Speak for yourself.
Where I work we're using office 97, primarily because of the 97/95 doc file fiasco on NT 4.0 boxes. There is absolutely no reason for us to upgrade to win2000 or XP or office 2000. IT here probably agrees; the computers primary use in the building/facility I work at is primarily to use a windows based application to access the mainframe & perform various transactions. The use of MS Office applications is necessary but I don't think our IT department needs, wants or seeks "support" from MS.
For $400, a person can buy a used computer that's far more functional than any of these toys, assuming the person doesn't already have an unused pentium level machine lying around anyway.
The devices have to drop to about 100 or 200 to be of any real value to anyone, otherwise it creeps up into the price range of PCs.
I already have 2 computers; I'd buy one of these things if it was cheap enough, but not for the $500 price they're asking for.
That's only on the newer, more expensive video cards. Most people still don't have a video card with TV out functionality.
PCs would need to have SVideo connectors to excel at this kind of thing, or some other connector that can be used to transmit video across a room(s) by 10 feet or so.
Except that mp3s came out when most people had connection speeds of 14.4-28.8, and a 5 meg download, while not lightning quick, could be done within an hour.
Can't quite say the same thing about movies, even with Cable modems/DSL and compressing movies to 400 megs using divx. The best that we can say is that at least we can put a full length movie on a single CD & it would be very good quality instead of a postage stamp sized film.
I get what you're saying, but the progression of our advances in speed, size and quality haven't made transferring movies over the net the trivial task that mp3s are. (and with mp3s, it's only trivial if you use >56K modemm; if you don't you're still looking at a 20 minute or longer download for a 5 meg song. Download 1 at a time & it's not so bad. Try to download several, and it takes over an hour.)
Except the video rentals pay this price once, per video tape, vs. paying over, and over and over and over again per movie per showing of each movie.
The cost they pay isn't that significant; you're talking about $100 a tape vs $20 in the stores. And the reason video stores buy 300 copies per store is so that it's in stock during the high initial demand, & then later they sell used copies when demand drops for a given film.
"The ultimate goal of Open Source is free software"
I don't know if this is true or not but lets say it is.
"Now this means that you don't pay anything for it. "
For the software itself, no.
"If this happens, there is no money to pay programmers."
Depends on what programmers you're talking about.
At my job, we use software that we do not pay for. It's made in house, for our use, not for public distribution.
We spend an awful lot of money on programmers, despite using 'free software' and have used this free software for 3 years now.
Does it matter that this software isn't "open source" and really has no application to anyone outside of the corporation I work with? (though other health care companies may benefit from using a system like we use... that's a different matter altogether though.)
Consider too that rather than wait for Microsoft or some other company to provide bug fixes, upgrades/dates etc. to, say Office, a corporation can hire a programmer or 2 to work with the networking guys to make sure that "Open-Office" works fine & provides the features needed in this environment".
"As a result, intelligent people such as myself, who could command 6 figure salaries in any profession will take different career paths.
With fewer programmers, the result will be less innovation and worse software."
That's assuming that more programmers automatically means more innovation & more software.
What drives innovation & more software is demand demand demand. Which isn't going away regardless of the impact of Open Source. If people don't want a more innovative GUI than what Windows 98SE provides, we're not going to see much success in subsequant revisions of the UI, even though win98se is not open source.
"Furthermore, universities, etc. won't be able to afford to run computing courses, since, as is the stated aim of many OS people, MS will be dead - and MS funds a lot of universities."
If there's no demand for computing courses, prices will decline & offerings dropped from some colleges. That's not necessarily a "bad thing", nor inevitable today.
"Furthermore, the evidence is that open source does not tend to produce new innovation. For example, desktops such as KDE are based on older products from Apple and MS. When open source is the only thing remaining, innovation will obviously be reduced."
It helps to have an environment encourage innovation. I don't think the computer software industry does this very well, regardless of what platform you're talking about or whether you consider Open Source to be sliced bread or stale, moldy bread. When people are reluctant to change their UI because they're used to a specific look & feel (ie the windows interface) you're obviously going to get copycats on platforms that are not MS based, in an attempt to draw such people to the UI."
There's a point to getting a free OS when you are able to build a computer from scratch. A CPU here, case there, MB, ram, hd, video equipment and suddenly you have a computer. Except for the OS.
In such a box, yes, it makes a lot of sense to develop & run a free os. But on a handheld, which you cannot build yourself? The OS comes with it.
I'm not against figuring out a way to run linux on these things; maybe eventually someone will develop a linux version (or app) that actually makes it more worthwhile for people to use that instead of WinCE/PalmOS.
I'm still waiting for the day to come where we can build our own laptops, vs. buying an overpriced offering from a specific company.
I don't think you get it. The companies want it both ways.
I pay $11 dollars for a _tape_ of a recording act. If the tape is damaged, I can't get it replaced- my "license" to listen to that tape is done. I have to buy a new one. But I can't do whatever I want with this tape- if I play the tape as background music for my restaurant, I get sued for some sort of infringement. If I don't own the content; if they do, then when I purchase a license to listen to it, it should be valid regardless.
Would analog go off the air if the majority of TVs out there were not analog? The congresscritter's phones would burn up from the calls if suddenly everyone had to go out and buy a TV they don't want (or need) because the old ones stopped working. Video tapes sell well, still, as do new VCRs. With as much balleyhoo over DVDs, DVDs still don't sell as many vhs tapes.
I think it depends on your box. If you're a home user on a cable modem, that's 1 thing. If you're a business with an T3 or better connection, thats a little different. But if your car is stolen & used to kill someone, you shouldn't be liable for it; neither should a victim of a hacker be held liable for those actions.
I don't believe rehab facilities necessarily profit from the War On (some) Drugs, or cynically support the WO(S)D as part of their own self-interest.
Relapses happen all the time, regardless of whether the treatment was done in a for-profit or non-profit center, or gov't run facility. If anything, based on the presumption that legality would increase the potential for # of addicts, I'd gather that they'd _support_ legalization.
The only reason that they'd support prohibition would be the theory that when the drugs are illegal, it gives another reason why the addict should not use it.
First, let me be frank: I don't agree with suing for $5billion. Nor do I agree with using the small percentage of MSFT minority workers as leverage. What I DO agree with is the basis behind their argument, which is the EXACT same attitude being reinforced on this board.
Which is what exactly?
So far, all this lawsuit has suggested is:
1> Microsoft has treated these employees shabbily due to their race
2> Because of the ethnic makeup of the company, that is proof that the company is racist
So far, since there's no trial or anything, it's hard to gague on the validity on point #1. But point #2 is ridiculous. You even say later in your post about the lack of opportunities to get a decent education, yet it's Microsoft's fault that they don't hire enough blacks?
Everywhere I've worked (UNIX Systems Admin/Engineering) I've been seen as a remarkably compentent, skilled worker....until I meet the customer face-to-face. Then, suddenly, my decisions are questioned more, people go over my head to ask about things that are my responsibility.
This can be due to various reasons. Your voice. Your race. Your weight. Your age. And or all of the above may apply.
And this sort of thing happens to other people... white people too.
Even back to college (University of Michigan), I was faced every day with fellow students who were SO SURE that they were smarter than me, and professors who didn't think that I deserved to be here, assuming that I was only here because of Affirmative Action (I've got that in the workplace as well).
That's the fault of affirmative action programs which say "Well, since 30% of the makeup of michigan is black, so must the underclass be 30% black, and if we can't find 30% of X students who are qualified & Black, we'll lower the standards to 'make' them qualified." As long as such programs exist, and as long as lawsuits continue which claim racist on the basis of representation or lackof, vs. any real, coherent racism on the part of the employer/school/etc.
Let's set the record straight: My racial group does not choose to be less educated...we simply don't always have access to the same resources growing up as whites.
The only comment I can make about this statement is that parents, black or white, need to get more involved in the education of their children.
That can't possibly be understood by someone who's never attended public school in a major city (I'm from Detroit).I took freshman EECS with 3 hundred white guys that had been taking C classes since the 9th grade, and the only exposure I'd had to any form of high-level programming was self-taught. Poor K-12 education == Poor SAT/ACT != quality higher education. This uneven playing field is the reason for the small numbers of us in the tech industry.
And that's proof of a problem at the school levels preceding college. That's not proof of racism on the part of Colleges or Businesses who supposedly are employing racist admission/hiring policies.
To sum up, stop with the "Blacks are always complaining...why don't they just get jobs...they have as much access to higher education as we do" crap. Find a black man on your job site, and ask him where he's from, and what high school he attended. I guarantee he's either got parents as priviliged as most of yours, or he worked his ASS off to get to where he is now.
Funny you mention this, but ignore this:
It seems the general consensus among white, male tech workers is that they belong in the industry. If they are up for a promotion against an equally skilled minority, of COURSE they should get the promotion, because they're automatically more skilled. Because the majority of tech managers are ALSO white, this attitude is perpetuated.
Do you think that those white workers DIDN'T work their asses off as well? You're generalizing about them while complaining about others generalizing about your presumed non-skills.
Exactly. And since they control the government, they control the army.
That assumes that the entire army would be on the Gov't side, or the people's side, should an insurrection ever occur.
Look, I have a 3rd dan black belt with 16 years of training and I have no illusions about my ability to stand up in hand-to-hand combat with members of the armed forces. I would last a bit longer than the average Joe, but not much. I have no idea why these gun nuts think that a few hours of practice a week will enable them and a few of their friends to stand up to a US army battalion.
Vietnam comes to mind. Chechnya and Afghanistan as other examples.
You're comparing the future inability to tape a TV show & play it on a new TV, new VCR or friend's vcr with intercepting a phone call & broadcasting it to pedophiles?
That's not a bad point, except that the movie/tv industry is beaming signals to my house, on my property, and yet I have no ownership of such property? Why cant I record something to watch later? On a friend's tv? My tv broke, I need a new one. All my recordings no longer work? My vcr broke, I need a new one. I have to rerecord everything?
All this to stop piracy, and yet the piracy which hurts the industry will continue, unabated.
Fair use isn't a right, but neither is copyright. If someone has an idea but refuses to express it on the basis that it may be copied by someone else, has his own problems. In a true free market, people will determine how to reward this individual based on his idea. And depending on his reward, he will try again or not.
The funny thing is, however, is that the blathering on and on about corporations infringing on our rights ignores gov't's actions, and not one person decrying Pepsi or Microsoft or some other corporation can point to a country which has said "enough" to them and stood up to them. Obviously not the US but none of the European countries, certainly not Canada... not one.
I think you hit the nail on the head. The "Property Rights" issues where corporations are doing "bad" things stem from 1 source. The fact that the GOVT has given them these rights in the first place provides them with the hammer to use upon the rest of us. If the gov't didn't do so in the first place, they wouldn't be so emboldened to do what they have.
I'm beginning to wonder what constitutes a rational subject for discussion here on slashdot.
The original question was just begging for a flame war in which the US was praised or bashed & every country had a thread (ie. Canada) was similarly flamed/praised or otherwise provoked a lame flamewar.
Remarks like the above, questioning the sense of patriotism doesn't do much to address the user's original question(s) and only begs for more flames.
Maybe someone needs to come up with a.doc type which is open source? I dont think any of the XML/TeX/html ideas would fly; we're talking about a document which is WYSIWYG when it's open in an editor, and.txt files are insufficient for that kind of thing.
Why not.EXT- enhanced text which would be open source (maybe GPLed so that noone can use it to create a really good, but proprietary format)?
Slashdot Mirror
Speak for yourself. Where I work we're using office 97, primarily because of the 97/95 doc file fiasco on NT 4.0 boxes. There is absolutely no reason for us to upgrade to win2000 or XP or office 2000. IT here probably agrees; the computers primary use in the building/facility I work at is primarily to use a windows based application to access the mainframe & perform various transactions. The use of MS Office applications is necessary but I don't think our IT department needs, wants or seeks "support" from MS.
Except that MLB took over ALL of the web sites for baseball teams and if a team wished to broadcast its feed over the net, they no longer can.
They don't sell because they need to be cheap.
For $400, a person can buy a used computer that's far more functional than any of these toys, assuming the person doesn't already have an unused pentium level machine lying around anyway.
The devices have to drop to about 100 or 200 to be of any real value to anyone, otherwise it creeps up into the price range of PCs.
I already have 2 computers; I'd buy one of these things if it was cheap enough, but not for the $500 price they're asking for.
That's only on the newer, more expensive video cards. Most people still don't have a video card with TV out functionality.
PCs would need to have SVideo connectors to excel at this kind of thing, or some other connector that can be used to transmit video across a room(s) by 10 feet or so.
Except that mp3s came out when most people had connection speeds of 14.4-28.8, and a 5 meg download, while not lightning quick, could be done within an hour.
Can't quite say the same thing about movies, even with Cable modems/DSL and compressing movies to 400 megs using divx. The best that we can say is that at least we can put a full length movie on a single CD & it would be very good quality instead of a postage stamp sized film.
I get what you're saying, but the progression of our advances in speed, size and quality haven't made transferring movies over the net the trivial task that mp3s are. (and with mp3s, it's only trivial if you use >56K modemm; if you don't you're still looking at a 20 minute or longer download for a 5 meg song. Download 1 at a time & it's not so bad. Try to download several, and it takes over an hour.)
How do we "protect" ourselves from these things?
I'm especially concerned about it's usage in email, newsgroup mail and the like, but how do we prevent these bugs/beacons/etc. from finding us?
Except the video rentals pay this price once, per video tape, vs. paying over, and over and over and over again per movie per showing of each movie.
The cost they pay isn't that significant; you're talking about $100 a tape vs $20 in the stores. And the reason video stores buy 300 copies per store is so that it's in stock during the high initial demand, & then later they sell used copies when demand drops for a given film.
"The ultimate goal of Open Source is free software"
I don't know if this is true or not but lets say it is.
"Now this means that you don't pay anything for it. "
For the software itself, no.
"If this happens, there is no money to pay programmers."
Depends on what programmers you're talking about.
At my job, we use software that we do not pay for. It's made in house, for our use, not for public distribution.
We spend an awful lot of money on programmers, despite using 'free software' and have used this free software for 3 years now.
Does it matter that this software isn't "open source" and really has no application to anyone outside of the corporation I work with? (though other health care companies may benefit from using a system like we use... that's a different matter altogether though.)
Consider too that rather than wait for Microsoft or some other company to provide bug fixes, upgrades/dates etc. to, say Office, a corporation can hire a programmer or 2 to work with the networking guys to make sure that "Open-Office" works fine & provides the features needed in this environment".
"As a result, intelligent people such as myself, who could command 6 figure salaries in any profession will take different career paths.
With fewer programmers, the result will be less innovation and worse software."
That's assuming that more programmers automatically means more innovation & more software.
What drives innovation & more software is demand demand demand. Which isn't going away regardless of the impact of Open Source. If people don't want a more innovative GUI than what Windows 98SE provides, we're not going to see much success in subsequant revisions of the UI, even though win98se is not open source.
"Furthermore, universities, etc. won't be able to afford to run computing courses, since, as is the stated aim of many OS people, MS will be dead - and MS funds a lot of universities."
If there's no demand for computing courses, prices will decline & offerings dropped from some colleges. That's not necessarily a "bad thing", nor inevitable today.
"Furthermore, the evidence is that open source does not tend to produce new innovation. For example, desktops such as KDE are based on older products from Apple and MS. When open source is the only thing remaining, innovation will obviously be reduced."
It helps to have an environment encourage innovation. I don't think the computer software industry does this very well, regardless of what platform you're talking about or whether you consider Open Source to be sliced bread or stale, moldy bread. When people are reluctant to change their UI because they're used to a specific look & feel (ie the windows interface) you're obviously going to get copycats on platforms that are not MS based, in an attempt to draw such people to the UI."
In such a box, yes, it makes a lot of sense to develop & run a free os. But on a handheld, which you cannot build yourself? The OS comes with it.
I'm not against figuring out a way to run linux on these things; maybe eventually someone will develop a linux version (or app) that actually makes it more worthwhile for people to use that instead of WinCE/PalmOS.
I'm still waiting for the day to come where we can build our own laptops, vs. buying an overpriced offering from a specific company.
Poverty doesn't mean you can't stop having unprotected sex, or have multiple partners, or use IV drugs.
http://www.niaid.nih.gov/factsheets/evidhiv.htm
Copyrights were never intended to last for eons.
I pay $11 dollars for a _tape_ of a recording act. If the tape is damaged, I can't get it replaced- my "license" to listen to that tape is done. I have to buy a new one. But I can't do whatever I want with this tape- if I play the tape as background music for my restaurant, I get sued for some sort of infringement. If I don't own the content; if they do, then when I purchase a license to listen to it, it should be valid regardless.
Would analog go off the air if the majority of TVs out there were not analog? The congresscritter's phones would burn up from the calls if suddenly everyone had to go out and buy a TV they don't want (or need) because the old ones stopped working. Video tapes sell well, still, as do new VCRs. With as much balleyhoo over DVDs, DVDs still don't sell as many vhs tapes.
I think it depends on your box. If you're a home user on a cable modem, that's 1 thing. If you're a business with an T3 or better connection, thats a little different. But if your car is stolen & used to kill someone, you shouldn't be liable for it; neither should a victim of a hacker be held liable for those actions.
Relapses happen all the time, regardless of whether the treatment was done in a for-profit or non-profit center, or gov't run facility. If anything, based on the presumption that legality would increase the potential for # of addicts, I'd gather that they'd _support_ legalization.
The only reason that they'd support prohibition would be the theory that when the drugs are illegal, it gives another reason why the addict should not use it.
First, let me be frank: I don't agree with suing for $5billion. Nor do I agree with using the small percentage of MSFT minority workers as leverage. What I DO agree with is the basis behind their argument, which is the EXACT same attitude being reinforced on this board.
Which is what exactly?
So far, all this lawsuit has suggested is:
1> Microsoft has treated these employees shabbily due to their race
2> Because of the ethnic makeup of the company, that is proof that the company is racist
So far, since there's no trial or anything, it's hard to gague on the validity on point #1. But point #2 is ridiculous. You even say later in your post about the lack of opportunities to get a decent education, yet it's Microsoft's fault that they don't hire enough blacks?
Everywhere I've worked (UNIX Systems Admin/Engineering) I've been seen as a remarkably compentent, skilled worker....until I meet the customer face-to-face. Then, suddenly, my decisions are questioned more, people go over my head to ask about things that are my responsibility.
This can be due to various reasons. Your voice. Your race. Your weight. Your age. And or all of the above may apply.
And this sort of thing happens to other people... white people too.
Even back to college (University of Michigan), I was faced every day with fellow students who were SO SURE that they were smarter than me, and professors who didn't think that I deserved to be here, assuming that I was only here because of Affirmative Action (I've got that in the workplace as well).
That's the fault of affirmative action programs which say "Well, since 30% of the makeup of michigan is black, so must the underclass be 30% black, and if we can't find 30% of X students who are qualified & Black, we'll lower the standards to 'make' them qualified." As long as such programs exist, and as long as lawsuits continue which claim racist on the basis of representation or lackof, vs. any real, coherent racism on the part of the employer/school/etc.
Let's set the record straight: My racial group does not choose to be less educated...we simply don't always have access to the same resources growing up as whites.
The only comment I can make about this statement is that parents, black or white, need to get more involved in the education of their children.
That can't possibly be understood by someone who's never attended public school in a major city (I'm from Detroit).I took freshman EECS with 3 hundred white guys that had been taking C classes since the 9th grade, and the only exposure I'd had to any form of high-level programming was self-taught. Poor K-12 education == Poor SAT/ACT != quality higher education. This uneven playing field is the reason for the small numbers of us in the tech industry.
And that's proof of a problem at the school levels preceding college. That's not proof of racism on the part of Colleges or Businesses who supposedly are employing racist admission/hiring policies.
To sum up, stop with the "Blacks are always complaining...why don't they just get jobs...they have as much access to higher education as we do" crap. Find a black man on your job site, and ask him where he's from, and what high school he attended. I guarantee he's either got parents as priviliged as most of yours, or he worked his ASS off to get to where he is now.
Funny you mention this, but ignore this:
It seems the general consensus among white, male tech workers is that they belong in the industry. If they are up for a promotion against an equally skilled minority, of COURSE they should get the promotion, because they're automatically more skilled. Because the majority of tech managers are ALSO white, this attitude is perpetuated.
Do you think that those white workers DIDN'T work their asses off as well? You're generalizing about them while complaining about others generalizing about your presumed non-skills.
Exactly. And since they control the government, they control the army.
That assumes that the entire army would be on the Gov't side, or the people's side, should an insurrection ever occur.
Look, I have a 3rd dan black belt with 16 years of training and I have no illusions about my ability to stand up in hand-to-hand combat with members of the armed forces. I would last a bit longer than the average Joe, but not much. I have no idea why these gun nuts think that a few hours of practice a week will enable them and a few of their friends to stand up to a US army battalion.
Vietnam comes to mind. Chechnya and Afghanistan as other examples.
Please tell me you're not serious.
All this to stop piracy, and yet the piracy which hurts the industry will continue, unabated.
The funny thing is, however, is that the blathering on and on about corporations infringing on our rights ignores gov't's actions, and not one person decrying Pepsi or Microsoft or some other corporation can point to a country which has said "enough" to them and stood up to them. Obviously not the US but none of the European countries, certainly not Canada... not one.
You couldn't decompile & recompile it for Linux, for example, but you could write your own software that'd do the same thing.
If that doesn't interest you, support a developer who has.
I think you hit the nail on the head. The "Property Rights" issues where corporations are doing "bad" things stem from 1 source. The fact that the GOVT has given them these rights in the first place provides them with the hammer to use upon the rest of us. If the gov't didn't do so in the first place, they wouldn't be so emboldened to do what they have.
I'm beginning to wonder what constitutes a rational subject for discussion here on slashdot.
The original question was just begging for a flame war in which the US was praised or bashed & every country had a thread (ie. Canada) was similarly flamed/praised or otherwise provoked a lame flamewar.
Remarks like the above, questioning the sense of patriotism doesn't do much to address the user's original question(s) and only begs for more flames.
Maybe someone needs to come up with a .doc type which is open source? I dont think any of the XML/TeX/html ideas would fly; we're talking about a document which is WYSIWYG when it's open in an editor, and .txt files are insufficient for that kind of thing.
Why not .EXT- enhanced text which would be open source (maybe GPLed so that noone can use it to create a really good, but proprietary format)?