Back when I was maintaining a somewhat popular free software project, I occasionally (very occasionally, twice over 10 years) got offers of donations. Both time I thanked for the thought, and suggested a donation to the FSF instead. Really, I did it as a hobby, and didn't want the moral obligations coming from accepting money.
Send a "thank you" letter to those who do not solicit donations, and tell them why their software is useful to you. It means surprisingly much
I seriously doubt Google will be freely sharing your private information with health insurance providers without your consent. According to their privacy policy, they won't.
Well, Visual Studio is nice minimalistic development environment. Using it doesn't make my cry out loud in frustration, unlike what happens with most of its commercial competitors. Microsoft can be proud of it.
But of course, for doing real work there is still no alternative to Emacs.
IOC doesn't even pretend to care about freedom. All they care about is money, while pretending to care about sport. [ Quite unlike the US, which only cares about money, while pretending to care about freedom. ]
Actually, there was little or nothing that Shakespeare could have done in his time to prevent someone writing a play called Humlet Duke of Dinmark. And, of course, Shakespeare's version wasn't exactly original.
One of the advantage of programming as a hobby over programming for a salary is that you can ignore the whiners, and concentrate on those users who can give feedback without explaining how stupid you are, or how betrayed they feel because you doesn't cater to all their needs. That is, you can concentrate on the emotionally grown ups, and ignore the spoiled kids.
[ And note: This is hobby vs professional, not free vs. proprietary. ]
Yeah that'd do it, genius. Actually, the addition of a motive like say being on the losing end of a legal struggle over ownership of the company both of you had invested your life and future on, or your friend having had bizzare sex with your wife, would also help.
OSS typically goes after mature late life cycle applications, Actually, a lot of scientific software is free, basically because it matches how science works, and because a lot of science is publicly funded, so sharing seems to be the only honorable thing to do.
Innovative free software was common before the more user oriented free software. BSD, Mach (the microkernel powering MacOS X), the X window system, TeX, and many early Internet applications were all both innovative when the came out, and free software.
There are two trends which can explain your impression. The first is the GNU project, which explicitly did not wish to innovate, just make a free version of Unix that happened to be technically superior. For the one component where they did innovate, the kernel, their GNU component failed, and an (initially) much less innovative kernel filled the spot instead. (Later, Linux has seen lots of innovation).
The other is the re-release of once unfree software under a free software license. That gave us stuff like Firefox and OpenOffice.org.
But for Firefox, remember that the original browsers from CERN and NCSA were free software, so even here free software pawed the way for non-free software.
Maye that is the trend:
1. Free software break new ground. This is because basic research is not profitable on the short term.
2. Non-free software commercialize the application areas. The touches needed to make it end user friendly is not interesting to the researchers, and the distance from a "proof of concept" to a "product" is short enough for private enterprise to span.
3. Eventually, competition will make the area "commodity", no big profit is possible. At this point, a free software license facilitating cooperation makes most sense.
You could argue the same happens with drugs.
1. Basic research is mostly done on universities, and/or financed by foundations such as Bill Gates own.
2. Drug companies do the expensive tests needed to make the drug approved, something that has little scientific value, but enormous practical and commercial value. They are awarded with a patent.
3. Eventually, the patent expires, and the drug becomes a commodity.
Assuming NASA would pay all the expenses of actually running and promoting the game plus associated overheads, I guess a simple game could be done based on an existing free engine. The budget would pay for 10 man in three years. Database guy, engine programmer (to adapt the engine), game architect / script writer, puzzle programmer, sound effects, music composer, and four graphic artists.
For Ukraine at least, I have got great expectations. They have the will, the knowledge and everything else to make a prosperous country. I truly wish them the best. Western Ukraine is really more Polish than it is Russian.
If you look at history you will see that Russia's potential is most effectively realized under authoritarian governments (Czars, Stalin, Brezhnev) and mostly wasted under "democratic" rulers (Gorbachev, Yeltsin.)
Russia was in one long decline under Brezhnev. And only a few of the Czars accomplished anything, the last one was a disaster.
It's not the weather. It's russians. Given the choice they don't work. Unlike americans, russians are not chasing the golden calf, preferring instead to have good time. Nothing gets done this way.
Russians know that good times are only a temporary abnormality, so they might as well enjoy it as long as it lasts.
Also, hard work is not the way ahead in society in Russia, all you accomplish is to make some gangster or bureaucrat (in Russia, they are mostly the same) happy. So either you become a gangster/bureaucrat, or you work as little as possible and spend what you have on vodka, so there is nothing to steal.
I don't know about other European countries, but in Denmark advertisers are obligated to specify the minimum total payment during the binding period. This has obviously meant lower demand for the "low initial cost, high subscription fee. And even those who sell with a subscription often sell the phones unlocked. You are free to choose another cell company, but you still have to pay the subscription fee in the binding period.
I believe lots of people now think a locked phone is simply "uncool", which would work against the iPhone.
All plant "generate their own food" through photosynthesis. But the only element you get through photosynthesis is carbon.
When people talk about plant nutrients, they mean the other elements. The most important is nitrogen, then phosphorus, then trace amounts of other stuff.
Some plants (peas, clover) can sort of get their nitrogen from the air, where it is in plenty supply (N2). They rely on symbiosis with soil bacteria which can bind the N2 from the air to NO3 (or NH4). This costs energy, which the plant supply in form of sugar from photosynthesis.
Organic farming make great uses of these plant in crop rotations, to avoid the need of mineral fertilizer. But it has a price in total production, so conventional farmers supply the nitrogen needed in suitable form for the plants.
Phosphorus and the trace elements cannot be extracted from the air, but significant amounts is nonetheless donated freely through the air, from industrial pollution. In fact, the success in combating air pollution is costing the farmers money, as they have to fertilize more.
For the Moon, I suspect supplying the trace elements and phosphorus will not be the most costly part of the operation. The big posts on the budget is the water, the carbon dioxide, and perhaps the nitrogen. Depending on what can be mined locally.
Most of the jobs I have gotten have been through people I knew from the university. The tech school is likely to provide you with a larger network of people which can help you get an interesting tech job, than the people you learn to know in the liberal arts school.
However, the college years are likely to shape what kind of person you are going to be, not just what kind of jobs you get. If you are very good at keeping active outside college, it won't matter much. Otherwise, if the liberal arts college feels more right for you, go for it. It may help you be a more well rounded person.
i call BS I see you call, you are full of bullshit. I'm posting this from a Vista machine, and it has been a nightmare. Everything was pointlessly different from XP. It was very difficult to hook up with the corporate net, I have still not fully succeeded. Lots of software didn't work properly. It seem to require a reboot slightly more often than the old laptop (every other week rather than once a month).
It still fells slower than my previous laptop when not compiling or running numeric simulations (its main purpose). It is no longer unbearable slow as it was in the beginning, but I had a change to try my old laptop (a 1 GHz Pentium-M vs a 1.5 GHz Core 2 Duo, and the old actually felt more responsive.
The official company police is to install XP on all new computers. I got mine just before that policy was established, and I'm keeping it because Vista is, no matter how much we hate it, the short term future.
[ My advice: Keep your old XP computer as long as possible. Your next computer will run Vista, but the longer you wait, the less the pain will be (because Vista is bound to better, and the rest of the world is bound to adapt). And keep an eye open for any chance to lessen your dependence on Microsoft technology. ]
But the experiences with Vista will help make organizations more receptive to the idea of using software where their own plans are not bound by the "strategic planning" of another company. There is no doubt there is still a huge market in XP, which Microsoft is choosing to ignore, because they see it in their best interest to get everyone switched to Vista. And we have no other vendor to turn to for XP based solutions.
I wonder why some people like to defend Vista here. I see four possibilities:
1) They have been unusually lucky, maybe had their old XP machines filled with accumulated crap so Vista seemed fast in comparison.
2) They like to hurt other people. They suffered, so must everyone else.
3) They never tried Vista, and are just talking trash. Maybe they see themselves as a heroic counterweight to the "group think" of those of us who actually speak from our experiences.
4) They are paid by Microsoft (unlikely, 2 and 3 are probably common enough for that to be unnecessarily).
I didn't follow the "Marvel Civil War" but saw some of the ads, and I got the impression that Iron Man was the leader of the "government oppression" side.
So if they take the "ones man terrorist is another mans freedom fighter" point of view, this doesn't have to be bad. A supervillian using free software tactics (grassroots, openness, transparency, collaboration) to destroy Tony Starks (closed, hierarchical, corrupt) economic empire.
The Open Source Development Labs was formed by "big iron" vendors to cooperate on the development Linux for of enterprise computing, so I don't find it surprising that is where their focus is. OSDL later merged with the Free Standards Group to form the the Linux Foundation, but OSDL was the larger part of the merge.
I don't find that more noteworthy, than freedesktop.org focusing on the desktop. Different organization have different focus.
I believe the key phrase is
people don't know about the underlying model of how it operates Wikipedia is an incredible useful tool, if you know how it works. As the primary task of schools are, or should be, to teach kids how to find facts, rather than to teach the facts themselves, schools should have courses in both the use and pitfalls of collaborative tools such as Wikipedia. [ Wikipedia itself may fail, but I'm sure collaborative tools like it will remain. ]
Slashdot Mirror
Back when I was maintaining a somewhat popular free software project, I occasionally (very occasionally, twice over 10 years) got offers of donations. Both time I thanked for the thought, and suggested a donation to the FSF instead. Really, I did it as a hobby, and didn't want the moral obligations coming from accepting money.
Send a "thank you" letter to those who do not solicit donations, and tell them why their software is useful to you. It means surprisingly much
If you include the legislative branch, the government can get any information they want from Google or any other private corporation.
So if you trust Google or any other corporation with your data, you implicitly trust the government
Not a single world about HYPNOTOAD. I hope we get another full episode of Everybody Loves Hypnotoad! It was possible the best television ever!
Well, Visual Studio is nice minimalistic development environment. Using it doesn't make my cry out loud in frustration, unlike what happens with most of its commercial competitors. Microsoft can be proud of it.
But of course, for doing real work there is still no alternative to Emacs.
For all the people (at least the non-Jews) living before Jesus.
It is a pretty old theological problem, as far I know the "consensus view" is that there probably exists some special arrangements for them.
IOC doesn't even pretend to care about freedom. All they care about is money, while pretending to care about sport. [ Quite unlike the US, which only cares about money, while pretending to care about freedom. ]
License the rights to someone who cares. I'm sure Lenovo would love to market a range of "ThinkMac" laptops to business users.
Good artists borrow, great artists steal.
One of the advantage of programming as a hobby over programming for a salary is that you can ignore the whiners, and concentrate on those users who can give feedback without explaining how stupid you are, or how betrayed they feel because you doesn't cater to all their needs. That is, you can concentrate on the emotionally grown ups, and ignore the spoiled kids.
[ And note: This is hobby vs professional, not free vs. proprietary. ]
This article has not been labeled "whatcouldpossiblygowrong".
Innovative free software was common before the more user oriented free software. BSD, Mach (the microkernel powering MacOS X), the X window system, TeX, and many early Internet applications were all both innovative when the came out, and free software.
There are two trends which can explain your impression. The first is the GNU project, which explicitly did not wish to innovate, just make a free version of Unix that happened to be technically superior. For the one component where they did innovate, the kernel, their GNU component failed, and an (initially) much less innovative kernel filled the spot instead. (Later, Linux has seen lots of innovation).
The other is the re-release of once unfree software under a free software license. That gave us stuff like Firefox and OpenOffice.org.
But for Firefox, remember that the original browsers from CERN and NCSA were free software, so even here free software pawed the way for non-free software.
Maye that is the trend:
1. Free software break new ground. This is because basic research is not profitable on the short term.
2. Non-free software commercialize the application areas. The touches needed to make it end user friendly is not interesting to the researchers, and the distance from a "proof of concept" to a "product" is short enough for private enterprise to span.
3. Eventually, competition will make the area "commodity", no big profit is possible. At this point, a free software license facilitating cooperation makes most sense.
You could argue the same happens with drugs.
1. Basic research is mostly done on universities, and/or financed by foundations such as Bill Gates own.
2. Drug companies do the expensive tests needed to make the drug approved, something that has little scientific value, but enormous practical and commercial value. They are awarded with a patent.
3. Eventually, the patent expires, and the drug becomes a commodity.
Assuming NASA would pay all the expenses of actually running and promoting the game plus associated overheads, I guess a simple game could be done based on an existing free engine. The budget would pay for 10 man in three years. Database guy, engine programmer (to adapt the engine), game architect / script writer, puzzle programmer, sound effects, music composer, and four graphic artists.
I truly wish them the best. Western Ukraine is really more Polish than it is Russian.
If you look at history you will see that Russia's potential is most effectively realized under authoritarian governments (Czars, Stalin, Brezhnev) and mostly wasted under "democratic" rulers (Gorbachev, Yeltsin.)
Russia was in one long decline under Brezhnev. And only a few of the Czars accomplished anything, the last one was a disaster.It's not the weather. It's russians. Given the choice they don't work. Unlike americans, russians are not chasing the golden calf, preferring instead to have good time. Nothing gets done this way.
Russians know that good times are only a temporary abnormality, so they might as well enjoy it as long as it lasts.Also, hard work is not the way ahead in society in Russia, all you accomplish is to make some gangster or bureaucrat (in Russia, they are mostly the same) happy. So either you become a gangster/bureaucrat, or you work as little as possible and spend what you have on vodka, so there is nothing to steal.
I don't know about other European countries, but in Denmark advertisers are obligated to specify the minimum total payment during the binding period. This has obviously meant lower demand for the "low initial cost, high subscription fee. And even those who sell with a subscription often sell the phones unlocked. You are free to choose another cell company, but you still have to pay the subscription fee in the binding period.
I believe lots of people now think a locked phone is simply "uncool", which would work against the iPhone.
All plant "generate their own food" through photosynthesis. But the only element you get through photosynthesis is carbon.
When people talk about plant nutrients, they mean the other elements. The most important is nitrogen, then phosphorus, then trace amounts of other stuff.
Some plants (peas, clover) can sort of get their nitrogen from the air, where it is in plenty supply (N2). They rely on symbiosis with soil bacteria which can bind the N2 from the air to NO3 (or NH4). This costs energy, which the plant supply in form of sugar from photosynthesis.
Organic farming make great uses of these plant in crop rotations, to avoid the need of mineral fertilizer. But it has a price in total production, so conventional farmers supply the nitrogen needed in suitable form for the plants.
Phosphorus and the trace elements cannot be extracted from the air, but significant amounts is nonetheless donated freely through the air, from industrial pollution. In fact, the success in combating air pollution is costing the farmers money, as they have to fertilize more.
For the Moon, I suspect supplying the trace elements and phosphorus will not be the most costly part of the operation. The big posts on the budget is the water, the carbon dioxide, and perhaps the nitrogen. Depending on what can be mined locally.
Most of the jobs I have gotten have been through people I knew from the university. The tech school is likely to provide you with a larger network of people which can help you get an interesting tech job, than the people you learn to know in the liberal arts school.
However, the college years are likely to shape what kind of person you are going to be, not just what kind of jobs you get. If you are very good at keeping active outside college, it won't matter much. Otherwise, if the liberal arts college feels more right for you, go for it. It may help you be a more well rounded person.
You will notice that almost all their platinum members are hardware manufacturers, which explain their emphasis on big iron.
Adobe only recently joined Linux Foundation, in connection with their decision to port AIR to Linux.
It still fells slower than my previous laptop when not compiling or running numeric simulations (its main purpose). It is no longer unbearable slow as it was in the beginning, but I had a change to try my old laptop (a 1 GHz Pentium-M vs a 1.5 GHz Core 2 Duo, and the old actually felt more responsive.
The official company police is to install XP on all new computers. I got mine just before that policy was established, and I'm keeping it because Vista is, no matter how much we hate it, the short term future.
[ My advice: Keep your old XP computer as long as possible. Your next computer will run Vista, but the longer you wait, the less the pain will be (because Vista is bound to better, and the rest of the world is bound to adapt). And keep an eye open for any chance to lessen your dependence on Microsoft technology. ]
But the experiences with Vista will help make organizations more receptive to the idea of using software where their own plans are not bound by the "strategic planning" of another company. There is no doubt there is still a huge market in XP, which Microsoft is choosing to ignore, because they see it in their best interest to get everyone switched to Vista. And we have no other vendor to turn to for XP based solutions.
I wonder why some people like to defend Vista here. I see four possibilities:
1) They have been unusually lucky, maybe had their old XP machines filled with accumulated crap so Vista seemed fast in comparison.
2) They like to hurt other people. They suffered, so must everyone else.
3) They never tried Vista, and are just talking trash. Maybe they see themselves as a heroic counterweight to the "group think" of those of us who actually speak from our experiences.
4) They are paid by Microsoft (unlikely, 2 and 3 are probably common enough for that to be unnecessarily).
You understand that Linux is an alternative to Windows, not an alternative to the desktop, and that the allegory therefore is flawed.
I didn't follow the "Marvel Civil War" but saw some of the ads, and I got the impression that Iron Man was the leader of the "government oppression" side.
So if they take the "ones man terrorist is another mans freedom fighter" point of view, this doesn't have to be bad. A supervillian using free software tactics (grassroots, openness, transparency, collaboration) to destroy Tony Starks (closed, hierarchical, corrupt) economic empire.
The Open Source Development Labs was formed by "big iron" vendors to cooperate on the development Linux for of enterprise computing, so I don't find it surprising that is where their focus is. OSDL later merged with the Free Standards Group to form the the Linux Foundation, but OSDL was the larger part of the merge.
I don't find that more noteworthy, than freedesktop.org focusing on the desktop. Different organization have different focus.