To give one (and only) examples, you talk about word vs. vi (or emacs)
No, I do not talk about Word vs. vi. I compared and actually lumped them together.
I understand the difference between vi/notepad and Word/whatever as text processor/word processor. I also understand that at the meta level they are both things that manipulate text, simply two different conceptual approaches to achieving the same end.
I don't use word processors at all (LaTeX is the way to go;-))
Q.E.D.
OpenOffice is the only non-M$ alternative to M$ Offix
Here I would disagree. There are many alternatives. Alternative does not mean "drop in replacement."
. ..and it's not (yet) as good as the former. ..
It is not yet the equal of, on a drop in replacement basis to use as if it actually were MS Office. "As good as" is an entirely different concept. If I were to compare Word vs. vi, for instance, I would argue that a text editor and a standard markup language is better than Word (although one could make a Word Processor out of the combo by giving it a graphical front end).
For the most part Wordpad, which comes free with Windows, is a better Word processor than Word. It is small, fast, resource friendly and all most people need.
As more and more business move to 'web-deployed' business software I predict a big departure from HTML for web applications.
I predict that as more and more business move to 'web-deployed' business software the more their wet dream of an annuity will collapse as businesses insist on the one time payment model, or just downloading the free version and installing that.
Joe public user doesnt want to know about "You cant use drag and drop anymore, the browser doesnt support it".
Why is Joe public user playing Solitaire over the web?
. ..you can get the rich client experience in the browser.
Arrrrrrrgh! He said the words. Run away! Run away!
Users will demand this, execs will demand this and development companies/open source groups will provide this.
Do you, by any chance, work for/on "rich client experience in the browser"?
How can a patent system protect the genuinely innovative little guys, whilst preventing the abuses the Big Business will practice in order to protect their market share?
If we are discussing software patents, don't give the big guys patents in the first place--or the little guys.
Extending patent protection to ideas was a braindead idea.
Well, I'm noted for my imagination, and I've read all the major works of science fiction going back to Verne and Wells. I started reading Analog and F&SF when I was six, beginning with my mother's ten year backlog of both, so there's something like half a century of some pretty solid science fiction reading right there.
I've also read Asimov's science fact, which I adore, a good deal of Sagan, Gould, Weisenberg, Russell, Thorne, Shapely, et al, and god knows how many physics, math, chemistry, programing, etc. texts.
So, on the whole, I think I'm reasonably qualified to sort out the science from the fiction.
I certainly never said there wasn't still work to be done or progress to be made, but. ..
It's pretty much time to stick a fork in the word processor. It's done.
No, I really don't think the bugs are there to drive the upgrade cycle. I think the bugs are they because they really don't give a shit. Shoddy workmanship. Not the fault, for the most part, of the programmers either, but of the entire aura of the software industry, reaching even into the training the programers get in college. A lot of OSS programers fall prey to this too I'm afraid and the majority of selftaught off the internet programers don't even know enough to know what they don't know, but defend their ignorance vehemently.
It all makes for a lot of crappy programing on all sorts of levels and there are certainly still all sorts of improvements to be made in all sorts of places.
But even given all that software is still maturing. A word processor is a word processor and MS word processors and their spawn hit their peak with 97. emacs and vi just keep working, and working, and working. ..
No, I really think most of the propriatary companies really believed that by following their policy of only releasing upgrades in slow cycles well below the rate they were actually developing product they could extend the process for decades, relying on technology to outpace their own release cycle.
Yes, this has certainly played a role in letting OSS catch up and even pass their product in some cases.
I think some of the companies just didn't think about it at all. They were young and just got caught up in the whole fervor of the thing, ploughed ahead blindly and got surprised when software turned out to be just another technology business prey to all the laws of the real world.
Microsoft is a special case though. It's a company founded on a cult of personality more than anything else. I've never seen a company, except maybe early IBM, simply exude the personality of its founder more than Microsoft.
And Bill is one of these people who simply does not acknowledge other people as valid other people. He has a "right to innovate." He has a right to conduct business however he likes, because his like is what's right. We get to do what he says, when he says it because we don't share his rights.
So Microsoft simply thought they could make us upgrade forever without ever even considering that we might simply refuse. It wasn't in their world view that that was possible.
And OSS catching up and even surpassing their product in some cases (well, virtually all really. The best Windows programs don't come from Microsoft) is certainly playing a role in disquieting them. It rattles their whole view of cosmology.
Like the Protestant Reformation rattled the Pope.
OSS has its own problem with maturation though. It likes to press ever onward at increasing speed and yesterday's project becomes uninteresting.
Somebody has to do the last two percent of finishing up a project and tying a bow on it. In OSS this only seems to happen with the console programs.
Just like people smart enough to make an atomic bomb would be smart enough not to use it. In extremis and mixed in with a bit of ignorance people will do amazing things in retrospect, espcially as a group. There's nothing stupider than a nation with an enemy. We learn by trial and error. For the most part smart people aren't people who don't make mistakes, they're people who recognize them as mistakes and then don't do it again.
But the mistake comes first.
As for that explosion of Mars thingy, I'd kinda like to see that myself and I know of no theoretical restriction on time travel to the future, but I'd like a chance to walk around the place a bit first.
I've always fancied making a copy of Harrison's H.1 clock. Harrison's were probably the most accurate clocks ever made until Reifler which is a championship reign of about 150 years.
That's a good connection, but the two things would look very different. The Big Bang looks vaguely like a big bomb done went off. It scattered debris and radiation, but the debris is expanding and the distances between the matter in increasing, all the while the initial energy of explosion is dissipating and space gets colder and colder.
An energy feedback would look like a point version of Olber's Paradox. If the universe were inifinately large and looked the same from any point it would contain an infinate number of stars and over time space would fill up with energy making it brigher and brighter. Even the night sky should blinding (and since it isn't we can conclude that there aren't an infinate number of stars). If there were an energy feedback at some point a "ball" of light would emanate from it that ever increased in diameter and intensity and space would get hotter and hotter.
So, if we ever see a "supernova" event that refuses to burn out, engulfs its galaxy and then just keeps going, we can deduce that some"one", somewhere, has invented time travel to the past and we'll have to make our time (which could be billions of years. You won't get out of your AmEx bill that easy).
Since we don't see this we can deduce that a)no "one" anywhere has ever been able to do it, or b)they did it but never tried coming back this far, or c)it certainly wasn't us in any case because the first thing we would have done was go check out some dinosaurs, unless we were a dork like Bruce Willis under the command of insurance underwriters or something. (Of course there's also d)there's a flaw in the reasoning somewhere. Which would still leave us with Hawking's argument--where are all the time tourists pointing at us, giggling and saying things like "My. How quaint."?)
Hey man, warn a guy to bring his shovel and boots before you post like that, will ya?
I assume people have them when they come in here. If they don't I assume they get what they deserve and will know better next time. If they don't know better next time, well, it's not my responsibility to look out for every idiot in the world.
Time is simply one way of viewing entropy. It is thermodynamic and innately unidirectional. Time travel to the future is simple, it just takes a while to accomplish. It is generally claimed reversing time would violate cause and effect. This isn't really true, it would simply exchange causes for effects. What it would violate is the second law of thermodynamics. The result of this would be the setting up of a feedback cycle that increased energy in "the past" infinately. Not only do we not observe this, it would be a Bad Thing.
In terms of controling "dimensions" the fact of the matter is that we are, for all of our technological advances, still restrained to "control" things within the bounds of natural law. We can manipulate those laws in certain ways to achieve certain effects we desire, but we are, and always will be, constrained by them.
Thus pure research is not so much expanding our limits as it is determining what the absolute limits beyond which we cannot go actually are. The more we learn, the more we learn we are constrained. In fact, that was the whole point of the Theory of Relativity which is really the Theory of an Absolute Limit.
It would seem that travel in time is one of those absolute contraints, which, no matter how much you and I might like to go look at some dinosaurs, is probably a Good Thing.
The future, however, is simply awaiting our arrival.
Q:Should you build a wall around your city and only let residents in or out so you don't have to have locks on your doors?
A:There really isn't any point, since it won't work (some of your neighbors, as it turns out, are thieves. Go figure.) and you'll have to put locks on your doors anyway. In the meantime everyone else thinks you're all a bunch of paranoid assholes.
Ambiguous limits and shady enforcement policies foster a sense of unease among users.
Yeah, and it's always good to have your customers uneasy about using your service.
When I owned an R/C track I offered unlimited practice for three bucks a driver a day. I told people flat out that they could show up at opening with the wife and kiddies bearing a picnic basket and stay until closing for their three bucks.
And some people did, and it was a real pain in the ass because I wasn't the sort to just take their money and sit behind the counter ignoring them all day. I considered my customers my guests and treated them as such, making sure music they liked was playing, the sort of racing tapes they liked were on the TV, helped them set up their cars and even played with their kids so that they'd be free to play with their cars.
That's a lot of work for three bucks.
But I didn't consider these people as abusing my policy. I set my policy. My policy was my policy.
And I had a lot of happy customers who loved coming to my place and hanging out, who felt free to just pop in for a few minutes or a few hours. Who never felt they had to carefully schedule their visits so they came more often.
So I had more customers overall, because they were all happy.
It is our duty to inform you that Freebird is the intellectual property of one of our constituant members, thus giving a free bird is going to cost you.
Please send everything you have plus 10% per Slashdot reader (which we place at 37 billion). We'll be by for your liver later.
Slashdot Mirror
"This is the only place that seems to fit [Plato's] description," he told BBC News Online.
Except for its not being an island and all the other bits we ignored to make the data fit the model.
KFG
Am I the only one who can't see the rings in that photo?
You have to look at them in the n-ray spectrum.
KFG
To give one (and only) examples, you talk about word vs. vi (or emacs)
;-))
.and it's not (yet) as good as the former. . .
No, I do not talk about Word vs. vi. I compared and actually lumped them together.
I understand the difference between vi/notepad and Word/whatever as text processor/word processor. I also understand that at the meta level they are both things that manipulate text, simply two different conceptual approaches to achieving the same end.
I don't use word processors at all (LaTeX is the way to go
Q.E.D.
OpenOffice is the only non-M$ alternative to M$ Offix
Here I would disagree. There are many alternatives. Alternative does not mean "drop in replacement."
. .
It is not yet the equal of, on a drop in replacement basis to use as if it actually were MS Office. "As good as" is an entirely different concept. If I were to compare Word vs. vi, for instance, I would argue that a text editor and a standard markup language is better than Word (although one could make a Word Processor out of the combo by giving it a graphical front end).
For the most part Wordpad, which comes free with Windows, is a better Word processor than Word. It is small, fast, resource friendly and all most people need.
So is OpenOffice.
I spoke of "propriatary software", "the software industry," and "college," not Microsoft.
KFG
As more and more business move to 'web-deployed' business software I predict a big departure from HTML for web applications.
.you can get the rich client experience in the browser.
I predict that as more and more business move to 'web-deployed' business software the more their wet dream of an annuity will collapse as businesses insist on the one time payment model, or just downloading the free version and installing that.
Joe public user doesnt want to know about "You cant use drag and drop anymore, the browser doesnt support it".
Why is Joe public user playing Solitaire over the web?
. .
Arrrrrrrgh! He said the words. Run away! Run away!
Users will demand this, execs will demand this and development companies/open source groups will provide this.
Do you, by any chance, work for/on "rich client experience in the browser"?
KFG
How can a patent system protect the genuinely innovative little guys, whilst preventing the abuses the Big Business will practice in order to protect their market share?
If we are discussing software patents, don't give the big guys patents in the first place--or the little guys.
Extending patent protection to ideas was a braindead idea.
KFG
no imagination and reads too little science
.
Well, I'm noted for my imagination, and I've read all the major works of science fiction going back to Verne and Wells. I started reading Analog and F&SF when I was six, beginning with my mother's ten year backlog of both, so there's something like half a century of some pretty solid science fiction reading right there.
I've also read Asimov's science fact, which I adore, a good deal of Sagan, Gould, Weisenberg, Russell, Thorne, Shapely, et al, and god knows how many physics, math, chemistry, programing, etc. texts.
So, on the whole, I think I'm reasonably qualified to sort out the science from the fiction.
I certainly never said there wasn't still work to be done or progress to be made, but. .
It's pretty much time to stick a fork in the word processor. It's done.
KFG
Well, in other cultures it's called "maturity" ;-)
;-)
Hey, I don't think that proprietary software makers saw it coming either! (I'm on a roll here!
Personally I don't see it coming any time soon for Bill or Larry. Linus's real ace in the hole is being well ahead of them on that score.
KFG
No, I really don't think the bugs are there to drive the upgrade cycle. I think the bugs are they because they really don't give a shit. Shoddy workmanship. Not the fault, for the most part, of the programmers either, but of the entire aura of the software industry, reaching even into the training the programers get in college. A lot of OSS programers fall prey to this too I'm afraid and the majority of selftaught off the internet programers don't even know enough to know what they don't know, but defend their ignorance vehemently.
.
It all makes for a lot of crappy programing on all sorts of levels and there are certainly still all sorts of improvements to be made in all sorts of places.
But even given all that software is still maturing. A word processor is a word processor and MS word processors and their spawn hit their peak with 97. emacs and vi just keep working, and working, and working. .
No, I really think most of the propriatary companies really believed that by following their policy of only releasing upgrades in slow cycles well below the rate they were actually developing product they could extend the process for decades, relying on technology to outpace their own release cycle.
Yes, this has certainly played a role in letting OSS catch up and even pass their product in some cases.
I think some of the companies just didn't think about it at all. They were young and just got caught up in the whole fervor of the thing, ploughed ahead blindly and got surprised when software turned out to be just another technology business prey to all the laws of the real world.
Microsoft is a special case though. It's a company founded on a cult of personality more than anything else. I've never seen a company, except maybe early IBM, simply exude the personality of its founder more than Microsoft.
And Bill is one of these people who simply does not acknowledge other people as valid other people. He has a "right to innovate." He has a right to conduct business however he likes, because his like is what's right. We get to do what he says, when he says it because we don't share his rights.
So Microsoft simply thought they could make us upgrade forever without ever even considering that we might simply refuse. It wasn't in their world view that that was possible.
And OSS catching up and even surpassing their product in some cases (well, virtually all really. The best Windows programs don't come from Microsoft) is certainly playing a role in disquieting them. It rattles their whole view of cosmology.
Like the Protestant Reformation rattled the Pope.
OSS has its own problem with maturation though. It likes to press ever onward at increasing speed and yesterday's project becomes uninteresting.
Somebody has to do the last two percent of finishing up a project and tying a bow on it. In OSS this only seems to happen with the console programs.
KFG
If so, is that because they can't make enough new products (Longhorn >= 2007 ? ) or can't get people to migrate.
Yes. As software improves it gets harder and harder to improve it. As software improves people see less and less reason to upgrade.
It's called "maturation," which, for some reason, most propriatary software makers never saw coming.
KFG
Just like people smart enough to make an atomic bomb would be smart enough not to use it. In extremis and mixed in with a bit of ignorance people will do amazing things in retrospect, espcially as a group. There's nothing stupider than a nation with an enemy. We learn by trial and error. For the most part smart people aren't people who don't make mistakes, they're people who recognize them as mistakes and then don't do it again.
But the mistake comes first.
As for that explosion of Mars thingy, I'd kinda like to see that myself and I know of no theoretical restriction on time travel to the future, but I'd like a chance to walk around the place a bit first.
KFG
I've always fancied making a copy of Harrison's H.1 clock. Harrison's were probably the most accurate clocks ever made until Reifler which is a championship reign of about 150 years.
I wouldn't need a Meccano set though.
I'd need a lumberyard.
And several "spare" years.
KFG
That's a good connection, but the two things would look very different. The Big Bang looks vaguely like a big bomb done went off. It scattered debris and radiation, but the debris is expanding and the distances between the matter in increasing, all the while the initial energy of explosion is dissipating and space gets colder and colder.
An energy feedback would look like a point version of Olber's Paradox. If the universe were inifinately large and looked the same from any point it would contain an infinate number of stars and over time space would fill up with energy making it brigher and brighter. Even the night sky should blinding (and since it isn't we can conclude that there aren't an infinate number of stars). If there were an energy feedback at some point a "ball" of light would emanate from it that ever increased in diameter and intensity and space would get hotter and hotter.
So, if we ever see a "supernova" event that refuses to burn out, engulfs its galaxy and then just keeps going, we can deduce that some"one", somewhere, has invented time travel to the past and we'll have to make our time (which could be billions of years. You won't get out of your AmEx bill that easy).
Since we don't see this we can deduce that a)no "one" anywhere has ever been able to do it, or b)they did it but never tried coming back this far, or c)it certainly wasn't us in any case because the first thing we would have done was go check out some dinosaurs, unless we were a dork like Bruce Willis under the command of insurance underwriters or something. (Of course there's also d)there's a flaw in the reasoning somewhere. Which would still leave us with Hawking's argument--where are all the time tourists pointing at us, giggling and saying things like "My. How quaint."?)
KFG
Hey man, warn a guy to bring his shovel and boots before you post like that, will ya?
I assume people have them when they come in here. If they don't I assume they get what they deserve and will know better next time. If they don't know better next time, well, it's not my responsibility to look out for every idiot in the world.
KFG
Time is simply one way of viewing entropy. It is thermodynamic and innately unidirectional. Time travel to the future is simple, it just takes a while to accomplish. It is generally claimed reversing time would violate cause and effect. This isn't really true, it would simply exchange causes for effects. What it would violate is the second law of thermodynamics. The result of this would be the setting up of a feedback cycle that increased energy in "the past" infinately. Not only do we not observe this, it would be a Bad Thing.
In terms of controling "dimensions" the fact of the matter is that we are, for all of our technological advances, still restrained to "control" things within the bounds of natural law. We can manipulate those laws in certain ways to achieve certain effects we desire, but we are, and always will be, constrained by them.
Thus pure research is not so much expanding our limits as it is determining what the absolute limits beyond which we cannot go actually are. The more we learn, the more we learn we are constrained. In fact, that was the whole point of the Theory of Relativity which is really the Theory of an Absolute Limit.
It would seem that travel in time is one of those absolute contraints, which, no matter how much you and I might like to go look at some dinosaurs, is probably a Good Thing.
The future, however, is simply awaiting our arrival.
KFG
Q:Should you build a wall around your city and only let residents in or out so you don't have to have locks on your doors?
A:There really isn't any point, since it won't work (some of your neighbors, as it turns out, are thieves. Go figure.) and you'll have to put locks on your doors anyway. In the meantime everyone else thinks you're all a bunch of paranoid assholes.
KFG
Think if you found out by a cop that your kid was abused and his/her pic was online for pedo-freaks to masterbate to?
True. I'd wonder why he didn't just use the Sears catalog like decent folk do.
KFG
And what about the first legit child abuse support site they block?
Why, then the public simply infers, since they are blocked, that they are child pornographers.
KFG
Ambiguous limits and shady enforcement policies foster a sense of unease among users.
Yeah, and it's always good to have your customers uneasy about using your service.
When I owned an R/C track I offered unlimited practice for three bucks a driver a day. I told people flat out that they could show up at opening with the wife and kiddies bearing a picnic basket and stay until closing for their three bucks.
And some people did, and it was a real pain in the ass because I wasn't the sort to just take their money and sit behind the counter ignoring them all day. I considered my customers my guests and treated them as such, making sure music they liked was playing, the sort of racing tapes they liked were on the TV, helped them set up their cars and even played with their kids so that they'd be free to play with their cars.
That's a lot of work for three bucks.
But I didn't consider these people as abusing my policy. I set my policy. My policy was my policy.
And I had a lot of happy customers who loved coming to my place and hanging out, who felt free to just pop in for a few minutes or a few hours. Who never felt they had to carefully schedule their visits so they came more often.
So I had more customers overall, because they were all happy.
KFG
It means I can hold two contradictory thoughts in my head and not be bothered.
No, cognative dissonance is specifically the being bothered about it part of holding two contradictory ideas at the same time.
That doesn't mean you stop holding one of the ideas. I means you kick the dog and then post an AC rant.
KFG
I leave the DRM to the others who have already answered, so I'll address how Ogg Vorbis support matches up with revenue.
More iPod owners, more people likely to buy content from iTunes. Anything that spreads the iPod beyond the core of Apple users is potential revenue.
KFG
Dear Sir,
I sense a kindred sense of humor and raise my mug of Blue Mountain to you.
May the metamoderators have mercy on your soul.
KFG
. . .almost everyone's using check cards, ATM cards, and what have you. . .
I just came back from one of those neighborhood wide garage sales.
KFG
This does tend to confirm that the music industry considers there customers criminals and feels they should be treated as such.
Nonsense. Even criminals are allowed to own a CD as their own property.
I believe they consider us criminal Morlocks.
KFG
/me gives RIAA the finger
Dear Sir,
It is our duty to inform you that Freebird is the intellectual property of one of our constituant members, thus giving a free bird is going to cost you.
Please send everything you have plus 10% per Slashdot reader (which we place at 37 billion). We'll be by for your liver later.
Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.
Sincerly,
The R.I. "Satan is our Bitch" I. A.
KFG