True. If the business model is inherently bad, it can't succeed. OTOH, I don't believe that packaging OSS for Windows is inherently a bad idea--it just needs to be executed properly. Bear in mind that you aren't necessarily paying for software here. You're paying for all the hours that were spent reviewing and testing the software to decide whether or not it was worth including on the CD. If such a company could build a good reputation, people would eagerly snap up the latest "Foo Company Collection" at the local CompUSA, or *maybe* even subscribe for monthly deliveries of updated Foo Company CDs. However, the window of opportunity for marketing a CD is closing. When we have sufficient broadband penetration, it will be much harder to sell OSS CDs without some value added such as printed manuals, or as stuff included with new hardware. Contracts with hardware OEMs to provide the latest Foo Company Collection along with "includes the latest Foo Company Collection" on the box could still be profitable. Of course, they need quite a marketing push to make that happen, and they don't look like they are that professional. I think I saw a request for volunteer help... always a bad sign. Maybe free Windows software will just have to remain "our little secret" among the "power users" who know how to find the deals.
I think something like this would probably be best executed by somebody like C|net--somebody who already has a reputation.
Well, I've gotten way off on a tangent here. My point was that the guy who crashed into the lake didn't crash because flying was an inherently bad idea. He crashed because the engine manufacturer sent him the wrong model--one with a power to weight ratio that made it unsuitable for flying. Many experts have concluded that with the right engine (no pun intended) he would have flown, and the Swiss would have gotten credit for pioneering controlled, powered, heavier-than-air flight.
I've been wondering what they are going to do with the war on terror and a lot of other post 911 stuff.
I thought that all the episodes this season were made before 911, but they had "Bin Laden in a blender" last Sunday, so what's the deal? Was that spliced in later?
On one hand, there is a lot of way to spin humor on some of this stuff, but on the other hand it's hard to do it without addressing "important social issues" or having a "very special episode", which was what used to signal the end of a sitcom before everyone started to say "jumping the shark".
Let's see:
They fly someplace. Lisa gets wanded and taken into a special room. Bart's slingshot gets ignored. Homer beeps in the detector, but nobody wants to touch him. Marge is asked to stick her hair in the X-ray machine, and it comes all the way out the other side. Maggie has a gun in her diaper, but nobody notices. This stuff practicly writes itself.
Or how about... Bart decides to become a Moslem. Do all the Lisa Budist stuff--Bart style. Hurl pork chops out the window, etc. End Moslem conversion when Bart finds out he has to get circumcised.
Then again... maybe having the Simpsons come to an end without ever riffing on that stuff would be better. It would fix the Simpsons permanently as part of the "pre-911" world, allowing us to watch it in sindicated re-runs knowing that stuff would never intrude, save for that one little reference to Bin Laden.
No. He belongs with the Free Software Movement. Anybody who can use the phrase the success we now enjoy when he is still working his day job should be quite at home with the language manipulation of RMS and friends.
How hard would it be to include an md5 hash along with the filename? Maybe that will happen in the next edition. Of course, then the spyware folks might start serving software from machines that embed random codes in the software. That would wreck md5 or any other scheme... unless you hash chunks of the offending file and base the match on matching 90% of the chunks. Bottom line? Just matching filenames is way too simple.
A good response to this would have been a "hardware consortium". If you want to represent 90% of the PC hardware manufacturers, what companies would have to join? Dell, Gateway, Compaq, IBM, who else?
All those companies should get together, form a list of demands, agree to tear up their current MSFT contracts and agree to collectively bargain with MSFT for a new contract. Until the contract was signed, the HW manufacturers could bundle retailed boxed versions of generic Windows (and choose to either eat the loss or charge the customer more). It would have been a PR coup, and could have been accompanied by TV ads featuring the CEOs of all the box makers holding hands in a loving embrace, championing the cause of the consumer. Essentially--the box makers could have gone on strike against MSFT.
The "strike fund" could have included Windows OEM licenses bought from 3rd party distributors (can't you get OEM 5-packs and stuff from places like CDW without being subjected to a background check?). Either that, or they could have overproduced boxes for the short-term.
Then of course there are the sneakier alternatives, like not having special OEM agreements at all and just forming dummy corporations that had no other purpose but to buy generic OEM versions of Windows.
There was no creativity going into the anti-MSFT effort at all.
Sigh... how about just not buying Windows instead?
I would really like to know what might have been accomplished if all the passion, all the lawyering, all the planning, all the brainpower that goes into trying to take down MSFT had been used to create competing products instead (and I don't mean GPL software that has no hope of generating enough revenue to really compete). Sadly, we will probably never find out. Seems like too many people have been taught it's easier to whine. Maybe it is, but it's a helluva lot less interesting to watch. Come on, IBM, bring back OS/2. Scrape off Be and verticly integrate it with hardware. Heck, if you verticly integrate Linux with hardware (thus removing the economic problem associated with the GPL) that would work too. There are so many fine creative ways to strike at the heart of MSFT and benefit the consumer. But no. You'd rather play lawyerball.
So what? When you do the books, development and production are both costs. You still have to pay for both of them.
However, I agree that we shouldn't allow economics to trump the moral value that says "if you can help somebody, you should".
Simply declaring that some people should get the drug for free would help the patients, but it would screw the company and in the long run that screws the patients because the company... well... we know.
So, what's my idea? How about replacing the fixed-duration patent with a different kind of bargain? Instead of a fixed duration, the company would instead be gauranteed a return on its investment. As soon as that return was achieved, the patent would expire.
This would eliminate the problem of companies charging confiscatory prices because they want to squeeze in profit before the patent expires.
This still wouldn't solve the problem of poor countries not being able to afford the drug. However, it would make obligations to sell at reduced prices in poor countries more palatable to the company. That's because when the company subsidizes the poor country, it also extends its monopoly in the rich country.
For some drugs, the duration of the patent might actually be *shorter* under this system, since the company will be eager to earn its return as quickly as possible. There would still be some drugs that companies wouldn't want to develop, because it might take too long to earn the return (e.g., drugs to treat rare conditions that require lots of R&D) but we already have that problem, and reducing patent protection certainly won't solve that either.
Of course sharing doesn't hurt. If somebody asks me for a copy of something, and I am willing to give it to them, nobody is hurt. OTOH, if somebody asks me for a copy of something, and I don't feel like they are entitled to it, or would like to have some compensation for my time, or I'm from a society where it's considered polite to compensate, and the requester refuses to abide by the terms, then I am hurt. Not just financially either--emotionally too. It hurts to think that I am surrounded by people who feel entitled to reap where they have not sewn. God is just such a master, but few men are godly, and I will have none of them as my master.
Ask yourself--would you feel comfortable copying something if the person who created it was in the room with you and knew what you were doing? Would the exchange be a polite exchange? Today, as always, virtue is what you do and say when the other party is not in the room.
I seriously doubt a boycott is going to change anybody's views, unless their opinions are based on nothing more than who shouts the loudest. I imagine that if his views were based on that, they would be boring and nobody would care anyway. This is an author we're talking about here; not Bill Clinton. If his opinion ever changes, it'll be through thought, because that's what real intellectuals do--think.
If you are still clinging to the idea that a mere boycott can change an author's opinion, I have only one more thing to say: Salman Rushdie.
They say nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM. Of course, I find that hard to believe. Surely somebody must have chosen IBM technology when it wasn't appropriate, and gotten fired. Anybody have a story?
I can't believe I had to scroll this far down to find this post. There is a case that probably proves your point. Around y2k, there were major attacks involving airliners that were thwarted. You hear about it from time-to-time in the media, but there is no way that such a thing can ever generate the volume of coverage that 911 can. That's because the very nature of such work is such that when you succeed you generate little or no news. The same thing applies to presidents. A president who wins a war is a hero. A president who prevents a war is just "a good foreign policy president".
...without filling out the proper forms, they can get you on DMCA, CBTPA, and Tax Evasion??? No thanks.
Followed by, "hey, have you noticed that all of the sudden there is a lot less interest in sci-fi?", followed by "yeah, but DVD burners are flying off the shelves".
If they did know where Bin Laden was, they wouldn't say. Kill him? Sure. But say they had killed him? Maybe not. Why? He's too useful. Take away Bin Laden, and people might lose interest. We need UBL. We need him to excite the "what if" fear. We need him to be for Bush what the "bear in the woods" was for Reagan. Take away the bear, and there's no reason to carry a gun. Of course, the real bear is probably Iraq with weapons grade plutonium, anthrax, or chemical agents; but Sadam's marketing department is even better than MSFT's.
Now, from the radical "Moslem" POV, they won't tell us if UBL is dead either. They need him to make the myth. They need him to be the one who the Americans can't catch. They need him to fill time on Al Jazeera.:)
No, UBL is sticking around for a good long time. He's too useful to both sides to just die. Personally, I think he's probably already dead from kidney failure, and has probably been buried secretly in Pakistan where he died from exhaustion and kidney failure after the border crossing. No matter. Both sides will keep him "living".
No, vacuum tubes are analog, just as transistors are analog. However, they can both be used to build circuits that are "digital" when operated within certain parameters (noise margin, etc). The modern design process for digital devices is such that most people never have to think about the analog aspects of it, but it's still there. Also, vacuum tubes are not inherently slower than transistors. Had semiconductors not been discovered, I bet we'd be building some pretty fast nanotubes about now. However, you are right about them burning out fast. One of these early beasts had techs who were paid to run around with shopping carts full of tubes, replacing them as they burned out. Also, you can heat the office with a simple vacuum tube calculator.
Merlin is an ancient battery powered hand-held gadget with 9 LED/buttons and a noisemaker. Yes. Not very sophisticated. It looked sort of like a telephone. This was considered cool stuff when I was a kid, just before home computers arrived. Anyway, one of the games Merlin could play was one where each LED/button caused other LED/buttons to go on or off. At the start of the game there was a random pattern and you kept pushing buttons until you had all the keys lit up (or something like that). It occurs to me that if programs uninstall eachother, it would be like playing this Merlin game, only NOT FUN AT ALL. Of course, it's probably trivial to write a program that solves the Merlin puzzle. So, somebody would have to write a Perl script that solved the Merlin puzzle. Then you enter what you have installed, what you want to install, and the program would tell you the sequence of installs/uninstalls you needed to perform in order to reach the desired state. Of course, Merlin played a tune when you solved the puzzle. Maybe that will be bundled into the next version of Windows.:)
You mean, there's official Star Wars(TM) plastic crap, and I've never seen it??? If they're going to be making less of it, I'd better pick some up fast. No more generic fake do-do for me. From now on it's Star Wars(TM) plastic crap, or nothing at all... unless they make fake vomit too.
From the linked Salon piece: Byrd's failure to earn artist's royalties stems in part from his inability to find a copy of his contract. "I've looked everywhere," he says
The moral is obvious: Save the paperwork. Make copies. Get a safety deposit box and/or fireproof safe, etc. You never know when may need it.
Re:Of Course The Microwave Beam...
on
Lunar Power
·
· Score: 1
Yes, then you'll have the problem of constant re-entry of supersonic pods
You mean, like shuttles and Russian capsules? Remember, I was talking about rare mineral elements. How often do you think they'll be able to send back a capsule containing 1000kg of platinum?
Of Course The Microwave Beam...
on
Lunar Power
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
...would have to be a no-fly zone. Come to think of it, it'd have to be a no-pigeon, no-duck, no-eagle and no-butterfly zone too.
I don't think any of these uwave links will ever get built for one reason: NIMBY. (Not In My Back Yard).
Now, maybe you could convince some desparate 3rd world nation to receive, but that's not where the power is needed now is it? So you would just compound the transmission problem. I think they are better off using the power right there on the moon to drive energy-intensive manufacturing processes that produce small products that can be easily shipped back to Earth. That way, you free up energy resources on Earth without having to fuss about how the power is transmitted. Synthetic diamond production perhaps? Then of course there is the potential of mining the moon and running electric smelters up there, but it's probably only practical for certain rare commodity metals. How much platinum and gold is on the moon?
M. Scott Peck, MD in his book, Further Along the Road Less Traveled came up with these 10 criteria for a cult:
1. Idolatry of a single charismatic leader
2. A revered inner circle
3. Secrecy of management
4. Financial evasiveness
5. Dependancy (followers become dependant)
6. Conformity
7. Special language
8. Dogmatic doctrine
9. Heresy (Peck's definition of this is a little vague; something about the relationship between God and man not being proper)
10 God in captivity (Peck defines this as claiming to know everything about God)
I would add an 11th criterion: You have to give an excessive ammount (perhaps all) of your personal wealth to the organization. Maybe Peck would fit that under conformity or dependance.
Peck notes that prior to Vatican II, the Catholic Church met most of these criteria, and still meets many of them. I suppose that one of the dangers of trying to find an objective measure of something is that you risk placing things you hold to be of value in a less positive light. Exercise for Slashdot readers: Apply these criteria to the Free Software Foundation, and/or the Free Software movement in general.
I agree that wireless providers should provide quite a bit more selection in stocking their handsets, but I would don't expect them to sell and support every type of handset out there.
I don't think anybody is suggesting that. I think they are suggesting that artificial barriers to interoperability should be removed. Removing such barriers doesn't necessarily imply that you have to support every product. By "support" I mean "provide bundled customer support".
The best analogy I can think of is working for an ISP, which I've done. We only "supported" Netscape, and IE on Windows and MacOS. That didn't mean users couldn't use pine on Linux. It just meant that if they called us having a problem with that, we just gave them server settings and sent them on their way.
So, from a support standpoint, I think all they are asking is that the network be open to phones that are capable of accessing the network. If somebody has a problem with a 3rd party phone, all the company's service rep has to do is say "make sure it's a foobar compatable phone" and check for network outages in their area. Anything else would indeed be unreasonable, since the rep could be exposed to a virtually unlimited range of technologies for which they aren't trained. Also, it would open the door for customers to take advantage of reps in unreasonable ways. I swear I'm not making this up: One time a customer called us asking for help with a modem that his brother had *built* as a project.
Why should MSFT pay taxes to fund its competition? Even if MSFT doesn't pay a dime in taxes, why should the government compete with MSFT? If the government can arbitrarily decide to compete with a business, what is the point of going into business? It's very discouraging to think I might someday build a business, only to have the government confiscate it because a bunch of Leftists are all in a snit.
Also, the government doesn't pay for anything. Taxpayers pay for it.
And I don't want to hear any whining here about how no-one will bother extending or improving the software if they can't profit from it. The entire history of Linux and other GPL'ed software has proven that theory wrong...
No. It's proven them right. The non-GPL'd BSD consistantly outperforms Linux; especially in security. GPL advocates often point to Apache (either due to ignorance or intentional deception), but that isn't GPL'd. It isn't even copylefted. Perl was originally Artistic only, not copylefted. It was only dual-licensed with the GPL due to community pressure. The gcc compiler keeps most free *NIXs hobbled at lower performance levels due to its subpar optimization. Non-copylefted Open Source consistantly attracts better developers for a very good reason: The better developers want to keep their options open, and that includes the option to release proprietary versions.
You are right up to a point. The GPL doesn't discourage every other journeyman coder or college student from contributing. Real engineers with real funding however, have better things to do with their time.
Slashdot Mirror
True. If the business model is inherently bad, it can't succeed. OTOH, I don't believe that packaging OSS for Windows is inherently a bad idea--it just needs to be executed properly. Bear in mind that you aren't necessarily paying for software here. You're paying for all the hours that were spent reviewing and testing the software to decide whether or not it was worth including on the CD. If such a company could build a good reputation, people would eagerly snap up the latest "Foo Company Collection" at the local CompUSA, or *maybe* even subscribe for monthly deliveries of updated Foo Company CDs. However, the window of opportunity for marketing a CD is closing. When we have sufficient broadband penetration, it will be much harder to sell OSS CDs without some value added such as printed manuals, or as stuff included with new hardware. Contracts with hardware OEMs to provide the latest Foo Company Collection along with "includes the latest Foo Company Collection" on the box could still be profitable. Of course, they need quite a marketing push to make that happen, and they don't look like they are that professional. I think I saw a request for volunteer help... always a bad sign. Maybe free Windows software will just have to remain "our little secret" among the "power users" who know how to find the deals.
I think something like this would probably be best executed by somebody like C|net--somebody who already has a reputation.
Well, I've gotten way off on a tangent here. My point was that the guy who crashed into the lake didn't crash because flying was an inherently bad idea. He crashed because the engine manufacturer sent him the wrong model--one with a power to weight ratio that made it unsuitable for flying. Many experts have concluded that with the right engine (no pun intended) he would have flown, and the Swiss would have gotten credit for pioneering controlled, powered, heavier-than-air flight.
I've been wondering what they are going to do with the war on terror and a lot of other post 911 stuff.
I thought that all the episodes this season were made before 911, but they had "Bin Laden in a blender" last Sunday, so what's the deal? Was that spliced in later?
On one hand, there is a lot of way to spin humor on some of this stuff, but on the other hand it's hard to do it without addressing "important social issues" or having a "very special episode", which was what used to signal the end of a sitcom before everyone started to say "jumping the shark".
Let's see:
They fly someplace. Lisa gets wanded and taken into a special room. Bart's slingshot gets ignored. Homer beeps in the detector, but nobody wants to touch him. Marge is asked to stick her hair in the X-ray machine, and it comes all the way out the other side. Maggie has a gun in her diaper, but nobody notices. This stuff practicly writes itself.
Or how about... Bart decides to become a Moslem. Do all the Lisa Budist stuff--Bart style. Hurl pork chops out the window, etc. End Moslem conversion when Bart finds out he has to get circumcised.
Then again... maybe having the Simpsons come to an end without ever riffing on that stuff would be better. It would fix the Simpsons permanently as part of the "pre-911" world, allowing us to watch it in sindicated re-runs knowing that stuff would never intrude, save for that one little reference to Bin Laden.
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Orville: Didn't some guy in Switzerland crash into a lake a few months ago trying this?
Wilbur: You're right. What were we thinking? Let's just go back to the bicycle shop and forget about all this nonsense.
No. He belongs with the Free Software Movement. Anybody who can use the phrase the success we now enjoy when he is still working his day job should be quite at home with the language manipulation of RMS and friends.
How hard would it be to include an md5 hash along with the filename? Maybe that will happen in the next edition. Of course, then the spyware folks might start serving software from machines that embed random codes in the software. That would wreck md5 or any other scheme... unless you hash chunks of the offending file and base the match on matching 90% of the chunks. Bottom line? Just matching filenames is way too simple.
A good response to this would have been a "hardware consortium". If you want to represent 90% of the PC hardware manufacturers, what companies would have to join? Dell, Gateway, Compaq, IBM, who else?
All those companies should get together, form a list of demands, agree to tear up their current MSFT contracts and agree to collectively bargain with MSFT for a new contract. Until the contract was signed, the HW manufacturers could bundle retailed boxed versions of generic Windows (and choose to either eat the loss or charge the customer more). It would have been a PR coup, and could have been accompanied by TV ads featuring the CEOs of all the box makers holding hands in a loving embrace, championing the cause of the consumer. Essentially--the box makers could have gone on strike against MSFT.
The "strike fund" could have included Windows OEM licenses bought from 3rd party distributors (can't you get OEM 5-packs and stuff from places like CDW without being subjected to a background check?). Either that, or they could have overproduced boxes for the short-term.
Then of course there are the sneakier alternatives, like not having special OEM agreements at all and just forming dummy corporations that had no other purpose but to buy generic OEM versions of Windows.
There was no creativity going into the anti-MSFT effort at all.
Sigh... how about just not buying Windows instead?
I would really like to know what might have been accomplished if all the passion, all the lawyering, all the planning, all the brainpower that goes into trying to take down MSFT had been used to create competing products instead (and I don't mean GPL software that has no hope of generating enough revenue to really compete). Sadly, we will probably never find out. Seems like too many people have been taught it's easier to whine. Maybe it is, but it's a helluva lot less interesting to watch. Come on, IBM, bring back OS/2. Scrape off Be and verticly integrate it with hardware. Heck, if you verticly integrate Linux with hardware (thus removing the economic problem associated with the GPL) that would work too. There are so many fine creative ways to strike at the heart of MSFT and benefit the consumer. But no. You'd rather play lawyerball.
This reminds me of the people who say "I did cocaine and I'm just fine". Marxism, like cocaine, buries its failures.
So what? When you do the books, development and production are both costs. You still have to pay for both of them.
However, I agree that we shouldn't allow economics to trump the moral value that says "if you can help somebody, you should".
Simply declaring that some people should get the drug for free would help the patients, but it would screw the company and in the long run that screws the patients because the company... well... we know.
So, what's my idea? How about replacing the fixed-duration patent with a different kind of bargain? Instead of a fixed duration, the company would instead be gauranteed a return on its investment. As soon as that return was achieved, the patent would expire.
This would eliminate the problem of companies charging confiscatory prices because they want to squeeze in profit before the patent expires.
This still wouldn't solve the problem of poor countries not being able to afford the drug. However, it would make obligations to sell at reduced prices in poor countries more palatable to the company. That's because when the company subsidizes the poor country, it also extends its monopoly in the rich country.
For some drugs, the duration of the patent might actually be *shorter* under this system, since the company will be eager to earn its return as quickly as possible. There would still be some drugs that companies wouldn't want to develop, because it might take too long to earn the return (e.g., drugs to treat rare conditions that require lots of R&D) but we already have that problem, and reducing patent protection certainly won't solve that either.
Of course sharing doesn't hurt. If somebody asks me for a copy of something, and I am willing to give it to them, nobody is hurt. OTOH, if somebody asks me for a copy of something, and I don't feel like they are entitled to it, or would like to have some compensation for my time, or I'm from a society where it's considered polite to compensate, and the requester refuses to abide by the terms, then I am hurt. Not just financially either--emotionally too. It hurts to think that I am surrounded by people who feel entitled to reap where they have not sewn. God is just such a master, but few men are godly, and I will have none of them as my master.
Ask yourself--would you feel comfortable copying something if the person who created it was in the room with you and knew what you were doing? Would the exchange be a polite exchange? Today, as always, virtue is what you do and say when the other party is not in the room.
I seriously doubt a boycott is going to change anybody's views, unless their opinions are based on nothing more than who shouts the loudest. I imagine that if his views were based on that, they would be boring and nobody would care anyway. This is an author we're talking about here; not Bill Clinton. If his opinion ever changes, it'll be through thought, because that's what real intellectuals do--think.
If you are still clinging to the idea that a mere boycott can change an author's opinion, I have only one more thing to say: Salman Rushdie.
and IBM on down
They say nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM. Of course, I find that hard to believe. Surely somebody must have chosen IBM technology when it wasn't appropriate, and gotten fired. Anybody have a story?
I can't believe I had to scroll this far down to find this post. There is a case that probably proves your point. Around y2k, there were major attacks involving airliners that were thwarted. You hear about it from time-to-time in the media, but there is no way that such a thing can ever generate the volume of coverage that 911 can. That's because the very nature of such work is such that when you succeed you generate little or no news. The same thing applies to presidents. A president who wins a war is a hero. A president who prevents a war is just "a good foreign policy president".
...without filling out the proper forms, they can get you on DMCA, CBTPA, and Tax Evasion??? No thanks.
Followed by, "hey, have you noticed that all of the sudden there is a lot less interest in sci-fi?", followed by "yeah, but DVD burners are flying off the shelves".
If they did know where Bin Laden was, they wouldn't say. Kill him? Sure. But say they had killed him? Maybe not. Why? He's too useful. Take away Bin Laden, and people might lose interest. We need UBL. We need him to excite the "what if" fear. We need him to be for Bush what the "bear in the woods" was for Reagan. Take away the bear, and there's no reason to carry a gun. Of course, the real bear is probably Iraq with weapons grade plutonium, anthrax, or chemical agents; but Sadam's marketing department is even better than MSFT's.
Now, from the radical "Moslem" POV, they won't tell us if UBL is dead either. They need him to make the myth. They need him to be the one who the Americans can't catch. They need him to fill time on Al Jazeera. :)
No, UBL is sticking around for a good long time. He's too useful to both sides to just die. Personally, I think he's probably already dead from kidney failure, and has probably been buried secretly in Pakistan where he died from exhaustion and kidney failure after the border crossing. No matter. Both sides will keep him "living".
No, vacuum tubes are analog, just as transistors are analog. However, they can both be used to build circuits that are "digital" when operated within certain parameters (noise margin, etc). The modern design process for digital devices is such that most people never have to think about the analog aspects of it, but it's still there. Also, vacuum tubes are not inherently slower than transistors. Had semiconductors not been discovered, I bet we'd be building some pretty fast nanotubes about now. However, you are right about them burning out fast. One of these early beasts had techs who were paid to run around with shopping carts full of tubes, replacing them as they burned out. Also, you can heat the office with a simple vacuum tube calculator.
Merlin is an ancient battery powered hand-held gadget with 9 LED/buttons and a noisemaker. Yes. Not very sophisticated. It looked sort of like a telephone. This was considered cool stuff when I was a kid, just before home computers arrived. Anyway, one of the games Merlin could play was one where each LED/button caused other LED/buttons to go on or off. At the start of the game there was a random pattern and you kept pushing buttons until you had all the keys lit up (or something like that). It occurs to me that if programs uninstall eachother, it would be like playing this Merlin game, only NOT FUN AT ALL. Of course, it's probably trivial to write a program that solves the Merlin puzzle. So, somebody would have to write a Perl script that solved the Merlin puzzle. Then you enter what you have installed, what you want to install, and the program would tell you the sequence of installs/uninstalls you needed to perform in order to reach the desired state. Of course, Merlin played a tune when you solved the puzzle. Maybe that will be bundled into the next version of Windows. :)
You mean, there's official Star Wars(TM) plastic crap, and I've never seen it??? If they're going to be making less of it, I'd better pick some up fast. No more generic fake do-do for me. From now on it's Star Wars(TM) plastic crap, or nothing at all... unless they make fake vomit too.
From the linked Salon piece: Byrd's failure to earn artist's royalties stems in part from his inability to find a copy of his contract. "I've looked everywhere," he says
The moral is obvious: Save the paperwork. Make copies. Get a safety deposit box and/or fireproof safe, etc. You never know when may need it.
Yes, then you'll have the problem of constant re-entry of supersonic pods
You mean, like shuttles and Russian capsules? Remember, I was talking about rare mineral elements. How often do you think they'll be able to send back a capsule containing 1000kg of platinum?
...would have to be a no-fly zone. Come to think of it, it'd have to be a no-pigeon, no-duck, no-eagle and no-butterfly zone too.
I don't think any of these uwave links will ever get built for one reason: NIMBY. (Not In My Back Yard).
Now, maybe you could convince some desparate 3rd world nation to receive, but that's not where the power is needed now is it? So you would just compound the transmission problem. I think they are better off using the power right there on the moon to drive energy-intensive manufacturing processes that produce small products that can be easily shipped back to Earth. That way, you free up energy resources on Earth without having to fuss about how the power is transmitted. Synthetic diamond production perhaps? Then of course there is the potential of mining the moon and running electric smelters up there, but it's probably only practical for certain rare commodity metals. How much platinum and gold is on the moon?
M. Scott Peck, MD in his book, Further Along the Road Less Traveled came up with these 10 criteria for a cult:
1. Idolatry of a single charismatic leader
2. A revered inner circle
3. Secrecy of management
4. Financial evasiveness
5. Dependancy (followers become dependant)
6. Conformity
7. Special language
8. Dogmatic doctrine
9. Heresy (Peck's definition of this is a little vague; something about the relationship between God and man not being proper)
10 God in captivity (Peck defines this as claiming to know everything about God)
I would add an 11th criterion: You have to give an excessive ammount (perhaps all) of your personal wealth to the organization. Maybe Peck would fit that under conformity or dependance.
Peck notes that prior to Vatican II, the Catholic Church met most of these criteria, and still meets many of them. I suppose that one of the dangers of trying to find an objective measure of something is that you risk placing things you hold to be of value in a less positive light. Exercise for Slashdot readers: Apply these criteria to the Free Software Foundation, and/or the Free Software movement in general.
I agree that wireless providers should provide quite a bit more selection in stocking their handsets, but I would don't expect them to sell and support every type of handset out there.
I don't think anybody is suggesting that. I think they are suggesting that artificial barriers to interoperability should be removed. Removing such barriers doesn't necessarily imply that you have to support every product. By "support" I mean "provide bundled customer support".
The best analogy I can think of is working for an ISP, which I've done. We only "supported" Netscape, and IE on Windows and MacOS. That didn't mean users couldn't use pine on Linux. It just meant that if they called us having a problem with that, we just gave them server settings and sent them on their way.
So, from a support standpoint, I think all they are asking is that the network be open to phones that are capable of accessing the network. If somebody has a problem with a 3rd party phone, all the company's service rep has to do is say "make sure it's a foobar compatable phone" and check for network outages in their area. Anything else would indeed be unreasonable, since the rep could be exposed to a virtually unlimited range of technologies for which they aren't trained. Also, it would open the door for customers to take advantage of reps in unreasonable ways. I swear I'm not making this up: One time a customer called us asking for help with a modem that his brother had *built* as a project.
Why should MSFT pay taxes to fund its competition? Even if MSFT doesn't pay a dime in taxes, why should the government compete with MSFT? If the government can arbitrarily decide to compete with a business, what is the point of going into business? It's very discouraging to think I might someday build a business, only to have the government confiscate it because a bunch of Leftists are all in a snit.
Also, the government doesn't pay for anything. Taxpayers pay for it.
And I don't want to hear any whining here about how no-one will bother extending or improving the software if they can't profit from it. The entire history of Linux and other GPL'ed software has proven that theory wrong...
No. It's proven them right. The non-GPL'd BSD consistantly outperforms Linux; especially in security. GPL advocates often point to Apache (either due to ignorance or intentional deception), but that isn't GPL'd. It isn't even copylefted. Perl was originally Artistic only, not copylefted. It was only dual-licensed with the GPL due to community pressure. The gcc compiler keeps most free *NIXs hobbled at lower performance levels due to its subpar optimization. Non-copylefted Open Source consistantly attracts better developers for a very good reason: The better developers want to keep their options open, and that includes the option to release proprietary versions.
You are right up to a point. The GPL doesn't discourage every other journeyman coder or college student from contributing. Real engineers with real funding however, have better things to do with their time.