Most of us on Slashdot aren't book authors, but we (or at least, a lot of us) are programmers. I'm sure you've heard of programmers -- the guys who write Free Software like Linux and OpenOffice and the like.
Kind of. I live across the street from a fancy restaurant. A couple of years ago the street lights on this block went out for about two weeks. I complained several times and so did the other businesses along this block, but it still took two weeks for them to fix the lights. What finally got them moving was when the police department got after them because the alarm on the restaurant was being "tested" regularly overnight by folks walking by in the dark.
I know that I saw more police cars zipping up to that restaurant during the early morning hours (after midnight, when the restaurant was closed) during that two weeks than I have seen before or since.
It's my understanding that the "long life" incandescent bulbs gain their long life by using thicker filaments. The downside is that it requires more electricity to make that thicker filament glow, so you end up getting less actual light out of a long life bulb than you get out of a regular one of the same wattage.
I live in Saskatchewan, where we get down to -50 and below, sometimes, in the winter. I have CFL bulbs in my outdoor security lights (over the doors and so on), on a switch that automatically turns them on at dusk and off at dawn. When it gets really cold in the winter the outside lights sometimes take about ten or fifteen minutes to get going. They burn a sort of pale pink colour that doesn't really give any usable light until they get warmed up, but after the first fifteen minutes they provide almost as much light as they do in the summer.
The cost of erasing the drives and checking to insure that they have been erased would exceed the value of the drives. It's a better use of the taxpayer's dollar to simply destroy them.
I own and operate a small-town movie theatre. I print and send out just over 6000 flyers every month that go in all of the mailboxes in my town and the 18 little towns near here where my customers come from. The postage alone costs me almost $800 per month, but it's my main advertising method. My flyer lists the movies that are coming for the following month with a brief description of each, and almost everyone takes it home and posts it on their fridge. (I see very few of my flyers in the post office garbage can, unlike flyers from other businesses around here.)
People who don't get my flyer occasionally complain to me. My first question to them is, "Did you tell the post office to not deliver junk mail to you?" When they say yes, I tell them that's why they're not getting my flyer in the mail any more. The almost-universal response to that is, "But the theatre flyer isn't junk mail!"
Some years ago, there was a scandal here (Canada) when the federal government had a bunch of "Buy Canadian!" stickers printed up for some kind of a promotional thing, and the back of the sheets said "printed in USA". Apparently the lowest-bidding printer was US-based.
In this case, the "work" is a photograph of a building, or several buildings. As the buildings in question are the property of someone other than the chap who took the photos, what percentage of the fees that he collects should be given to the people who actually own the properties that he is photographing for profit?
I deal with SaskTel as my ISP. We actually get the full use of the provisioned bandwidth as promised, with no filtering, traffic shaping, or other artificial impediments.
Sask Tel recently started blocking port 25 for customers with dynamic ip addresses. If you pay the extra $15/month for a static address, there is no block.
Sask Tel recently started blocking port 25 for customers with dynamic ip addresses. If you pay the extra $15/month for a static address, there is no block.
A short while ago, Twentieth Century Fox threatened to delay releasing their movies in Canada until at least a month after their US release. The Canadian government then passed a special law against camcording in theatres even though it was already illegal under current Canadian copyright law, and Fox withdrew their threat.
Home Hardware (a Canadian hardware store chain) runs a program in their stores called PRISM on SCO Unix to handle their inventory, POS, and I don't know what else.
Also, my ideal union would offer vocational training
My mother was a union member all of her working life. The union paid a full scholarship for my brother to attend McGill University, all the way to his Ph.D.
if you're going to write commercial software, is paying for a commercial license that much of a burden?
It can be, if you're just writing something "on spec", or perhaps writing something for fun or the learning experience that, by golly, turns into a commercial product. Or $20 shareware. Or software for your insurance-broker neighbour that he pays for "informally" (case of beer, help with fixing your fence, etc) that grows into something bigger.
It's either free now and forever, or it's proprietary from step 1.
What do you do if your pet kitten suddenly shows that it has the potential to be a tiger? "Oh well, I guess I'm out of luck" doesn't seem right if it's your own program.
If it is, then use WX or something.
Or GTK.
Did you just argue the point that I made and then decide that you agree with me?
The father of a friend of mine has spent his entire life chasing the big dollar that's always just over the next hill. When I first realized that, i found it rather amusing. But now I just find it rather sad to see.
He has never really worked at anything for very long because there is always a bigger, better opportunity right over there instead. And he has managed to get started on some things that could possibly have developed into something eventually, but due to his short attention span they never get a chance to get off the ground.
The last I heard of him was a year or so back when he was moving to yet another new town because money was just falling out of peoples' pockets there and he was going to offer some kind of unspecified services and collect some of that.
It's too bad, really, because he's now got to be well over 60 years old now, and he still has pretty much nothing at all.
I have never been comfortable with having Trolltech set themselves up as the gatekeeper/toll collector for closed-source software on any platform. Even Microsoft doesn't get to collect extra fees for commercial software development on Windows. GTK is much better suited for a general-purpose library on Linux than QT simply because it allows you to develop "anything" using it.
This "under new ownership" wrinkle tends to reinforce my opinion.
My "problem" with QT is simply that if, in time, KDE somehow becomes the default desktop environment on Linux and Gnome withers away for some reason, then Trolltech becomes the gatekeeper to commercial desktop software development on Linux, and nobody who wishes to develop that sort of software on Linux will have any choice other than to pay them whatever fee they decide to ask for.
On Windows, you can purchase a copy of the operating system and use any of several compilers (some free, some pay-for) and create commercial or free software to your hearts content without having to give more money to Microsoft. The amount that you pay for your operating system remains the same regardless of what kind of software you choose to write.
Again, Trolltech's current licensing scheme attempts to set them up as the toll collector for software development on Linux, using GPL QT as a "hook" to reel in software developers and get them to use their toolkit. "It's free now, but you will have to pay later."
Some people may take this as a mere "where is my free lunch" complaint. However, given that there is already a "free lunch" available in the form of GTK, why not use that as the superior (at least in terms of licensing and future-proofing) library? It seems that arguing the technical merits of QT vs GTK usually turns into something at least close to a draw or a stalemate, so the licensing seems to be the most important feature that differentiates one from the other.
There is a greater-than-zero chance that folks who have based their commercial software on QT could be up the proverbial creek, depending on what happens now. Developers using GTK could never be put into a similar position.
They recoup it by collecting extra fees for using windows. (_Both_ from you and all users of your software.)
The price that you pay for your copy of Windows is exactly the same, regardless of whether you are a "user" or a "programmer".
Code written by me using stdio.h is my code to license as I please. Code written by me using GTK is my code to license as I please. Code written by me using QT is no less my code, too, but I can't license it as I please. Therefore, GTK is a much more free and versatile library to write with than QT, regardless of whether you are writing free or commercial software.
Kinda weird for a "free software" library to faciliate proprietary lawsuits.
I agree. It would be very weird to be sued by Trolltech for using the library that provides the back-end services for a standard desktop environment on your operating system of choice, wouldn't it...
They dont make it more "central" than any other toolkit out there.
KDE is based around QT, and it's one of the big two standard desktop environments. Your definition of central differs from mine.
With regard to "a development environment for free", see gcc for a perfect example. It's a free compiler that anyone can use to create any kind of software that he wishes to create.
My "problem" with QT is simply that if, in time, KDE becomes the default desktop environment on Linux and Gnome withers away for some reason, then Trolltech becomes the gatekeeper to commercial desktop software development on Linux, and nobody who wishes to develop that sort of software on Linux will have any choice other than to pay them whatever fee they decide to ask for.
On Windows, you can purchase a copy of the operating system and use any of several compilers (some free, some pay-for) and create commercial or free software to your hearts content without having to give more money to Microsoft. The amount that you pay for your operating system remains the same regardless of what kind of software you choose to write.
Again, Trolltech's licensing scheme attempts to set them up as the toll collector for software development on Linux, using GPL QT as a "hook" to reel in software developers and get them to use their toolkit. "It's free now, but you will have to pay later." They are well within their rights to do that, but I see no reason to support their effort.
I am not comfortable with having Trolltech set themselves up as the gatekeeper/toll collector for closed-source software on any platform. Even Microsoft doesn't get to collect extra fees for commercial software development on Windows.
GTK is much better suited for a general-purpose library on Linux than QT simply because it allows you to develop "anything" using it.
I have no problem with Trolltech using their current scheme to make money -- more power to them. However, I do have an objection to supporting their attempt to make QT central to Linux software development.
I avoid QT, except when using software that someone else wrote using it. I use GTK and ncurses when writing my own software.
They release dual license GPL and Qt, such that if you are ok with GPL, feel free to use it with impunity, but if you want a more commercial license, you can, but it will cost you.
Well stated.
It took me a while to figure out exactly why I have a problem with Trolltech's approach to Linux, KDE and QT. I eventually realized that the reason is because I have a problem with the fact that Trolltech has set up a toll booth for commercial (non-GPL) software development on Linux, which seems contrary to the entire reason why Linux was developed in the first place.
One of the major reasons commercial software vendors back Gnome is that fitting into that merely requires the LGPL, and thus they don't have to reciprocate commercially or with contributions.
Exactly. I lost interest in QT and play with Gnome-based stuff (and ncurses, depending on what I'm doing) when fiddling around with programming projects. I don't have to fork out the big bux up front (or at all) for anything that I choose to do with my projects and my time that way.
Slashdot Mirror
Most of us on Slashdot aren't book authors, but we (or at least, a lot of us) are programmers. I'm sure you've heard of programmers -- the guys who write Free Software like Linux and OpenOffice and the like.
Got any counter examples?
Kind of. I live across the street from a fancy restaurant. A couple of years ago the street lights on this block went out for about two weeks. I complained several times and so did the other businesses along this block, but it still took two weeks for them to fix the lights. What finally got them moving was when the police department got after them because the alarm on the restaurant was being "tested" regularly overnight by folks walking by in the dark.
I know that I saw more police cars zipping up to that restaurant during the early morning hours (after midnight, when the restaurant was closed) during that two weeks than I have seen before or since.
It's my understanding that the "long life" incandescent bulbs gain their long life by using thicker filaments. The downside is that it requires more electricity to make that thicker filament glow, so you end up getting less actual light out of a long life bulb than you get out of a regular one of the same wattage.
I live in Saskatchewan, where we get down to -50 and below, sometimes, in the winter. I have CFL bulbs in my outdoor security lights (over the doors and so on), on a switch that automatically turns them on at dusk and off at dawn. When it gets really cold in the winter the outside lights sometimes take about ten or fifteen minutes to get going. They burn a sort of pale pink colour that doesn't really give any usable light until they get warmed up, but after the first fifteen minutes they provide almost as much light as they do in the summer.
The cost of erasing the drives and checking to insure that they have been erased would exceed the value of the drives. It's a better use of the taxpayer's dollar to simply destroy them.
The labour cost to erase each one (and check it to be sure that it was, indeed, erased) would exceed 1p per unit.
You can do the same thing with this Firefox plugin. It controls both javascript and flash on a per-site basis.
http://www.customizegoogle.com/
Screw all advertising.
I own and operate a small-town movie theatre. I print and send out just over 6000 flyers every month that go in all of the mailboxes in my town and the 18 little towns near here where my customers come from. The postage alone costs me almost $800 per month, but it's my main advertising method. My flyer lists the movies that are coming for the following month with a brief description of each, and almost everyone takes it home and posts it on their fridge. (I see very few of my flyers in the post office garbage can, unlike flyers from other businesses around here.)
People who don't get my flyer occasionally complain to me. My first question to them is, "Did you tell the post office to not deliver junk mail to you?" When they say yes, I tell them that's why they're not getting my flyer in the mail any more. The almost-universal response to that is, "But the theatre flyer isn't junk mail!"
Really.
I pretty much live and die by my flyer.
Some years ago, there was a scandal here (Canada) when the federal government had a bunch of "Buy Canadian!" stickers printed up for some kind of a promotional thing, and the back of the sheets said "printed in USA". Apparently the lowest-bidding printer was US-based.
One other point occurs to me.
In this case, the "work" is a photograph of a building, or several buildings. As the buildings in question are the property of someone other than the chap who took the photos, what percentage of the fees that he collects should be given to the people who actually own the properties that he is photographing for profit?
I deal with SaskTel as my ISP. We actually get the full use of the provisioned bandwidth as promised, with no filtering, traffic shaping, or other artificial impediments.
Sask Tel recently started blocking port 25 for customers with dynamic ip addresses. If you pay the extra $15/month for a static address, there is no block.
no blocked ports,
Sask Tel recently started blocking port 25 for customers with dynamic ip addresses. If you pay the extra $15/month for a static address, there is no block.
A short while ago, Twentieth Century Fox threatened to delay releasing their movies in Canada until at least a month after their US release. The Canadian government then passed a special law against camcording in theatres even though it was already illegal under current Canadian copyright law, and Fox withdrew their threat.
You may as well try to run a catering business under the "Septic Services" brand.
Sam and Ella's Diner?
Home Hardware (a Canadian hardware store chain) runs a program in their stores called PRISM on SCO Unix to handle their inventory, POS, and I don't know what else.
Also, my ideal union would offer vocational training
My mother was a union member all of her working life. The union paid a full scholarship for my brother to attend McGill University, all the way to his Ph.D.
if you're going to write commercial software, is paying for a commercial license that much of a burden?
It can be, if you're just writing something "on spec", or perhaps writing something for fun or the learning experience that, by golly, turns into a commercial product. Or $20 shareware. Or software for your insurance-broker neighbour that he pays for "informally" (case of beer, help with fixing your fence, etc) that grows into something bigger.
It's either free now and forever, or it's proprietary from step 1.
What do you do if your pet kitten suddenly shows that it has the potential to be a tiger? "Oh well, I guess I'm out of luck" doesn't seem right if it's your own program.
If it is, then use WX or something.
Or GTK.
Did you just argue the point that I made and then decide that you agree with me?
The father of a friend of mine has spent his entire life chasing the big dollar that's always just over the next hill. When I first realized that, i found it rather amusing. But now I just find it rather sad to see.
He has never really worked at anything for very long because there is always a bigger, better opportunity right over there instead. And he has managed to get started on some things that could possibly have developed into something eventually, but due to his short attention span they never get a chance to get off the ground.
The last I heard of him was a year or so back when he was moving to yet another new town because money was just falling out of peoples' pockets there and he was going to offer some kind of unspecified services and collect some of that.
It's too bad, really, because he's now got to be well over 60 years old now, and he still has pretty much nothing at all.
I have never been comfortable with having Trolltech set themselves up as the gatekeeper/toll collector for closed-source software on any platform. Even Microsoft doesn't get to collect extra fees for commercial software development on Windows. GTK is much better suited for a general-purpose library on Linux than QT simply because it allows you to develop "anything" using it.
This "under new ownership" wrinkle tends to reinforce my opinion.
My "problem" with QT is simply that if, in time, KDE somehow becomes the default desktop environment on Linux and Gnome withers away for some reason, then Trolltech becomes the gatekeeper to commercial desktop software development on Linux, and nobody who wishes to develop that sort of software on Linux will have any choice other than to pay them whatever fee they decide to ask for.
On Windows, you can purchase a copy of the operating system and use any of several compilers (some free, some pay-for) and create commercial or free software to your hearts content without having to give more money to Microsoft. The amount that you pay for your operating system remains the same regardless of what kind of software you choose to write.
Again, Trolltech's current licensing scheme attempts to set them up as the toll collector for software development on Linux, using GPL QT as a "hook" to reel in software developers and get them to use their toolkit. "It's free now, but you will have to pay later."
Some people may take this as a mere "where is my free lunch" complaint. However, given that there is already a "free lunch" available in the form of GTK, why not use that as the superior (at least in terms of licensing and future-proofing) library? It seems that arguing the technical merits of QT vs GTK usually turns into something at least close to a draw or a stalemate, so the licensing seems to be the most important feature that differentiates one from the other.
There is a greater-than-zero chance that folks who have based their commercial software on QT could be up the proverbial creek, depending on what happens now. Developers using GTK could never be put into a similar position.
They recoup it by collecting extra fees for using windows. (_Both_ from you and all users of your software.)
The price that you pay for your copy of Windows is exactly the same, regardless of whether you are a "user" or a "programmer".
Code written by me using stdio.h is my code to license as I please. Code written by me using GTK is my code to license as I please. Code written by me using QT is no less my code, too, but I can't license it as I please. Therefore, GTK is a much more free and versatile library to write with than QT, regardless of whether you are writing free or commercial software.
Kinda weird for a "free software" library to faciliate proprietary lawsuits.
I agree. It would be very weird to be sued by Trolltech for using the library that provides the back-end services for a standard desktop environment on your operating system of choice, wouldn't it...
They dont make it more "central" than any other toolkit out there.
KDE is based around QT, and it's one of the big two standard desktop environments. Your definition of central differs from mine.
With regard to "a development environment for free", see gcc for a perfect example. It's a free compiler that anyone can use to create any kind of software that he wishes to create.
My "problem" with QT is simply that if, in time, KDE becomes the default desktop environment on Linux and Gnome withers away for some reason, then Trolltech becomes the gatekeeper to commercial desktop software development on Linux, and nobody who wishes to develop that sort of software on Linux will have any choice other than to pay them whatever fee they decide to ask for.
On Windows, you can purchase a copy of the operating system and use any of several compilers (some free, some pay-for) and create commercial or free software to your hearts content without having to give more money to Microsoft. The amount that you pay for your operating system remains the same regardless of what kind of software you choose to write.
Again, Trolltech's licensing scheme attempts to set them up as the toll collector for software development on Linux, using GPL QT as a "hook" to reel in software developers and get them to use their toolkit. "It's free now, but you will have to pay later." They are well within their rights to do that, but I see no reason to support their effort.
I am not comfortable with having Trolltech set themselves up as the gatekeeper/toll collector for closed-source software on any platform. Even Microsoft doesn't get to collect extra fees for commercial software development on Windows.
GTK is much better suited for a general-purpose library on Linux than QT simply because it allows you to develop "anything" using it.
I have no problem with Trolltech using their current scheme to make money -- more power to them. However, I do have an objection to supporting their attempt to make QT central to Linux software development.
I avoid QT, except when using software that someone else wrote using it. I use GTK and ncurses when writing my own software.
They release dual license GPL and Qt, such that if you are ok with GPL, feel free to use it with impunity, but if you want a more commercial license, you can, but it will cost you.
Well stated.
It took me a while to figure out exactly why I have a problem with Trolltech's approach to Linux, KDE and QT. I eventually realized that the reason is because I have a problem with the fact that Trolltech has set up a toll booth for commercial (non-GPL) software development on Linux, which seems contrary to the entire reason why Linux was developed in the first place.
One of the major reasons commercial software vendors back Gnome is that fitting into that merely requires the LGPL, and thus they don't have to reciprocate commercially or with contributions.
Exactly. I lost interest in QT and play with Gnome-based stuff (and ncurses, depending on what I'm doing) when fiddling around with programming projects. I don't have to fork out the big bux up front (or at all) for anything that I choose to do with my projects and my time that way.
I believe it defaults to time.windows.com. I change mine to us.pool.ntp.org.
You do? I actually set time.windows.com as the timeserver on my Fedora boxes. I figure Microsoft can afford the bandwidth, and I enjoy the irony.