I'm a freelance programmer, and like most programmers I do it for the love of the "art", and because of that most of my creations are licensed under GPL.. However, my question is, what would happen if Big Corporation X were to take my code, integrate it into a proprietary system, and sell it for millions, ignoring all demands to release source to the modifications (and thus breaking the GPL).. What could I honestly do besides writting letters threatening legal action?
I obviously don't have the funds to compete in the courtroom with Big Corporation X, and even if I were to try, the expense and time alone would set me into debt for probably the greater part of the rest of my life. What chance does the GPL or any other Open Source licensed software have, if a good part of it's development team is composed of just average guys with bills, debt and little free time?
This was a very good peice of satire.. and not far off from the actual truth on the market. Most companies did very little research if an idea was marketable.. For example, my previous job was working for a company called InterAct Accessories, (GameShark.com, interact-acc.com).. I worked on many projects that were just not researched.. My boss at the time's outlook was, "If its internet enabled or does something on the internet, it will sell millions." And thus a product called SharkWire was born. SharkWire was a modem for your Nintendo 64 that allowed you to get Gaming information straight from Sharkwire.com for only 9.95$ a month! The best part you ask? You can't browse anywhere else on the Web, and Sharkwire.com was always down! I know, I know first thing I said was where can I sign up to get one of these devices... Well instead of even just testing the water before investing a lot of money, they put approximately 2 million into it, produced 80,000 units, setup a huge sharkwire.com hosting deal with Genuity (approximately 90,000 a month for Solaris machines, Radius servers, mail, etc..), then released the product LATE.. Missing its target date before christmas.. But alas, it was the technology era, it would sell anyway right? Well InterAct sold approximately 500 units over a period of 5 months.. of those only 100 actually called to subscribe to the service.. The rest were eventually returned.. Needless to say after about 8 months the project was shut down... with still 80,000 of these units in a warehouse.. Fortunately I wasn't directly involved with this particular project, but my job was eliminated anyway thanks to the huge loss involved..
Last time I checked, the population of the earth was growing out of control, thanks to medical treatments, etc.. But I really do think we should be focusing on ways to fit more people or earth, or populate the moon or mars or at least something before we work on ways to keep people living longer and having more children.. I'm sure this would be flamebait but hey, its the honest truth.. if we don't figure out something soon it'll be like China all over the world, with everyone sleeping in drawers and showering in the kitchen.
Well, after the age of 60, your risk of stroke, and heart attack greatly increases... I can see the rational behind this.. I'd rather not be in a commercial airline and suddenly the pilot has a stroke, dies and falls face first onto the flight stick, putting the plane into a downward spiral.. (meanwhile the copilot is in the john) Sure there are probably a lot of healthy 60 year olds with no prior medical conditions, but I've met 60 year olds that are in perfect health and then suddenly one day they have a stroke or a severe heart attack.. Its probably in the best interest to have a mandate like that.
Its an Apache -module-, not part of Apache. Modules can be created by a 3rd party for whatever reason. I'm sure the Apache Group is working on more important things than streaming mp3 support, but this is cool.
From an advertising standpoint it benefits AOL to have 2 seperate Protocols. The benefit comes when they sell Ads space on that little box on the Windows AIM client. They can force users on the OSCAR protocol to use the Windows AIM client, and thus be served Ads. Where as the TOC client is just who-ever and whatever. They can then say "there are 10 million active users on AIM (refering to the OSCAR protocol) that are receiving ads." Then they can sell ads based on those statistics. At least AOL is providing an alternative protocol to using their services. This is all speculation of course, just a thought.
I don't mind Slashdot ads at all.. In fact I click on an ad once a day.. And for a simple reason, they are targetted properly. I don't see ads on how to improve my sex life, or a new blender that will change my life at the top of Slashdot. I see things I like, ThinkGeek, Web Hosting Companies, Open Source Products, ora books, etc. I would however pay maybe 30 bux a year for Slashdot without ads, and bonus content. The key would be the bonus content. Maybe more indepth stories, and more original content, ala Slashdot Exclusive or something. That would be worth some money..
The point of this is the current Patent system does not work. And we've all seen this many times over (see Articles on Amazon, TechSearch, NCR, and Apple). They Parent insane things like One Click Shopping, Aqua Color Theme, and Compression between a Client and a Server.. These people didn't patent this because they were afraid their great new idea would be stolen by a huge corporation, or by another individual, they patented so competition legally couldn't compete and so that they could wait until the rest of the world had popular devices like theirs, with many companies producing them, and then sue/charge licensing fees for them. That is whats wrong. What this place does is allow us Open Source programmers to patent our ideas or at least record prior art so that we don't one day get a letter from Apple saying that we violate their patent on the creation of a text file containing specific code to be run through a preprocessor, compiler and linker to create a distributable executable binary. Sure GCC has prior art.. but thats not the case for all open source projects, it could be very hard to prove..
The only advantage I really see with those is potentially brand name, and support. What I mean by Brand Name is chances are your boss has heard about Oracle, and heard only good things about Oracle, but never heard of MySQL or only heard a tad about it being Open Source. And then there is support. If you are going to run some kind of eStore with potentially millions of customers and transactions and products, and then one day your PHP and MySQL setup craps out and you have no idea why or how to fix it in a short amount of time, who exactly are you going to turn too? You have an entire business, employees, and customers that are riding on your database setup, what are you going to do? You can get MySQL support, and sorta support through Zend for PHP, but I know their support staff is nothing compared to Oracle, and I know with Oracle you can pay them to actually fix the problem and not just give advance.... it all depends, how mission critical is your database?
I'm sure static executables can run without much effort, but shared.. I can only imagine hours of trying to get 100's of different libraries to run properly, probably only having to resort to finding a Linux machine to staticly compile your application to run properly..
Covad helping people from other ISPs?
on
DSL Woes
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· Score: 4
Thats funny, I have a friend who had his Internet service through Flashcom, and Flashcom just recently filed Chapter 11, my friend went to Covads site to investigate on how to get another ISP, however Covads reponse was, "It is Covads policy not to allow customers to switch ISPs while their current ISP is in the process of filing Chapter 11", so he's stuck using a free dialup temporarly...
What if a truck is out of control coming towards me, and I have to speed up to move out of the way, what then? Oops thats right, the car would restrict my ability to speed, thus causing an accident..
I really am, I feel ashamed to live in this country anymore.. Every week on Slashdot there is some kind of new patent that just makes me want to vommit. I think the best is AltaVistas on Search Indexing.. But now this? Next thing we know they'll be patents for using Light to create an Imagine on a screen, and I'll be paying licensing fees to watch TV and use my computer.... sigh.
Lets see, KDE and GNOME. I do beleive competition has improved both these projects. Apache does have competition, but its biggest competition isn't open source, I beleive Competition is good, if there is no competition, what drives you to add a new feature? Obviously the having the feature is some motivation, but nothing motivates you more to do something when someone else does it before you. You would obviously then add this new feature, but this time not only would you add it, but you make it better than the other products feature. What does that do? Obviously inturn makes the other product work better to better your project. And what does this result in? Improvement.
Yeah, That really makes a lot of since. Without some kind of revenue generating source on a website, how is the website suppose to stay in business? Do you think all those people working to update content, all the servers, and the bandwidth comes free? Hell no, cost has to be covered somewhere. Either ad companies need to formulate a new plan for advertising on the net, or all those free sites need to start charging. And sure if say slashdot charged like even only $5 a month for reading articles and participating in discussion, What if every other site did the same? That $5 a month would add up real quick. I know off hand about 30 sites I go to regularly, and if they started charging that becomes 150 bux a month I have to shell out just to look at 30 sites I enjoy, only 30 sites out of the limitless amount the internet is suppose to offer.. combined with the fact of standard Internet charges it would total about 200 bux a month just to use the Internet.. So yeah, let the internet be ad-free..
When has pressing the delete key on email you don't want become such a difficult task that people nearly have a stroke when something like this happens.. I do see how eBay is trying to get more people to receive emails from 3rd parties, but they aren't forcing you. Especially with todays technologies and being able to filter email into the "Trash" folder, what is such the big deal? I live in an apartment, and I have one of those tiny apartment mail boxes, and every day I get some kind of catalog, or Penny Saver thing with ads on it, what do I do? I throw it away, but in computers when someone gets one peice of spam, its the end of the world. I can see getting upset about Porn Spam, or spam where you are getting an email every hour on the hour, but getting something once a week, that I can easily press that key labeled "Del", its right under the "Insert", I fail to see the earth shattering problem.
I had the very unconfortable experience of being on the otherside of the spectrum. The guy I replaced, was fired the day I started working.. it was rather interesting coming in my first day, being show my cube while the guy before me was packing his things up.. What was even better was I ended up helping him carry some of his boxes to his car...
You still purchase the music for more than just the music on the CD. Personally any artist that I really enjoy I purchase the CD because I want the cover art, the insert, and the original CD itself..
near infinite bandwidth and perfect reproduction?
This reminds me slightly of Star Trek, one day a machine will come along that will reproduce any object simply by saying the objects name.. when that time comes, why bother buying anything anyway.. and what value does money have then? The only reason money has any value is because its a measure of work and materials..
Slashdot Mirror
I obviously don't have the funds to compete in the courtroom with Big Corporation X, and even if I were to try, the expense and time alone would set me into debt for probably the greater part of the rest of my life. What chance does the GPL or any other Open Source licensed software have, if a good part of it's development team is composed of just average guys with bills, debt and little free time?
This was a very good peice of satire.. and not far off from the actual truth on the market. Most companies did very little research if an idea was marketable.. For example, my previous job was working for a company called InterAct Accessories, (GameShark.com, interact-acc.com).. I worked on many projects that were just not researched.. My boss at the time's outlook was, "If its internet enabled or does something on the internet, it will sell millions." And thus a product called SharkWire was born. SharkWire was a modem for your Nintendo 64 that allowed you to get Gaming information straight from Sharkwire.com for only 9.95$ a month! The best part you ask? You can't browse anywhere else on the Web, and Sharkwire.com was always down! I know, I know first thing I said was where can I sign up to get one of these devices... Well instead of even just testing the water before investing a lot of money, they put approximately 2 million into it, produced 80,000 units, setup a huge sharkwire.com hosting deal with Genuity (approximately 90,000 a month for Solaris machines, Radius servers, mail, etc..), then released the product LATE.. Missing its target date before christmas.. But alas, it was the technology era, it would sell anyway right? Well InterAct sold approximately 500 units over a period of 5 months.. of those only 100 actually called to subscribe to the service.. The rest were eventually returned.. Needless to say after about 8 months the project was shut down... with still 80,000 of these units in a warehouse.. Fortunately I wasn't directly involved with this particular project, but my job was eliminated anyway thanks to the huge loss involved..
Last time I checked, the population of the earth was growing out of control, thanks to medical treatments, etc.. But I really do think we should be focusing on ways to fit more people or earth, or populate the moon or mars or at least something before we work on ways to keep people living longer and having more children.. I'm sure this would be flamebait but hey, its the honest truth.. if we don't figure out something soon it'll be like China all over the world, with everyone sleeping in drawers and showering in the kitchen.
Hopefully maybe Microsoft will ban all its products from Maryland =) I suppose I can dream..
The want for Power and Weapons out does the need for exploration and advancement.
Well, after the age of 60, your risk of stroke, and heart attack greatly increases... I can see the rational behind this.. I'd rather not be in a commercial airline and suddenly the pilot has a stroke, dies and falls face first onto the flight stick, putting the plane into a downward spiral.. (meanwhile the copilot is in the john) Sure there are probably a lot of healthy 60 year olds with no prior medical conditions, but I've met 60 year olds that are in perfect health and then suddenly one day they have a stroke or a severe heart attack .. Its probably in the best interest to have a mandate like that.
Its an Apache -module-, not part of Apache. Modules can be created by a 3rd party for whatever reason. I'm sure the Apache Group is working on more important things than streaming mp3 support, but this is cool.
From an advertising standpoint it benefits AOL to have 2 seperate Protocols. The benefit comes when they sell Ads space on that little box on the Windows AIM client. They can force users on the OSCAR protocol to use the Windows AIM client, and thus be served Ads. Where as the TOC client is just who-ever and whatever. They can then say "there are 10 million active users on AIM (refering to the OSCAR protocol) that are receiving ads." Then they can sell ads based on those statistics. At least AOL is providing an alternative protocol to using their services. This is all speculation of course, just a thought.
I don't mind Slashdot ads at all.. In fact I click on an ad once a day.. And for a simple reason, they are targetted properly. I don't see ads on how to improve my sex life, or a new blender that will change my life at the top of Slashdot. I see things I like, ThinkGeek, Web Hosting Companies, Open Source Products, ora books, etc. I would however pay maybe 30 bux a year for Slashdot without ads, and bonus content. The key would be the bonus content. Maybe more indepth stories, and more original content, ala Slashdot Exclusive or something. That would be worth some money..
The point of this is the current Patent system does not work. And we've all seen this many times over (see Articles on Amazon, TechSearch, NCR, and Apple). They Parent insane things like One Click Shopping, Aqua Color Theme, and Compression between a Client and a Server.. These people didn't patent this because they were afraid their great new idea would be stolen by a huge corporation, or by another individual, they patented so competition legally couldn't compete and so that they could wait until the rest of the world had popular devices like theirs, with many companies producing them, and then sue/charge licensing fees for them. That is whats wrong. What this place does is allow us Open Source programmers to patent our ideas or at least record prior art so that we don't one day get a letter from Apple saying that we violate their patent on the creation of a text file containing specific code to be run through a preprocessor, compiler and linker to create a distributable executable binary. Sure GCC has prior art.. but thats not the case for all open source projects, it could be very hard to prove..
Hah so now I know where the sendmail guys learned to program =)
The only advantage I really see with those is potentially brand name, and support. What I mean by Brand Name is chances are your boss has heard about Oracle, and heard only good things about Oracle, but never heard of MySQL or only heard a tad about it being Open Source. And then there is support. If you are going to run some kind of eStore with potentially millions of customers and transactions and products, and then one day your PHP and MySQL setup craps out and you have no idea why or how to fix it in a short amount of time, who exactly are you going to turn too? You have an entire business, employees, and customers that are riding on your database setup, what are you going to do? You can get MySQL support, and sorta support through Zend for PHP, but I know their support staff is nothing compared to Oracle, and I know with Oracle you can pay them to actually fix the problem and not just give advance.... it all depends, how mission critical is your database?
I'm sure static executables can run without much effort, but shared.. I can only imagine hours of trying to get 100's of different libraries to run properly, probably only having to resort to finding a Linux machine to staticly compile your application to run properly..
Thats funny, I have a friend who had his Internet service through Flashcom, and Flashcom just recently filed Chapter 11, my friend went to Covads site to investigate on how to get another ISP, however Covads reponse was, "It is Covads policy not to allow customers to switch ISPs while their current ISP is in the process of filing Chapter 11", so he's stuck using a free dialup temporarly...
What if a truck is out of control coming towards me, and I have to speed up to move out of the way, what then? Oops thats right, the car would restrict my ability to speed, thus causing an accident..
I can't begin to talk about how on-topic that was
I can think of hundreds of applications this would have in the Porn Industry...
I really am, I feel ashamed to live in this country anymore.. Every week on Slashdot there is some kind of new patent that just makes me want to vommit. I think the best is AltaVistas on Search Indexing.. But now this? Next thing we know they'll be patents for using Light to create an Imagine on a screen, and I'll be paying licensing fees to watch TV and use my computer.... sigh.
Lets see, KDE and GNOME. I do beleive competition has improved both these projects. Apache does have competition, but its biggest competition isn't open source, I beleive Competition is good, if there is no competition, what drives you to add a new feature? Obviously the having the feature is some motivation, but nothing motivates you more to do something when someone else does it before you. You would obviously then add this new feature, but this time not only would you add it, but you make it better than the other products feature. What does that do? Obviously inturn makes the other product work better to better your project. And what does this result in? Improvement.
Yeah, That really makes a lot of since. Without some kind of revenue generating source on a website, how is the website suppose to stay in business? Do you think all those people working to update content, all the servers, and the bandwidth comes free? Hell no, cost has to be covered somewhere. Either ad companies need to formulate a new plan for advertising on the net, or all those free sites need to start charging. And sure if say slashdot charged like even only $5 a month for reading articles and participating in discussion, What if every other site did the same? That $5 a month would add up real quick. I know off hand about 30 sites I go to regularly, and if they started charging that becomes 150 bux a month I have to shell out just to look at 30 sites I enjoy, only 30 sites out of the limitless amount the internet is suppose to offer.. combined with the fact of standard Internet charges it would total about 200 bux a month just to use the Internet.. So yeah, let the internet be ad-free..
When has pressing the delete key on email you don't want become such a difficult task that people nearly have a stroke when something like this happens.. I do see how eBay is trying to get more people to receive emails from 3rd parties, but they aren't forcing you. Especially with todays technologies and being able to filter email into the "Trash" folder, what is such the big deal? I live in an apartment, and I have one of those tiny apartment mail boxes, and every day I get some kind of catalog, or Penny Saver thing with ads on it, what do I do? I throw it away, but in computers when someone gets one peice of spam, its the end of the world. I can see getting upset about Porn Spam, or spam where you are getting an email every hour on the hour, but getting something once a week, that I can easily press that key labeled "Del", its right under the "Insert", I fail to see the earth shattering problem.
I had the very unconfortable experience of being on the otherside of the spectrum. The guy I replaced, was fired the day I started working.. it was rather interesting coming in my first day, being show my cube while the guy before me was packing his things up.. What was even better was I ended up helping him carry some of his boxes to his car...
.. was there any evidence of the smoking man..? =)
You still purchase the music for more than just the music on the CD. Personally any artist that I really enjoy I purchase the CD because I want the cover art, the insert, and the original CD itself..
near infinite bandwidth and perfect reproduction?
This reminds me slightly of Star Trek, one day a machine will come along that will reproduce any object simply by saying the objects name.. when that time comes, why bother buying anything anyway.. and what value does money have then? The only reason money has any value is because its a measure of work and materials..