BTW I am German (lived in Canada and the US for 20 years, but currently live in Switzerland).
Back to the issue, No....
Europeans tend to be more corrupt than North American's... Seriously!
It is partially because of the social system which is a system of one party taking advantage of the other. For example in Europe you pay a ton of tax, people hide their money left right and center. In North America people tend to be pretty honest about taxes. Ok North Americans hide a few cents here and there, but nobody does outright tax evasion.
As an example of scandal. I lived in France and people cheated on their taxes and entered lower amounts than was written on their income slips. Think about it. The government can check that SO easy and yet they cheat. And once when at a dentist the guy asked cash or invoice? I said what is the difference? Cash you get better service and we send the money to a tax haven. Invoice you get ok service. That is corruption!
Or consider the problem of robbery in the UK? People buy and sell stolen goods and they think it is ok so long as the robbery was from a company.
Or consider how Germans will eat all day at an all you can eat bar. Notice that they do not exist much in Germany? There is a reason. My cousin starved himself for two days so that he could sit all day at an all you can eat bar. That was when companies tried all you can eats for a short time.
My point is that Europeans have a funny attitude to "good" behaviour. They tend to push the line and do not do what is accepted behaviour. This is also why North Americans tend to find Europeans rude.
Not to say that North American's are perfect, they tend to be too prude and extreme in things (drinking in public, anti-smoking and fat free anything). But that is a topic for another day.
Re:I pointed out one..
on
Google Juice
·
· Score: 2
LOL...
I guess you can call me an oddity... I do like oddball colour schemes and desktops...
Having lived on both sides of the pond I have to say that I am North American and distrustful of governments. In Germany, France, etc people are trustful and look to the government for guidance.
>>but there are enough checks and balances that I don't think anyone in Europe seriously thinks the government is working more for its own good, rather than for that of the people it's serving.
You are kidding right?
Have you looked at the laundered money going through the individual political parties in Germany and France? For example stats in Germany (Speigel TV March 17, 2002) say that there are officially 220 corruption cases. Think about it OFFICIAL CORRUPTION SCANDALS!!! Corruption in the sense of faking, changing, laundering, etc!!!
Have you see how the German government for work faked the numbers to make it look like the government was actually doing something?
Have you heard of the move by the German government to not consider people over 50 unemployed but in pre-retirement? This way the the unemployment numbers would look better...
Did you see the how Volkswagon and Mercedes would not sell or service their own cars not bought in Germany? And the government did NOTHING! Why corruption...
Sorry, but European governments do NOT always look in the best interest of the people. I DO LIKE the skepticism bred into you living in Canada and the US.
But I do see hope in Mario Monti.. He is the "DOJ" of Europe and HE IS changing things for the better. He is slapping fines and changing business practices, even when the governments are not HAPPY!!!
Ever heard of Bertelsman? One of the big five. They are based in Germany. Or how about Krichgroup? Another big one (but about to go bankrupt)
The difference in the media industry between the US and Germany is ZIP, ZILCH NADA... Global corporatization took care of any differences that did exist!!!
Globalism is good, but global corporatization is not so good!!!
The problem is that the OpenOffice people and many others are copying and not thinking of doing things differently.
For example when I developed my DeNotes I wanted to solve some problems. So I stepped back and said, Ok if I could how would I really do this?
Maybe if they thought like that it would change how we protray office applications. Sure it would be a hard learning curve for the user. BUT it is that or not being able to keep up.
I pointed out one..
on
Google Juice
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I sent Google a link about sex and Javascript. I was searching for Javascript debuggers and got something ELSE. Here is a link to the old picture. http://www.devspace.com/Articles/Article_2002_01_2 1.html
However I think they are starting to do something since doing this search again yields proper results.
I have no problem with Free / Shared / Open / Propriatary Software. My opinion is live and let live.
I do have a problem with RMS's comments. He is saying things to people that are ludicrous. He is saying the West does not understand what he is trying to do, whereas India does. He does all of this from his "comfy" home. It reminds me when the Sun King's wife said "Why do they need bread when they can eat cake".
It ticks me off because I have lived (have family that currently lives) in developing countries. And in developing countries there are many factors at work. Having someone like RMS spout off that the "West" does not understand him gets my goat ROYALLY!!!
"In India there are a number of people who are capable of seeing free software as an ethical and social issue, whereas in many parts of the world very few people recognize the ethical and social issues, and they are more interested in the practical benefits of today's free software," Stallman said.
I think it has nothing to do with India in specific. It has more to do with that getting people to pay software when they do not have the money is the issue.
Last time I checked Indian programmers want to be paid just as much as everyone else on this planet. It is just right now that Indian programmers are getting shafted and paid less than they rightfully deserve.
While the FSF does not preclude getting paid, it makes it DAMM difficult. If you look at the past Slashdot arcticles you can see a good business model is what makes sense. I would like the FSF to consider the fact that people have mortgages, children and college.
Sure there are companies that are doing ok. IE Redhat, but Redhat is one of the few. The rest are having problems as witnessed by the slashdot articles. Philosphical arguments are easy when you are feed, clothed and have a roof over your head.
As much as people would like to change the way it works it is VERY difficult. (I write myself).
1) An individual piece of music is a chapter in a book. A book is much more effort is more like a symphany or a good album.
2) Listening to music on an MP3 player is feasible. Reading a book electronically is not possible or at least not easily and not that nicely. More time needs to pass before this will work.
Music and books are two totally different animals. Even though both deal with intellectual creativity. Until points 1 and 2 are addressed sadly authors are screwed!
But can you stop a creating a company and then hosting servers? I could do this in the US. I just need to keep creating companies and then shutting them down. There is no law against this in the US or anywhere. The RIAA would have to constantly track... That is the point. If this is calculated into the equation then it could be very profitable.
I think that is part of it. If BSD were more popular than LINUX then I would think MS would be dising the other license.
MS is doing this so that they can support Apple OS-X and rub one into LINUX at the same time. Competing head to head on technical merits alone has never been a strength of MS. MS competes in other ways and this is it. Competing technically is a short lived argument. Technology always gets better. Making the GNU GPL "sound bad" is a good long term decision influencer...
Re:You don't understand the spirit then.
on
Abusing the GPL?
·
· Score: 2
Here is the sentence from the GPL...
>>The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it.>For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable.
My source code is source code A transformed into B. A is not a script, nor an IDL, it is a transformation. Hence I am not required to distribute the originals. I am only required to distribute the transformation results.
Folks you are missing the point. Lets take a GPL project integrate into our own. At that point the entire code is obfuscated REALLY badly. For example a function calls ten other functions. The GPL original sources are distributed alongside with the REALLY obfuscated code. The obfuscated code compiles fine and creates a program that RUNS REALLY SLOW...
However, the company has an executable optimizer that happens to clear out all of the slowness. Well the optimizer is company propriatary and is not part of the GPL distribution because the application still works sources and all. It is just that the sources and all are useless...
Interesting concept... I guess people are using the GPL...
Re:Dirty Pool! But also confusing.
on
Abusing the GPL?
·
· Score: 2
While you are determined, I somehow doubt it. Lets say that the project is Linux. The Linux code becomes totally obfuscated, etc, etc. Maybe even there is a pass compiler developed internal to the company that cleans up the code. Would you really go through line by line to simplify the code? If so then no compiled code is safe from you. But I doubt many would actually go through this. Code is only valuable when you can read it and compile it cleanly. The GPL does not cover this situation. The GPL does not say it needs to compile or needs to be readable. Hence I could twist GPL code and mine and give them to you!! Interesting concept nonetheless... So I guess people are starting to get interested in Open Source.
I think you have put the finger on it. I wonder if Morpheus did not do what they did to get out of the RIAA fiasco.
With GNUTELLA and being based in other places it does become very difficult. BTW I am using the new Morpheus and have to say it is getting better.
Since we are talking conspiracy here is one. Imagine Morpheus buying third party companies on off shore companies. These third companies run "Super Node" GNUTELLA servers. These supernodes enhance the GNUTELLA experience, by caching, etc, etc.
The RIAA sees these super servers and goes after the owners. Immediately the third party companies shut down. But in the same moment another company with a super server starts up. The RIAA has to go through this deal YET AGAIN!!!
Morpheus is in the clear because they only provide a client that connects to an open network. That would be a brilliant strategy...
While you may see this, the judge does not. The problem with the GPL is that it is new for the legal system. And as such they cannot simply say "Oh lets knock off this company because they are illegal".
Right now legally speaking the company is innocent until proven guilty. (Even if we know otherwise or think otherwise) This is a justice...
The comparison to piracy is incorrect since that has already been determined to be illegal. Remember how long it took to make hacking and cracking illegal.
I have never been scammed and never actually bought anything an EBay. But lets just say that I am have a family member who while is not an outright thief does like to bend the rules a bit.
And he actually asked me to register myself as an EBay user and then rate him well. And to particpate in bids if the bidding was too low so that he would not have to sell it at that level.
Of course immediately I said, "No way". But it got me to thinking that if a family member did this, what would someone else who was a real big time thief. I guess we got our answer.
First MS did not leave out that single function call. It was added at a later iteration and hence changed the entire programming model.
Second MS can and may introduce stuff that works best on their platform. And lets say that Mono does not implement those things. We would then have to write applications like in C++. There would be defines specific to the implementation. To be very frank I thought the point of.NET and this easier programming model was to avoid that in the first place? If I do not have it then why bother going to.NET in the first place? Better to stick to something like C++ and Java.
Re:Miguel DOES NOT GET IT!!! So young and naive
on
Could Mono Kill Gnome?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
That is the point exactly. MS is playing the standard supporters like a fiddle. They understand what is required to compete against Open Source. And sadly people like Miguel fall into it.
I look at Apache and PERL and LINUX... What do they do? They make sure they build the best applications there are.
Take Apache as an example. To be compatible Apache could have said, wow ISAPI is really cool lets build that and do a good job... What did Apache do? They did a rudimentary ISAPI, but kept focus on their API.
Or take PERL. Sure there are PERL extensions specific to Windows. But the mother ship PERL (Larry Wall) is more concerned about making sure that PERL solves the needs of all its users.
Maybe GNOME will continue since Ximian != GNOME. But with people like Miguel talking the way he does does not bode well. I am curious to see what Sun will say...
And remember track record of anyone building a symbiotic relationship with Microsoft is 0!!! Microsoft is a dictator (their right) and there is no way you can change that.
Miguel DOES NOT GET IT!!! So young and naive
on
Could Mono Kill Gnome?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Let me tell you of a little "problem". I am writing a shareware application. And in this shareware application I am saving data to the users directory. Since this application is going to be cross-platform I decided to write it in wxWindows. All is ok.
But then I saw that the wxWindows call to get the users home directory was not working. So I investigated. It turned out that Microsoft "added" a new call to get the users home directory. Only this shell call will get the right directory. So I had to #ifdef WIN32 to get the right directory.
What is the moral of the story? Without this shell call I cannot write a good app. Since Windows XP requires that I save my data in the user directory. I do not want Win32 approved, I just want my app to work properly. Now imagine this one call was patented or hidden or whatever. At that point mono is left without a single call. What does Mono do? Invent a new call? What happens then? I am back to C++ programming with #ifdef's. To be frank I would rather go back to C++ then start anew to be confronted with that problem yet again.
Sorry folks Miguel has not learned from history and he is doomed to repeat it. Except he may pull down the entire GNOME project. Oh well c'est la vie that is why we have KDE!!!
Where do you live? I live in Switzerland, have lived on the Cote'D'Azur (French Riveria for Anglo's) and have a house in the Laurentians. All of these regions have mountains (big ones). My turbo powered sports car has to be shifted down to go up these hills. (Ok driving is fun since there are lots of cruves)
The segway will simply croak when trying to manuveur these hills. And if the road is leveled out then the segway will run out of juice simply because the distance is too long.
My other question is what the segway will do going down the hill. Remember no brakes!!! Here again I have to shift down in sports car to stop using the brakes. Will the segway have enough electrical resistance in the motors to use electrical braking? If not there goes more battery power.
The Segway is a great thing for factory floors of large corporations. Another popular scenario is as a toy for guys when they want to show off while they are beer drinking.
Slashdot Mirror
BTW I am German (lived in Canada and the US for 20 years, but currently live in Switzerland).
Back to the issue, No....
Europeans tend to be more corrupt than North American's... Seriously!
It is partially because of the social system which is a system of one party taking advantage of the other. For example in Europe you pay a ton of tax, people hide their money left right and center. In North America people tend to be pretty honest about taxes. Ok North Americans hide a few cents here and there, but nobody does outright tax evasion.
As an example of scandal. I lived in France and people cheated on their taxes and entered lower amounts than was written on their income slips. Think about it. The government can check that SO easy and yet they cheat. And once when at a dentist the guy asked cash or invoice? I said what is the difference? Cash you get better service and we send the money to a tax haven. Invoice you get ok service. That is corruption!
Or consider the problem of robbery in the UK? People buy and sell stolen goods and they think it is ok so long as the robbery was from a company.
Or consider how Germans will eat all day at an all you can eat bar. Notice that they do not exist much in Germany? There is a reason. My cousin starved himself for two days so that he could sit all day at an all you can eat bar. That was when companies tried all you can eats for a short time.
My point is that Europeans have a funny attitude to "good" behaviour. They tend to push the line and do not do what is accepted behaviour. This is also why North Americans tend to find Europeans rude.
Not to say that North American's are perfect, they tend to be too prude and extreme in things (drinking in public, anti-smoking and fat free anything). But that is a topic for another day.
LOL...
I guess you can call me an oddity... I do like oddball colour schemes and desktops...
Oh c'est la vie...
If I remember the Sun King was Louis the 14th? Which was the queen of France during the revolution.
Having lived on both sides of the pond I have to say that I am North American and distrustful of governments. In Germany, France, etc people are trustful and look to the government for guidance.
>>but there are enough checks and balances that I don't think anyone in Europe seriously thinks the government is working more for its own good, rather than for that of the people it's serving.
You are kidding right?
Have you looked at the laundered money going through the individual political parties in Germany and France? For example stats in Germany (Speigel TV March 17, 2002) say that there are officially 220 corruption cases. Think about it OFFICIAL CORRUPTION SCANDALS!!! Corruption in the sense of faking, changing, laundering, etc!!!
Have you see how the German government for work faked the numbers to make it look like the government was actually doing something?
Have you heard of the move by the German government to not consider people over 50 unemployed but in pre-retirement? This way the the unemployment numbers would look better...
Did you see the how Volkswagon and Mercedes would not sell or service their own cars not bought in Germany? And the government did NOTHING! Why corruption...
Sorry, but European governments do NOT always look in the best interest of the people. I DO LIKE the skepticism bred into you living in Canada and the US.
But I do see hope in Mario Monti.. He is the "DOJ" of Europe and HE IS changing things for the better. He is slapping fines and changing business practices, even when the governments are not HAPPY!!!
Ever heard of Bertelsman? One of the big five. They are based in Germany. Or how about Krichgroup? Another big one (but about to go bankrupt)
The difference in the media industry between the US and Germany is ZIP, ZILCH NADA... Global corporatization took care of any differences that did exist!!!
Globalism is good, but global corporatization is not so good!!!
The problem is that the OpenOffice people and many others are copying and not thinking of doing things differently.
For example when I developed my DeNotes I wanted to solve some problems. So I stepped back and said, Ok if I could how would I really do this?
Maybe if they thought like that it would change how we protray office applications. Sure it would be a hard learning curve for the user. BUT it is that or not being able to keep up.
I sent Google a link about sex and Javascript. I was searching for Javascript debuggers and got something ELSE. Here is a link to the old picture. http://www.devspace.com/Articles/Article_2002_01_2 1.html
However I think they are starting to do something since doing this search again yields proper results.
I agree Free Software != bad business model. I just get nerved by comments made by people who want to fundementally drive everything philosphically.
Linus's attitude is amazing and that is why I think LINUX does so well. He has the attitude of live and let live.
I have no problem with Free / Shared / Open / Propriatary Software. My opinion is live and let live.
I do have a problem with RMS's comments. He is saying things to people that are ludicrous. He is saying the West does not understand what he is trying to do, whereas India does. He does all of this from his "comfy" home. It reminds me when the Sun King's wife said "Why do they need bread when they can eat cake".
It ticks me off because I have lived (have family that currently lives) in developing countries. And in developing countries there are many factors at work. Having someone like RMS spout off that the "West" does not understand him gets my goat ROYALLY!!!
I read the following in the article:
"In India there are a number of people who are capable of seeing free software as an ethical and social issue, whereas in many parts of the world very few people recognize the ethical and social issues, and they are more interested in the practical benefits of today's free software," Stallman said.
I think it has nothing to do with India in specific. It has more to do with that getting people to pay software when they do not have the money is the issue.
Last time I checked Indian programmers want to be paid just as much as everyone else on this planet. It is just right now that Indian programmers are getting shafted and paid less than they rightfully deserve.
While the FSF does not preclude getting paid, it makes it DAMM difficult. If you look at the past Slashdot arcticles you can see a good business model is what makes sense. I would like the FSF to consider the fact that people have mortgages, children and college.
Sure there are companies that are doing ok. IE Redhat, but Redhat is one of the few. The rest are having problems as witnessed by the slashdot articles. Philosphical arguments are easy when you are feed, clothed and have a roof over your head.
As much as people would like to change the way it works it is VERY difficult. (I write myself).
1) An individual piece of music is a chapter in a book. A book is much more effort is more like a symphany or a good album.
2) Listening to music on an MP3 player is feasible. Reading a book electronically is not possible or at least not easily and not that nicely. More time needs to pass before this will work.
Music and books are two totally different animals. Even though both deal with intellectual creativity. Until points 1 and 2 are addressed sadly authors are screwed!
But can you stop a creating a company and then hosting servers? I could do this in the US. I just need to keep creating companies and then shutting them down. There is no law against this in the US or anywhere. The RIAA would have to constantly track... That is the point. If this is calculated into the equation then it could be very profitable.
I think that is part of it. If BSD were more popular than LINUX then I would think MS would be dising the other license.
MS is doing this so that they can support Apple OS-X and rub one into LINUX at the same time. Competing head to head on technical merits alone has never been a strength of MS. MS competes in other ways and this is it. Competing technically is a short lived argument. Technology always gets better. Making the GNU GPL "sound bad" is a good long term decision influencer...
Here is the sentence from the GPL...
>>The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it.>For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable.
My source code is source code A transformed into B. A is not a script, nor an IDL, it is a transformation. Hence I am not required to distribute the originals. I am only required to distribute the transformation results.
I think there are loopholes...
Folks you are missing the point. Lets take a GPL project integrate into our own. At that point the entire code is obfuscated REALLY badly. For example a function calls ten other functions. The GPL original sources are distributed alongside with the REALLY obfuscated code. The obfuscated code compiles fine and creates a program that RUNS REALLY SLOW...
However, the company has an executable optimizer that happens to clear out all of the slowness. Well the optimizer is company propriatary and is not part of the GPL distribution because the application still works sources and all. It is just that the sources and all are useless...
Interesting concept... I guess people are using the GPL...
While you are determined, I somehow doubt it. Lets say that the project is Linux. The Linux code becomes totally obfuscated, etc, etc. Maybe even there is a pass compiler developed internal to the company that cleans up the code. Would you really go through line by line to simplify the code? If so then no compiled code is safe from you. But I doubt many would actually go through this. Code is only valuable when you can read it and compile it cleanly. The GPL does not cover this situation. The GPL does not say it needs to compile or needs to be readable. Hence I could twist GPL code and mine and give them to you!! Interesting concept nonetheless... So I guess people are starting to get interested in Open Source.
I think you have put the finger on it. I wonder if Morpheus did not do what they did to get out of the RIAA fiasco.
With GNUTELLA and being based in other places it does become very difficult. BTW I am using the new Morpheus and have to say it is getting better.
Since we are talking conspiracy here is one. Imagine Morpheus buying third party companies on off shore companies. These third companies run "Super Node" GNUTELLA servers. These supernodes enhance the GNUTELLA experience, by caching, etc, etc.
The RIAA sees these super servers and goes after the owners. Immediately the third party companies shut down. But in the same moment another company with a super server starts up. The RIAA has to go through this deal YET AGAIN!!!
Morpheus is in the clear because they only provide a client that connects to an open network. That would be a brilliant strategy...
While you may see this, the judge does not. The problem with the GPL is that it is new for the legal system. And as such they cannot simply say "Oh lets knock off this company because they are illegal".
Right now legally speaking the company is innocent until proven guilty. (Even if we know otherwise or think otherwise) This is a justice...
The comparison to piracy is incorrect since that has already been determined to be illegal. Remember how long it took to make hacking and cracking illegal.
Ok so Eiffel.net can do Multiple Inheritance?
I have never been scammed and never actually bought anything an EBay. But lets just say that I am have a family member who while is not an outright thief does like to bend the rules a bit.
And he actually asked me to register myself as an EBay user and then rate him well. And to particpate in bids if the bidding was too low so that he would not have to sell it at that level.
Of course immediately I said, "No way". But it got me to thinking that if a family member did this, what would someone else who was a real big time thief. I guess we got our answer.
Two points...
.NET and this easier programming model was to avoid that in the first place? If I do not have it then why bother going to .NET in the first place? Better to stick to something like C++ and Java.
First MS did not leave out that single function call. It was added at a later iteration and hence changed the entire programming model.
Second MS can and may introduce stuff that works best on their platform. And lets say that Mono does not implement those things. We would then have to write applications like in C++. There would be defines specific to the implementation. To be very frank I thought the point of
That is the point exactly. MS is playing the standard supporters like a fiddle. They understand what is required to compete against Open Source. And sadly people like Miguel fall into it.
I look at Apache and PERL and LINUX... What do they do? They make sure they build the best applications there are.
Take Apache as an example. To be compatible Apache could have said, wow ISAPI is really cool lets build that and do a good job... What did Apache do? They did a rudimentary ISAPI, but kept focus on their API.
Or take PERL. Sure there are PERL extensions specific to Windows. But the mother ship PERL (Larry Wall) is more concerned about making sure that PERL solves the needs of all its users.
Maybe GNOME will continue since Ximian != GNOME. But with people like Miguel talking the way he does does not bode well. I am curious to see what Sun will say...
And remember track record of anyone building a symbiotic relationship with Microsoft is 0!!! Microsoft is a dictator (their right) and there is no way you can change that.
Let me tell you of a little "problem". I am writing a shareware application. And in this shareware application I am saving data to the users directory. Since this application is going to be cross-platform I decided to write it in wxWindows. All is ok.
But then I saw that the wxWindows call to get the users home directory was not working. So I investigated. It turned out that Microsoft "added" a new call to get the users home directory. Only this shell call will get the right directory. So I had to #ifdef WIN32 to get the right directory.
What is the moral of the story? Without this shell call I cannot write a good app. Since Windows XP requires that I save my data in the user directory. I do not want Win32 approved, I just want my app to work properly. Now imagine this one call was patented or hidden or whatever. At that point mono is left without a single call. What does Mono do? Invent a new call? What happens then? I am back to C++ programming with #ifdef's. To be frank I would rather go back to C++ then start anew to be confronted with that problem yet again.
Sorry folks Miguel has not learned from history and he is doomed to repeat it. Except he may pull down the entire GNOME project. Oh well c'est la vie that is why we have KDE!!!
My emoticons were not written. I do find it interesting that the judge is hard nosed.
I meant that comment as an emotion in that I would say, darn judge, when in fact logically I would know that the judge acted fairly.
"Hills are not a big problem"
Where do you live? I live in Switzerland, have lived on the Cote'D'Azur (French Riveria for Anglo's) and have a house in the Laurentians. All of these regions have mountains (big ones). My turbo powered sports car has to be shifted down to go up these hills. (Ok driving is fun since there are lots of cruves)
The segway will simply croak when trying to manuveur these hills. And if the road is leveled out then the segway will run out of juice simply because the distance is too long.
My other question is what the segway will do going down the hill. Remember no brakes!!! Here again I have to shift down in sports car to stop using the brakes. Will the segway have enough electrical resistance in the motors to use electrical braking? If not there goes more battery power.
The Segway is a great thing for factory floors of large corporations. Another popular scenario is as a toy for guys when they want to show off while they are beer drinking.