You aren't getting it. If any product doesn't djust to meet the needs of its intended audience, its audience will stop using it.
You're looking at open source from your point of view as a developer. But developers wouldn't use FOSS unless it met their needs and unless FOSS responded to their criticisms. The developer community, like the broader user community, represents a collection of consumers using a product. (It's a product whether or not you need to pay for it.)
The broader user community has expectations of software that differ from the developer community. If FOSS is expected to attract more and more users from the proprietary world, then FOSS needs to pay attention to those users. As a developer, you may not be interested in that, but I am.
I don't care what exists in your brain. I don't care if you memorize anything I write.
Here's what I care about: I write a book. At some point in time, there is a single, physical copy of that book. I own it. Not a collection of ideas or information, but the physical thing called a book. I own it. You don't. I have all rights to it. You have none. It is impossible for you to have rights to the book if I don't not give you those rights. If I do not allow you to make a copy, any copies you make constitute abridgement of my rights. This apples even if I allow you to read the sole existing copy, during which you memorize it and reproduce your own copy. That is still making an unauthorized copy.
If I publish the book, everyone's rights to that book derive from the rights I transferred to them.
As usual for people attempting to make your argument, you are deliberately obscuring the isse with rhetoric about ideas and information. This is not about ideas and information.
Linux and the rest of the open source "community" is clearly not a random collection of indpendent developers writing only code to meet their specific needs and, incidentally, releasing it as a "gift" to the public. That's a quaint but unrealistic notion.
Linux and open source has clearly been positioned by its advocates and its corporate funders as an alternative to proprietary closed-source software. That cannot be reconciled with the concept of open source as a collection of hardy independent coders all going their own ways for their own purposes.
But, in the end, that is all irrelevant to the reality that software is written to be used and that users will judge the software they use. This is true regardless of the number of users: You will judge your software even if no one else uses it; anyone who heeds the exhortations to use Linux will judge it. And, as they judge it, they will expect that their criticisms and suggestions are taken into account.
The assertion that no one is forced to use it suggest that a product can be criticized only if its use if forced. That's obviously wrong. Likewise, it makes no difference if the software costs nothing or costs a great deal. The price of a product does not determine the amount of freedom its users have to talk about it and their expectation that anyone who seeks broader use of a product will pay attention to its users.
Source code availability is also irrelevant. That does me and the vast majority of Linux users no good. We are not going to modify code ourselves or pay someone to do that for us. If something is "free", why would I consider paying developers thousands of dollars to tweak it for me? It's more rational to simply move on to other software.
Bottom line: Linux is a product. It is not a gift to the world made by beneficent developers. Its users will determine its acceptance and its users expect their wishes to be heeded. Thinking of it as the plaything of developers will mean developers will be its only users.
Again, why is this a moral issue? We're talking about a software development model, not guidelines for life.
I'm not asserting that I have a right to dictate how you spend your time. I am asserting that software is developed to be used, that users are the ultimate judge of any code's usefulness, and, as such, any developer interested in garnering wider acceptance of his code will pay attention to his users.
If a developer is content to write code only for himself, then he should consider not releasing it. As I said, why should a developer by immune from the treatment accorded anyone else who releases a work of intellect for the public's consideration?
Therefore, there is a tension between those who argue that users ought to be flocking to Linux and those who argue that control of Linux belongs exclusively in the hands of its developers. The history of software shows, after all, that developers, left to their own devices, often don't have a clue what people really want to use.
>>,,, no moral case for users to have a say in what a developer chooses to spend his or her time...
Why is this a moral issue? You can do whatever you wish and remain free of comment so long as you don't release it for the public's use. But, as soon as any developer releases any code for public use, they become liable for criticism. At that point, it is no longer "our software". Why should software developers be treated any different than authors, musicians or artists?
Linux and open source have long since left behind the quaint notion that it exists thanks to unsung and unpaid developers slaving away in basements and dormitories.
Given that Linux constantly asserts that it is the better choice for users, it is the height of hypocrisy for Linux developers to argue that they have no obligation to heed the needs of users.
You don't imagine that either Apple's or Microsoft's developers spend their time working on their favorite toys? No, they spend their time coding software that their employees hope the public will buy. Linux developers who release their code are in the same position. If they expect people to actually use their products, they are obligated to pay attention to any criticisms and suggestions made by the users of their products.
While I agree with your emphasis on the seriousness of owning a gun with the intent of using it on another person, the point of my original post was to highlight the notion that a criminal will not be deterred from breaking into a house because the resident owns a gun. Why? Because there is no way for the criminal to know that.
Once inside, the sight of the gun may prompt the criminal to leave. It may also prompt the criminal to react violently and irrationally, or to use his own gun. When a gun is introduced into the action, it obviously dramatically increases the chances of someone being shot. That "someone" is not necessarily the criminal.
These are the realities that knee-jerk gun lovers gloss over.
The people that use Linux are not the people who make Linux. The vast majority of Linux users, like the users of any OS, aren't developers and can't write code.
So, the notion that the "user is the developer" is false. By definition, all Linux developers are Linux users, but only a small minority of Linux users are Linux developers.
It is those users who should have the greatest voice in determining what they like or dislike about Linux and what course they want to see it take. It is arrogant and presumptious for developers to assume they have complete control of Linux and that its users are "grateful" for any crumbs thrown to them.
The reason fonts remained so bloody poor for so long, and remain problematic, is that too many developers considered, and still consider, anything that looks like a professional display to be "eye candy". Users often rejected Linux because it was (a) too ugly and too hard to read, and, (b)lack of attention to display quality implied lack of attention to quality in other areas. To this criticism, many developers respond by simply defaming users as lazy and stupid.
My choice is not limited to coding a new font system or paying someone else to do it. My choices include not using Linux at all.
To cut to the chase, about the only thing you can do is make certain the car alarm is working. Consider installing a good alarm system in your mother's house, since a car is expendable, but your mother is not.
Ignore the testosterone-laden bozos who tell you to buy a gun for your mother. A gun will have no deterrent value. Criminals are not telepathic. They will not know there's a gun in the house they're about to break into.
Once a criminal is in the house, of course, your mother can wave her gun around. That may, in fact, protect her. It may also involve her in months and months of legal anguish. If you do buy her a gun, be sure you also buy her some training so she doesn't shoot herself.
Remember, too, that the cops' job is to catch people after they commit a crime. Unless you can talk the local town council into stationing a police patrol in front of your mother's house, I wouldn't expect too much from them.
In the end, the real solution may be to move, if that is realistic.
That's the biggest problem with fonts in Linux: Lack of an integrated and unified approach to font and display management. Too many developer egos and way too much NIH syndrome. Everyone does their own thing.
Regardless of the desktop or the window manager you use, you ought to able able to select and manage all your fonts from one single location. Any changes made there should be reflected across your system, in all areas and in all applications.
Today, KDE goes one way, Gnome goes another, openoffice a third way, and almost every other individual application goes its own way. These applications should allow individual customization, but should know and default to the choices you make for the system.
For example, Gnome allows me to select an "application" font. But my selection there isn't reflected in most of the applications I use. KDE takes a similar approach with equally mixed results.
The second biggest problem, not just regarding fonts, is whiney and arrogant developers and wanna-be developers who think Linux is their exclusive property and tell any user who ventures to make a suggestion or raise a criticism to "shut up and start coding". Someone needs to lock these guys in a room.
Munjoy looks good because it defaults to the equally good fonts produced by its creator, who also also tweaked KDE's Asteroid theme to good purpose. Toss in dbus, udev and a few other goodies and it is an excellent Debian-unstable derivative.
As for apt, it handles a dist-upgrade with no problems. Although it is KDE centric, I've installed and used Gnome with no problems appearing.
The current release can't handle Nvidia's proprietary driver. So, if 3D is a big deal for you, wait for the next release. (FWIW, installing dbus on a stock Debian unstable machine seems to keep X from finding the Nvidia driver.)
The best science fiction has always been about the future, not about today. I enjoy Sawyer's books, but they belong to the same sub-genre with Michael Crichton's novels: unusual things set in a comtemporary setting are given a patina of scientific justification. Hence, Neanderthals with neuroses and islands crawling with dinosaurs. Interesting, but certainly lacking in the "sense of wonder" area.
The best science fiction project human existence into a future that has been fundamentally altered by technology, either for the better or for the worse. When the author is up to it, and the concept itself is up to it, the reader can experience a transcendent realization of the wonder of the Universe and our place, for good or ill, in it. That, for example, is what I take away from a novel like Clarke's Childhood's End. That is what distinguished the Star Trek franchise: the occasional ability to whack us on the head with the insight that there really is no reason why, a few centuries from now, humans can't be living peacefully in something like the Federation in a galaxy peopled with other sentient species. That is a very hopeful message; it is not surprising that the franchise was born in the sixth decade of a century largely given over to war, death and fear.
Admittedly, I'm not a fantasy fan, but the few times I've tried it the novels seem like pure escapism, comic books without pictures telling impossible stories of elves and magic.
You're gonna be plastered by people chanting "choice" and who, as a matter of warped principal, will never concede that anything at all about Windows might actually be worthy of emulation.
There is absolutely no reason why sofware installation should not be standardized in Linux. Software installation is an occasional, mundane, and necessary task. The current abundance of package and dependency resolution schemes offers a false choice that, in reality, limits and confines the user by locking him into that particular system.
Software installation is not what we buy computers for, regardless of how we use them or what OS they run. The continuing focus on it within the Linux community testifies to the immaturity of at least elements in that community and their inability to cooperatively resolve a problem that should be invisible to users.
The goal should be the ability of users to install software from any repository on any distribution.
How is apt-get supposed to be a solution to te shared library problem?
Apt-get isn't AI or magic. It's people who determine the dependencies and it's people who break programs by linking with specific outdated and/or conflicting libraries.
If Programs A and B both depend on mutually conflicting libraries, no dependency resolver will help.
Package managers lock you into the material available for your packaging system. If you need something that's only available in souce, then, in my experience, you run a greater risk by installing it than you would by installing it on a system that didn't use a package manager.
Typically, most people equate package managers with dependcy resolvers. Of course, they are not the same. Slackware has a package manager, for example, but no dependency resolver.
As a long-time Slackware user, I tend to install most new software from source. So, in effect, I become my own dependency resolver. This is seldom a problem. I know what's on my machine and I don't install code out of simple curiosity.
Everytime I've given a system that uses a dependency resolver, I've eventually run into a problem whose resolution requires me to learn more about the system's package manager/dependency resolver that I want to learn. So, they are nice for a while, but they add extra layers of complexity and they always break.
If I announce my formula and then throw it away without revealing it, I have not relased any ideas.
In any case, I argued, as you should see by reading more carefully, that I do not have rights to own any ideas, nor does anyone else. Ideas cannot be owned, possessed or manipulated. That is simply impossible. If an idea cannt be owned, then it is pointless to debate who can own ideas. They simply cannot be owned.
What I did say, however, is that the physical work I create that expresses and/or represents, of necessity, ideas is, in fact, owned by me. No one can access it in any fashion unless I allow it.
So, if write my formula on a pice of paper, I own that piece of paper and the symbols written on it. That piece of paper is not an idea. If some devises an identical formula and writes it another piece of paper, I have not rights to it, nor they to mine.
If I Make It, I Own It
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Is IP Property?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Fixating on the word "property" is a mistake, taking this discussion in the wrong direction.
Invariably, someone asserts that IP is equivalent to "ideas" and that it is wrong/unethical/immoral to claim ownership of ideas.
I assert that entire line of argument is pointless. By its nature, an idea cannot be owned. An idea exists only as a thought confined to someone's brain.
However, works of intellect are not ideas. They are physical entities that use symbols to express and convey the information, the story, that the work's creator is trying to convey to others. Yes, those symbols express an author's ideas, but they are not ideas. The ideas remain in the mind of the author and, perhaps, in the minds of his audience.
So, therefore, if I write a book, the file or manuscript that is the single existing copy of that book belongs to me. Society may or may not benefit from exposure to that book, but society has no rights of access to it unless I, as its owner, transfer those rights.
The same applies, of course, to any such work -- music, sculpture, painting, etc. At some point, each work exists as some sort of a single physical entity that is owned, exclusively, by the person who made it. All rights to that object are vested in that person. No one else can legitimately access that work unless its owner transfers the necessary rights to them.
None of this has anything to do with ideas or access to ideas. To cite an extreme hypothetical example, if I conjure a formula for immortality and write it down on a piece of paper, I can do whatever I wish with that piece of paper. I can make millions of copies and drop them for airplanes, post it to Slashdot, or burn it and never tell anyone.
The counter to this argument requires explaining how rights to an object can move from that object's creator to someone else without that creator's sanction. (Such rights cannot move to "society", which is only a useful linguistic construct. They must move to one or more specific individuals.)
Re:Why Are These People So Naive?
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Dive Into Python
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· Score: 1
Again, what's the problem?
If you think a book is too long, don't read it. On the other hand, I might think it's just about right, and wonder why you bought that puny little thing you're reading. You and I don't have any right to decide for others what is worth reading or not.
It is nice to know you're worried about "the craft of writing and the pastime of reading". but I'm pretty certain those aren't uppermost in the minds of commercial authors and publishers. Nor in mine. We're talking computer books here, not works of literature.
Re:Why Are These People So Naive?
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Dive Into Python
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· Score: 1
>> The big fat "intro to whatever" books that are 1200 pages are a problem...
Why are they a problem? Is someone forcing you to buy them?
It's my impression that authors sign contracts with publishers that set the price, rather than some open-ended deal that sees a publisher agree to pay a fixed price per page. (What's a "page", anyway?) A publisher could not control its costs if it allowed writers to determine what it paid for manuscripts.
Frankly, it's my impression that all those huge books exist because people buy them. If they didn't, publishers would stop trying to sell them.
Why Are These People So Naive?
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Dive Into Python
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· Score: 2, Insightful
>>... one gets the feeling that its primary purpose is to allow the author to make some payments on a car or mortgage...
Geez, how did some people become so naive? Just figuring out that professional authors write for money? And you're offended by it?
If the news is available from sources people aren't reading, listening to, or watching, then it isn't being censored. If most people (not just the American pople, but people everywhere) choose to be entertained than spend hours gathering news from alternative site, that isn't at all comparable to censorship. It is an expression of popular choice,
TV station owners want to make money. They aren't engaged in some conspiracy to dumd down the American population. If ratings for for hours and hours of detailed news productions were higher than, says, "Survivor", they'd drop Survivor in a heartbeat.
Finally, every society, throughout history, has always had a "very small percentage of the American population has more wealth than a very large percentage of Americans combined". That's the essence of being rich: Having more money than most other people. There's nothing, in itself, wrong about that. And there's nothing wrong about TV not harping on it. We all know it.
They're isn't going to be a Soyuz upgrade. The plan that was lfoated several weeks ago is not funded and almost certainly will not be funded. Neither is their any plan for NASA to build a modified Apollo.
Building an LEO infrastructure than can support Lunar and planetary exploration requires the capacity to lift payloads on the order of 100 tons to LEO. That capability does not exist today, even with the Shuttle. Even then, we'd see dozens of launches each year.
ISS is an minimal experimental facility. I'm looking for a facility that supports dozens of people and where lunar and planetary craft are built, fueled, and launched. That will requiure new heavy-lift launchers.
1. The "current configuration" is one step short of clsing down. In effect, the station's mission has been reconfigured and drawn down to permit support by Soyuz. The crew is down to two specifically because the Soyuz infrastructure cannot support anemergency departure by more than that number. If nothing other than the Soyuz ever flies, the station is moribund.
2. I don't care about making things in space stations. I care about human space travel.
3. Ellipses, circles, whatever. You be an engineer if you did't fathom the point.
4. The Shuttle was designed to support ISS. Since ISS has no real purpose, the Shuttle has no purpose. BTW, the Air Force bowed out of the Shuttle before it was even operational. The NRO gave up on it as a satellite launcher after Challenger.
5. Soyuz can't be used for lunar missions without modifications and additions.
6. Canoes = current spacecraft, both Soyuz and Shuttle. We need spacecraft comparable to carriers. Or is that another metaphor you missed?
7. Spitfire? Geez. No one's talking about abandoning things. Just building the right tools for the job. Soyuz does what it does. But we knew how to do that 40 years ago. Time to go somewhere other than LEO.
Get it? I don't care how we get to LEO. It's almost routine.
1. The Souyz cannot support the station. It does what is does rather well, but it cannot support the station in its current configuration, much less support its completion.
2. Space stations, in general, serve no purpose unless they support travel elsewhere. ISS doesn't. Neither did Mir. They just went in circles.
3. The U.S. may not be specifically buying seats on the Soyuz, but the Russian program has been supported and sustained in many ways since the Soviet collapse by NASA.
4. The Shuttle was a closed loop because, like Mir and ISS, it went in circles, literally, If the purpose of space travel is to travel in space, neither the Shuttle, Mir or ISS have a purpose.
5. The Russian's may operate their program on a shoestring, but all they're doing is a few minimal launchs annually,
6. The point you are missing is that the Soyuz is not, and cannot be, the basis for building an infrastructure that will support human exploration of the moon and the planets. Neither can the Shuttle or ISS. So, as I see it, Soyuz is rather akin to a successful canoe, when we need to be building aircraft carriers.
Slashdot Mirror
You aren't getting it. If any product doesn't djust to meet the needs of its intended audience, its audience will stop using it.
You're looking at open source from your point of view as a developer. But developers wouldn't use FOSS unless it met their needs and unless FOSS responded to their criticisms. The developer community, like the broader user community, represents a collection of consumers using a product. (It's a product whether or not you need to pay for it.)
The broader user community has expectations of software that differ from the developer community. If FOSS is expected to attract more and more users from the proprietary world, then FOSS needs to pay attention to those users. As a developer, you may not be interested in that, but I am.
I don't care what exists in your brain. I don't care if you memorize anything I write.
Here's what I care about: I write a book. At some point in time, there is a single, physical copy of that book. I own it. Not a collection of ideas or information, but the physical thing called a book. I own it. You don't. I have all rights to it. You have none. It is impossible for you to have rights to the book if I don't not give you those rights. If I do not allow you to make a copy, any copies you make constitute abridgement of my rights. This apples even if I allow you to read the sole existing copy, during which you memorize it and reproduce your own copy. That is still making an unauthorized copy.
If I publish the book, everyone's rights to that book derive from the rights I transferred to them.
As usual for people attempting to make your argument, you are deliberately obscuring the isse with rhetoric about ideas and information. This is not about ideas and information.
Linux and the rest of the open source "community" is clearly not a random collection of indpendent developers writing only code to meet their specific needs and, incidentally, releasing it as a "gift" to the public. That's a quaint but unrealistic notion.
Linux and open source has clearly been positioned by its advocates and its corporate funders as an alternative to proprietary closed-source software. That cannot be reconciled with the concept of open source as a collection of hardy independent coders all going their own ways for their own purposes.
But, in the end, that is all irrelevant to the reality that software is written to be used and that users will judge the software they use. This is true regardless of the number of users: You will judge your software even if no one else uses it; anyone who heeds the exhortations to use Linux will judge it. And, as they judge it, they will expect that their criticisms and suggestions are taken into account.
The assertion that no one is forced to use it suggest that a product can be criticized only if its use if forced. That's obviously wrong. Likewise, it makes no difference if the software costs nothing or costs a great deal. The price of a product does not determine the amount of freedom its users have to talk about it and their expectation that anyone who seeks broader use of a product will pay attention to its users.
Source code availability is also irrelevant. That does me and the vast majority of Linux users no good. We are not going to modify code ourselves or pay someone to do that for us. If something is "free", why would I consider paying developers thousands of dollars to tweak it for me? It's more rational to simply move on to other software.
Bottom line: Linux is a product. It is not a gift to the world made by beneficent developers. Its users will determine its acceptance and its users expect their wishes to be heeded. Thinking of it as the plaything of developers will mean developers will be its only users.
Again, why is this a moral issue? We're talking about a software development model, not guidelines for life.
I'm not asserting that I have a right to dictate how you spend your time. I am asserting that software is developed to be used, that users are the ultimate judge of any code's usefulness, and, as such, any developer interested in garnering wider acceptance of his code will pay attention to his users.
If a developer is content to write code only for himself, then he should consider not releasing it. As I said, why should a developer by immune from the treatment accorded anyone else who releases a work of intellect for the public's consideration?
Therefore, there is a tension between those who argue that users ought to be flocking to Linux and those who argue that control of Linux belongs exclusively in the hands of its developers. The history of software shows, after all, that developers, left to their own devices, often don't have a clue what people really want to use.
>> ,,, no moral case for users to have a say in what a developer chooses to spend his or her time...
Why is this a moral issue? You can do whatever you wish and remain free of comment so long as you don't release it for the public's use. But, as soon as any developer releases any code for public use, they become liable for criticism. At that point, it is no longer "our software". Why should software developers be treated any different than authors, musicians or artists?
Linux and open source have long since left behind the quaint notion that it exists thanks to unsung and unpaid developers slaving away in basements and dormitories.
Given that Linux constantly asserts that it is the better choice for users, it is the height of hypocrisy for Linux developers to argue that they have no obligation to heed the needs of users.
You don't imagine that either Apple's or Microsoft's developers spend their time working on their favorite toys? No, they spend their time coding software that their employees hope the public will buy. Linux developers who release their code are in the same position. If they expect people to actually use their products, they are obligated to pay attention to any criticisms and suggestions made by the users of their products.
So patents are keeping developers from coming up with a better approach?
The patent prevents developers from stealing somone else's invention, not from orginal thought.
While I agree with your emphasis on the seriousness of owning a gun with the intent of using it on another person, the point of my original post was to highlight the notion that a criminal will not be deterred from breaking into a house because the resident owns a gun. Why? Because there is no way for the criminal to know that.
Once inside, the sight of the gun may prompt the criminal to leave. It may also prompt the criminal to react violently and irrationally, or to use his own gun. When a gun is introduced into the action, it obviously dramatically increases the chances of someone being shot. That "someone" is not necessarily the criminal.
These are the realities that knee-jerk gun lovers gloss over.
The people that use Linux are not the people who make Linux. The vast majority of Linux users, like the users of any OS, aren't developers and can't write code.
So, the notion that the "user is the developer" is false. By definition, all Linux developers are Linux users, but only a small minority of Linux users are Linux developers.
It is those users who should have the greatest voice in determining what they like or dislike about Linux and what course they want to see it take. It is arrogant and presumptious for developers to assume they have complete control of Linux and that its users are "grateful" for any crumbs thrown to them.
The reason fonts remained so bloody poor for so long, and remain problematic, is that too many developers considered, and still consider, anything that looks like a professional display to be "eye candy". Users often rejected Linux because it was (a) too ugly and too hard to read, and, (b)lack of attention to display quality implied lack of attention to quality in other areas. To this criticism, many developers respond by simply defaming users as lazy and stupid.
My choice is not limited to coding a new font system or paying someone else to do it. My choices include not using Linux at all.
To cut to the chase, about the only thing you can do is make certain the car alarm is working. Consider installing a good alarm system in your mother's house, since a car is expendable, but your mother is not.
Ignore the testosterone-laden bozos who tell you to buy a gun for your mother. A gun will have no deterrent value. Criminals are not telepathic. They will not know there's a gun in the house they're about to break into.
Once a criminal is in the house, of course, your mother can wave her gun around. That may, in fact, protect her. It may also involve her in months and months of legal anguish. If you do buy her a gun, be sure you also buy her some training so she doesn't shoot herself.
Remember, too, that the cops' job is to catch people after they commit a crime. Unless you can talk the local town council into stationing a police patrol in front of your mother's house, I wouldn't expect too much from them.
In the end, the real solution may be to move, if that is realistic.
>> You have to set fonts in many many places.
That's the biggest problem with fonts in Linux: Lack of an integrated and unified approach to font and display management. Too many developer egos and way too much NIH syndrome. Everyone does their own thing.
Regardless of the desktop or the window manager you use, you ought to able able to select and manage all your fonts from one single location. Any changes made there should be reflected across your system, in all areas and in all applications.
Today, KDE goes one way, Gnome goes another, openoffice a third way, and almost every other individual application goes its own way. These applications should allow individual customization, but should know and default to the choices you make for the system.
For example, Gnome allows me to select an "application" font. But my selection there isn't reflected in most of the applications I use. KDE takes a similar approach with equally mixed results.
The second biggest problem, not just regarding fonts, is whiney and arrogant developers and wanna-be developers who think Linux is their exclusive property and tell any user who ventures to make a suggestion or raise a criticism to "shut up and start coding". Someone needs to lock these guys in a room.
Munjoy looks good because it defaults to the equally good fonts produced by its creator, who also also tweaked KDE's Asteroid theme to good purpose. Toss in dbus, udev and a few other goodies and it is an excellent Debian-unstable derivative.
As for apt, it handles a dist-upgrade with no problems. Although it is KDE centric, I've installed and used Gnome with no problems appearing.
The current release can't handle Nvidia's proprietary driver. So, if 3D is a big deal for you, wait for the next release. (FWIW, installing dbus on a stock Debian unstable machine seems to keep X from finding the Nvidia driver.)
The best science fiction has always been about the future, not about today. I enjoy Sawyer's books, but they belong to the same sub-genre with Michael Crichton's novels: unusual things set in a comtemporary setting are given a patina of scientific justification. Hence, Neanderthals with neuroses and islands crawling with dinosaurs. Interesting, but certainly lacking in the "sense of wonder" area.
The best science fiction project human existence into a future that has been fundamentally altered by technology, either for the better or for the worse. When the author is up to it, and the concept itself is up to it, the reader can experience a transcendent realization of the wonder of the Universe and our place, for good or ill, in it. That, for example, is what I take away from a novel like Clarke's Childhood's End. That is what distinguished the Star Trek franchise: the occasional ability to whack us on the head with the insight that there really is no reason why, a few centuries from now, humans can't be living peacefully in something like the Federation in a galaxy peopled with other sentient species. That is a very hopeful message; it is not surprising that the franchise was born in the sixth decade of a century largely given over to war, death and fear.
Admittedly, I'm not a fantasy fan, but the few times I've tried it the novels seem like pure escapism, comic books without pictures telling impossible stories of elves and magic.
You're gonna be plastered by people chanting "choice" and who, as a matter of warped principal, will never concede that anything at all about Windows might actually be worthy of emulation.
There is absolutely no reason why sofware installation should not be standardized in Linux. Software installation is an occasional, mundane, and necessary task. The current abundance of package and dependency resolution schemes offers a false choice that, in reality, limits and confines the user by locking him into that particular system.
Software installation is not what we buy computers for, regardless of how we use them or what OS they run. The continuing focus on it within the Linux community testifies to the immaturity of at least elements in that community and their inability to cooperatively resolve a problem that should be invisible to users.
The goal should be the ability of users to install software from any repository on any distribution.
How is apt-get supposed to be a solution to te shared library problem?
Apt-get isn't AI or magic. It's people who determine the dependencies and it's people who break programs by linking with specific outdated and/or conflicting libraries.
If Programs A and B both depend on mutually conflicting libraries, no dependency resolver will help.
Package managers lock you into the material available for your packaging system. If you need something that's only available in souce, then, in my experience, you run a greater risk by installing it than you would by installing it on a system that didn't use a package manager.
Typically, most people equate package managers with dependcy resolvers. Of course, they are not the same. Slackware has a package manager, for example, but no dependency resolver.
As a long-time Slackware user, I tend to install most new software from source. So, in effect, I become my own dependency resolver. This is seldom a problem. I know what's on my machine and I don't install code out of simple curiosity.
Everytime I've given a system that uses a dependency resolver, I've eventually run into a problem whose resolution requires me to learn more about the system's package manager/dependency resolver that I want to learn. So, they are nice for a while, but they add extra layers of complexity and they always break.
An idea is not an opinion.
If I announce my formula and then throw it away without revealing it, I have not relased any ideas.
In any case, I argued, as you should see by reading more carefully, that I do not have rights to own any ideas, nor does anyone else. Ideas cannot be owned, possessed or manipulated. That is simply impossible. If an idea cannt be owned, then it is pointless to debate who can own ideas. They simply cannot be owned.
What I did say, however, is that the physical work I create that expresses and/or represents, of necessity, ideas is, in fact, owned by me. No one can access it in any fashion unless I allow it.
So, if write my formula on a pice of paper, I own that piece of paper and the symbols written on it. That piece of paper is not an idea. If some devises an identical formula and writes it another piece of paper, I have not rights to it, nor they to mine.
Fixating on the word "property" is a mistake, taking this discussion in the wrong direction.
Invariably, someone asserts that IP is equivalent to "ideas" and that it is wrong/unethical/immoral to claim ownership of ideas.
I assert that entire line of argument is pointless. By its nature, an idea cannot be owned. An idea exists only as a thought confined to someone's brain.
However, works of intellect are not ideas. They are physical entities that use symbols to express and convey the information, the story, that the work's creator is trying to convey to others. Yes, those symbols express an author's ideas, but they are not ideas. The ideas remain in the mind of the author and, perhaps, in the minds of his audience.
So, therefore, if I write a book, the file or manuscript that is the single existing copy of that book belongs to me. Society may or may not benefit from exposure to that book, but society has no rights of access to it unless I, as its owner, transfer those rights.
The same applies, of course, to any such work -- music, sculpture, painting, etc. At some point, each work exists as some sort of a single physical entity that is owned, exclusively, by the person who made it. All rights to that object are vested in that person. No one else can legitimately access that work unless its owner transfers the necessary rights to them.
None of this has anything to do with ideas or access to ideas. To cite an extreme hypothetical example, if I conjure a formula for immortality and write it down on a piece of paper, I can do whatever I wish with that piece of paper. I can make millions of copies and drop them for airplanes, post it to Slashdot, or burn it and never tell anyone.
The counter to this argument requires explaining how rights to an object can move from that object's creator to someone else without that creator's sanction. (Such rights cannot move to "society", which is only a useful linguistic construct. They must move to one or more specific individuals.)
Again, what's the problem?
If you think a book is too long, don't read it. On the other hand, I might think it's just about right, and wonder why you bought that puny little thing you're reading. You and I don't have any right to decide for others what is worth reading or not.
It is nice to know you're worried about "the craft of writing and the pastime of reading". but I'm pretty certain those aren't uppermost in the minds of commercial authors and publishers. Nor in mine. We're talking computer books here, not works of literature.
>> The big fat "intro to whatever" books that are 1200 pages are a problem...
Why are they a problem? Is someone forcing you to buy them?
It's my impression that authors sign contracts with publishers that set the price, rather than some open-ended deal that sees a publisher agree to pay a fixed price per page. (What's a "page", anyway?) A publisher could not control its costs if it allowed writers to determine what it paid for manuscripts.
Frankly, it's my impression that all those huge books exist because people buy them. If they didn't, publishers would stop trying to sell them.
>>... one gets the feeling that its primary purpose is to allow the author to make some payments on a car or mortgage...
Geez, how did some people become so naive? Just figuring out that professional authors write for money? And you're offended by it?
If the news is available from sources people aren't reading, listening to, or watching, then it isn't being censored. If most people (not just the American pople, but people everywhere) choose to be entertained than spend hours gathering news from alternative site, that isn't at all comparable to censorship. It is an expression of popular choice,
TV station owners want to make money. They aren't engaged in some conspiracy to dumd down the American population. If ratings for for hours and hours of detailed news productions were higher than, says, "Survivor", they'd drop Survivor in a heartbeat.
Finally, every society, throughout history, has always had a "very small percentage of the American population has more wealth than a very large percentage of Americans combined". That's the essence of being rich: Having more money than most other people. There's nothing, in itself, wrong about that. And there's nothing wrong about TV not harping on it. We all know it.
They're isn't going to be a Soyuz upgrade. The plan that was lfoated several weeks ago is not funded and almost certainly will not be funded. Neither is their any plan for NASA to build a modified Apollo.
Building an LEO infrastructure than can support Lunar and planetary exploration requires the capacity to lift payloads on the order of 100 tons to LEO. That capability does not exist today, even with the Shuttle. Even then, we'd see dozens of launches each year.
ISS is an minimal experimental facility. I'm looking for a facility that supports dozens of people and where lunar and planetary craft are built, fueled, and launched. That will requiure new heavy-lift launchers.
If the law's so secret. how come this Gilmore character knows enough about it to file a lawsuit?
Maybe he will sue the next grocery that asks for his drivers license when he tries to cash a check.
Being asked to provide evidence that you are who you were said you when when you bought your ticket has nothing at all to do with privacy.
1. The "current configuration" is one step short of clsing down. In effect, the station's mission has been reconfigured and drawn down to permit support by Soyuz. The crew is down to two specifically because the Soyuz infrastructure cannot support anemergency departure by more than that number. If nothing other than the Soyuz ever flies, the station is moribund.
2. I don't care about making things in space stations. I care about human space travel.
3. Ellipses, circles, whatever. You be an engineer if you did't fathom the point.
4. The Shuttle was designed to support ISS. Since ISS has no real purpose, the Shuttle has no purpose. BTW, the Air Force bowed out of the Shuttle before it was even operational. The NRO gave up on it as a satellite launcher after Challenger.
5. Soyuz can't be used for lunar missions without modifications and additions.
6. Canoes = current spacecraft, both Soyuz and Shuttle. We need spacecraft comparable to carriers. Or is that another metaphor you missed?
7. Spitfire? Geez. No one's talking about abandoning things. Just building the right tools for the job. Soyuz does what it does. But we knew how to do that 40 years ago. Time to go somewhere other than LEO.
Get it? I don't care how we get to LEO. It's almost routine.
1. The Souyz cannot support the station. It does what is does rather well, but it cannot support the station in its current configuration, much less support its completion.
2. Space stations, in general, serve no purpose unless they support travel elsewhere. ISS doesn't. Neither did Mir. They just went in circles.
3. The U.S. may not be specifically buying seats on the Soyuz, but the Russian program has been supported and sustained in many ways since the Soviet collapse by NASA.
4. The Shuttle was a closed loop because, like Mir and ISS, it went in circles, literally, If the purpose of space travel is to travel in space, neither the Shuttle, Mir or ISS have a purpose.
5. The Russian's may operate their program on a shoestring, but all they're doing is a few minimal launchs annually,
6. The point you are missing is that the Soyuz is not, and cannot be, the basis for building an infrastructure that will support human exploration of the moon and the planets. Neither can the Shuttle or ISS. So, as I see it, Soyuz is rather akin to a successful canoe, when we need to be building aircraft carriers.