It sounds more like professional sports to me. Particularly auto racing where the idea that you use to win today is used by all of your competitors to beat you tomorrow.
You won't find many auto racers who are communists. The structure inherently attracts rabid individualists and fanatical Libertarians.
Kinda like computer geeks. Gearhead is just a subcatagory of geek, as is bithead.
Also, never forget the maxim that the only thing sweeter than money earned is money won.
People will die trying to win a penny where they wouldn't work for a million bucks.
Much of human behaviour that appears mysterious is hidden in this simple fact.
B) Anyone who receives one of those invoices might try to challenge SCO's copyrights. Given that the presiding judge ruled ATT was "unlikely" to prevail on their copyright claims in the BSD case, SCO does not want to put their copyrights to the test in court.
I keep pointing this one out, and being told I'm an idiot in various ways, but the fact of the matter is that UNIX code has already been judicially reviewed and the result of that review suggests that SCO's magic bag of intellectual property is, and always was, empty.
That's why the only "trick" they've managed to pull out of it so far is a cheap and tawdry contractual disagreement.
Even that one is bogus and unimplemented in the vast majority of actual installs.
It's less a dog and pony show than a strip tease. And I really *don't* want to imagine Darl naked.
"Haah. Ah'm SCO. This is my brother Darl and this is my other brother Darl. We're the McIdiots. Would you lahk us to strip fer yew?"
"No? How about we eat a dead rat, or business plan, or OS, or somethin'?"
According to people who have actually tried it it isn't even possible to sign up for a user license, at any rate.
No license is actually available.
It's all a big dog and pony show (with fake dogs and ponies) and even SCO staff are puzzled and frustrated, particularly the sales staff who actually have to tell people to take a hike.
Well, like I said, I consider 50 as ample. This is not to say that I consider it ideal.
If I had my druthers I'd make it 15 years renewable once for another 15.
This allows fair time to show the work is marketable; and if it is maintain your monopoly for a while.
On the other hand it allows an acceleration of the process of becoming public domain in those cases where it isn't worth the author's time and effort to fill out a form and pay another ten bucks to maintain his monopoly.
After that, well, write something new Sparky. Even Joseph Heller, the most lethargic novelist known to man, managed to wobble out a new novel every decade or so.
Pop songs can be cranked out on an assembly line, and obviously are. I really don't see why the authors/owners of "Sugar, Sugar" and "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy I've got Love in my Tummy" deserve a sinecure for life. ..And Beyond!
If I fix someone's car I don't expect to derive continuing income from it. More to the point, I certainly don't expect that my descendents should derive an income from it. I rather expect that they should have to fix someone else's car to earn money.
If I do wish my descendents to have an easy life why don't I just invest my earnings to create a trust fund for them?
I have no problem with authors making a decent income for their work, but I also have no problem with them having to continue to produce works to maintain themselves and their heirs.
Just like everyone else.
50 years has always seemed both a fair and ample copyright duration to me, protecting both the rights of the author and the public.
Bzzzzt! Wrong wrong answer. One could be Spanish and Cuban as part of the Empire. You're trying to tell me there's no such thing as a Puerto Rican or a Vermonter?
Now let's see if you're bright and informed enough to find the real historical falsity in my post.
You aren't old enough to remember when we had three big TV networks who controled everything, are you?
I live three blocks from the very first commercial TV studio in history ( WRGB, GE Broadcasting Company, now used as a science lab by the Schenectady County Community College ), my father worked for them in sales and managment. I got to see a bit of how things worked from the inside.
We do not want to return to that. Trust me on this one.
This afternoon I've been watching shows about Velociraptors in China, Easter Island, Anime, The Hauorani ( with nudity, as per National Geographic Magazine) and several different and distinct points of view on the same news story, from different nations.
In the old days I would have had my choice between three essentially identical "day time dramas" and three essentially identical American news shows broadcasting at noon and six only.
You can take that and shove it. I like my diversity and "duplication of effort," thank you very much.
To Sun, or not to Sun. That is the question. Whether tis nobler of the budget to suffer the bogosity and "RTFM!"s of outrageous Linux zealots, or, by taking contract for a sea of packages, have them supported.
"Perhaps if they start charging some serious money for stuff, then things will change."
Indeed, things would change a great deal. They would be ignored completely.
Paperclips are ubiquitous because they are virtually free, as well as useful.
Ferraris? Well, there are fewer of them than paperclips and the company has teetered on the verge of financial disaster since its inception. Only Agnelli money has kept them alive at all.
Lots of Skoda shitboxes running around though.
If paperclips were gold plated and cost $100 apiece no one would have one, let alone thousands, and the paperclip companies would be constantly teetering on the edge of disaster.
Java's only value comes if it is ubiquitous. Thus it needs to be effectively without cost. Expensive Java would be ignored, and thus worthless.
Nor can a company simply set prices while ignoring its competition.
What does Linux/Apache/Python cost again?
If Sun wishes to make money the very first thing they have to do is make a true and honest assessment on the state of the market and their place in it.
For all the brilliant minds that Sun has had under their roof over the years this is the one thing that they seem completely unable to do.
I'll start you out with a link to ESR's "The Art of Unix Programing," which deals with Unix history and philosophy quite nicely, right up front:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/
And the Unix Koans of Master Foo:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/
Maybe it'll be all you need and save you even the trip to the library.
Since most Linux users traditionally come out of the Unix culture Linux books, even those at the "Dummies" level ( I failed to install Linux for a week using "Linux for Dummies", it didn't even make any sense to me) assume you are already aculturated.
Unix books tend to assume you're some poor, dumb slob who's being sat down at a terminal for the first time and are thinking, "What the F**k?!"
Which is exactly what those of us who came to Unix already indoctrinated in other systems are thinking when finally getting Linux successfully installed.
The hardest part of getting used to a Unix is just learning where things are and why they are there. This is a bit of a Catch-22, because you can't really understand that until you understand the Unix philosophy. Nifty, huh?:)
What't the first question most Linux newbies ask?
"Does it run MS Office?"
What they can't know, because they don't understand the culture, is that that's the wrong question to ask. Unix doesn't even really know about "apps." It has a fine grained modular structure.
A Unix weenie will answer that question with, "Well, duh! No," while wondering why anyone would even want that.
The correct question is, "How do I produce a document?"
Then the Unix weenie can answer, "Oh, that's easy, you type the text in with your favorite text editor, spell check it with ispell, format it with LaTex, search it with grep. ..," etc.
None of these things are "apps" in the PC sense. They are all small programs that perform single functions and are inherent to the system.
Your mail program and your wordprocessor don't each maintain a spell checker. The system has spell checking capability. The system can search and modify text files.
In the MS world you buy a kit for every model you wish to build. You want a Cutty Sark? Fine, we'll sell you a Cutty Sark kit. You want a Bluenose instead? Well, we'll sell you that kit too.
In the Unix world you're given a "tool kit," a pile of materials and a book of plans.
KDE and Gnome have certainly done a good job of making Windows like enviroments and apps for Linux, and I certainly encourage you to use them ( I'm typing this in Konquerer right now), but always remember that down underneath the GUI things are happening in very Unixy ways, or you'll get bit sooner or later.
Oh, and just to be fair I'll close out by giving you a link to the Unix Hater's Handbook.:)
Re:Application programming is a dying paradigm
on
Ford To Move To Linux
·
· Score: 1
"Most new, non-game applications these days are written for the Web.
This way, any platform can connect to the application and run it the same way as anyone else would on a Palm Pilot or Pocket PC or Linux or Solaris or Windows or whatever.
Through XML and standard Web technologies, we are making a revolution in availability. No longer does each client/end-user of the application have to download and install certain drivers or use a certain computer -- the application behaves and runs the same on any device."
Yep, universal availability, so long as you're connected to the network and the server is up.
I can also look forward to my SPARC workstation having all the power and usability of my Palm Pilot.
Yowza! Where do I sign up?
"When an app does have to be a traditional desktop program. .."
Which would still be most of them, if only for internal security reasons.
"But for most all-new programs, bosses are increasingly and more often suggesting that these be written for the Web, and for the Web exclusively."
Because bosses are well known for having keen insight into the best engineering solution to a particular problem.
There are valid reasons for writing to the <i>browser</i> as interface ( not the web ) but these reasons are still fairly few and far between.
"The Linux-vs.-Microsoft thing is dying."
Except for that adhering to open standards vs. trying to control the web for personal enrichment thingy, yeah.
The very first lesson that every Linux newbie learns is:
Documentation sucks.
It's getting better by the day, but it still sucks.
Fortunately there's an alternative. UNIX books. Don't bother spending money on these. Go to your library, browse around, pick a couple that "speak" to you. After a few nights of poking at these all of a sudden the Linux books will start to make sense to you and you can return to them.
The thing you absolutely must understand is that you are joining the Unix community and its culture. These are not merely empty buzzwords. They have real meaning and import. Unix/Linux are not merely "Windows alternatives" in the sense that they simply replace Windows with a free version. Unix is fundamentally different. It's foreign. Like when you go to Japan and can't even guess where the restrooms are.
Windows is the end result of a series of commercial accidents and commercial rapacity.
Unix was designed by a handful of people outside of the commercial sphere (AT&T was actually forbiden by law to enter such a sphere at the time) according to their ideas of what an OS should be and how it should work. A growing community who agreed with that philosophy took hold of it and has pushed its development to where you see it today.
That original philosophy and community are still the core values of Unix. Learn them and you'll get along. Insist on doing things the way you grew accustomed to under MS "products" and you will always be unhappy.
Always.
You can't just learn a few new commands, just as in Japan you can't just learn a few equivilent words to English words you know. The very culture that words are built upon are different.
Read the UNIX books, or UNIX may forever remain "inscrutable" to you.
Spend your actual money on two O'Reilly books. Running Linux and Linux in a Nutshell. These might not be what you consider the best books in the long run, but they'll put you on the right track. On the other hand you might just find they're the only pure Linux books you'll ever need.
handheld wireless tecnology. Pulse Code Modulated to boot.
Yeah, I understand that's it's cool that they've been able to do it this way and the technology may have some legitimate applications in the future and I applaud them for having done it.
Just remember, before you rush out to try to build one of these things, that's it's actually a pretty daft way to control a model airplane.
Just because we have a hammer does not mean that everything is a nail. The world is still full of screws and rivets, not to mention the odd bit of glue and welding.
Slashdot Mirror
It sounds more like professional sports to me. Particularly auto racing where the idea that you use to win today is used by all of your competitors to beat you tomorrow.
You won't find many auto racers who are communists. The structure inherently attracts rabid individualists and fanatical Libertarians.
Kinda like computer geeks. Gearhead is just a subcatagory of geek, as is bithead.
Also, never forget the maxim that the only thing sweeter than money earned is money won.
People will die trying to win a penny where they wouldn't work for a million bucks.
Much of human behaviour that appears mysterious is hidden in this simple fact.
KFG
B) Anyone who receives one of those invoices might try to challenge SCO's copyrights. Given that the presiding judge ruled ATT was "unlikely" to prevail on their copyright claims in the BSD case, SCO does not want to put their copyrights to the test in court.
I keep pointing this one out, and being told I'm an idiot in various ways, but the fact of the matter is that UNIX code has already been judicially reviewed and the result of that review suggests that SCO's magic bag of intellectual property is, and always was, empty.
That's why the only "trick" they've managed to pull out of it so far is a cheap and tawdry contractual disagreement.
Even that one is bogus and unimplemented in the vast majority of actual installs.
It's less a dog and pony show than a strip tease. And I really *don't* want to imagine Darl naked.
"Haah. Ah'm SCO. This is my brother Darl and this is my other brother Darl. We're the McIdiots. Would you lahk us to strip fer yew?"
"No? How about we eat a dead rat, or business plan, or OS, or somethin'?"
"Okey-dokey. Just give us yer money then."
KFG
According to people who have actually tried it it isn't even possible to sign up for a user license, at any rate.
No license is actually available.
It's all a big dog and pony show (with fake dogs and ponies) and even SCO staff are puzzled and frustrated, particularly the sales staff who actually have to tell people to take a hike.
Cute, huh?
KFG
"Do you really miss the eliza psychologist that much?"
What makes you say that?
KFG
Well, like I said, I consider 50 as ample. This is not to say that I consider it ideal.
.And Beyond!
If I had my druthers I'd make it 15 years renewable once for another 15.
This allows fair time to show the work is marketable; and if it is maintain your monopoly for a while.
On the other hand it allows an acceleration of the process of becoming public domain in those cases where it isn't worth the author's time and effort to fill out a form and pay another ten bucks to maintain his monopoly.
After that, well, write something new Sparky. Even Joseph Heller, the most lethargic novelist known to man, managed to wobble out a new novel every decade or so.
Pop songs can be cranked out on an assembly line, and obviously are. I really don't see why the authors/owners of "Sugar, Sugar" and "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy I've got Love in my Tummy" deserve a sinecure for life. .
KFG
"No, I think here at Slashdot, you satrt with "Ummm..." and follow with something that essentially states "you are an idiot"."
Ummmmmmm. . . Yeah, right Sparky. Whatever.
KFG
If I fix someone's car I don't expect to derive continuing income from it. More to the point, I certainly don't expect that my descendents should derive an income from it. I rather expect that they should have to fix someone else's car to earn money.
If I do wish my descendents to have an easy life why don't I just invest my earnings to create a trust fund for them?
I have no problem with authors making a decent income for their work, but I also have no problem with them having to continue to produce works to maintain themselves and their heirs.
Just like everyone else.
50 years has always seemed both a fair and ample copyright duration to me, protecting both the rights of the author and the public.
KFG
"I'm no grammar nazi but aren't you not suppose to start sentences with "And"?"
And your point is. . . ?
KFG
expansion of governmental surviellence to me.
Yummy, where do I sign up?
KFG
Bzzzzt! Wrong wrong answer. One could be Spanish and Cuban as part of the Empire. You're trying to tell me there's no such thing as a Puerto Rican or a Vermonter?
Now let's see if you're bright and informed enough to find the real historical falsity in my post.
KFG
Oh, don't worry, it's not like one powerful media mogul could manipulate the populace and government into a war or anything.
I'm sure those nasty Cubans really blew up our battleship. I read it in the paper.
KFG
You aren't old enough to remember when we had three big TV networks who controled everything, are you?
I live three blocks from the very first commercial TV studio in history ( WRGB, GE Broadcasting Company, now used as a science lab by the Schenectady County Community College ), my father worked for them in sales and managment. I got to see a bit of how things worked from the inside.
We do not want to return to that. Trust me on this one.
This afternoon I've been watching shows about Velociraptors in China, Easter Island, Anime, The Hauorani ( with nudity, as per National Geographic Magazine) and several different and distinct points of view on the same news story, from different nations.
In the old days I would have had my choice between three essentially identical "day time dramas" and three essentially identical American news shows broadcasting at noon and six only.
You can take that and shove it. I like my diversity and "duplication of effort," thank you very much.
KFG
That's ok. I am not my job, nor am I my employer (well, ok, I am, but you get the point).
I take it for granted that the same applies to you.
KFG
To Sun, or not to Sun. That is the question.
Whether tis nobler of the budget to suffer the bogosity and "RTFM!"s of outrageous Linux zealots, or, by taking contract for a sea of packages, have them supported.
KFG
"Perhaps if they start charging some serious money for stuff, then things will change."
Indeed, things would change a great deal. They would be ignored completely.
Paperclips are ubiquitous because they are virtually free, as well as useful.
Ferraris? Well, there are fewer of them than paperclips and the company has teetered on the verge of financial disaster since its inception. Only Agnelli money has kept them alive at all.
Lots of Skoda shitboxes running around though.
If paperclips were gold plated and cost $100 apiece no one would have one, let alone thousands, and the paperclip companies would be constantly teetering on the edge of disaster.
Java's only value comes if it is ubiquitous. Thus it needs to be effectively without cost. Expensive Java would be ignored, and thus worthless.
Nor can a company simply set prices while ignoring its competition.
What does Linux/Apache/Python cost again?
If Sun wishes to make money the very first thing they have to do is make a true and honest assessment on the state of the market and their place in it.
For all the brilliant minds that Sun has had under their roof over the years this is the one thing that they seem completely unable to do.
KFG
Book 1: The Silent Void
1.2
The Tao gave birth to machine language. Machine language gave birth to the assembler.
The assembler gave birth to the compiler. Now there are ten thousand languages.
Each language has its purpose, however humble. Each language expresses the Yin and Yang of software. Each language has its place within the Tao.
But do not program in COBOL if you can avoid it.
KFG
I'll start you out with a link to ESR's "The Art of Unix Programing," which deals with Unix history and philosophy quite nicely, right up front:
:)
.," etc.
:)
o ad .html
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/
And the Unix Koans of Master Foo:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/
Maybe it'll be all you need and save you even the trip to the library.
Since most Linux users traditionally come out of the Unix culture Linux books, even those at the "Dummies" level ( I failed to install Linux for a week using "Linux for Dummies", it didn't even make any sense to me) assume you are already aculturated.
Unix books tend to assume you're some poor, dumb slob who's being sat down at a terminal for the first time and are thinking, "What the F**k?!"
Which is exactly what those of us who came to Unix already indoctrinated in other systems are thinking when finally getting Linux successfully installed.
The hardest part of getting used to a Unix is just learning where things are and why they are there. This is a bit of a Catch-22, because you can't really understand that until you understand the Unix philosophy. Nifty, huh?
What't the first question most Linux newbies ask?
"Does it run MS Office?"
What they can't know, because they don't understand the culture, is that that's the wrong question to ask. Unix doesn't even really know about "apps." It has a fine grained modular structure.
A Unix weenie will answer that question with, "Well, duh! No," while wondering why anyone would even want that.
The correct question is, "How do I produce a document?"
Then the Unix weenie can answer, "Oh, that's easy, you type the text in with your favorite text editor, spell check it with ispell, format it with LaTex, search it with grep. .
None of these things are "apps" in the PC sense. They are all small programs that perform single functions and are inherent to the system.
Your mail program and your wordprocessor don't each maintain a spell checker. The system has spell checking capability. The system can search and modify text files.
In the MS world you buy a kit for every model you wish to build. You want a Cutty Sark? Fine, we'll sell you a Cutty Sark kit. You want a Bluenose instead? Well, we'll sell you that kit too.
In the Unix world you're given a "tool kit," a pile of materials and a book of plans.
KDE and Gnome have certainly done a good job of making Windows like enviroments and apps for Linux, and I certainly encourage you to use them ( I'm typing this in Konquerer right now), but always remember that down underneath the GUI things are happening in very Unixy ways, or you'll get bit sooner or later.
Oh, and just to be fair I'll close out by giving you a link to the Unix Hater's Handbook.
http://research.microsoft.com/~daniel/uhh-downl
KFG
"Most new, non-game applications these days are written for the Web.
."
This way, any platform can connect to the application and run it the same way as anyone else would on a Palm Pilot or Pocket PC or Linux or Solaris or Windows or whatever.
Through XML and standard Web technologies, we are making a revolution in availability. No longer does each client/end-user of the application have to download and install certain drivers or use a certain computer -- the application behaves and runs the same on any device."
Yep, universal availability, so long as you're connected to the network and the server is up.
I can also look forward to my SPARC workstation having all the power and usability of my Palm Pilot.
Yowza! Where do I sign up?
"When an app does have to be a traditional desktop program. .
Which would still be most of them, if only for internal security reasons.
"But for most all-new programs, bosses are increasingly and more often suggesting that these be written for the Web, and for the Web exclusively."
Because bosses are well known for having keen insight into the best engineering solution to a particular problem.
There are valid reasons for writing to the <i>browser</i> as interface ( not the web ) but these reasons are still fairly few and far between.
"The Linux-vs.-Microsoft thing is dying."
Except for that adhering to open standards vs. trying to control the web for personal enrichment thingy, yeah.
KFG
We like hamstringing consumers.
The looks on their little faces are just so precious.
KFG
"You people say "insensitive clod" too much. What's wrong with you?"
We're insensitive clods, obviously, you insensitive clod.
KFG
The very first lesson that every Linux newbie learns is:
Documentation sucks.
It's getting better by the day, but it still sucks.
Fortunately there's an alternative. UNIX books. Don't bother spending money on these. Go to your library, browse around, pick a couple that "speak" to you. After a few nights of poking at these all of a sudden the Linux books will start to make sense to you and you can return to them.
The thing you absolutely must understand is that you are joining the Unix community and its culture. These are not merely empty buzzwords. They have real meaning and import. Unix/Linux are not merely "Windows alternatives" in the sense that they simply replace Windows with a free version. Unix is fundamentally different. It's foreign. Like when you go to Japan and can't even guess where the restrooms are.
Windows is the end result of a series of commercial accidents and commercial rapacity.
Unix was designed by a handful of people outside of the commercial sphere (AT&T was actually forbiden by law to enter such a sphere at the time) according to their ideas of what an OS should be and how it should work. A growing community who agreed with that philosophy took hold of it and has pushed its development to where you see it today.
That original philosophy and community are still the core values of Unix. Learn them and you'll get along. Insist on doing things the way you grew accustomed to under MS "products" and you will always be unhappy.
Always.
You can't just learn a few new commands, just as in Japan you can't just learn a few equivilent words to English words you know. The very culture that words are built upon are different.
Read the UNIX books, or UNIX may forever remain "inscrutable" to you.
Spend your actual money on two O'Reilly books. Running Linux and Linux in a Nutshell. These might not be what you consider the best books in the long run, but they'll put you on the right track. On the other hand you might just find they're the only pure Linux books you'll ever need.
KFG
handheld wireless tecnology. Pulse Code Modulated to boot.
Yeah, I understand that's it's cool that they've been able to do it this way and the technology may have some legitimate applications in the future and I applaud them for having done it.
Just remember, before you rush out to try to build one of these things, that's it's actually a pretty daft way to control a model airplane.
Just because we have a hammer does not mean that everything is a nail. The world is still full of screws and rivets, not to mention the odd bit of glue and welding.
KFG
You might say it's an awl-in-one tool.
KFG
By copyrighting OSS and releasing it it becomes publicly demonstrable prior art.
Patents are only necessary to restrict use.
KFG
I have a geeky fasicination for all-in-one tools, so I use sporksticks myself.
KFG