RMS is the only one here who seems to have it straight. The existing system is flawed, and the only way to work it out is to, as Chuck D of Public Enemy put it, "Fight the power! Fight the powers that be!"
If you want to "Fight the power" you should stop listening to RIAA-pimped music altogether. Stop watching MTV. Stop listening to commericial radio stations. Don't buy their crappy CD's. Don't buy magazines with photos of Britney Spears.
Otherwise, you're just as clueless as all the people that complain that Microsoft is a monopoly, while using a pirated copy of MS Office. Using Napster is the moral equivilant to giving the RIAA the finger. They might not like it, but it sure as hell doesn't hurt them. If you're gonna be a tough monkey boy and "Fight the Power", then fight it in a way that hurts them. Hurt their influence and pocketbook -- stop giving them any money at all, either directly through album sales, or indirectly through advertising revenue.
RMS was paid to write software (EMACS) but thought he had the -right- to release it for free, even though it was written on someone else's time. This right was granted to him by MIT.
Well, if MIT granted Stallman the right to release EMACS for free, then he had the right to release EMACS for free. How is being aware of your rights "morally unjustifiable?"
RMS then resigned when MIT was charging people for the software that other MIT employees wrote - employees that MIT -paid- to write that software.
The fact that Stallman believes in his moral principles so strongly that he quit a lucrative job with a company that violated those principles doesn't make the principles morally unjustifiable. Much of the United States (outside of the midwest) fosters an environment that actually encourages people not to work for companies they disagree with. This isn't morally unjustifiable -- it's morally nuetral.
Free software has it's place, but commercial software does, too. It takes a lot of time and effort to write good, useful software. If that time isn't volunteered (for free) by private citizens, then someone is paying for it.
Why do people confuse the notion of "Free Software" with "Software Written for Free?" This seems to be a fundemental mis-understanding in the free software debate - the idea that the FSF wants to run all the developers out of business, and make them get jobs at Taco Bell. Most developers deliver solutions to problems. Businesses will always pay for solutions. It is only the "shrink wrapped" non-solution software developer that is hurt by the open source movement.
If you pay for something, shouldn't you be able to expect something (tangible) in return, if that's what your business is about? Not many businesses survive if they don't have income.
Yes, of course. That is exactly what Stallman believes, too. He believes that if you pay for software, you should own the software. You should be able to change the software as you see fit, and you should be able to sell the software elsewhere - in other words, you should have tangible rights to software you pay for.
Exactly! I can't see why a robot would want to rule the meat world, any more than I would want to be "King of the Trees."
The e-world and meat world will continue to interact with each other heavily, and in ways that may be detrimental to both, for a little while still. But eventually (possibly even within our lifetimes) our computers will stop thinking about us at all. Its narcissistic to believe otherwise.
When assigning to a list, if LIMIT is omitted, Perl supplies a LIMIT one larger than the number of variables in the list, to avoid unnecessary work. For the list above LIMIT would have been 4 by default. In time critical applications it behooves you not to split into more fields than you really need. ...
To be honest, the substr version makes my head hurt to read, and I'd be suprised if it were any faster.
Also, assigning and using $a in two different arguments to the same subroutine makes me stop and think for a long time, and frankly meat time is infinitely more valuable than silicon time to me...
I'm much more inclined to call index/substr a kludge in this case.
Actually, I doubt we'll see very many personal computers in the near future. That sounds silly for me to say, since I'm plugged into a PC nearly 24 hours a day (minus the time sleeping and on the bicycle, of course), but I really can't see much future in the things.
I wouldn't be at all suprised if I could just shout out "Computer! How much money have I got in my checking acount right now?" and expect to get a reasonable answer, just like Scotty did on the Enterprise back in the 60's. And I don't mean I think I'll be able to shout out random questions at home or at work or in my car -- I mean, I expect to be able to do it while I'm standing in the check-out line at the supermarket. Except, of course, I'm expecting there won't be check-out lines in 20 years, either.
So, in a very, very real way, I really do expect one, single, planet sized sentient ENIAC to be here on earth within our lifetimes, and the idea of a PC will be nothing more than a blip in human technological evolution, soon to disappear, just like natural gas powered street lamps.
I'm guessing that the short answer to the question, "how would the open source model develop an Air Traffic Control system" is: "exactly the same way, with the same product, and the same cost, but with a different license." I think two things are confused here -- first, "free software" does not mean "software written for free." Second, its a grave mistake to believe that the source code represents the product in an enterprise code base -- building a complete, maintainable, reliable, supported solution of any scale is extremely expensive, and the source code is little more than a by-product of the complete system. Don't overestimate the value of code. For an enterprise-class product, code is never the product, but just a by-product of the implementation. Having the complete source code woudn't provide an ATC system, any more than having a typewriter makes me into Hemingway, or a a bunch of computer parts make me into Micheal Dell.
I think you're confusing "free software" with "software written for free". Obviously, an Air Traffic Control system isn't going be hacked out by high school students in their spare time -- someone will have to pay to 4 billion dollars to have that system implemented. But once it's going, I suspect its going to have a license very similar to open source anyhow -- unless they've got rocks in their heads, the customer will own probably own the right to view the source, the customer will own the right to modify the source, and the customer will own the right to have other vendors fix the source, if and when your company is no longer willing to.
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RMS is the only one here who seems to have it straight. The existing system is flawed, and the only way to work it out is to, as Chuck D of Public Enemy put it, "Fight the power! Fight the powers that be!"
If you want to "Fight the power" you should stop listening to RIAA-pimped music altogether. Stop watching MTV. Stop listening to commericial radio stations. Don't buy their crappy CD's. Don't buy magazines with photos of Britney Spears.
Otherwise, you're just as clueless as all the people that complain that Microsoft is a monopoly, while using a pirated copy of MS Office. Using Napster is the moral equivilant to giving the RIAA the finger. They might not like it, but it sure as hell doesn't hurt them. If you're gonna be a tough monkey boy and "Fight the Power", then fight it in a way that hurts them. Hurt their influence and pocketbook -- stop giving them any money at all, either directly through album sales, or indirectly through advertising revenue.
RMS was paid to write software (EMACS) but thought he had the -right- to release it for free, even though it was written on someone else's time. This right was granted to him by MIT.
Well, if MIT granted Stallman the right to release EMACS for free, then he had the right to release EMACS for free. How is being aware of your rights "morally unjustifiable?"
RMS then resigned when MIT was charging people for the software that other MIT employees wrote - employees that MIT -paid- to write that software.
The fact that Stallman believes in his moral principles so strongly that he quit a lucrative job with a company that violated those principles doesn't make the principles morally unjustifiable. Much of the United States (outside of the midwest) fosters an environment that actually encourages people not to work for companies they disagree with. This isn't morally unjustifiable -- it's morally nuetral.
Free software has it's place, but commercial software does, too. It takes a lot of time and effort to write good, useful software. If that time isn't volunteered (for free) by private citizens, then someone is paying for it.
Why do people confuse the notion of "Free Software" with "Software Written for Free?" This seems to be a fundemental mis-understanding in the free software debate - the idea that the FSF wants to run all the developers out of business, and make them get jobs at Taco Bell. Most developers deliver solutions to problems. Businesses will always pay for solutions. It is only the "shrink wrapped" non-solution software developer that is hurt by the open source movement.
If you pay for something, shouldn't you be able to expect something (tangible) in return, if that's what your business is about? Not many businesses survive if they don't have income.
Yes, of course. That is exactly what Stallman believes, too. He believes that if you pay for software, you should own the software. You should be able to change the software as you see fit, and you should be able to sell the software elsewhere - in other words, you should have tangible rights to software you pay for.
Exactly! I can't see why a robot would want to rule the meat world, any more than I would want to be "King of the Trees."
The e-world and meat world will continue to interact with each other heavily, and in ways that may be detrimental to both, for a little while still. But eventually (possibly even within our lifetimes) our computers will stop thinking about us at all. Its narcissistic to believe otherwise.
To be honest, the substr version makes my head hurt to read, and I'd be suprised if it were any faster.
Also, assigning and using $a in two different arguments to the same subroutine makes me stop and think for a long time, and frankly meat time is infinitely more valuable than silicon time to me...
I'm much more inclined to call index/substr a kludge in this case.
Actually, I doubt we'll see very many personal computers in the near future. That sounds silly for me to say, since I'm plugged into a PC nearly 24 hours a day (minus the time sleeping and on the bicycle, of course), but I really can't see much future in the things.
I wouldn't be at all suprised if I could just shout out "Computer! How much money have I got in my checking acount right now?" and expect to get a reasonable answer, just like Scotty did on the Enterprise back in the 60's. And I don't mean I think I'll be able to shout out random questions at home or at work or in my car -- I mean, I expect to be able to do it while I'm standing in the check-out line at the supermarket. Except, of course, I'm expecting there won't be check-out lines in 20 years, either.
So, in a very, very real way, I really do expect one, single, planet sized sentient ENIAC to be here on earth within our lifetimes, and the idea of a PC will be nothing more than a blip in human technological evolution, soon to disappear, just like natural gas powered street lamps.
I'm guessing that the short answer to the question, "how would the open source model develop an Air Traffic Control system" is: "exactly the same way, with the same product, and the same cost, but with a different license." I think two things are confused here -- first, "free software" does not mean "software written for free." Second, its a grave mistake to believe that the source code represents the product in an enterprise code base -- building a complete, maintainable, reliable, supported solution of any scale is extremely expensive, and the source code is little more than a by-product of the complete system. Don't overestimate the value of code. For an enterprise-class product, code is never the product, but just a by-product of the implementation. Having the complete source code woudn't provide an ATC system, any more than having a typewriter makes me into Hemingway, or a a bunch of computer parts make me into Micheal Dell.
I think you're confusing "free software" with "software written for free". Obviously, an Air Traffic Control system isn't going be hacked out by high school students in their spare time -- someone will have to pay to 4 billion dollars to have that system implemented. But once it's going, I suspect its going to have a license very similar to open source anyhow -- unless they've got rocks in their heads, the customer will own probably own the right to view the source, the customer will own the right to modify the source, and the customer will own the right to have other vendors fix the source, if and when your company is no longer willing to.