to VI, it would definitely go into my "gems" file.
How about knowing all the things it can do before making stupid comments on things you don't understand
I asked "what can it do?" You told me. Pretty straightforward, eh? Now, I could have sought out the information some other way, but asking people is far more efficient.
Obviously my post hit some raw nerves. Why else would (as of this moment) 13 people reply, and most with great passion in support of VI and against me as a person (even though they've never met me). Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that VI as the default *NIX editor has been one of the greatest stumbling blocks to wider acceptance of *NIX-like OSs is the larger community. Maybe it's just the criticizing such a thing is like walking through Harlem and shouting "nigger". I dunno. I'm not a shrink. Just chill out guys. It's a software. It sucks; just like all software.
Do I complain that vi sucks? No, because it doesn't. It just doesn't fit the way I do editing.
I don't spend a great deal of time complaining about it either, except when some snob comes down on me for not liking it. We're on the same page here; as I said I "route around it". Also, thank-you for being one of the few respondants who didn't employ some kind of ad hominem attack.
Any Text Editor That Needs A Book...
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Vi IMproved -- Vim
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· Score: 1, Troll
Any Text Editor That Needs A Book is hopelessly broken. The editor that comes with MSVC is usable without a book. What can VI/VIM do that it can't? More importantly, what can a wide variety of alternatives do that VI/VIM can't? If you are nostalgic for the "good old days" when the ability to edit interactively was considered a great leap forward, then by all means use something like VI. As for me, whenever I have to deal with a *NIX box one of my first questions is "is there another editor on this box?". You may see the obtuseness of VI as part of the initiation; I see it as damage and route around it. Improving VI? That's like improving the buggy whip.
After I posted that, I thought about that too. The original series was definitely... dayglo. So, maybe they could have some kind of contest as a subplot, and the 60s uniforms could lose in favor of oh... colored collars, insignia, or armbands which would fit in better with the aesthetics of the rest of the show. Then, somebody could remark that the rejected suggestion was "ahead of it's time, and really should have won".
Lawyers write code. They intentionally make the code complicated so that people need lawyers to understand it. It reminds me very much of a guy I knew who wanted to code everything in Perl so only he could understand it, thus making him very difficult to fire. The appeal of this on a purely selfish basis is obvious; but is it really what we want to see from a movement that holds itself out to be more ethical than the proprietary system it desires to replace? You can certainly cite examples of OSS that isn't like this, but as time goes by people will inevitably be tempted to perform the computer equivalent of passing 1000-page bills at 2 o'clock in the morning. Nevermind that for most people or small businesses buying proprietary package X for $50/seat or even $1000/seat is far more cost effective than hiring consultants who will estimate a cost of $50,000 to provide a solution, and eventually charge you $100,000.
As you can see from my.sig, and my un-updated URL, I used to be obsessed with just such a thing. Long story short, VRML-1 inspired, VRML97 failed to build upon it properly, failed to deliver, and worst of all failed to perform. A Quake-like VRML97 world renders on my system at less than 1 fps. Quake renders on my system at >30 fps.
The answer to the 3d format question? NONE. Why? Because if you really want to do 3d, you can implement something in Java and load whatever format you want. I hate to say that, I spent a lot of time wishing it weren't true, but I had to face it. I also had to face the fact that standards are irrelevant in 3d because it's all about performance, Performance, PERFORMANCE. For the time being, 3d is one of the most peripatetic (sp?) art forms in a medium that is already very impermanent. Maybe 100 years from now when all our boxes are capable of rendering 3d so realistic that it can fool the human eye, it will make sense to lock into a format and create content that will be "for the ages". For now, the techniques are being obsoleted after every work of art is produced.
It would be interesting to see more animation/CAD tools that export interactive Java-based 3d for the web. MSFT's C# stuff might do interesting things in browsers too, assuming it doesn't let some script kiddie take control of your system before the page loads.
Then of course there is the fact that 99.999% of the time, you just don't need 3d on a web-page. I don't need the Magna Carta, Shakespeare, popular lyrics, or the Nevada State Code in 3d. Those panoramas of houses for sale and furniture displays that let you change the fabric on a sofa are cool, but those are just a few niche applications where it makes sense.
Also, the availability of 3d tools doesn't make people 3d artists any more than the availability of camcorders makes people video artists. It turns out that people with a talent for visual art are (surprise, surprise...) rare! If you want to see more compelling visual arts, you are better off encouraging visual arts programs in the schools. Good luck.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a registered democrat
I could have called that in my sleep. It's been plain to me for quite some time that the Free Software movement is just another plank in the Left Wing Extremist platform of the Democratic Party.
On the one hand, this disturbs me because there is the possibility that politicly savvy advocates could foist the GPL on an uneducated American populace.
On the other hand, I am happy to see more people (especially those outside the tech industry) exposed to the Free Software philosophy. When I explained it to my father, he exclaimed "that's communism!" without any leading from me. My father never touches a computer, but he was exposed to Socialist rabble-rousers in the 1930s, he saw the Nazis rise and fall, and he knows radical political bull**** when he sees it. You don't need to be an expert in order to understand what this is all about (in fact, being an expert can cloud your judgement). You just have to be an ordinary American with common sense. The true core of the Free Software movement won't stand the light of day. Ultimately, it's limited by the same factors that limit other attempts by Leftists to foist their ways on us. Even if you actually succeed in forcing taxpayers to fund GPL more than we already do, you will have to maintain your dominance. That would divert resources from the effort to maintain Unions (in steady decline since the Japanese started skunking us in autos), Public Education (beginning to crumble, and likely to erode further due to a recent landmark Supreme Court ruling), etc. So, in a strange way, I am sad that you won't be speaking out and attracting attention to your point of view.
As long as they give you the source after you buy the software, they are not in violation. So, requiring payment before you can access CVS is perfectly acceptable under the GPL. Strange but true. I bet even RMS would agree with my interpretation. This is one of those times where free doesn't mean gratis--the GPL was never intended to imply gratis, it just works out that way 99.999...% of the time.
I'm not impressed, but I'll have to "age myself" too to explain why. I knew people back in highschool who recorded stuff off the air, and never labeled their tapes. They just knew the music by the brand of the tape, how dirty or scratched the plastic was, where it was thrown last, etc. I've seen that done with collections of 100 or more tapes. OK, it's not quite as impressive, but the leap to different patterns in the vinyl isn't that great.
Why not just use two small curved mirrors 100 meters apart? You don't get the light-gathering ability, but you don't really need it because the moon is so bright. You should be able to get the effective resolution of a 100-meter scope right? It seems to me like the biggest challenge is building a big frame that won't wobble too much, and coping with the differences in atmospheric "seeing" between the two mirrors. However, it probably isn't too much more difficult than running the MMT, which has 6 large synchronized mirrors. Maybe I'm missing something...
In my early 20s I worked as a courier. We had radios in our cars. No full duplex. You had to key the mike and "capture" the channel. On more than one occasion, I was asked to change routes, rendezvous with other drivers, or even take a different exit while driving. This was an inherently dangerous and stressful business. I had two accidents, neither of which I attribute directly to use of the radio.
The first one was caused by speeding and an oil slick. The lady I rear-ended even slipped on the oil as she got out of her SUV and commented about it. Damage to my beat-up little 4-cylinder Mustang? $600. Damage to her SUV? $600.
The second time I was going through a parking lot and this woman backed out. She said I was speeding, I said she was an idiot not to look back before reversing. Insurance said neither party was at fault, so I had no access to her damage figure. Mine was $1100 because she scraped 3 side panels.
Although I wasn't talking on the radio during either of these accidents, the stress of the job pushed me to drive in an unsafe manner. The radio was part of that stress. Since I no longer do that job, I have had no moving violations and more importantly, no accidents.
Runs Linux for network admin types (imagine a few of these suckers in your business - $200 for a Staroffice/web browsing/java running machine).
Call the sales rep from IBM and say "no". If he asks why, explain to him that $2000/seat for fully supported workstations is too much. We decided to use the guy with blue hair, a bolt through his nose, and a minivan full of cracked $200 game consoles.
I think Hasbro has overestimated the Star Wars appeal. Or are there really that many /. readers out there so enamored of the Star Wars universe that $100 seems reasonable for a glorified beer-fetcher?
Yes. I think The Simpsons said it best:
Skinner: Here's Ralph Wiggum's entry... Pre-packaged "Star Wars" characters, still in their display box? Are those the limited-edition action figures?
Ralph: What's a diarama?
And of course, Ralph won.
Whenever I see one of these, I just have to picture it stopping too fast for an 18-wheeler. Either that, or I flash back to that film they showed us in drivers ed where small cars collided with big cars. Corbin Sparrow vs. 1972 Cadillac. I can just picture it. Of course, plenty of people ride motorcycles. The Sparrow is like, all of the danger of a motorcycle without any of the cool factor.
...is that the experimenters didn't create environmental conditions that would evolve what they thought should evolve. They simply created conditions that favored the development of circuits that oscillate. They failed to create conditions that favored the development of circuits that oscillate independantly.
Others have said that GA algorithms "cheat". I prefer to think that they take things into account that humans don't. I recall reading about another experiment like this. The end result only worked when the temperature was within a very narrow range.
Yuck. Where are you supposed to run your circuits? In a room where the temperature, radiation, vibration, humidity, and barometric pressure are all held to design conditions?
That's why evolution takes so long. The "creatures" have to experience a wide range of conditions in combination. I think a better way to approach such designs is to simulate them in software, because we know that programs are deterministic. Hopefully, we can then check every "function" of such designs using some automated testing software to be sure it won't crash on us.
Of course, doing GA for circuits in the "real world" will produce more exciting results, but more pitfalls too.
You have to be really careful about that. Do it wrong, and you send thousands of white-hot rocks down into the middle of California in the middle of July. Oops! Just kindled all the redwood forests.
If the asteroid is big enough, you could even heat the atmosphere and/or spread enough space dust around to influence the weather in wierd ways. That's not as bad as sending a 1000-foot wave around the Pacific rim, but it's still less than optimal.
That said, it would be nice if we had enough lead-time to send up something that could pulverize it into little chunks and disperse them widely enough to create a nice annual meteor shower.
The question you have to ask for all this is: How long would it take us to turn a planet-killer into lots of little pebbles and scatter them widely enough?
Also, how much energy would that take, and where would it come from? I wager the answer is "a lot" and "from nothing we have right now".
I think the most practical answer for the time being is going to be "nuke it". Of course that won't turn it into pebbles, but hopefully the chunks will split wide enough to miss us.
Lead time is everything. We really need as much effort as possible going into detection so we can get as much lead-time as possible. 50 years lead time and we can mine the thing. 5 days lead time and we are the next dinosaurs.
Fine. A test to see what happens to a country that does this. Smart countries considering such a plan will hold off to "wait and see" what kind of impact this has. Unfortunately, the very nature of long term effects is that they will take... well... a long term to take effect. The short-term impacts (learning curve, etc.) are already well known. However, at least a few years from now we can say "let's look at V and see what people are saying".
Argh! You're right. After posting my usual snide remarks, I decided to download the article and read it. Right there on the first few pages is Apache's market share graph. That Apache isn't GPL'd (and that claiming it for the GPL camp is one of the oldest lies in the Free Software advocate's handbook) is bad enough. What's even sadder is that it plainly shows Apache to have "peaked" and lost ground to IIS (note, I'm not saying that's good or bad, it's simply an observation).
I stopped reading the essay when I saw that.
So, for once I am not going to offer any calm objective arguments to follow my bombast. I stand by the troll.
How whip cream fosters weight loss, how unfettered immigration promotes security, and how adultry prevents AIDS.
Sure there are people who eat all they want, live next door to strangers from Iran, screw all the time and don't end up as fat disease bags screaming in a pool of their own blood at a bombed-out supermarket. However, the smart money says "why chance it?".
If government-produced software is GPL'd, then I, as a citizen, am being denied the right to use the government work in a way I see fit. The GPL is *not* public domain. Allowing MSFT to repackage PD material does no harm to anybody, because the PD material is still there. At this point, I have to hit you with one of my classic zingers:
A Free Software wacko is somebody who believes that intellectual property can't be stolen--except when a proprietary software company uses something from the Public Domain.
The Free Software wackos (like Rush Limbaugh's environmentalist wackos) don't care about Freedom, Liberty, Technical merit, or any other system of values. They simply choose to identify with value systems when it suits their purpose. Sooner or later, they can be caught in a glaring inconsistancy. With the environmentalist wackos it's preferring to let forests burn rather than allow logging companies to thin them. With Free Software wackos it's extolling technical merit in one breath, and then arguing that freedom is more important in the next breath, and then arguing that some people have to give up their freedom in the next breath. It's also saying "IP" can't be stolen and then turning around and objecting when *their* IP is stolen.
So, what values do these sibling wacko movements really hold dear? Political power and self importance. That's it. That's all. Not everybody mind you, there are many people in both these movements who are not aware of it. True believers. Every once in a while they wake up and have a "conversion". I'm not aware of anybody doing this from the Free Software movement, but give it time. It's a bit younger than the environmentalist movement, and hasn't become as political... yet.
how on earth can a government releasing a "free gpl'ed software" be a monopoly in that area?
Because the existance of such software tends to drive out low-cost proprietary alternatives leaving us with high-end proprietary and GPL'd "distributions". The compiler market is a good example of a place where "the middle" is stagnating because of this.
Read the GPL --- you have the right to do what you want to do with the source, as long as you don't take away others' rights to do what they want to do with the new source.
In other words, you can only propogate the GPL, and if the government throws its hefty weight into a particular market, it would create a monopoly by driving out proprietary competitors. The damage would be proportional to the quality of the product. If the product were really poor, it would produce little damage. If it breaks into the realm of "good but lacking some features" It will destroy the low end of the market. If it becomes the best-in-class it will destroy the entire market. Then, the government is free to sit on its collective ass and let what was once best-in-class slowly erode. The proprietary versions won't come back because the threat of increased government funding and restoration is ever-present.
Where exactly in there do you see the government who may have written the sourc-code, exerting a monopolistic control over you?
I think I've made it pretty clear. Although there wouldn't be an explicit government monopoly, there would be a defacto monopoly. The proprietary software industry would be effectively destroyed, which RMS freely admits is the purpose of the GPL. However, most customers want the choice. If people were properly educated and the issue were put to a vote, most would not want this to happen. Unfortunately, most people are not properly educated due to the Left's prior victories in education.
My standard answer to the "MSFT can't do XXX" argument is "Who is going to stop them?"
Apple, Sun, Palm (if they can survive), Any other corporation that can please people for whom control really matters, and last but not least--the Free Software and Open Source movements.
I actually like the fact that they exist as independant players in the market. What I object to is them being enshrined as part of the government, because when government gives something away for free there is potential for serious inequity. The public schools are the best example of this. Poor kids can only use public schools. Rich people may choose private. Vouchers are a good solution, but the Left fights it tooth and nail. Now, imagine if everybody can run free government Linux systems but if you want the features missing from that you have to pay $1500 for Windows or MacOS. Would that really be good?
Viewed in this light, FS / OS desktops present a perfect match for Government investment. Free desktops provide a boundless, publically-available resource which results not only in large financial savings to its citizens, but also protects and enhances citizen privacy, freedom and choice. Moreover, because Government investment in free software development can be made locally, such support stimulates the nation's or locality's technology sector. In the longer-term view, such investment eventually operates to sizably reduce the outflow of hard currency to other countries, something especially critical for developing nations but also a factor no Government cannot seriously consider. What responsible Government would prefer its citizens pay a large international tax to a foreign corporation over creating high-tech jobs in its local economy?
Folks, this meme has been in the Free Software community from the earliest days of the FSF. Just read some of RMS's early essays and you'll see the same ideas. It's bunk. They just want us to exchange a private monopoly for a government monopoly. Private monopolies can be defeated when customers become so disatisfied that they choose alternatives. Private monopolies can be defunded because when customers stop buying they lose money. Public monopolies are much harder to defeat because they just confiscate money in the form of taxes. Almost all products produced by governments are inferior. This long-winded interview is just loaded with Leftist scare tactics. MSFT is not capable of preventing you from viewing your own creations unless you are stupid enough to let them. Don't let the government take care of you--do it yourself. You'll be much better off in the long run.
But does that mean that, at the end of the day, the MSVC++ editor is easier to use than vi? I don't think so. For example, if I want to delete 8 lines of text in vi, I simply type "8dd". Now, you might say "Well, all I have to do is take the mouse, highlight those eight lines, and choose Edit->Cut or press Delete or Control-C or Control-X or whatever", and you'd be right. And this may be more intuitive and familiar then pressing "8dd", but you'd have a difficult time convincing me that it's easier, and it is most certainly not faster.
I don't use MSVC like that. If I want to delete 8 lines of text in MSVC, all I have to do is hold down shift, move up 8 lines (with the cursor, not the mouse), and hit backspace. However, seldom do I want to delete "8 lines of text". It's far more likely that I want to delete "the foo function". If it were 8 lines, typing 8dd might not be so bad, but what if it's 17? How long does it take you to figure out how many lines it is? What if it's off edge of the screen?
Of course, this is just one example. Maybe someday I will see a savings in *using* vi and it will outweigh the cost of *learning* vi for me, but I've never found myself in a position where I was just totally cursing out the editor because it lacked a feature. Maybe I've just never been asked to do certain types of text processing. I dunno.
One thing is sure though; the last part of your post is golden, and should probably be in the FAQ for any group where editor flamewars break out on a routine basis.
How about easy binding keys: :map <f1> <f12>
OK, if it can map the cursor keys to the requisite command sequence for moving the cursor; if it can map the return key to splitting the line like most other editors; if it can map ctrl-C to cut and paste, etc... in other words, if it can map out a more familiar and intuitive set of shortcuts than I wouldn't care so much to find an alternative. If somebody has a script that does that to VI, it would definitely go into my "gems" file.
How about knowing all the things it can do before making stupid comments on things you don't understand
I asked "what can it do?" You told me. Pretty straightforward, eh? Now, I could have sought out the information some other way, but asking people is far more efficient.
Obviously my post hit some raw nerves. Why else would (as of this moment) 13 people reply, and most with great passion in support of VI and against me as a person (even though they've never met me). Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that VI as the default *NIX editor has been one of the greatest stumbling blocks to wider acceptance of *NIX-like OSs is the larger community. Maybe it's just the criticizing such a thing is like walking through Harlem and shouting "nigger". I dunno. I'm not a shrink. Just chill out guys. It's a software. It sucks; just like all software.
Do I complain that vi sucks? No, because it doesn't. It just doesn't fit the way I do editing.
I don't spend a great deal of time complaining about it either, except when some snob comes down on me for not liking it. We're on the same page here; as I said I "route around it". Also, thank-you for being one of the few respondants who didn't employ some kind of ad hominem attack.
Any Text Editor That Needs A Book is hopelessly broken. The editor that comes with MSVC is usable without a book. What can VI/VIM do that it can't? More importantly, what can a wide variety of alternatives do that VI/VIM can't? If you are nostalgic for the "good old days" when the ability to edit interactively was considered a great leap forward, then by all means use something like VI. As for me, whenever I have to deal with a *NIX box one of my first questions is "is there another editor on this box?". You may see the obtuseness of VI as part of the initiation; I see it as damage and route around it. Improving VI? That's like improving the buggy whip.
After I posted that, I thought about that too. The original series was definitely... dayglo. So, maybe they could have some kind of contest as a subplot, and the 60s uniforms could lose in favor of oh... colored collars, insignia, or armbands which would fit in better with the aesthetics of the rest of the show. Then, somebody could remark that the rejected suggestion was "ahead of it's time, and really should have won".
wishes the series would kill more people off like the original Star Trek
Maybe they should introduce the colored uniforms so we could have redshirt ensigns.
Lawyers write code. They intentionally make the code complicated so that people need lawyers to understand it. It reminds me very much of a guy I knew who wanted to code everything in Perl so only he could understand it, thus making him very difficult to fire. The appeal of this on a purely selfish basis is obvious; but is it really what we want to see from a movement that holds itself out to be more ethical than the proprietary system it desires to replace? You can certainly cite examples of OSS that isn't like this, but as time goes by people will inevitably be tempted to perform the computer equivalent of passing 1000-page bills at 2 o'clock in the morning. Nevermind that for most people or small businesses buying proprietary package X for $50/seat or even $1000/seat is far more cost effective than hiring consultants who will estimate a cost of $50,000 to provide a solution, and eventually charge you $100,000.
As you can see from my .sig, and my un-updated URL, I used to be obsessed with just such a thing. Long story short, VRML-1 inspired, VRML97 failed to build upon it properly, failed to deliver, and worst of all failed to perform. A Quake-like VRML97 world renders on my system at less than 1 fps. Quake renders on my system at >30 fps.
The answer to the 3d format question? NONE. Why? Because if you really want to do 3d, you can implement something in Java and load whatever format you want. I hate to say that, I spent a lot of time wishing it weren't true, but I had to face it. I also had to face the fact that standards are irrelevant in 3d because it's all about performance, Performance, PERFORMANCE. For the time being, 3d is one of the most peripatetic (sp?) art forms in a medium that is already very impermanent. Maybe 100 years from now when all our boxes are capable of rendering 3d so realistic that it can fool the human eye, it will make sense to lock into a format and create content that will be "for the ages". For now, the techniques are being obsoleted after every work of art is produced.
It would be interesting to see more animation/CAD tools that export interactive Java-based 3d for the web. MSFT's C# stuff might do interesting things in browsers too, assuming it doesn't let some script kiddie take control of your system before the page loads.
Then of course there is the fact that 99.999% of the time, you just don't need 3d on a web-page. I don't need the Magna Carta, Shakespeare, popular lyrics, or the Nevada State Code in 3d. Those panoramas of houses for sale and furniture displays that let you change the fabric on a sofa are cool, but those are just a few niche applications where it makes sense.
Also, the availability of 3d tools doesn't make people 3d artists any more than the availability of camcorders makes people video artists. It turns out that people with a talent for visual art are (surprise, surprise...) rare! If you want to see more compelling visual arts, you are better off encouraging visual arts programs in the schools. Good luck.