If you hire a shareware programmer you will get someone who is motivated, is able to undertake and deliver on large projects, can work independently, and understands the importance of deadlines, time-to-market, the customer and other business concepts.
On the other hand most shareware programmers are independently wealthy off their software so you will have to work harder at making it worth their while.
--
Good-bye.
Just as Linux has taken on and beaten much larger
competitors just by being open source, so can open source musicians.
An open source lyricist writes a song, someone else writes a melody, others contribute tweaks and bug-fixes to it, then someone sings it, later open source musicians edit out and add different music to it. All of this happens over CVS. Over time the song can evolve to become really good.
Eventually good enough to get on the top 10 and drive RIAA out of business.
Although you may have a valid point here, the poster said he wants to brush up on his C skills. I'm assuming he needs the C knowledge for the school he will be attending. Although these languages share some similarities with C, they are not C and will not help the poster accomplish what he intended to do.
Actually C code can now be written in Perl
using Inline::C module; it allows you
to embed subroutines written in C inside your Perl code.
You could also use a scripting language like Perl, Python, or Ruby. On Linux Perl and Python are likely to come pre-installed so your program would also be quite portable across Unix systems.
Most of these languages provide nice wrappers around curses or even a full-fledged X interface.
Tired of losing real money in a bear market?
Try Peak Trader.
Space for me, and not for thee. csy writes "Dennis Tito returns jubilant to Earth. Meanwhile, John Glenn criticizes Tito's trip as a "misuse of a spacecraft designed for research". I guess space junkets by geriatric senators must count as research.
Umm, it's not clear to me why Dennis needs to be morally assaulted for spending his own money by the senator who got a free ride on the taxpayers.
Tired of day trading with real money? Try Peak Trader.
On a somewhat related topic, is there a programming IDE that lets people work on code together (over the web)? This could be seriouly fun.
I disagree with the moderator's opinion on
this one that it is redundant. The original query
on which the story is based was about scientific
collaboration using a product like NetMeeting on
Linux.
A collaborative programming IDE would be quite
a bit more complicated and different. As far as I
know no such thing exists on Windows or Linux. In
fact this could be an excellent marketing
opportunity for any entrepreneurs out there.
Specifically I am interested in a
collaborative IDE that allows eXtreme Programming
style pair programming to occur. Where the two
people sitting on different edges of the internet
could pass keyboard control back and forth and
look at each other's live-edits to the code on
the screen. Also it will need to make sure that
the code base was synched between the two
different users.
Collaborative programming could be a boon
to open source as well as to distributed
commercial teams.
Also this is a much more tangible and doable
problem than doing math on the web (which the
original story asked for). A net meeting drawing
board is too flimsy and feeble compared to a real
drawing board and is a poor substitute for live
face-to-face mathematics.
For programmers on the other hand, code
is thought. And so much more interaction could
occur through a collaborative IDE.
I should have explained the strategy in more
detail. Just repackaging Linux as Microsoft Linux
will clearly not give Microsoft any advantage.
And it is easy for open-source teams to republish
the still open sources to the OS.
However, here is where Microsoft will need to
be a bit more creative. First, Microsoft is not
Corel. Corel does not have the kind of OS
monopoly that Microsoft has which it can leverage
to enter the Linux game. So the comparison with
Corel is not valid.
There are many things Microsoft can do. The
simplest and most obvious is to start adding
products to Linux which are closed source and
which only operate with Microsoft's open sourced
Linux. Internet Explorer would be a good
product for this. So while Microsoft Linux will
be open sourced it will have an edge over other
distros because it will come prepackaged with IE.
Similar other creative bundling can easily elbow
out the competition so that the MS becomes the
mainstream distro.
To the moderators who moderated my original
comment down, I am deeply disappointed in what
appears to be a knee-jerk pro open source
reaction. As open-sourcers people need to
understand Microsoft and the moves open to it.
Without this kind of exploration Linux is a
sitting duck.
This is completely on-topic and not off-topic
as the moderator has mistakenly asserted. The
discussion is about Microsoft's operating system
strategies and what it will do in the future.
Clearly Linux needs to figure in this discussion
too since Microsoft acknowledges it as a big
threat to its server OS marketshare. What-if
scenarios help us analyze the situation and see
it more clearly. Think of this like a chess
game.
Why do the Linux community constantly play 'catch up' with the closed-source community.
That's a brilliant strategy for world domination.
Linux does not need to be innovative or profitable. It just needs to stick around and
stay in the game. Sooner or later another niche
will erupt -- like the internet -- and Linux will
be there to explode into it and overwhelm it --
as long as it stays in the game.
The bar for Linux's survival is much lower than is the bar for Microsoft, for example.
Microsoft needs to perpetually remain profitable.
Also they need to keep growing to be a more
attractive investment to stock-holders than
a savings account.
Linux just needs to hang out in prowl until
the times comes for it to dominate.
When will be the first time one of these shoots down a passenger plane? Crash into a house? Usually pilots will try to avoid civilian structures if their plane is going down. When this thing gets hit, it just goes down whereever it wants to.
Given that this will have no humans on it it
should safely be able to explode into tiny little
souvenirs before hitting the ground. Probably
worse from a clean-up pollution point of view.
But at least the worse things the little plane
pieces will do is put a scratch on people's cars.
Also Newton's discoveries weren't GPL'ed. It would
be interesting if Linus argued that that if Newton
was GPLed that would have helped science.
Mundie's main argument against the GPL was that
it limits reusability of code. And in fact if
Newton had GPL'ed his discoveries in a similar
way (not that it is possible) that would have
been disastrous for physics.
So in conclusion Mundie makes a good point and
the Newton analogy only works for non-GPL
software. The best analogy for GPL software is
the mafia where once you are in it you can't get
out. GPL restricts the freedom of its users and
as such will never be as influential as non-GPL
code.
Unfortunately, the Slashdot story as well as
Eric Raymond's article are trolls. Eric's
article is a particularly bad example of FUD
(Fear Uncertainty Doubt). Note that all his
sentences begin with "They will probably
say...". So his case against Microsoft is
based his psychic vision of what Mundie will
say at NYU. Can we have fact instead, please?
According to the Wall Street Journal which I
read this morning Mundie is actually going to
talk about Microsoft's plan to open-source it's
operating system to key partners and thereby gain some of the benefits of open-sourcing.
This seems like a perfectly good strategy and
will allow Microsoft partners to submit code
fixes to bugs they find. This should improve the
quality of Windows dramatically.
I am somewhat disappointed at the gross
misreporting of the story on Slashdot. It would
be refreshing if the stories were not outright
lies.
Thanks for reading this.
Hopefully I won't be modded down into oblivion
because I have not towed the party line in this
case because it happens to be baseless. Slashdot
readers need to realize that living in a fantasy
world made up of fake news is not going to give
open source an edge over anything. Pretty soon
we'll end up living on a hill in Montana disconnected from reality.
Let's argue from facts instead of baseless
fabrications.
Having lived in China: Yes, China does have a huge black market; however, the people involved are generally very mobile (selling things out of suitcases) as they are constantly searched out by the police. Black market internet cafes don't exactly have that mobility on their side.
I for one would not like to drink coffee pulled
out of a suitcase.
Fearsome Badgers presentation is a little
crude and unfortunately that is distracting us
from his/her main point which I think is quite
valid.
The point is that not taking showers, wearing
geek clothes, and coming in late, are not a
substitute for actually being creative or
intelligent. Similarly a lot of normal looking
people who wake up at 5am in the morning and
work hard are actually twice as smart as the
smelly geek with the bloated ego and social
dysfunction.
I know many people who come in 7.30 am and are
quite creative and clever and responsible. They
finish their work on time and don't goof off.
They take deadlines seriously and have a
professional appearance and work ethic.
On the flip side I have also known highly
unprofessional lazy people who assume that
growing their hair long and wearing gothic
clothing can be an effective substitute for
actual work or creativity.
Sorry. It doesn't work that way.
The whole geek subculture really puts me off.
Appearance, smelliness, lack of responsibility,
and not being able to get up in the morning has
very little to do with creativity or productivity.
Just because you have no time management skills
does not mean you are a creative genius. Maybe
you are just an idiot with no time management
skills.
Similarly just because you have a picture of
Einstein on your shirt does not mean you are
Einstein. Sorry. Try again.
<< Most people, when skimming code, look for the indentation anyway. This leads to
sometimes easily overlooked bugs like this one:
if (x < 10)
x = 10;
y = 0;
>>
Interestingly Perl won't allow you to do this
either. Perl requires braces even around
single statements following if, for, while, etc. So this
is not a valid reason for Perl programmers to
switch to Python.
It is not possible to evaluate a language without
seriously trying it out. Learning a new language
is usually a mind altering experience, especially
with Smalltalk.
You can't miss what you don't know about.
On Perl: Perl's power comes from it's
reflexivity. And Smalltalk is almost equally
reflexive except in a cleaner and more
systematic way.
Instead of different tax brackets a simpler
tax system would just use the exponential curve.
If you earn x dollars the govco gets T(x) of that
in taxes then T(x) x*(1.0 - (0.6)^x). As x goes to
infinity T(x) approaches x.
Once the exponential nature of progressive
taxation becomes apparent it will become unpopular
in the mathematically challenged crowd leading to
a giant simplification to either flat-tax or
zero-tax. So it will all be all right in the end.
Slashdot Mirror
On the other hand most shareware programmers are independently wealthy off their software so you will have to work harder at making it worth their while.
--
Good-bye.
Become a better stock trader with PeakTrader
An open source lyricist writes a song, someone else writes a melody, others contribute tweaks and bug-fixes to it, then someone sings it, later open source musicians edit out and add different music to it. All of this happens over CVS. Over time the song can evolve to become really good.
Eventually good enough to get on the top 10 and drive RIAA out of business.
Become a better day trader with PeakTrader .
Actually C code can now be written in Perl using Inline::C module; it allows you to embed subroutines written in C inside your Perl code.
Improve Day Trading Skills with Peak Trader
Most of these languages provide nice wrappers around curses or even a full-fledged X interface.
Tired of losing real money in a bear market? Try Peak Trader.
Umm, it's not clear to me why Dennis needs to be morally assaulted for spending his own money by the senator who got a free ride on the taxpayers.
Tired of day trading with real money? Try Peak Trader.
I disagree with the moderator's opinion on this one that it is redundant. The original query on which the story is based was about scientific collaboration using a product like NetMeeting on Linux.
A collaborative programming IDE would be quite a bit more complicated and different. As far as I know no such thing exists on Windows or Linux. In fact this could be an excellent marketing opportunity for any entrepreneurs out there.
Specifically I am interested in a collaborative IDE that allows eXtreme Programming style pair programming to occur. Where the two people sitting on different edges of the internet could pass keyboard control back and forth and look at each other's live-edits to the code on the screen. Also it will need to make sure that the code base was synched between the two different users.
Collaborative programming could be a boon to open source as well as to distributed commercial teams.
Also this is a much more tangible and doable problem than doing math on the web (which the original story asked for). A net meeting drawing board is too flimsy and feeble compared to a real drawing board and is a poor substitute for live face-to-face mathematics.
For programmers on the other hand, code is thought. And so much more interaction could occur through a collaborative IDE.
--
Exit here.
However, here is where Microsoft will need to be a bit more creative. First, Microsoft is not Corel. Corel does not have the kind of OS monopoly that Microsoft has which it can leverage to enter the Linux game. So the comparison with Corel is not valid.
There are many things Microsoft can do. The simplest and most obvious is to start adding products to Linux which are closed source and which only operate with Microsoft's open sourced Linux. Internet Explorer would be a good product for this. So while Microsoft Linux will be open sourced it will have an edge over other distros because it will come prepackaged with IE. Similar other creative bundling can easily elbow out the competition so that the MS becomes the mainstream distro.
To the moderators who moderated my original comment down, I am deeply disappointed in what appears to be a knee-jerk pro open source reaction. As open-sourcers people need to understand Microsoft and the moves open to it. Without this kind of exploration Linux is a sitting duck.
This is completely on-topic and not off-topic as the moderator has mistakenly asserted. The discussion is about Microsoft's operating system strategies and what it will do in the future. Clearly Linux needs to figure in this discussion too since Microsoft acknowledges it as a big threat to its server OS marketshare. What-if scenarios help us analyze the situation and see it more clearly. Think of this like a chess game.
--
Milk, it does a body GOOD.
That's a brilliant strategy for world domination. Linux does not need to be innovative or profitable. It just needs to stick around and stay in the game. Sooner or later another niche will erupt -- like the internet -- and Linux will be there to explode into it and overwhelm it -- as long as it stays in the game.
The bar for Linux's survival is much lower than is the bar for Microsoft, for example. Microsoft needs to perpetually remain profitable. Also they need to keep growing to be a more attractive investment to stock-holders than a savings account.
Linux just needs to hang out in prowl until the times comes for it to dominate.
--
Milk, it does a body good.
Create an internet spy portal -- www.spyportal.com. Offer free e-mail and webhosting to all spies, supported by banner ad revenues.
Read all their e-mail.
This could even turn profitable if the banner revenues don't plummet this year.
--
Milk, it does a body good.
Given that this will have no humans on it it should safely be able to explode into tiny little souvenirs before hitting the ground. Probably worse from a clean-up pollution point of view. But at least the worse things the little plane pieces will do is put a scratch on people's cars.
--
Milk, it does a body good.
With about 10 people you could run a pretty decent IT department and still have programmer and operators left to spare.
--
Milk, it does a body good.
--
Milk, it does a body good.
Mundie's main argument against the GPL was that it limits reusability of code. And in fact if Newton had GPL'ed his discoveries in a similar way (not that it is possible) that would have been disastrous for physics.
So in conclusion Mundie makes a good point and the Newton analogy only works for non-GPL software. The best analogy for GPL software is the mafia where once you are in it you can't get out. GPL restricts the freedom of its users and as such will never be as influential as non-GPL code.
----
Milk, it does a body good.
According to the Wall Street Journal which I read this morning Mundie is actually going to talk about Microsoft's plan to open-source it's operating system to key partners and thereby gain some of the benefits of open-sourcing.
This seems like a perfectly good strategy and will allow Microsoft partners to submit code fixes to bugs they find. This should improve the quality of Windows dramatically.
I am somewhat disappointed at the gross misreporting of the story on Slashdot. It would be refreshing if the stories were not outright lies.
Thanks for reading this.
Hopefully I won't be modded down into oblivion because I have not towed the party line in this case because it happens to be baseless. Slashdot readers need to realize that living in a fantasy world made up of fake news is not going to give open source an edge over anything. Pretty soon we'll end up living on a hill in Montana disconnected from reality.
Let's argue from facts instead of baseless fabrications.
---
Milk, it does a body good.
I for one would not like to drink coffee pulled out of a suitcase.
--
Milk, it does a body good.
The point is that not taking showers, wearing geek clothes, and coming in late, are not a substitute for actually being creative or intelligent. Similarly a lot of normal looking people who wake up at 5am in the morning and work hard are actually twice as smart as the smelly geek with the bloated ego and social dysfunction.
I know many people who come in 7.30 am and are quite creative and clever and responsible. They finish their work on time and don't goof off. They take deadlines seriously and have a professional appearance and work ethic.
On the flip side I have also known highly unprofessional lazy people who assume that growing their hair long and wearing gothic clothing can be an effective substitute for actual work or creativity.
Sorry. It doesn't work that way.
The whole geek subculture really puts me off. Appearance, smelliness, lack of responsibility, and not being able to get up in the morning has very little to do with creativity or productivity.
Just because you have no time management skills does not mean you are a creative genius. Maybe you are just an idiot with no time management skills.
Similarly just because you have a picture of Einstein on your shirt does not mean you are Einstein. Sorry. Try again.
--
You are the weakest link. Good-bye.
Interestingly Perl won't allow you to do this either. Perl requires braces even around single statements following if, for, while, etc. So this is not a valid reason for Perl programmers to switch to Python.
--
Milk, it does a body good.
You can't miss what you don't know about.
On Perl: Perl's power comes from it's reflexivity. And Smalltalk is almost equally reflexive except in a cleaner and more systematic way.
----
INTP
If you earn x dollars the govco gets T(x) of that in taxes then T(x) x*(1.0 - (0.6)^x). As x goes to infinity T(x) approaches x.
Once the exponential nature of progressive taxation becomes apparent it will become unpopular in the mathematically challenged crowd leading to a giant simplification to either flat-tax or zero-tax. So it will all be all right in the end.
--
Eat goat-cheese.