I used to have fairly poor vision, but equally in both eyes (-4.25 in both). As I've gotten older, my vision has improved, but more in the right eye than the left (-2.25 left, -0.50 right). I often read at night and never use my glasses. With my vision being somewhat different between the eyes I started getting lazy and only reading with my right eye. Eventually I stopped using binocular vision at all.
Then a few months ago I started to get interesting in stereoscopic photography using the "crossed eyes" method. After about a week of looking at pictures like this, suddenly I was using my binocular vision while reading again. And overall my depth perception improved. I suspect it has something to do with having better focus control of my eyes. So I'm not sure that I buy this "3D is bad for your vision" thing. Actual studies showing the effects would be interesting, but this seems to be just speculation.
Granted I (used to) work in the programming field. But I have to disagree somewhat here. The reason FLOSS became successful was not due to the increased presence of good programmers. I can tell you for a fact that the number of talented amateur illustrators in the high school I work in out number the talented programmers by at least a factor of 10 to 1. No they aren't pro-level, but then neither are most of the programmers who start out writing free software in University.
FLOSS became successful based on a number of unique factors. The first was the fact that the means to program at a "pro" level was available to almost everyone who wanted it (in wealthy countries anyway). Especially at the start, programs were NOT complicated. You could spend 100 hours cranking out horrible code and somebody would want it. Things are different now, of course. But because getting in was easy originally, a culture was born that allowed FLOSS.
In the arts, this is often not the case. Unless you have a big budget and a bunch of highly paid pros, you aren't likely to produce something that someone wants. And so it is difficult to build up enough of a critical mass of free/commons developers to support its own activity. We are flooded with cheap/free-of-charge art. And the standard is very high. It is extremely difficult to break into that.
But I think this attempt (along with a few others that have proceeded it) is a step in the right direction. The reality is that *some* people don't care about having the highest level of production quality. They are willing to put up with quite a lot. Even if the percentage is very, very small, (say 1 in 10,000) in a large population it can add up to a reasonable number of people. 1 in 10,000 of 100,000,000 is still 10,000. It is insignificant compared to "real" arts, but it is significant enough (probably) to start something that is self-sustaining.
That's the other thing about the time that FLOSS came into being. At the time, the internet was becoming available to the people doing this kind of development. And they could find each other and build small virtual communities. And thanks to the early efforts of a lot of people in the free software community, a set ethical agreements was reached that allowed people to contribute to projects without having to fear that this contribution would be appropriated some way.
We're starting to see some traction in other areas these days. Creative Commons is unbelievably important in this endeavor. But just like it took at least 10 years before the average person could even begin to see the point of FLOSS, it will take time for free and open artistic endeavors to gel. I would be very surprised if 20 years from now we don't see this kind of thing as being relatively common (though, perhaps not mainstream) -- just like FLOSS.
Exactly HOW would the GPL have been better? There's still a fork of the last "good" version, which you can use if you like.
There is always a balance when choosing a license. The main advantage (IMHO) with choosing the GPL over something like the Apache license is that you don't have to compete against proprietary versions that are based on the code you wrote. As an author this is a significant consideration for me. If I am the primary author, it would suck to have features from my free version used with impunity when I am unable to use features from the proprietary version. It gives the proprietary version an unfair advantage (unfair in that as the primary author I can't enjoy the same privileges).
However, there are lots of reasons to choose non-copyleft licenses for work. Sometimes the benefit you receive from extended exposure outweighs the disadvantage of unfair competition. Given that Google was the primary author and *they* aren't complaining, I have to agree with you that there doesn't seem to be a problem. If they got what they want, then it is all good. However, I can understand if the authors of the forked version want to use the GPL to avoid having to unfairly compete against the proprietary version.
Can I inject an opinion from a kanji lover. I love kanji and I'm unabashed about it. I can read Japanese -- badly by a native speaker's standard, but I quite happily read manga and light novels. Reading and writing kanji is not difficult at all. The point to the article was that *some* characters were considered too complicated to write in daily life. For example the character for "who" () is 15 strokes. The phonetic form is only 8 strokes (the 2 phonetic characters ). So there is no real need to teach the complex kanji character. But with the advent of computers *everybody* uses the kanji character. Even little kids know it.
So, if kanji is so horrible, why is everyone using this character even though they officially don't have to know it? Because it is actually much, much easier to recognize than the phonetic characters. To understand why, you need to understand a little bit about Japanese grammar and the way it is written.
As I wrote in another post, Japanese words are often made up of 2 parts -- the meaning and some grammatical information. The meaning is written in kanji. The grammar is written in the phonetic alphabet (hiragana). This lets you instantly recognize if a word is a noun or a verb, for instance. is to think and is a thought. Also, when verbs are inflected only the phonetic part changes. This allows you to easily parse what is going on. Finally, words in Japanese are usually separated by particles which indicate the grammatical purpose of the word. The particles are written in hiragana. Since the words start with Kanji and are separated by hiragana you can very easily parse the sentence at a glance.
So, while the character for "who" is more complex than the phonetic equivalent, it stands out and is much, much easier to recognize. Thus, everyone uses it. Especially since you almost never have to write it by hand, it simply makes sense to use it.
In my opinion, even though I am a poor reader of Japanese, Japanese using kanji is much easier than reading English. The downside is that it takes a very long time to learn. But once you do, you never look back. Phonetic characters are simply a headache.
Kanji are not words. This is a very common misunderstanding and is very important. A kanji character conveys meaning, but that meaning may or may not be a word. Most words are composed of 2 or more kanji (probably the vast majority are 2 characters, but I haven't seen the statistics).
Each kanji character is made up of parts called radicals (bushu in Japanese). There is a main bushu for each character that that is what it used to look it up in the dictionary. One of the pronunciations of the character is often related to the main bushu. Each character can have many pronunciations but usually only has 2 or 3 main ones that are used often. These come up in different enough contexts that it isn't actually difficult to remember them (I've never specifically studied readings, as they are called -- just memorized vocabulary).
Japanese is unique in it's writing in that words are made up of a meaning part (at the beginning) and a grammar part (at the end). The meaning part is written in kanji and the grammar part is written in hiragana. When a word is modified by the grammar (inflecting verbs for instance), it is the grammar part (in hiragana) that changes.
I could write a long time about this because it is fascinating, but probably only if you are studying Japanese;-) To get back to the point, the kanji characters that are being added are already in the language. They are simply being added to the syllabus that you must learn in order to be considered literate (i.e., the ones they teach you in public school). Many, many more kanji are used in daily life. Honestly it is about time since there are some really glaring omissions.
Anyway, I totally love kanji. It is the ultimate ease of use versus ease of learning thing. It takes a really long time to learn, but once you do, reading is significantly easier. Reading phonetic words gives me a headache. Kanji is just so much more pleasurable.
IANAP (physicist) - The wind hits the sail. Since it's hitting the sail on one side and not the other, the pressure is higher on the side where the wind is hitting. This means that the sail is sucked towards the low pressure side. The speed of the craft is dependent upon the pressure difference that you are able to make and the amount of inertia and friction of the vehicle. It's not really related to the speed of the wind (other than higher speeds can create higher pressure differentials).
I disagree - there is the probability that there already exists an infrastructure built around Windows desktops, including systems management and applications. In such a case, does it really make sense to consider bids for an alternative desktop OS, which would require extra unbudgeted expenditure in order to integrate into the existing infrastructure (or replace the existing infrastructure altogether, with all the costs associated with that)?
The answer is YES! The government is required to consider all competing bids. It's not just a good idea, it's the law and for good reason. It helps stop corruption when doling out taxpayer's money. IF it can be shown that a competing bid is more expensive for the same value, then of course they are quite able to reject the bid. However, disallowing competing bids is extremely bad because you don't know what the cost will be, or what the issues are -- because nobody has made a bid! Given that the capital cost for the average Linux distribution is zero, there should be plenty of money left over for other expenditures required to integrate into the existing infrastructure. In fact, from a reputable integrator, this (along with training and support of course) should be the vast majority of the cost.
People in the industry have told me that since they typically write "one-off" things they tend not to worry about maintainability. I think the reasoning is that they just have to keep it going until release. For the next release they will start from scratch. This was quite a while ago (like a decade at least). I believe the number of "one-off"s has diminished over time and there is some expectation of maintaining at least an engine for sequels. But old habits die hard. The development culture is handed down from one programmer to the next. Kind of like when you look at telecommunications code you are suddenly faced with really long subroutines (long ago it was feared that the overhead of calling a subroutine would destroy "real time performance". This myth is probably still being propagated in some circles). As little as 3 years ago I worked in a respected telecommunications company with a coding standard that encouraged subroutines to be *at least* 200 lines long -- longer was better.
But then, lately I've been despairing of finding *any* application with consistently good code. Unfortunately, I include my own meager efforts in that statement...
Given the recent work on the integrated Intel graphics drivers it would have been nice to see some benchmarks. My impression is that it is better, but it would be nice to have some numbers.
This has got to be the craziest post I've seen in a long time.
Last summer CNet reported that 50% of GPL projects hosted by google code were GPLv3. That works out to at least 56,000 projects. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10294452-16.html This information took me 30 seconds to find on google. Before making wild ass comments, please do some research.
Now, you may have meant that GPLv3 code is rare on embedded devices. This may very well be true. But at least look up the numbers and tell us what they are rather than making outrageous comments backed up by nothing.
Also asserting that RMS is trying to capitalize on the popularity of the GPL to ram home his minority views is completely ridiculous. The GPL has ALWAYS been his vehicle for ramming home his minority views. Did you honestly think the GPL was popular when it was first released???? RMS and the GPL popularized these ideas in the first place. v2 isn't working exactly the way he wanted it to, so he changed it. What kind of warped view of the world do you have to have to think this is unreasonable?
Finally, if industry is accepting the GPL because it is pragmatic, then that is a good thing. I'm sorry that you can't see beyond the end of your nose to see that v3 addresses pragmatic issues. It might not be for you. That's great. Choose another license. But take a look at some of the messages here. For example, vendors are allegedly shipping software for their wireless routers with vulnerabilities. Fixes exist for those vulnerabilities, but the customer can not apply the fix because they can't load a custom build. Things like this do not endear customers to their suppliers. Generally speaking, having the ability to fix your own problems is a good thing. This is one of the pragmatic issues that v3 fixes. The license is a promise by the vendor that these kinds of things won't happen. It is something that an informed consumer can base their purchase on if it is important to them.
I happen to think it is important to me. Many other people here happen to think it is important to them. Obviously you do not. I think you are letting your bias cloud your judgement, but that's up to you.
I think it should be pointed out that everybody is 10% development and 90% sales and marketing. Actually 10% R&D is considered to be quite a big budget in high tech companies. Hardware manufacturers may still be up against it since they have to do the retail channel thing (VERY expensive), but it is potentially an edge for free software companies. They should be able to move money from distribution into development.
But here's the thing. When you buy something from a media company, the money doesn't primarily go to the creators of the product . It goes primarily to the marketing geniuses who are deciding not to make their jobs redundant.
And conversely if nobody needed a better vehicle then nobody would pay for its design. So it would indeed die as it should. Artificial scarcity models promote useless feature creep which can most easily be seen in software.
I'm glad you mentioned this. I don't really want the games, but I *do* want the source released. As a way of encouraging this behaviour I will go give them money and not download anything. I wonder if this makes me a reverse pirate... Oh the implications for global warming...
This is somewhat pedantic, but I think it is important to point out that you are writing free software. You are giving your "customer" (i.e., employer) all the freedoms necessary to be free software. You're even giving them the copyright (I assume). You can't get any more free than that from your perspective. Whether or not they choose to distribute it further is their business. They are perfectly free to do so under the GPL. But they don't have to if they don't want to. That is their freedom.
Of course it is also proprietary, meaning that your employer holds exclusive rights to the software and these freedoms. Because they are the only users of the software, free and proprietary are not mutually exclusive. Again, while this pedantic, I think it's important for people to understand what "free as in freedom" really means. Doing what you are doing is perfectly fine from a free software perspective.
I used to feel that way back when I was a programmer working the normal 100 hour weeks. Then I quit my job and did something else. But without the constant security blanket that was work I noticed I was missing something. I later learned it was called a social life. I talked to somebody and found out that groups of people were going to parties and meeting people, possibly even hooking up for sex (and not just looking at pictures on the internet, it seems). Anyway, I asked why I never got invited to anything like that. Well apart from my slovenly appearance of unkept hair, rolls of fat and poor fashion sense (hint: wearing the same T-shirt every day is no good even if it is a Star Wars one), I needed to be on Facebook. Despite having a perfectly good email account, it turns out that you wont get invited to parties unless they can simply include you on the event list. But even more than that, people check out your activities to make sure you are cool enough to be invited to the parties. Basically you have to pretend that you are doing something amazingly interesting and take pictures of it. It helps to have other people in the pictures too so that everyone thinks you have friends (but it's pretty easy to fake it with pictures of strangers, so don't worry about it). Oh, and don't forget to frequently update your status saying, "I'm having the best day ever!" so that people think you're always doing something interesting. Finally, even with all your friends and amazing activities, you have to appear uber-organized by having enough time to play stupid farm games and flooding everyone's screens with updates about your progress. After you do all this, you will get invited to parties and get laid (well... maybe -- it turns out that shirt thing is really serious).
That's interesting. I actually live in Japan, where drawings of children engaged in sexual activity aren't illegal. However I was surprised when I read the first volume of Inu Yasha (a manga that is also popular in the US) to see a nude picture of the main female character bathing. As she is meant to be 14, I wondered if it would be considered child porn in the states. There isn't anything particularly suggestive about it. She's just bathing in a lake.
On the other hand it's rather dangerous to have around, I guess. No sense becoming a sex offender for the sake of reading a silly manga...
Actually, not that I want it to be, but why is this not child pornography? I'm not really familiar with the law, but just because you are the child's parent and not distributing the pictures widely, does it really mean that you can take nude pictures with impunity? At what point does it become child pornography? Also, does it stop with your own children? What if you took a picture or your neighbor's kids in the tub (with yours for instance). I mean, this has got to be a slipperier slope than cartoons of nude children... isn't it???
Perhaps I'm being naive to expect logic in child porn laws.
It's clear that we're heading down a blind alley, so why not turn around ASAP, rather than waiting until all possible damage has been done?
The answer to this in unfortunately all to easy. You know how sometimes you're driving your car and you notice that the lane you are in is about to end? You've got two choices - merge now while there is still some space between the cars, or race up to the end of the lane and try to cut in. The first choice will result in a faster average speed for everyone. The second choice will result in a slower average speed, and will likely even slow you down on average. But there is a small chance that you will get ahead.
Politicians, decision makers and business leaders all have a common trait. They are all skillful at politics. They have all been successful in cut throat environments where dog eats dog and have managed to claw their way to the top.
Which option do you think these kind of people will chose?
If the trade-off you are making for yourself is acceptable to you, then be happy with your choice. From your post, it seems that you understand the benefits of software freedom. You realize that you are giving up those freedoms, but you are willing to do so because it seems that the software you use has features that you haven't seen in Free* software. As a personal choice, I, for one, won't criticize you. However, I will caution you that your support of a company that isn't necessarily working in your best interest may cause you problems in the future.
I think it would be fair to categorize me as a software freedom evangelist. Maybe not a "big E" evangelist, though. I'm not going to say that you will go to hell for using proprietary software. But willingly giving up your freedoms does make it slightly harder for others to help you out. Free software tends to get "paid" through wide adoption. More users create more business opportunities to make money. By choosing to use proprietary software, you select for a future where software freedom is more difficult; for example where big business ties up software development to the point where nothing can be written without a patent deal. Some claim this is already the case with respect to video codec development.
There are alternatives, though. I don't like the normal Gnome or KDE environments very much. But I use Compiz with GnomeDo to achieve a desktop environment that is similar and even more powerful in some cases than what is available on OSX. I can sympathize with your friend over the choice of suitable video codecs. Hopefully the opening up of the V8 codec will address his concerns. But in the end, you need to choose the tools that will allow you to succeed in your endeavors.
Wherever possible it is great if you can adopt Free software into your usage patterns. It will be beneficial to a great number of people. I understand if you have to use some proprietary software where you don't have any choice. But in other areas if you can use Free software, comment on it, send bugs, etc, etc, that software has a better chance of improving. It does make a difference.
* Sorry for using a capital F in "Free". I've lately adopted it in order to distinguish the difference between freedom and free of charge. I suppose I could use FLOSS, but Open Source is a movement (which I also support) which tends to focus more on process rather than end results. They aren't necessarily interested in software freedom or the plight of the end user. They are more interested in efficient development. Anyway, the F is not intended to seem pompous.
Whether or not the copying was fair use seems to be the crux of the matter. The copying of a work that falls under "fair use" is not infringement. This is laid out in the copyright law http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107 The court was originally being asked to identify the student.. The student tried to stop this by saying that no infringement occurred and so releasing their name would be an invasion of privacy. It seems to me that the judge decided that whether or not the copying was fair use or not was still up in the air, and so a trial was warranted. Like you said, it all seems perfectly reasonable to me -- from all sides. The plaintiff is entitled to ask for the disclosure of the name, the defendant is entitled to object saying that they were clearly not infringing, and the judge is entitled to say that the matter isn't clear enough to prevent the disclosure.
It is important to realize that patents do NOT protect ideas. They give a limited monopoly on the implementation of an innovative machine. An idea is an abstract concept. Anyone is allowed to think anything they want (for the time being anyway). You are allowed to come up with any idea. You are allowed to communicate that idea. You are allowed to describe it and document it.
A patent restricts the implementation of an artifact. Not only that, but it only restricts the implementation of artifacts that actually do something. Not only that, but it only restricts the implementation of an artifact that does something in a specific way to achieve a specific purpose.
It is not a restriction on ideas. The confusion on this point has been brought to bear in order for unscrupulous people to manipulate the public/politicians into accepting extensions to the concept of a patent that should not be tolerated. Please help to reduce this confusion rather than to spread it.
I live in Japan. There are lots of reasons for the popularity or lack of popularity in the iPhone (depending on whose side you want to argue). The first is that the iPhone is only sold by Softbank. Softbank is the the low end of the market -- it has cheap(ish) rates, but the coverage is poor. For example I can't make a telephone call in my apartment on Softbank. The very people who Apple would want to entice with the iPhone (image concious people) are the ones who would avoid Softbank. So sales numbers are not as high as they might be.
On the other hand, Softbank has a relatively understandable "unlimited" 3G packet plan. You pay X per month plus Y per month (for no reason what-so-ever) then you pay Z per packet until a certain limit (reached in about 10 minutes on an iPhone) and then it's free. Works out to about $50 per month (for 3G only). The two other big players, Docomo and AU, are incomprehensible... Seriously. I thought about switching but I can not for the life of me figure out how much it will cost me per month.
As far as I know, AU doesn't offer any smart phones at all. Now, it's a blurred line here because normal phones are pretty "smart". For instance, it is rare to find a phone that you can't buy games and applications for. You can read books, write memos, use a calender, maps, etc... So I will call "smart" something that operated similarly to the iPhone (i.e., primarily touch interface, etc)
Docomo has 2 smart phones as far as I know. They have an android phone and one other (which I forget). They don't really hype them either. I tried to get info on the android phone but the sales people weren't all that helpful. Basically, apple has the smart phone market by default right now.
The biggest stumbling blocks to adoption are the fact that the smart phones have no TV built into them and no pay card system. Many phones in Japan are able to interact with the bus and trains. You download money into the phone and flash your phone over a reader. You can also buy things at the convenience store or get coupons and the like. It is a very popular feature.
To make a long story a bit shorter, the iPhone is far for a failure here. But it is unlikely to take a large share of the market for a variety of reasons which people from other counties probably won't understand. People here like them fine, but there is a lot more to consider here than in the states.
Note: I am also a teacher and I also hate OO.o. It is feature rich, but bug filled.
Now, I will also say that I used to work professionally (when I was a programmer) on a proprietary office suite that you almost certainly know. It is also feature rich and bug filled. Every day there would be a prioritization of new features over bug fixes. The next version of the software requires new features (even if your product is already overly feature rich) otherwise nobody will buy it. Nobody wants to pay for bug fixes.
The scenario you describe is not at all unusual in the proprietary world. We had bugs in our system logged for years and years and years. But the difference was that there was *no* justification for not fixing them -- only that we prioritized something else over it. We also didn't tell the customer if we were going to fix it or not; just "Thank you for your bug report. Please hang up now, because you are costing us money". The customer couldn't see if their bug was logged previously, or how many other people had logged it, or why anyone thought is was important or not. We provided them a big black hole for their feedback.
Look, I hate OO.o as much as you do. Actually maybe even a lot more than you do. But I don't begrudge the developers prioritizing something else over your concerns. It's a judgement call. I'm sure you could find someone to do what you want if you paid them. That's a lot more than can be said for proprietary software. You *do* pay them and then you are completely powerless.
I hate OO.o and am always looking to replace it, but as badly as it works for me, it still works better than anything else I have at hand. Whenever I have problems, there is a bug database that I can check to see if it is actually a bug or just something I'm doing wrong. I can file a bug and I get feedback that actually addresses my problem. Maybe they won't fix the bug, but that's life. Whether or not I get the functionality I want, at least I know where I stand and I can do something about it.
I hate OO.o with a passion, but I use it every day anyway. I wouldn't change to MS Office if you paid me.
P.S. One day I'll finally finish my LaTeX macros for my lesson handouts and breathe a sigh of relief.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to have fairly poor vision, but equally in both eyes (-4.25 in both). As I've gotten older, my vision has improved, but more in the right eye than the left (-2.25 left, -0.50 right). I often read at night and never use my glasses. With my vision being somewhat different between the eyes I started getting lazy and only reading with my right eye. Eventually I stopped using binocular vision at all.
Then a few months ago I started to get interesting in stereoscopic photography using the "crossed eyes" method. After about a week of looking at pictures like this, suddenly I was using my binocular vision while reading again. And overall my depth perception improved. I suspect it has something to do with having better focus control of my eyes. So I'm not sure that I buy this "3D is bad for your vision" thing. Actual studies showing the effects would be interesting, but this seems to be just speculation.
Granted I (used to) work in the programming field. But I have to disagree somewhat here. The reason FLOSS became successful was not due to the increased presence of good programmers. I can tell you for a fact that the number of talented amateur illustrators in the high school I work in out number the talented programmers by at least a factor of 10 to 1. No they aren't pro-level, but then neither are most of the programmers who start out writing free software in University.
FLOSS became successful based on a number of unique factors. The first was the fact that the means to program at a "pro" level was available to almost everyone who wanted it (in wealthy countries anyway). Especially at the start, programs were NOT complicated. You could spend 100 hours cranking out horrible code and somebody would want it. Things are different now, of course. But because getting in was easy originally, a culture was born that allowed FLOSS.
In the arts, this is often not the case. Unless you have a big budget and a bunch of highly paid pros, you aren't likely to produce something that someone wants. And so it is difficult to build up enough of a critical mass of free/commons developers to support its own activity. We are flooded with cheap/free-of-charge art. And the standard is very high. It is extremely difficult to break into that.
But I think this attempt (along with a few others that have proceeded it) is a step in the right direction. The reality is that *some* people don't care about having the highest level of production quality. They are willing to put up with quite a lot. Even if the percentage is very, very small, (say 1 in 10,000) in a large population it can add up to a reasonable number of people. 1 in 10,000 of 100,000,000 is still 10,000. It is insignificant compared to "real" arts, but it is significant enough (probably) to start something that is self-sustaining.
That's the other thing about the time that FLOSS came into being. At the time, the internet was becoming available to the people doing this kind of development. And they could find each other and build small virtual communities. And thanks to the early efforts of a lot of people in the free software community, a set ethical agreements was reached that allowed people to contribute to projects without having to fear that this contribution would be appropriated some way.
We're starting to see some traction in other areas these days. Creative Commons is unbelievably important in this endeavor. But just like it took at least 10 years before the average person could even begin to see the point of FLOSS, it will take time for free and open artistic endeavors to gel. I would be very surprised if 20 years from now we don't see this kind of thing as being relatively common (though, perhaps not mainstream) -- just like FLOSS.
Exactly HOW would the GPL have been better? There's still a fork of the last "good" version, which you can use if you like.
There is always a balance when choosing a license. The main advantage (IMHO) with choosing the GPL over something like the Apache
license is that you don't have to compete against proprietary versions that are based on the code you wrote. As an author this is a
significant consideration for me. If I am the primary author, it would suck to have features from my free version used with impunity
when I am unable to use features from the proprietary version. It gives the proprietary version an unfair advantage (unfair in that as
the primary author I can't enjoy the same privileges).
However, there are lots of reasons to choose non-copyleft licenses for work. Sometimes the benefit you receive from extended
exposure outweighs the disadvantage of unfair competition. Given that Google was the primary author and *they* aren't complaining,
I have to agree with you that there doesn't seem to be a problem. If they got what they want, then it is all good. However, I can
understand if the authors of the forked version want to use the GPL to avoid having to unfairly compete against the proprietary
version.
Can I inject an opinion from a kanji lover. I love kanji and I'm unabashed about it. I can read Japanese -- badly by a native speaker's standard, but I quite happily read manga and light novels. Reading and writing kanji is not difficult at all. The point to the article was that *some* characters were considered too complicated to write in daily life. For example the character for "who" () is 15 strokes. The phonetic form is only 8 strokes (the 2 phonetic characters ). So there is no real need to teach the complex kanji character. But with the advent of computers *everybody* uses the kanji character. Even little kids know it.
So, if kanji is so horrible, why is everyone using this character even though they officially don't have to know it? Because it is actually much, much easier to recognize than the phonetic characters. To understand why, you need to understand a little bit about Japanese grammar and the way it is written.
As I wrote in another post, Japanese words are often made up of 2 parts -- the meaning and some grammatical information. The meaning is written in kanji. The grammar is written in the phonetic alphabet (hiragana). This lets you instantly recognize if a word is a noun or a verb, for instance. is to think and is a thought. Also, when verbs are inflected only the phonetic part changes. This allows you to easily parse what is going on. Finally, words in Japanese are usually separated by particles which indicate the grammatical purpose of the word. The particles are written in hiragana. Since the words start with Kanji and are separated by hiragana you can very easily parse the sentence at a glance.
So, while the character for "who" is more complex than the phonetic equivalent, it stands out and is much, much easier to recognize. Thus, everyone uses it. Especially since you almost never have to write it by hand, it simply makes sense to use it.
In my opinion, even though I am a poor reader of Japanese, Japanese using kanji is much easier than reading English. The downside is that it takes a very long time to learn. But once you do, you never look back. Phonetic characters are simply a headache.
Kanji are not words. This is a very common misunderstanding and is very important. A kanji character conveys meaning, but that meaning may or may not be a word. Most words are composed of 2 or more kanji (probably the vast majority are 2 characters, but I haven't seen the statistics).
Each kanji character is made up of parts called radicals (bushu in Japanese). There is a main bushu for each character that that is what it used to look it up in the dictionary. One of the pronunciations of the character is often related to the main bushu. Each character can have many pronunciations but usually only has 2 or 3 main ones that are used often. These come up in different enough contexts that it isn't actually difficult to remember them (I've never specifically studied readings, as they are called -- just memorized vocabulary).
Japanese is unique in it's writing in that words are made up of a meaning part (at the beginning) and a grammar part (at the end). The meaning part is written in kanji and the grammar part is written in hiragana. When a word is modified by the grammar (inflecting verbs for instance), it is the grammar part (in hiragana) that changes.
I could write a long time about this because it is fascinating, but probably only if you are studying Japanese ;-) To get back to the point, the kanji characters that are being added are already in the language. They are simply being added to the syllabus that you must learn in order to be considered literate (i.e., the ones they teach you in public school). Many, many more kanji are used in daily life. Honestly it is about time since there are some really glaring omissions.
Anyway, I totally love kanji. It is the ultimate ease of use versus ease of learning thing. It takes a really long time to learn, but once you do, reading is significantly easier. Reading phonetic words gives me a headache. Kanji is just so much more pleasurable.
I started to think about this more. And the more I thought about it, the more confused I became.
Finally, I came to the conclusion: Thank god I'm not a physicist!
IANAP (physicist) - The wind hits the sail. Since it's hitting the sail on one side and not the other, the pressure is higher on the side where the wind is hitting. This means that the sail is sucked towards the low pressure side. The speed of the craft is dependent upon the pressure difference that you are able to make and the amount of inertia and friction of the vehicle. It's not really related to the speed of the wind (other than higher speeds can create higher pressure differentials).
I disagree - there is the probability that there already exists an infrastructure built around Windows desktops, including systems management and applications. In such a case, does it really make sense to consider bids for an alternative desktop OS, which would require extra unbudgeted expenditure in order to integrate into the existing infrastructure (or replace the existing infrastructure altogether, with all the costs associated with that)?
The answer is YES! The government is required to consider all competing bids. It's not just a good idea, it's the law and for good reason. It helps stop corruption when doling out taxpayer's money. IF it can be shown that a competing bid is more expensive for the same value, then of course they are quite able to reject the bid. However, disallowing competing bids is extremely bad because you don't know what the cost will be, or what the issues are -- because nobody has made a bid! Given that the capital cost for the average Linux distribution is zero, there should be plenty of money left over for other expenditures required to integrate into the existing infrastructure. In fact, from a reputable integrator, this (along with training and support of course) should be the vast majority of the cost.
People in the industry have told me that since they typically write "one-off" things they tend not to worry about maintainability. I think the reasoning is that they just have to keep it going until release. For the next release they will start from scratch. This was quite a while ago (like a decade at least). I believe the number of "one-off"s has diminished over time and there is some expectation of maintaining at least an engine for sequels. But old habits die hard. The development culture is handed down from one programmer to the next. Kind of like when you look at telecommunications code you are suddenly faced with really long subroutines (long ago it was feared that the overhead of calling a subroutine would destroy "real time performance". This myth is probably still being propagated in some circles). As little as 3 years ago I worked in a respected telecommunications company with a coding standard that encouraged subroutines to be *at least* 200 lines long -- longer was better.
But then, lately I've been despairing of finding *any* application with consistently good code. Unfortunately, I include my own meager efforts in that statement...
Given the recent work on the integrated Intel graphics drivers it would have been nice to see some benchmarks. My impression is that it is better, but it would be nice to have some numbers.
This has got to be the craziest post I've seen in a long time.
Last summer CNet reported that 50% of GPL projects hosted by google code were GPLv3. That works out to at least 56,000 projects. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10294452-16.html This information took me 30 seconds to find on google. Before making wild ass comments, please do some research.
Now, you may have meant that GPLv3 code is rare on embedded devices. This may very well be true. But at least look up the numbers and tell us what they are rather than making outrageous comments backed up by nothing.
Also asserting that RMS is trying to capitalize on the popularity of the GPL to ram home his minority views is completely ridiculous. The GPL has ALWAYS been his vehicle for ramming home his minority views. Did you honestly think the GPL was popular when it was first released???? RMS and the GPL popularized these ideas in the first place. v2 isn't working exactly the way he wanted it to, so he changed it. What kind of warped view of the world do you have to have to think this is unreasonable?
Finally, if industry is accepting the GPL because it is pragmatic, then that is a good thing. I'm sorry that you can't see beyond the end of your nose to see that v3 addresses pragmatic issues. It might not be for you. That's great. Choose another license. But take a look at some of the messages here. For example, vendors are allegedly shipping software for their wireless routers with vulnerabilities. Fixes exist for those vulnerabilities, but the customer can not apply the fix because they can't load a custom build. Things like this do not endear customers to their suppliers. Generally speaking, having the ability to fix your own problems is a good thing. This is one of the pragmatic issues that v3 fixes. The license is a promise by the vendor that these kinds of things won't happen. It is something that an informed consumer can base their purchase on if it is important to them.
I happen to think it is important to me. Many other people here happen to think it is important to them. Obviously you do not. I think you are letting your bias cloud your judgement, but that's up to you.
I think it should be pointed out that everybody is 10% development and 90% sales and marketing. Actually 10% R&D is considered to be quite a big budget in high tech companies. Hardware manufacturers may still be up against it since they have to do the retail channel thing (VERY expensive), but it is potentially an edge for free software companies. They should be able to move money from distribution into development.
But here's the thing. When you buy something from a media company, the money doesn't primarily go to the creators of the product . It goes primarily to the marketing geniuses who are deciding not to make their jobs redundant.
And conversely if nobody needed a better vehicle then nobody would pay for its design. So it would indeed die as it should. Artificial scarcity models promote useless feature creep which can most easily be seen in software.
I'm glad you mentioned this. I don't really want the games, but I *do* want the source released. As a way of encouraging this behaviour I will go give them money and not download anything. I wonder if this makes me a reverse pirate... Oh the implications for global warming...
This is somewhat pedantic, but I think it is important to point out that you are writing free software. You are giving your "customer" (i.e., employer) all the freedoms necessary to be free software. You're even giving them the copyright (I assume). You can't get any more free than that from your perspective. Whether or not they choose to distribute it further is their business. They are perfectly free to do so under the GPL. But they don't have to if they don't want to. That is their freedom.
Of course it is also proprietary, meaning that your employer holds exclusive rights to the software and these freedoms. Because they are the only users of the software, free and proprietary are not mutually exclusive. Again, while this pedantic, I think it's important for people to understand what "free as in freedom" really means. Doing what you are doing is perfectly fine from a free software perspective.
I used to feel that way back when I was a programmer working the normal 100 hour weeks. Then I quit my job and did something else. But without the constant security blanket that was work I noticed I was missing something. I later learned it was called a social life. I talked to somebody and found out that groups of people were going to parties and meeting people, possibly even hooking up for sex (and not just looking at pictures on the internet, it seems). Anyway, I asked why I never got invited to anything like that. Well apart from my slovenly appearance of unkept hair, rolls of fat and poor fashion sense (hint: wearing the same T-shirt every day is no good even if it is a Star Wars one), I needed to be on Facebook. Despite having a perfectly good email account, it turns out that you wont get invited to parties unless they can simply include you on the event list. But even more than that, people check out your activities to make sure you are cool enough to be invited to the parties. Basically you have to pretend that you are doing something amazingly interesting and take pictures of it. It helps to have other people in the pictures too so that everyone thinks you have friends (but it's pretty easy to fake it with pictures of strangers, so don't worry about it). Oh, and don't forget to frequently update your status saying, "I'm having the best day ever!" so that people think you're always doing something interesting. Finally, even with all your friends and amazing activities, you have to appear uber-organized by having enough time to play stupid farm games and flooding everyone's screens with updates about your progress. After you do all this, you will get invited to parties and get laid (well... maybe -- it turns out that shirt thing is really serious).
That's interesting. I actually live in Japan, where drawings of children engaged in sexual activity aren't illegal. However I was surprised when I read the first volume of Inu Yasha (a manga that is also popular in the US) to see a nude picture of the main female character bathing. As she is meant to be 14, I wondered if it would be considered child porn in the states. There isn't anything particularly suggestive about it. She's just bathing in a lake.
On the other hand it's rather dangerous to have around, I guess. No sense becoming a sex offender for the sake of reading a silly manga...
Actually, not that I want it to be, but why is this not child pornography? I'm not really familiar with the law, but just because you are the child's parent and not distributing the pictures widely, does it really mean that you can take nude pictures with impunity? At what point does it become child pornography? Also, does it stop with your own children? What if you took a picture or your neighbor's kids in the tub (with yours for instance). I mean, this has got to be a slipperier slope than cartoons of nude children... isn't it???
Perhaps I'm being naive to expect logic in child porn laws.
It's clear that we're heading down a blind alley, so why not turn around ASAP, rather than waiting until all possible damage has been done?
The answer to this in unfortunately all to easy. You know how sometimes you're driving your car and you notice that the lane you are in is about to end? You've got two choices - merge now while there is still some space between the cars, or race up to the end of the lane and try to cut in. The first choice will result in a faster average speed for everyone. The second choice will result in a slower average speed, and will likely even slow you down on average. But there is a small chance that you will get ahead.
Politicians, decision makers and business leaders all have a common trait. They are all skillful at politics. They have all been successful in cut throat environments where dog eats dog and have managed to claw their way to the top.
Which option do you think these kind of people will chose?
If the trade-off you are making for yourself is acceptable to you, then be happy with your choice. From your post, it seems that you understand the benefits of software freedom. You realize that you are giving up those freedoms, but you are willing to do so because it seems that the software you use has features that you haven't seen in Free* software. As a personal choice, I, for one, won't criticize you. However, I will caution you that your support of a company that isn't necessarily working in your best interest may cause you problems in the future.
I think it would be fair to categorize me as a software freedom evangelist. Maybe not a "big E" evangelist, though. I'm not going to say that you will go to hell for using proprietary software. But willingly giving up your freedoms does make it slightly harder for others to help you out. Free software tends to get "paid" through wide adoption. More users create more business opportunities to make money. By choosing to use proprietary software, you select for a future where software freedom is more difficult; for example where big business ties up software development to the point where nothing can be written without a patent deal. Some claim this is already the case with respect to video codec development.
There are alternatives, though. I don't like the normal Gnome or KDE environments very much. But I use Compiz with GnomeDo to achieve a desktop environment that is similar and even more powerful in some cases than what is available on OSX. I can sympathize with your friend over the choice of suitable video codecs. Hopefully the opening up of the V8 codec will address his concerns. But in the end, you need to choose the tools that will allow you to succeed in your endeavors.
Wherever possible it is great if you can adopt Free software into your usage patterns. It will be beneficial to a great number of people. I understand if you have to use some proprietary software where you don't have any choice. But in other areas if you can use Free software, comment on it, send bugs, etc, etc, that software has a better chance of improving. It does make a difference.
* Sorry for using a capital F in "Free". I've lately adopted it in order to distinguish the difference between freedom and free of charge. I suppose I could use FLOSS, but Open Source is a movement (which I also support) which tends to focus more on process rather than end results. They aren't necessarily interested in software freedom or the plight of the end user. They are more interested in efficient development. Anyway, the F is not intended to seem pompous.
Whether or not the copying was fair use seems to be the crux of the matter. The copying of a work that falls under "fair use" is not infringement. This is laid out in the copyright law http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107 The court was originally being asked to identify the student.. The student tried to stop this by saying that no infringement occurred and so releasing their name would be an invasion of privacy. It seems to me that the judge decided that whether or not the copying was fair use or not was still up in the air, and so a trial was warranted. Like you said, it all seems perfectly reasonable to me -- from all sides. The plaintiff is entitled to ask for the disclosure of the name, the defendant is entitled to object saying that they were clearly not infringing, and the judge is entitled to say that the matter isn't clear enough to prevent the disclosure.
It is important to realize that patents do NOT protect ideas. They give a limited monopoly on the implementation of an innovative machine. An idea is an abstract concept. Anyone is allowed to think anything they want (for the time being anyway). You are allowed to come up with any idea. You are allowed to communicate that idea. You are allowed to describe it and document it.
A patent restricts the implementation of an artifact. Not only that, but it only restricts the implementation of artifacts that actually do something. Not only that, but it only restricts the implementation of an artifact that does something in a specific way to achieve a specific purpose.
It is not a restriction on ideas. The confusion on this point has been brought to bear in order for unscrupulous people to manipulate the public/politicians into accepting extensions to the concept of a patent that should not be tolerated. Please help to reduce this confusion rather than to spread it.
I live in Japan. There are lots of reasons for the popularity or lack of popularity in the iPhone (depending on whose side you want to argue). The first is that the iPhone is only sold by Softbank. Softbank is the the low end of the market -- it has cheap(ish) rates, but the coverage is poor. For example I can't make a telephone call in my apartment on Softbank. The very people who Apple would want to entice with the iPhone (image concious people) are the ones who would avoid Softbank. So sales numbers are not as high as they might be.
On the other hand, Softbank has a relatively understandable "unlimited" 3G packet plan. You pay X per month plus Y per month (for no reason what-so-ever) then you pay Z per packet until a certain limit (reached in about 10 minutes on an iPhone) and then it's free. Works out to about $50 per month (for 3G only). The two other big players, Docomo and AU, are incomprehensible... Seriously. I thought about switching but I can not for the life of me figure out how much it will cost me per month.
As far as I know, AU doesn't offer any smart phones at all. Now, it's a blurred line here because normal phones are pretty "smart". For instance, it is rare to find a phone that you can't buy games and applications for. You can read books, write memos, use a calender, maps, etc... So I will call "smart" something that operated similarly to the iPhone (i.e., primarily touch interface, etc)
Docomo has 2 smart phones as far as I know. They have an android phone and one other (which I forget). They don't really hype them either. I tried to get info on the android phone but the sales people weren't all that helpful. Basically, apple has the smart phone market by default right now.
The biggest stumbling blocks to adoption are the fact that the smart phones have no TV built into them and no pay card system. Many phones in Japan are able to interact with the bus and trains. You download money into the phone and flash your phone over a reader. You can also buy things at the convenience store or get coupons and the like. It is a very popular feature.
To make a long story a bit shorter, the iPhone is far for a failure here. But it is unlikely to take a large share of the market for a variety of reasons which people from other counties probably won't understand. People here like them fine, but there is a lot more to consider here than in the states.
Note: I am also a teacher and I also hate OO.o. It is feature rich, but bug filled.
Now, I will also say that I used to work professionally (when I was a programmer) on a proprietary office suite that you almost certainly know. It is also feature rich and bug filled. Every day there would be a prioritization of new features over bug fixes. The next version of the software requires new features (even if your product is already overly feature rich) otherwise nobody will buy it. Nobody wants to pay for bug fixes.
The scenario you describe is not at all unusual in the proprietary world. We had bugs in our system logged for years and years and years. But the difference was that there was *no* justification for not fixing them -- only that we prioritized something else over it. We also didn't tell the customer if we were going to fix it or not; just "Thank you for your bug report. Please hang up now, because you are costing us money". The customer couldn't see if their bug was logged previously, or how many other people had logged it, or why anyone thought is was important or not. We provided them a big black hole for their feedback.
Look, I hate OO.o as much as you do. Actually maybe even a lot more than you do. But I don't begrudge the developers prioritizing something else over your concerns. It's a judgement call. I'm sure you could find someone to do what you want if you paid them. That's a lot more than can be said for proprietary software. You *do* pay them and then you are completely powerless.
I hate OO.o and am always looking to replace it, but as badly as it works for me, it still works better than anything else I have at hand. Whenever I have problems, there is a bug database that I can check to see if it is actually a bug or just something I'm doing wrong. I can file a bug and I get feedback that actually addresses my problem. Maybe they won't fix the bug, but that's life. Whether or not I get the functionality I want, at least I know where I stand and I can do something about it.
I hate OO.o with a passion, but I use it every day anyway. I wouldn't change to MS Office if you paid me.
P.S. One day I'll finally finish my LaTeX macros for my lesson handouts and breathe a sigh of relief.