I haven't seen either Firefly or the current Trek incarnation ("Enterprise"). The last Trek thing that I saw that I liked was "The Voyage Home", and even that paled a bit multiple viewing.
It would be nice if the makers of Star Trek would give more play to science and less to romance and touchy-feely political correctness in general, imo...
I've always been surprised to find that movies that ignore such basic sci concepts are ever taken serious as sci-fi genre. Still, although Star Trek was never the best, but it was always the most commecial until Star Wars came along, at least. I don't know which is the bigger money-maker, these days, since I have reverted to books in my continuing search for intellectually stimulating entertainment...
If they've just gotta keep remaking this tired old shite, perhaps they could go back to the point at with earth actually gets off-planet. The original series pretty well glossed over that, imo.
Perhaps they could give us late-period, in-system settings of gundgy mining colonies and aging space stations scattered around the solar system. Throw in a little terra-forming a la Kim Stanley Robinson.
If I gotta sit thru another Kirk/McCoy/Kahn debacle, I think I'll barf. Why the hell can't starship officers age gracefully?
.... and one more time for you Hollywood morons: THERE IS NO SOUND IN SPACE! Starships, fighters, etc, explode in silence. Get used to it.
...or I just look in my posting history. Pure torture.
I'm forming a company that will, for a price, help you clean up your posting history and submit to mitigating responses to any crap webpages that may have been recorded against your ID in any of the major internet caching facilities. I figure once the idea catches on, I can sell the company to one of the big credit reporting agencies for enough to pay off all my old creditors...
You know, I seem to remember a debate similar to this "is dial-up sufficient" discussion that went on during the late 1980's and early 1990's. It went something like: "Modem? What would I need one of those for?"
I was on the "You gotta have one!" side, of course.
It's a strange and wonderful perspective to watch the same people (or some very much like them) arguing not "is a computer useful without a modem", or "does the average user need access to the net", but "how good does the user connection need to be?"
All you dialup advocates seem to have forgotton that if your ancestors had Won the Day with their "I/(the average user) don't need no steenkin modem" POV, you probably wouln't even be in this discussion....
Okay, I really feel this question is not flamebait, and is a legitimate question for a psych professional dealing in the field of robotics, so I'm going to state the same question in different terms:
When robotic sex toys are widely available, will their use ever be accepted by society as an alternative sexuality?
There may be some referents to this in Asimov's work, but I don't recall the topic ever being addressed in any detail (I'm guessing Asimov's own conservative moralistic bent prevented him doing so).
As additional support for the legitimacy of this question, I will point out that there have been individuals working on human-shaped, full-sized, robotic sex dolls intended to be used with pr0n sites.
Not exactly mainstream, but a legitimate question, I think.
Let's consider the users who do nothing but e-mail with their Internet connection...
Good idea... if you can find one. Is bitnet still in operation? That was pretty much email-only. It worked "ok" at 9600 baud, but it made getting those pix of the grandkids down to somewhere you could actually view them rather time consuming.... and that's before we start talking about retreiving files from the FTP archives via email.... IF you could figure out what the gateway address was and work out the routing to add to the email address of the FTP server AND you knew how to phrase the commands in the body of the email AND you could work out how to do a UUDECODE on multiple files on the PC side... heheh.
Waterloo TCP/IP and drivers via email over a noisy 2400 baud dialup to a quirky 9600 dedicated to a mainframe bitnet email account. Now there's a fun-filled weekend... back in the day when "megabyte" really meant something... something like: "Friday night and Saturday morning downloading to get one"
Yeah, you could use the nothing but email. Gopher was a distinct improvement, though, imo....
I think you're rationalizing. The net should be fast an ubiquitous. The rate structures can be worked out once the infrastructure is in place. Which it's not. Yet.
My logic is pretty simple:
1) I have high-speed at work for anything serious.
2) When at home, I really don't want to spend time on the Internet. I get to read, garden a little, talk to my wife, generally behave like a non-geek.
3) When I had high-speed internet, I would always be on. It's addicting.
My robots excite me sexually. Humans and animals are boring. Does this mean I'm a sick freak, or will the rest of society eventually catch up with this point of view?
the world will never stop shipping weapons to people who want them
Exactly. The problem is always how to mitigate the desire for them... I've always found that having some pocket change, not being under immediate threat, and having some of lifes basic needs (food, shelter, etc) has generally been enough to at least get me to use my pointy sticks for tent poles or a bar-b-que spit for awhile.
If it's arrogant to point out that humanity is largely powerless against it's own excesses, then I guess I am arrogant.
... not at all. Your observation is accurate, I think...
Open Source, to me, is not about Linux or software. It's about the consequences of sharing vs hoarding, and what those consequences can mean.
I tend to agree. I see Open Source primarily as a Philosphy, perhaps even an Economy (the term "hacking" was used in this sense quite commonly, at one time, before it got mainstreamed as a dirty word). It leads the mind in certain directions, I think, which is one of the reasons so many people fear it so much. An acceptance of what I think of as the Open Source Philosophy (OSP) is generally of both symptomatic of certain Understanding and indicative of certain types of intentions. The existing power structures have not yet evolved a useful defense against these concepts, afaik. Religion seems to be their Great Hope to save them from the "chaotic" forces of non-consumerism, which is why they keep calling Open Source advocates "zealots", if you get my logic...
They need the rest of the world to stop shipping them weapons, so that warlords stop giving RPGs to 12 year old kids to slaughter defenseless people(12 year olds because so many adults have been killed there aren't enough left to force into private armies). They also need the countries of the world to stop protecting their agricultural industries, making food so expensive 3rd world countries can't afford to buy it.
Amen.
Of course, once those things are accomplished, having the beginnings of an education, a high speed net connection, and some cheap hardware with free software will do wonders for your economy.
No reason the placing of an infrastructure can't be used as a motivating factor in e.g. breaking up the arms dealing. I actually think it would help, yes.
My father taught me to fish where I knew there was fish.
Good advice. My father taught me that if you give a man a fish, he eats for a day, but if you teach him to fish, he never goes hungry. Equally good advice, imo, and very germaine to this situation (Open Source for Ethiopia).
The "iceboxes to eskimos" ("coals to Newcastle") analogy doesn't hold, since the eskimos arguably already have ice. The old "bicycle to a fish" is the form I think you're looking for...
And in the US the average 80486 machine is a doorstop. That doesn't mean that it can't still function as a webserver.
Do you completely fail to understand how to use free stuff to make money when you have no money to begin with, or would just prefer that Ethiopia not benefit from the global economy?
God. It makes me want to go and do an install of Windows XP.
Go for it. You probably believe Microsoft is the penultimage example of capitalism, too. Some of us know better, being actual capitalists more interested in creating value than in taking what someone else has...
Could it be that he showed no interest because he's grown up in a country where people die of malnutrition and corrupt leaders reserve aid money for their own consumption?
More likey because he didn't understand WTF how to use the tech to improve the quality of life for the people. Education is always part of any successful missionary work. Can you think of a better tool to attack a corrupt infrastructure than Open Source?
open source and computers if the people don't even have food and aren't exactly the most... advanced people around?
Well, they could put up pr0n for pay sites and revitalize their national economy, for one thing. And that's before you even start talking about the possiblities if you can get their lawmaking bodies involved on the side of Open Source. Data havens, anyone? Maybe they could market diamonds direct to customers using ecommerce freeware. Or... what is it, uranium that Ethiopia has in abundance?... some kind of minreal natural resources, I don't remember.
The list of ways to make money from networking using free software and low cost hardware can get very, very long.
I congratulate them on the technical achievement, but I think that $0.99 (which is the price quoted in the review) is way too high a price for this service-- for that I could actually buy the song on iTunes or Napster. Unless they drop the price, I don't think this service will be terribly successful.
... how can you buy the tune if you don't know what tune it is? Perhaps they should change the nature of the service from "Name that Tune" to "Buy that Tune". You dial up and for $0.99 the service identifies the tune and squirts the MP3 down to your phone...
It is a neat peice of work, but I agree, a buck is too much for just the name of the song.
... just why is everyone so eager to accept the idea that only a techinically incompetent individual would want something simple?
For that matter, who's to say the even techinically incompetent individuals may not want things simplified? I work with techinical incompetents (of diverse ages) who seem to have a definite preference for keeping things as complicated as they possibly can...
A desire, preference, or choice for simplicity over complexity is not necesarily an indicator of technical competence or lack thereof.
Competence and a desire for simplicity are unrelated functions of the human mechanism.
There even some who believe that simplicity is Good, and the ability to make things simple is an inidcator of technical compentence.
The whole "it's statistics" excuse for stereo-typing is a) old and tired (it was already worn out the the 70's, ferchrisesake), and b) bullshit.
Of course, on the other hand there are the L33t tech freaks who are afraid that if they are subjected to something simple it will fry the Acme Complexity Generation(tm) implants they so recently spent the big bux on...
Seriously, this is a good list, but my list would be a bit smaller, if less flat, than your's, since I would roll #4 (Portatability) into #1 (functionality), and #5 (security) into #2 (reliability), the assign #6 thru #9 all under #1 (Functionality). #11 can go away altogether, since it is spurious and prejudicial.
Given that you seem to be into the whole Process thing, I guess you realize, as well, that each and every one of these ostensible tasks you lay out should be applied to User Interface design and implementation. Or did you think that was all just pretty graphics. Decoupling, we used to call it...
Why would you wish to apply Good Pogramming Practice to all aspects of a system except the user interface? You want the system to function well in all respects except when you have to give it input.
I interestingly enough, I don't disagee with the majority of your statements. If your statements are true concerning your background, abilities, and development activities (and I see no real reason to doubt them), then I don't really understand why a) you seem to think my quarrel is with you or people like you, or b) you choose to associate yourself with the score (probably hundreds or thousands of alleged developers who constitute the bulk of the hostility and agression towards the user community that I am speaking against.
Time and again I've watched budget and resources squandered on pretty GUI enhancements instead of addressing the back end server problems.
While you have my sympathies in this, it is a universal problem in the commecial world. It is sour grapes, in my opinion, to translate ones frustrations with the bean-counters to the community of Open Source users and -- more importantly -- potential Open Source users. It is (in my experience) unlikely that these suits are the same ones trying to communicate to you (or whomever -- the Open Source development team) that their most recent stable release of a spread-sheet program is not stable enough, or doesn't have features that they require, or is counter-intuitive to use to the point where they cannot use it at work to replace the similar but proprietary application that same bean-counter is telling them is "company policy" that they use.
You understand the dilemma? The same people who refuse to allow you as a developer the time to do it right are the ones who refuse to accept things like Open Source in the office. Their reasoning is spurious, of course, and they apparantly have no real clue how to count the actual cost of software (how many engineering hours could be back-charged to Microsoft Corp when an engineer has to spend, say 2 hours per workday rebooting a workstation because corporate higher-ups mandated mandated the use of an unstable version of Word for requirements documentation -- and we're talking maybe 300 engineers at approx $100/hr -- I'm not even counting the other 1500 or so employees who are having similar problems but are not engineers, so don't understand why their machine isn't working -- talk about no garuntees and no culpability for producers of crashware... Microsoft's successes in the realm of corporat level brainwashing are staggering, but that's a different rant). The point being that for Open Source to become the norm rather than some bizarre fringe activity -- and I do feel very strongly that it should, since the whole paradigm represents Choice, which is, imo, a Good Thing -- in order for that to happen, the Open Source community has to find a way around the bean-counters and the suits. They can either be co-opted or obviated, but until they are removed from the equation, we're dead in the water.
And make no mistake, the corporate desktop is the prize. In simplest terms, if I have to do user support, I would much prefer to support open source platforms than Microsoft platforms. It allows me to do a "better job", since if my vision impaired, color-blind admin user needs to have particular settings for fonts and color on every single user interface item I can do that. Problem is, if I can't get the develpers to bring the UI to a point where I can, I can't get the managerial layer to take me seriously. This is just an example...
My personal projects are functionality and stability first. I don't give a damn about user interface issues beyond them being able to access the functionality in a fashion I find convenient
I've spent many years dealing with usability "issues". The vast majority of the issues are the result of letting random user communities dictate how the system interacts, rather than following user interface guideline standards including the now-ancient CUA (Common User A
Heh. Strange you should ask...:) Up until very recently I've been a "money is good" sort of a person. Recently, though, I'm beginning to wonder if maybe a return to fighting over what we want with thrown rocks and pointy sticks might be appropriate.... of course, that doesn't really have that much to do with Open Source, it's more of a personal observation.
I think technology is a philosophy, so I guess that means I tend to a philosophical POV.
I do think you're right in what you posted, though. Pragmatism is a valuable POV as well, in my experience.
I was just wondering if, when a paid developer takes Open Source code as an input to their development process, and produces something based on it, if their output is necesarily Open Source, as well. I should probably look that up one of these days, but I always seem to forget, so I pretty much base everything on what I've read and the image the term "open source code" evokes in my (arguably feverish, warped, or just plain damaged) mind...
I see a lot of references to this Root Mean Square thing (RMS), but I'm not really sure what it all means. I definitely don't have an ethical or moral problem making and using knowledge and code gained from Open Source people, documents, code, etc to do so. In fact, I think that is the biggest part of the Open Source concept (as defined in the perfect world inside my head). This is something I don't hear discussed much (except by the voice in my head, of course), so I'd like to expand a little on it...
One of the posts I was reading deep in night last night said something about a "new business model". The fact is that I do see Open Source as a business model. In fact, when I first heard of Open Source (long enough ago that I don't even remember how long it was) I remember thinking that this Open Source thing matched very well with an idea I had run across back in college (back in the pre-Windows days) to the effect that it would be really neat if every one could have a system (computer system) tailored just for themselves. Tailored in ways that only a programmer (what we now call a "geek") coul have the expertise to do, but personalized nevertheless. I concieved of programmers setting up shop in much the same fashion that cobblers and tailors set up shop back in the day: Customer walks in, you take his measure, select a pattern (or design a pattern if this is a high-roller who can afford your time to do that), and put together the system for them. Then Windows happened, and that little dream got back-burnered for awhile as the legions of "users" marched in lock step to the MS GUI military band....
Jump cut to a few years later when I hear about this Open Source thing. "Wow, I think to myself, that's pretty neat. If the base sources are free, then my mechanic can find a coder to tailor a system for him and pay that code in coin he made from fixing a car." Simplistic, maybe, but I like simple, too.
Which all leads to what I still think: software development should be a service industry. For a user entering the world of computing, the entry cost should be for the hardware. The code should be free. What the coder should get paid for is customization and upgrades. I could imagine an individual's relationship with their coder in much the same way I imagine that their relationship with their pizza delivery guy, mechanic, doctor, lawyer, whatever. They want the system operation altered to some extent they can't do themselves, or they want a new feature, they call the neighborhood geek.
Obviously things don't work that way today. Not only is the system itself terminally broken (centralization, concentrations of wealth and power serving tiny groups of persons, while others work themselves do death trying to scape out a living), but some where along the line a couple things happened that have all but destroyed the coding business,
I think they should have chose the name "Lin" (dropping the '---s'). That would have added Lin ("lynn") to the phonetic pantheon of linux distro patron Goddesses -- SuSE (suzy), and Debian (debbie). Wait, isn't Lynn a boyz name? Perhaps they were gender-uncertain...
1) People who want open source domination 2) Companies that deal in open source software
You can count me in both those groups.
Note also that the people who actually are concerned about usability (Red Hat, Mandrake, etc.) _are_ doing things about it, and they're doing a decent job of it. However, this isn't the responsibility of every random open source programmer. They just make stuff they can use.
This is a distinction that I believe I overlooked, yes. Thank-you for a well thought-out response.
It does raise an interesting question in my mind, though: Are the developers employed by e.g. Mandrake or RedHat properly "Open Source" developers?
Some of the projects I've contributed to: GCC, Gmake, TCP_Wrapper, Screen, Minix, Linux, BSD, MIT Kerberos, Heimdal, Cyrus SASL, OpenSSL, C-Kermit, etc. etc. etc...
Admirable. I didn't realize I knew your work. But "Linux"? Do you meen the kernel?
I would never just "Drop off code that I dashed out." Clearly that's not under discussion
It is precisely the type of behaviour you described in your previous post.
The work I contributed has benefited the community at large, but that was not the reason I did the work. I fixed bugs because they inconvenienced me. I added features because I needed them, not because some amorphous community out there whined at me to do it.
I don't know if you've noticed, but the GNU tools are some of the best documented tools I have ever seen, open source or otherwise. C-Kermit? Likewise. Voluminuos documentation and an excellent user feed-back mechanism.
Those are formal, structured projects that somebody set up based on the idea that persons other than themselves could make use of the software product. You're talking about (for the most part) viable, proven, projects, where you most certainly can make a bug fix, submit it, and get it checked in without interacting with other, non-developer, users in any significant way. Again, this is not representative of the problems the article was addressing, nor are developers of these projects those that I am encouraging to give up on "Open Source" and go back to their Winows boxen.
I think what it's coming down to is that the problems with open source (as described in the article) are mostly with the user interfaces, and those mostly under X. Kermit, for example, is lauded by everyone I've ever known that has used it (althought I should probably point out that the kermit client software isn't "free"). It is a good example of a powerful, well documented user interface that is trivially accessible (usable) to non-geek users. People typically don't have much trobule accomplishing their tasks usining it, even if they're not "programmers".
In fact, if I had one issue with the article, it would be to wonder why the author chose Firefox as an exception to her critique? From what I've seen, the mozilla project is one of the worst (or at least most visible) offenders on all her points, and Firefox is no exception. And Mozilla will never acheive the visibility in the broader population of net users that Netscape once had (% of users who knew and used it) until the problems have been corrected, regardless of how many/.'ers scream and whine and cry about how they don't "owe" the users anything, and how "there are no garuntees" and how they - the l33t develer community -- don't care about and don't even want, users, etc etc
In short, I'm arguing that Open Source projects should be held to the standards set by e.g. GNU. I'm actually surpirsed that there are so many here arguing againt that concept, since those pretty much have been, and continue to be, my standards.
I would also add that the overall development approach taken by certain recent OSS projects is just plain anathema to the whole concept of *nix in general. Monolithic wholly integrated applications that do everything are not good programs. Such programs represent failures in the design stage, and yes, those are not unique to the OSS world. I have to deal with the same problem all the time in propreitary and in-house projects....
Semantics. Would you agree to the terms "user", "users", or "user base" ? How about "cutsomer"?
There is no reason a project cannot exist in and of itself for no other purpose than to be a fun hobby.
I suppose not, if you consider that a project can "exist" without developers or users. I consider the case spurious. It's completely beside the point of the article and everything else I've been addressing in my posts, here.
[stuff]... happens to internal, proprietary business projects as well.
The article under discussion made a smilar point; to wit, that the points she addressed concerned fundamental "good programming practice" and could be applied to proprietary software as well Open Source. Or at least, that was one fo the things I got out of it.
What makes you think most of us give a damn about Gates?
What makes you think I care what "most of us" give a damn about? I was simply making a point that arrogant, wannabe developers who would rather abuse the users of their software than fix bugs or design user interfaces are kindred spirits in the Microsoft ethic that a) is one of the biggest, if not the the biggest, problems in computing today (for those of us who are interested in producing quality software), and b) has made Mr Gate (and probably some few others) very wealthy. As I said: Mr Gates would be proud of those of you who sacrifice ethic to profit motive (greed), regardless of whether the profit is economic or otherwise. He would know, in reading the post to which I was responding, that the poster was on his side, or at least could be subverted easily...
I don't consider that applying Microsoft's notable lack of business ethics to free software necesarily makes for a better quality free software product. That is the point. I don't believe I asserted, or even assumed, that you or anyone else should "give a damn about gates." Although now that you mention it, I suppose you could interpret my statement as a use of Gates (and by implication, Microsoft) as a good example of how to produce bad software. In which case the only reason you should give a damn is if you care about producing good software. And the only reason I would care whether or not you "gave a damn" is if I was thinking of working with or hiring you. So what makes you think you know what I think?
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't seen either Firefly or the current Trek incarnation ("Enterprise"). The last Trek thing that I saw that I liked was "The Voyage Home", and even that paled a bit multiple viewing.
It would be nice if the makers of Star Trek would give more play to science and less to romance and touchy-feely political correctness in general, imo...
I've always been surprised to find that movies that ignore such basic sci concepts are ever taken serious as sci-fi genre. Still, although Star Trek was never the best, but it was always the most commecial until Star Wars came along, at least. I don't know which is the bigger money-maker, these days, since I have reverted to books in my continuing search for intellectually stimulating entertainment...
I never like Kirk, anyway.
If they've just gotta keep remaking this tired old shite, perhaps they could go back to the point at with earth actually gets off-planet. The original series pretty well glossed over that, imo.
Perhaps they could give us late-period, in-system settings of gundgy mining colonies and aging space stations scattered around the solar system. Throw in a little terra-forming a la Kim Stanley Robinson.
If I gotta sit thru another Kirk/McCoy/Kahn debacle, I think I'll barf. Why the hell can't starship officers age gracefully?
.... and one more time for you Hollywood morons: THERE IS NO SOUND IN SPACE! Starships, fighters, etc, explode in silence. Get used to it.
I'm forming a company that will, for a price, help you clean up your posting history and submit to mitigating responses to any crap webpages that may have been recorded against your ID in any of the major internet caching facilities. I figure once the idea catches on, I can sell the company to one of the big credit reporting agencies for enough to pay off all my old creditors...
You know, I seem to remember a debate similar to this "is dial-up sufficient" discussion that went on during the late 1980's and early 1990's. It went something like: "Modem? What would I need one of those for?"
I was on the "You gotta have one!" side, of course.
It's a strange and wonderful perspective to watch the same people (or some very much like them) arguing not "is a computer useful without a modem", or "does the average user need access to the net", but "how good does the user connection need to be?"
All you dialup advocates seem to have forgotton that if your ancestors had Won the Day with their "I/(the average user) don't need no steenkin modem" POV, you probably wouln't even be in this discussion....
Fwiw
Okay, I really feel this question is not flamebait, and is a legitimate question for a psych professional dealing in the field of robotics, so I'm going to state the same question in different terms:
When robotic sex toys are widely available, will their use ever be accepted by society as an alternative sexuality?
There may be some referents to this in Asimov's work, but I don't recall the topic ever being addressed in any detail (I'm guessing Asimov's own conservative moralistic bent prevented him doing so).
As additional support for the legitimacy of this question, I will point out that there have been individuals working on human-shaped, full-sized, robotic sex dolls intended to be used with pr0n sites.
Not exactly mainstream, but a legitimate question, I think.
Good idea ... if you can find one. Is bitnet still in operation? That was pretty much email-only. It worked "ok" at 9600 baud, but it made getting those pix of the grandkids down to somewhere you could actually view them rather time consuming. ... and that's before we start talking about retreiving files from the FTP archives via email. ... IF you could figure out what the gateway address was and work out the routing to add to the email address of the FTP server AND you knew how to phrase the commands in the body of the email AND you could work out how to do a UUDECODE on multiple files on the PC side ... heheh.
Waterloo TCP/IP and drivers via email over a noisy 2400 baud dialup to a quirky 9600 dedicated to a mainframe bitnet email account. Now there's a fun-filled weekend... back in the day when "megabyte" really meant something ... something like: "Friday night and Saturday morning downloading to get one"
Yeah, you could use the nothing but email. Gopher was a distinct improvement, though, imo ....
I think you're rationalizing. The net should be fast an ubiquitous. The rate structures can be worked out once the infrastructure is in place. Which it's not. Yet.
You wanker. Get a life ...
My robots excite me sexually. Humans and animals are boring. Does this mean I'm a sick freak, or will the rest of society eventually catch up with this point of view?
Well, yes, but fortunately the gunslingers seem to prefer red meat.
Never!
Trivially doable, and the developers will demand it. Trust me on that.
Exactly. The problem is always how to mitigate the desire for them... I've always found that having some pocket change, not being under immediate threat, and having some of lifes basic needs (food, shelter, etc) has generally been enough to at least get me to use my pointy sticks for tent poles or a bar-b-que spit for awhile.
... not at all. Your observation is accurate, I think...
I tend to agree. I see Open Source primarily as a Philosphy, perhaps even an Economy (the term "hacking" was used in this sense quite commonly, at one time, before it got mainstreamed as a dirty word). It leads the mind in certain directions, I think, which is one of the reasons so many people fear it so much. An acceptance of what I think of as the Open Source Philosophy (OSP) is generally of both symptomatic of certain Understanding and indicative of certain types of intentions. The existing power structures have not yet evolved a useful defense against these concepts, afaik. Religion seems to be their Great Hope to save them from the "chaotic" forces of non-consumerism, which is why they keep calling Open Source advocates "zealots", if you get my logic...
Amen.
Of course, once those things are accomplished, having the beginnings of an education, a high speed net connection, and some cheap hardware with free software will do wonders for your economy.
No reason the placing of an infrastructure can't be used as a motivating factor in e.g. breaking up the arms dealing. I actually think it would help, yes.
Good advice. My father taught me that if you give a man a fish, he eats for a day, but if you teach him to fish, he never goes hungry. Equally good advice, imo, and very germaine to this situation (Open Source for Ethiopia).
The "iceboxes to eskimos" ("coals to Newcastle") analogy doesn't hold, since the eskimos arguably already have ice. The old "bicycle to a fish" is the form I think you're looking for...
And in the US the average 80486 machine is a doorstop. That doesn't mean that it can't still function as a webserver.
Do you completely fail to understand how to use free stuff to make money when you have no money to begin with, or would just prefer that Ethiopia not benefit from the global economy?
Go for it. You probably believe Microsoft is the penultimage example of capitalism, too. Some of us know better, being actual capitalists more interested in creating value than in taking what someone else has...
More likey because he didn't understand WTF how to use the tech to improve the quality of life for the people. Education is always part of any successful missionary work. Can you think of a better tool to attack a corrupt infrastructure than Open Source?
Well, they could put up pr0n for pay sites and revitalize their national economy, for one thing. And that's before you even start talking about the possiblities if you can get their lawmaking bodies involved on the side of Open Source. Data havens, anyone? Maybe they could market diamonds direct to customers using ecommerce freeware. Or ... what is it, uranium that Ethiopia has in abundance? ... some kind of minreal natural resources, I don't remember.
The list of ways to make money from networking using free software and low cost hardware can get very, very long.
There's money in them thar wirez, i tell ya.
... how can you buy the tune if you don't know what tune it is? Perhaps they should change the nature of the service from "Name that Tune" to "Buy that Tune". You dial up and for $0.99 the service identifies the tune and squirts the MP3 down to your phone...
It is a neat peice of work, but I agree, a buck is too much for just the name of the song.
... just why is everyone so eager to accept the idea that only a techinically incompetent individual would want something simple?
For that matter, who's to say the even techinically incompetent individuals may not want things simplified? I work with techinical incompetents (of diverse ages) who seem to have a definite preference for keeping things as complicated as they possibly can...
A desire, preference, or choice for simplicity over complexity is not necesarily an indicator of technical competence or lack thereof.
Competence and a desire for simplicity are unrelated functions of the human mechanism.
There even some who believe that simplicity is Good, and the ability to make things simple is an inidcator of technical compentence.
The whole "it's statistics" excuse for stereo-typing is a) old and tired (it was already worn out the the 70's, ferchrisesake), and b) bullshit.
Of course, on the other hand there are the L33t tech freaks who are afraid that if they are subjected to something simple it will fry the Acme Complexity Generation(tm) implants they so recently spent the big bux on...
LoL
Okay, you've got the job!
Seriously, this is a good list, but my list would be a bit smaller, if less flat, than your's, since I would roll #4 (Portatability) into #1 (functionality), and #5 (security) into #2 (reliability), the assign #6 thru #9 all under #1 (Functionality). #11 can go away altogether, since it is spurious and prejudicial.
Given that you seem to be into the whole Process thing, I guess you realize, as well, that each and every one of these ostensible tasks you lay out should be applied to User Interface design and implementation. Or did you think that was all just pretty graphics. Decoupling, we used to call it...
Why would you wish to apply Good Pogramming Practice to all aspects of a system except the user interface? You want the system to function well in all respects except when you have to give it input.
I interestingly enough, I don't disagee with the majority of your statements. If your statements are true concerning your background, abilities, and development activities (and I see no real reason to doubt them), then I don't really understand why a) you seem to think my quarrel is with you or people like you, or b) you choose to associate yourself with the score (probably hundreds or thousands of alleged developers who constitute the bulk of the hostility and agression towards the user community that I am speaking against.
While you have my sympathies in this, it is a universal problem in the commecial world. It is sour grapes, in my opinion, to translate ones frustrations with the bean-counters to the community of Open Source users and -- more importantly -- potential Open Source users. It is (in my experience) unlikely that these suits are the same ones trying to communicate to you (or whomever -- the Open Source development team) that their most recent stable release of a spread-sheet program is not stable enough, or doesn't have features that they require, or is counter-intuitive to use to the point where they cannot use it at work to replace the similar but proprietary application that same bean-counter is telling them is "company policy" that they use.
You understand the dilemma? The same people who refuse to allow you as a developer the time to do it right are the ones who refuse to accept things like Open Source in the office. Their reasoning is spurious, of course, and they apparantly have no real clue how to count the actual cost of software (how many engineering hours could be back-charged to Microsoft Corp when an engineer has to spend, say 2 hours per workday rebooting a workstation because corporate higher-ups mandated mandated the use of an unstable version of Word for requirements documentation -- and we're talking maybe 300 engineers at approx $100/hr -- I'm not even counting the other 1500 or so employees who are having similar problems but are not engineers, so don't understand why their machine isn't working -- talk about no garuntees and no culpability for producers of crashware... Microsoft's successes in the realm of corporat level brainwashing are staggering, but that's a different rant). The point being that for Open Source to become the norm rather than some bizarre fringe activity -- and I do feel very strongly that it should, since the whole paradigm represents Choice, which is, imo, a Good Thing -- in order for that to happen, the Open Source community has to find a way around the bean-counters and the suits. They can either be co-opted or obviated, but until they are removed from the equation, we're dead in the water.
And make no mistake, the corporate desktop is the prize. In simplest terms, if I have to do user support, I would much prefer to support open source platforms than Microsoft platforms. It allows me to do a "better job", since if my vision impaired, color-blind admin user needs to have particular settings for fonts and color on every single user interface item I can do that. Problem is, if I can't get the develpers to bring the UI to a point where I can, I can't get the managerial layer to take me seriously. This is just an example ...
Heh. Strange you should ask... :) Up until very recently I've been a "money is good" sort of a person. Recently, though, I'm beginning to wonder if maybe a return to fighting over what we want with thrown rocks and pointy sticks might be appropriate. ... of course, that doesn't really have that much to do with Open Source, it's more of a personal observation.
I think technology is a philosophy, so I guess that means I tend to a philosophical POV.
I do think you're right in what you posted, though. Pragmatism is a valuable POV as well, in my experience.
I was just wondering if, when a paid developer takes Open Source code as an input to their development process, and produces something based on it, if their output is necesarily Open Source, as well. I should probably look that up one of these days, but I always seem to forget, so I pretty much base everything on what I've read and the image the term "open source code" evokes in my (arguably feverish, warped, or just plain damaged) mind ...
I see a lot of references to this Root Mean Square thing (RMS), but I'm not really sure what it all means. I definitely don't have an ethical or moral problem making and using knowledge and code gained from Open Source people, documents, code, etc to do so. In fact, I think that is the biggest part of the Open Source concept (as defined in the perfect world inside my head). This is something I don't hear discussed much (except by the voice in my head, of course), so I'd like to expand a little on it...
One of the posts I was reading deep in night last night said something about a "new business model". The fact is that I do see Open Source as a business model. In fact, when I first heard of Open Source (long enough ago that I don't even remember how long it was) I remember thinking that this Open Source thing matched very well with an idea I had run across back in college (back in the pre-Windows days) to the effect that it would be really neat if every one could have a system (computer system) tailored just for themselves. Tailored in ways that only a programmer (what we now call a "geek") coul have the expertise to do, but personalized nevertheless. I concieved of programmers setting up shop in much the same fashion that cobblers and tailors set up shop back in the day: Customer walks in, you take his measure, select a pattern (or design a pattern if this is a high-roller who can afford your time to do that), and put together the system for them. Then Windows happened, and that little dream got back-burnered for awhile as the legions of "users" marched in lock step to the MS GUI military band....
Jump cut to a few years later when I hear about this Open Source thing. "Wow, I think to myself, that's pretty neat. If the base sources are free, then my mechanic can find a coder to tailor a system for him and pay that code in coin he made from fixing a car." Simplistic, maybe, but I like simple, too.
Which all leads to what I still think: software development should be a service industry. For a user entering the world of computing, the entry cost should be for the hardware. The code should be free. What the coder should get paid for is customization and upgrades. I could imagine an individual's relationship with their coder in much the same way I imagine that their relationship with their pizza delivery guy, mechanic, doctor, lawyer, whatever. They want the system operation altered to some extent they can't do themselves, or they want a new feature, they call the neighborhood geek.
Obviously things don't work that way today. Not only is the system itself terminally broken (centralization, concentrations of wealth and power serving tiny groups of persons, while others work themselves do death trying to scape out a living), but some where along the line a couple things happened that have all but destroyed the coding business,
I think they should have chose the name "Lin" (dropping the '---s'). That would have added Lin ("lynn") to the phonetic pantheon of linux distro patron Goddesses -- SuSE (suzy), and Debian (debbie). Wait, isn't Lynn a boyz name? Perhaps they were gender-uncertain...
You bring up some good points.
You can count me in both those groups.
This is a distinction that I believe I overlooked, yes. Thank-you for a well thought-out response.
It does raise an interesting question in my mind, though: Are the developers employed by e.g. Mandrake or RedHat properly "Open Source" developers?
Admirable. I didn't realize I knew your work. But "Linux"? Do you meen the kernel?
It is precisely the type of behaviour you described in your previous post.
I don't know if you've noticed, but the GNU tools are some of the best documented tools I have ever seen, open source or otherwise. C-Kermit? Likewise. Voluminuos documentation and an excellent user feed-back mechanism.
Those are formal, structured projects that somebody set up based on the idea that persons other than themselves could make use of the software product. You're talking about (for the most part) viable, proven, projects, where you most certainly can make a bug fix, submit it, and get it checked in without interacting with other, non-developer, users in any significant way. Again, this is not representative of the problems the article was addressing, nor are developers of these projects those that I am encouraging to give up on "Open Source" and go back to their Winows boxen.
I think what it's coming down to is that the problems with open source (as described in the article) are mostly with the user interfaces, and those mostly under X. Kermit, for example, is lauded by everyone I've ever known that has used it (althought I should probably point out that the kermit client software isn't "free"). It is a good example of a powerful, well documented user interface that is trivially accessible (usable) to non-geek users. People typically don't have much trobule accomplishing their tasks usining it, even if they're not "programmers".
In fact, if I had one issue with the article, it would be to wonder why the author chose Firefox as an exception to her critique? From what I've seen, the mozilla project is one of the worst (or at least most visible) offenders on all her points, and Firefox is no exception. And Mozilla will never acheive the visibility in the broader population of net users that Netscape once had (% of users who knew and used it) until the problems have been corrected, regardless of how many /.'ers scream and whine and cry about how they don't "owe" the users anything, and how "there are no garuntees" and how they - the l33t develer community -- don't care about and don't even want, users, etc etc
In short, I'm arguing that Open Source projects should be held to the standards set by e.g. GNU. I'm actually surpirsed that there are so many here arguing againt that concept, since those pretty much have been, and continue to be, my standards.
I would also add that the overall development approach taken by certain recent OSS projects is just plain anathema to the whole concept of *nix in general. Monolithic wholly integrated applications that do everything are not good programs. Such programs represent failures in the design stage, and yes, those are not unique to the OSS world. I have to deal with the same problem all the time in propreitary and in-house projects....
Semantics. Would you agree to the terms "user", "users", or "user base" ? How about "cutsomer"?
I suppose not, if you consider that a project can "exist" without developers or users. I consider the case spurious. It's completely beside the point of the article and everything else I've been addressing in my posts, here.
The article under discussion made a smilar point; to wit, that the points she addressed concerned fundamental "good programming practice" and could be applied to proprietary software as well Open Source. Or at least, that was one fo the things I got out of it.
I'm sorry, did you have a point?
What makes you think I care what "most of us" give a damn about? I was simply making a point that arrogant, wannabe developers who would rather abuse the users of their software than fix bugs or design user interfaces are kindred spirits in the Microsoft ethic that a) is one of the biggest, if not the the biggest, problems in computing today (for those of us who are interested in producing quality software), and b) has made Mr Gate (and probably some few others) very wealthy. As I said: Mr Gates would be proud of those of you who sacrifice ethic to profit motive (greed), regardless of whether the profit is economic or otherwise. He would know, in reading the post to which I was responding, that the poster was on his side, or at least could be subverted easily...
I don't consider that applying Microsoft's notable lack of business ethics to free software necesarily makes for a better quality free software product. That is the point. I don't believe I asserted, or even assumed, that you or anyone else should "give a damn about gates." Although now that you mention it, I suppose you could interpret my statement as a use of Gates (and by implication, Microsoft) as a good example of how to produce bad software. In which case the only reason you should give a damn is if you care about producing good software. And the only reason I would care whether or not you "gave a damn" is if I was thinking of working with or hiring you. So what makes you think you know what I think?