Do people ever consider that software might not be such a good business in the long term?
Think about it - anyone, can produce a product. There's no tooling-up, factories, components, or anything else that manufacturing a physical product entails.
The barriers to market entry are very low...you just need smarts, a box, and a 'net connection.
Because of this low barrier, hobbyist programmers can easily compete with (and possibly beat) the commercial players, but the commericial outfits can't buy or otherwise destroy the free outfits.
The best the commercial firms can do is to try and make a BETTER product that's worth paying for.
I see that as a good thing.
Also, the whole software business is based on an artificial scarcity created by copyright laws,
rather than physical constraints.
When these laws are non-existant, or not enforced, the software business model fails.
I'm a programmer, but threats to the business of software don't really scare me.
I'm not afraid of entering another industry
if software were to suddenly become unprofitable -
I might make a bit less money, but I'm sure I could do ok.
The only improvement Apple has made since then are hardware improvements, really.
And Apple hardware rocks now.
The newer stuff is so much like UNIX workstation hardware it's not funny -
PeeCee hardware is archaic by comparison.
(Which reminds me...When the fsck are peecees gonna ditch the ancient BIOS firmware
and get OpenFirmware like *every other* modern platform out there?
I know it's possible (SGI's Intel boxen had it), but peecee
users and manufacturers are too stuck in the 80s to change.)
and I daresay that the UI experience isn't really any better either.
It is difficult to improve something that already is excellent.
Windows2K is really fundamentally different
No it's not. People have been using NT for years.
2000 is just the latest version. Hell, even the upcoming XP is nothing/new/, just NT for the masses.
Sure, NT is fundamentally different than 9x, but NT has been around for years...2000 is just NT in an incrementally prettier package...
It's still NT tho. The same NT APIs, the same blue screens, and the same flaky 3rd party drivers.
I for one look forward to the resurgence of easy-to-use Unix with the power of a Mac GUI.
Not to mention the NeXT development tools on OSX are really slick.
I'm amazed by just how fast GUI development is with
Project Builder, compared to, well, anything else.
I've disliked GUI development for a while, simply because dealing with positioning, alignment, layout managers, and such by hand is so tedious...
Interface Builder lets you graphically lay out your GUI[1],
and 'draw' connections between controls, classes, etc.
Then you just open the skeleton file it produces, and add your code for handling GUI events.
Way cool. It's painless GUI design like VB has, but without the icky BASIC coding.
[1]Yes, this tech has been around for years, and I'm aware of Glade and QT Designer. The NeXT toolset is, IMO, way slicker than either.
So fucking what if giant crystals don't 'do anything remotely useful'?
It's not like you do, either, sitting on your pale white ass and posting to slashdot.
Just because it exists does not mean it has to be exploited.
And from my vantage point, as a BSD user who doesn't play the 'Open Source or Die' game,
I see it as follows: I can't use NVIDIA cards for 3D. Period.
I really wish the 'L33n00x !z k3w1' crowd would realize that Linux is not the only free OS out there.
Carmack has said himself that when the next Doom game comes out in a test release, it will be nVidia only for Linux.
That doesn't really sound like Carmack. From his postings to slashdot,
he sounds like he supports interoperability through OpenGL,
'course it may be that only NVIDIA cards support necessary OpenGL extensions, or it'll be NVIDIA only in just the test release.
Regardless, my next card will prolly be a Matrox.
Yeah, the 3D is pokey compared to NVIDIA's, but Matrox 2D quality supposedly can't be beat,
and the 3D drivers are open.
If I bought a GEForce, I'd essentially be buying an overpriced, inferior 2D card.
ISP anonymity was a given, anyway.
Using my IP address, timestamp, and a warrant,
the Man can usually 'convince' my ISP to backtrace the IP to a name.
However, there are tools that can provide a decent level of anonymity:
Freedom - Privacy for everyone. Easy to use, relatively fast, and the Linux client is open source.
Based in Canada so Carnivore shouldn't be a problem.
SafeWeb - SSL surfing proxy, so your lan-mates/ISP can't snoop on your traffic.
Anonymous Remailers - MixMaster remailers can provide a very good level of email anonymity.
I don't have a link, but info is pretty easy to find.
There are tons more, these are just a few well-known tools.
I dunno about anyone else, but I very rarely got any rebates I sent for...
There's an easy way of dealing with that tho, just don't buy anything expecting to get a rebate.
I usually can find items online with price + shipping equal to or less than department store's price - rebate.
Mail-away rebates just aren't worth the time and trouble, especially when the initial outlay is the same.
Why must the Slashdot crowd constantly think of ways to get around protections put in place to allow content providers to exercise their rights to control their works?
If it's broadcast, and I can recieve it on my hardware, I'll do whatever the fuck I want with it - even if that means disabling consumer-hostile technologies.
I don't care about their synthetic, legislated 'rights', if they broadcast it, I have the natural right to recieve the signal and do with it what I like, whether that means capturing it, decoding it, or just watching it.
I did not ask for their signals to be broadcast to me, so they have no right to tell me what I can do
with that signal, provided I'm not distributing/profiting from the works modulated into it.
(Which would be violating pre-DMCA copyright laws)
It's almost like the Cue Cat crap; if you send me something I didn't request, nor pay for, what right do you have to get pissy about what I do with it?
Besides, time-shifting has been a right VCR owners have had for over a decade...
Why should new hardware suddenly nullify this right?
Oh, and to be honest, I don't care about the GPL.
I usually work under the BSD license, which basically just mandates I be credited for my work.
Mod me down, I've got gobs of karma.
--K
Re:read more about it at
on
Spidergoats
·
· Score: 1
"What the scientists have in their briefcases is terrifying." -- Nikita Khrushchev
But what they have in their briefs is even more so.
It was pretty cool, but with only 200k, I don't know how secure it could have been. It did have one plus on this USB model: by not actually "plugging in" to the module (just press it briefly in a little socket) it avoided any wear-and-tear on the plug. Unfortunately, as it was lightweight metal, it bounced against my other keys and got lots of little dents. Dunno if it made it not work; I didn't go back often.
I doubt it was even 200k, it was prolly more like 4k...iButtons are mostly intended to provide a unique ID (each one has a hardcoded serial number), and a little space to store a key, and possibly some other data...All the other information is stored on a workstation or server - the iButton just proves to the system that you really are you.
As for durability, Dallas Semi says they last around 10 years.
So what if people use Palmpilots as auxillary storage for stupid crap
(like '1 yr anvrsry 05/23, make rez at cafe de la pimp', for example).
Just because you use a Palmpilot to 'remember' appointments does not mean you're getting 'stupid', just that you have more important things to keep track of in 'moist memory'.
My 'trivial crap memory' has sucked as long as I can remember (heh), but stuff I've done on a day-to-day basis in the past sticks to this day.
I could prolly be back up to speed in VB within a day if I had to be, even though I haven't touched it in ~3 years.
It's the one-off stuff that catches me, and thus, goes into the Visor.
Sounds to me like the case examples referenced had more to do with people not paying attention in the first place, rather than forgetting.
A boat that fast will ensure that atlantic whales become extinct in decades!
And we know what happens when whales go extinct...
Giant, glowing, rod-shaped alien spacecraft start sucking the water out of the oceans. I think that's a good enough reason to save the whales.
I'd be willing to bet that the problem here is that Stardock (a for-profit business) was making
their themes using graphics copied from Apple screenshots, rather than 'cloning' the graphics without copying.
So, in a sense, they were/profiting/ from Apple's work, not just/distributing/ Apple's work.
(Which, judging by how they dealt with the KDE/GNOME theme designers, they don't mind/too/ much.)
Agreed. I'd imagine the theme creators were just copying pixmaps from OSX screenshots...
I think they'd be ok if they figured out how to do an aqua-like effect in Photoshop (It's not/that/ hard...), and made all their graphics themselves, without copying Apple's.
can someone else explain the purpose of the fee to me?
Pure speculation, but it might just discourage people from joining on a whim.
'Keeping out the riff-raff' so to speak.
Maybe they think people can be more trusted with sensitive info if they've bought it, rather than had it given to them.
Then again it might just be because they want to make a buck.
Slashdot Mirror
Do people ever consider that software might not be such a good business in the long term?
Think about it - anyone, can produce a product. There's no tooling-up, factories, components, or anything else that manufacturing a physical product entails.
The barriers to market entry are very low...you just need smarts, a box, and a 'net connection.
Because of this low barrier, hobbyist programmers can easily compete with (and possibly beat) the commercial players, but the commericial outfits can't buy or otherwise destroy the free outfits.
The best the commercial firms can do is to try and make a BETTER product that's worth paying for.
I see that as a good thing.
Also, the whole software business is based on an artificial scarcity created by copyright laws,
rather than physical constraints.
When these laws are non-existant, or not enforced, the software business model fails.
I'm a programmer, but threats to the business of software don't really scare me.
I'm not afraid of entering another industry
if software were to suddenly become unprofitable -
I might make a bit less money, but I'm sure I could do ok.
--K
The only improvement Apple has made since then are hardware improvements, really.
/new/, just NT for the masses.
And Apple hardware rocks now.
The newer stuff is so much like UNIX workstation hardware it's not funny -
PeeCee hardware is archaic by comparison.
(Which reminds me...When the fsck are peecees gonna ditch the ancient BIOS firmware
and get OpenFirmware like *every other* modern platform out there?
I know it's possible (SGI's Intel boxen had it), but peecee
users and manufacturers are too stuck in the 80s to change.)
and I daresay that the UI experience isn't really any better either.
It is difficult to improve something that already is excellent.
Windows2K is really fundamentally different
No it's not. People have been using NT for years.
2000 is just the latest version. Hell, even the upcoming XP is nothing
Sure, NT is fundamentally different than 9x, but NT has been around for years...2000 is just NT in an incrementally prettier package...
It's still NT tho. The same NT APIs, the same blue screens, and the same flaky 3rd party drivers.
--K
I for one look forward to the resurgence of easy-to-use Unix with the power of a Mac GUI.
Not to mention the NeXT development tools on OSX are really slick.
I'm amazed by just how fast GUI development is with
Project Builder, compared to, well, anything else.
I've disliked GUI development for a while, simply because dealing with positioning, alignment, layout managers, and such by hand is so tedious...
Interface Builder lets you graphically lay out your GUI[1],
and 'draw' connections between controls, classes, etc.
Then you just open the skeleton file it produces, and add your code for handling GUI events.
Way cool. It's painless GUI design like VB has, but without the icky BASIC coding.
[1]Yes, this tech has been around for years, and I'm aware of Glade and QT Designer. The NeXT toolset is, IMO, way slicker than either.
--K
Sex Bot by chance? ;D
--K
F-U F-Me
Thanks, Slashdot, for making V-Day a little more inane than it already is.
--K
So fucking what if giant crystals don't 'do anything remotely useful'?
It's not like you do, either, sitting on your pale white ass and posting to slashdot.
Just because it exists does not mean it has to be exploited.
--K
Fucking monkeys.
You ACTUALLY believe OSX is right around the corner?
Well, apparently Apple thinks so, as you can pre-order it (ships 03/24) in the Apple Store...
However, since you're obviously extremely brilliant and clueful
(as demonstrated by your posting), they're probably wrong, and you are likely right.
--K
And from my vantage point, as a BSD user who doesn't play the 'Open Source or Die' game,
I see it as follows: I can't use NVIDIA cards for 3D. Period.
I really wish the 'L33n00x !z k3w1' crowd would realize that Linux is not the only free OS out there.
Carmack has said himself that when the next Doom game comes out in a test release, it will be nVidia only for Linux.
That doesn't really sound like Carmack. From his postings to slashdot,
he sounds like he supports interoperability through OpenGL,
'course it may be that only NVIDIA cards support necessary OpenGL extensions, or it'll be NVIDIA only in just the test release.
Regardless, my next card will prolly be a Matrox.
Yeah, the 3D is pokey compared to NVIDIA's, but Matrox 2D quality supposedly can't be beat,
and the 3D drivers are open.
If I bought a GEForce, I'd essentially be buying an overpriced, inferior 2D card.
--K
Argh. I'm a crack baby. Shoot me.
Please tell me I'm not the only one that thought this was a slashdot interview...
--K
Since it's been made rather clear the drivers will not go open source, is it possible that *BSD users will see a port of the Detonator drivers?
It's hard for me to buy a card if my free platform of choice is unsupported.
--K
ISP anonymity was a given, anyway.
Using my IP address, timestamp, and a warrant,
the Man can usually 'convince' my ISP to backtrace the IP to a name.
However, there are tools that can provide a decent level of anonymity:
Freedom - Privacy for everyone. Easy to use, relatively fast, and the Linux client is open source.
Based in Canada so Carnivore shouldn't be a problem.
SafeWeb - SSL surfing proxy, so your lan-mates/ISP can't snoop on your traffic.
Anonymous Remailers - MixMaster remailers can provide a very good level of email anonymity.
I don't have a link, but info is pretty easy to find.
There are tons more, these are just a few well-known tools.
--K
I dunno about anyone else, but I very rarely got any rebates I sent for...
There's an easy way of dealing with that tho, just don't buy anything expecting to get a rebate.
I usually can find items online with price + shipping equal to or less than department store's price - rebate.
Mail-away rebates just aren't worth the time and trouble, especially when the initial outlay is the same.
--K
If an Eidola program crashes, does it bleed out too?
--K
Why must the Slashdot crowd constantly think of ways to get around protections put in place to allow content providers to exercise their rights to control their works?
If it's broadcast, and I can recieve it on my hardware, I'll do whatever the fuck I want with it - even if that means disabling consumer-hostile technologies.
I don't care about their synthetic, legislated 'rights', if they broadcast it, I have the natural right to recieve the signal and do with it what I like, whether that means capturing it, decoding it, or just watching it.
I did not ask for their signals to be broadcast to me, so they have no right to tell me what I can do
with that signal, provided I'm not distributing/profiting from the works modulated into it.
(Which would be violating pre-DMCA copyright laws)
It's almost like the Cue Cat crap; if you send me something I didn't request, nor pay for, what right do you have to get pissy about what I do with it?
Besides, time-shifting has been a right VCR owners have had for over a decade...
Why should new hardware suddenly nullify this right?
Oh, and to be honest, I don't care about the GPL.
I usually work under the BSD license, which basically just mandates I be credited for my work.
Mod me down, I've got gobs of karma.
--K
"What the scientists have in their briefcases is terrifying." -- Nikita Khrushchev
But what they have in their briefs is even more so.
--K
Osama Bin Laden and the majority of the Slashdot community have something in common -
;P
Zealotry and a desire for Jihad?
--K
It was pretty cool, but with only 200k, I don't know how secure it could have been. It did have one plus on this USB model: by not actually "plugging in" to the module (just press it briefly in a little socket) it avoided any wear-and-tear on the plug. Unfortunately, as it was lightweight metal, it bounced against my other keys and got lots of little dents. Dunno if it made it not work; I didn't go back often.
I doubt it was even 200k, it was prolly more like 4k...iButtons are mostly intended to provide a unique ID (each one has a hardcoded serial number), and a little space to store a key, and possibly some other data...All the other information is stored on a workstation or server - the iButton just proves to the system that you really are you.
As for durability, Dallas Semi says they last around 10 years.
--K
So what if people use Palmpilots as auxillary storage for stupid crap
(like '1 yr anvrsry 05/23, make rez at cafe de la pimp', for example).
Just because you use a Palmpilot to 'remember' appointments does not mean you're getting 'stupid', just that you have more important things to keep track of in 'moist memory'.
My 'trivial crap memory' has sucked as long as I can remember (heh), but stuff I've done on a day-to-day basis in the past sticks to this day.
I could prolly be back up to speed in VB within a day if I had to be, even though I haven't touched it in ~3 years.
It's the one-off stuff that catches me, and thus, goes into the Visor.
Sounds to me like the case examples referenced had more to do with people not paying attention in the first place, rather than forgetting.
--K
Aren't scientists of all people supposed to know these things?
They should, but they've been using their intelligence-sucking Palmpilots too much.
--K
A boat that fast will ensure that atlantic whales become extinct in decades!
And we know what happens when whales go extinct...
Giant, glowing, rod-shaped alien spacecraft start sucking the water out of the oceans.
I think that's a good enough reason to save the whales.
--K
I'd be willing to bet that the problem here is that Stardock (a for-profit business) was making
/profiting/ from Apple's work, not just /distributing/ Apple's work.
/too/ much.)
their themes using graphics copied from Apple screenshots, rather than 'cloning' the graphics without copying.
So, in a sense, they were
(Which, judging by how they dealt with the KDE/GNOME theme designers, they don't mind
--K
What about ram? You cant just sue people left and right because they have something similar....
You've never heard of Rambus, have you?
--K
Agreed. I'd imagine the theme creators were just copying pixmaps from OSX screenshots...
/that/ hard...), and made all their graphics themselves, without copying Apple's.
I think they'd be ok if they figured out how to do an aqua-like effect in Photoshop (It's not
--K
No you didn't! So send flames to hollyl@microsoft.com.
Yeah, d00dz!
Let's be real bastards and flame this gal to death!
After all flames are a sure way to raise someone's opinion of the linux 'community'!
--K
can someone else explain the purpose of the fee to me?
Pure speculation, but it might just discourage people from joining on a whim.
'Keeping out the riff-raff' so to speak.
Maybe they think people can be more trusted with sensitive info if they've bought it, rather than had it given to them.
Then again it might just be because they want to make a buck.
--K