Some would say that the incentive is in seeing others improve upon your work and give those improvements back to the community; enforcement of this relies on copright law.
If Microsoft refuses to develop Windows because it no longer has any copyrights, then Linux is there as a replacement, and it will become 10x what Windows ever was or Linux is today once it becomes unshackled from copyright and patent issues and has the customer base of MS Windows today.
How so? The *vast* majority of the Windows customer base have no skills relevant to software development, and a very high percentage of those of us who do have no interest, time or inclination to turn those skills to improving an operating system.
Sure, Linux would undoubtedly gain some extra developers, but I'd be surprised if it was as many as you seem to think.
A small amount of federal funds would replace a massive amount spent in retail software licenses.
You seem to be confusing free and Free; RedHat Enterprise, for example, is Free, but most certainly is not free. Besides which, compared to the cost of even my graphics card, the cost of my copy of XP Pro was negligible. At work, I use development tools that cost 10x that or more - or do you envision a world in which *all* software is free?
Very very few people argue against copyright when it comes to software.
Which makes the constant stream of slashdot posters arguing against copyright for music, films, etc all the more gauling and hypocritical. Why should the result of my efforts be afforded special protection just because they happen to be code, rather than music?
The result, I'm convinced, is that they hire a lot of sub-standard programmers
Actually, all other things being equal, you'd expect the proportion of sub-standard programmers with security clearance to be roughly the same as the proportion without. That's ignoring any time or cost to actually get them security cleared, which would presumably skew it towards better programmers being cleared, not worse ones.
These outfits need to either figure out a way to use better programmers who don't have security clearances
I am security cleared (in the UK), and work on "List X" projects (ie ones that you need to be security cleared for). It varies from project to project, but generally, I can't even give you the spec if you're not cleared. For the projects I've worked on at least, there is *no* way to use a non-security cleared programmer; even the source code is restricted.
What XML is good for is configuration, data interchange and similar files that a human may want to read through and/or edit by hand. With XML, you can see at a glance* what it is you're editing, without having to refer to a document and count bytes in a fixed column width binary file.
(* This presupposes that the XML schema is sane, of course...)
To answer your jpeg example, people don't stuff pixels into XML because no-one in their right minds would be editing the raw pixel data by hand. The closest to that you get is editing single pixels in a visual editor, and that's still nothing like doing it in a text (or hex) editor.
It would be admitting that kernel developers knowingly used patented methods in the kernel
I don't follow your logic there at all. You can equally well argue that they knew no such thing, but are rewriting any bit that is even vaguely suspicious to remove any possibility of infringement, now that such possibility has been brought to their attention.
I do have 4 non intel systems ( 2 ppc and 2 ultrasparc ) running perceptably faster than equivalently clocked intel machines
Which proves what about the Linux kernel, exactly? Perhaps with a BSD the differences would be even more noticable; perhaps they'd be less noticable.
The point is, you can't draw any conclusions at all from that setup, except that for those exact conditions, the non-x86 machines are "perceptably faster". Maybe he's right, and if the kernel was fixed, the other machines would beat the x86 ones into the ground - you just can't tell.
Redundant my arse. The OP is countering one person's article with another person's article. Apart from the fact that we like and agree with what's said on groklaw, what reason do I have to take PJ's word over O'Gara's?
Let me put it this way - the OP said "O'Gara's an SCO-funded shill!", to which the parent replied "PJ's an IBM-funded shill!". Flamebait or troll perhaps, but *redundant*? Go look it up moderator, because you don't know what means.
What reason could you have for running a huge study on the intellectual limits of one sex or another, or one race or another, but to use that information to exclude that race or sex on the basis of their supposed lack of ability?
Perhaps in the hope of proving once and for all that no such lack of ability exists?
I don't doubt that that was not his reason, but that's certainly a reason to run such a study other than the one you posit.
Oh, I'm not ranting about not being able to do what I want to under Linux, I'm ranting at the persistent "Linux will solve all your problems!" meme that permeates most sites like this.
Contrary to popular slashdot belief, Linux is not the solution to all computing woes, and blindly promoting it as such is not helpful. There's no point telling someone to install Linux without first knowing what it is that they actually use their PC for. If they can't do what they want with it (or work out how to), not only will they go back to Windows, they'll be that much more reluctant to try it again in the future.
You've clearly not smoked dope with some of the people I've smoked dope with.
[Note to mods: that's not a joke, that's a statement of fact; I've known dope smokers who smoke a lot more dope than the average cigarette smoker does tobacco]
that surely implies that it ought not to be 0wned in 5 minutes
Well, I've had two XP machines at home connected to ADSL for 2+ years and never been "0wned". I'd say it's fit for purpose, if the user it fit to use it.
In my experience, most malware gets on to PCs through user intervention. Sure, there are worms and self-propogating viruses that exploit holes, but there are also an awful lot of trojans and other crap masquerading as, or piggy-backing on, useful programs (think Kazaa and Bonzi Buddy and their ilk). There is *nothing* that can be done (by a usable system) to prevent this. Even if you're not running as root, you can compromise your own account and open ports to act as a spam really or other zombie. Add to that that most users will get used to typing in the root password when prompted to install stuff, and given sufficient market share, the situation for Linux will be nearly as bad as for Windows. Less remote exploits, but plenty enough social-engineering and trojans.
The only reason you don't see that sort of thing now is because Windows is an easier target (both in terms of itself and its users) and has vastly more market share. If/when Linux becomes mainstream and attains something like comparable market share, it'll be because more less clueful users are using it. Then it'll be worth the malware writers' time and effort to target it.
Rubbish - online casinos are legal in many countries, including the UK, but the bad guys are going after them here too. The real reason is that they have money and are easily attacked. Morality has nothing to do with it.
Tell you what, I'll make you a deal - you get Linux to a state where I can use it for my everyday computing activities, and I'll reinstall it.
Until such time as it's suitable for my use, telling me to ditch Windows and install Linux is akin to telling me to solve all my (imagined) computing problems by using an abacus instead. It may well be the best tool for some jobs, but not for all my jobs.
Text files are a superior configuration method because they're easy for a person to understand, easy for a computer to read, and can be changed on multiple computers with O(1) work.
That's all fine and dandy, but we're talking about a gaming system, not a server farm. Why would you need or even want to copy those text files to multiple computers if you only have one?
Even if you did (perhaps you run some sort of commercial LAN gaming setup), what's wrong with a GUI configurator backed by a text (or even binary) file?
But how many users are going to hop from platform to platform using OO, compared to the number who are going to stick to one platform (OS X) and hop from app to app?
When I was a teenager, I was arrested on one or another about half a dozen times... and wasn't ever actually prosecuted.... not even once.
That's because being arrested is supposed to be enough of a deterrent to make you think twice before doing it again. Would you prefer to have been hauled before a court and fined? Or would you whine even more about the waste of time and money?
If anything it means that society doesn't like those laws.
That's true, but never forget that society is just a bunch of loosely-coupled people, and sometimes people really don't know what's in their best interests. Lots of people here and elsewhere bemoan a lack of sight in corporate America - companies going for short-term gain, ignoring longer-term prospects, etc. Same thing applies here. Make it too hard to make money creating music, films, etc, and lots of people will stop. That'll cut down on the amount of dross produced for sure, but also on the amount of good stuff.
Because otherwise the *AA can use scare tactics to simply file a John Doe lawsuit against anyone, forcing them to either pay ${X}000 dollars without a chance to defend themselves, or get sued into bankruptcy.
That doesn't make sense; if it's cheap to bring the suit, it's cheap to defend it, and if you're doing nothing wrong, then you should be safe from bankruptcy, especially if the *AA has to pay your costs when they lose. Of course there will always be innocents wrongly found guilty, but on average they should be by far in the minority. Thus, either the *AAs mostly get guilty people, or they lose shedloads of money on frivolous suits.
They'll just say that they can't force downloads so anyone who has the content they provided did it willingly.
The content they provided? Surely, then, they can't prosecute downloaders, only those who download and the re-upload to others. After all, if they're making it available for download, they're the ones distributing it, which is their right as copyright holders (unless they want to sue themselves...)
Just look at the amazing things that have happened to the quake 1 engine over the past few years. It's _vastly_ superior to what ID software were selling a few years ago!
That's true, but fair's fair - at the time Q1 was released, it was state of the art. The improvements have been possible because the art moved on.
Two words: copyright infringement. Just because something is published on the web, doesn't mean anyone has the right to reproduce/republish it, even if you're trying to do the site's owner a favour. Without permission it's infringement.
The Sun vs MS case was nothing to do with their being a monopoly, it was breach of contract, pure and simple. The Java licence says that you're not allowed to add your own packages or classes in the java.* hierarchy, and that's exactly what MS did.
Slashdot Mirror
If people will create without incentive
Some would say that the incentive is in seeing others improve upon your work and give those improvements back to the community; enforcement of this relies on copright law.
If Microsoft refuses to develop Windows because it no longer has any copyrights, then Linux is there as a replacement, and it will become 10x what Windows ever was or Linux is today once it becomes unshackled from copyright and patent issues and has the customer base of MS Windows today.
How so? The *vast* majority of the Windows customer base have no skills relevant to software development, and a very high percentage of those of us who do have no interest, time or inclination to turn those skills to improving an operating system.
Sure, Linux would undoubtedly gain some extra developers, but I'd be surprised if it was as many as you seem to think.
A small amount of federal funds would replace a massive amount spent in retail software licenses.
You seem to be confusing free and Free; RedHat Enterprise, for example, is Free, but most certainly is not free. Besides which, compared to the cost of even my graphics card, the cost of my copy of XP Pro was negligible. At work, I use development tools that cost 10x that or more - or do you envision a world in which *all* software is free?
Very very few people argue against copyright when it comes to software.
Which makes the constant stream of slashdot posters arguing against copyright for music, films, etc all the more gauling and hypocritical. Why should the result of my efforts be afforded special protection just because they happen to be code, rather than music?
Are you *sure* that's what you want? Linux has remotely exploitable vulnerabilities found from time to time too, you know.
The result, I'm convinced, is that they hire a lot of sub-standard programmers
Actually, all other things being equal, you'd expect the proportion of sub-standard programmers with security clearance to be roughly the same as the proportion without. That's ignoring any time or cost to actually get them security cleared, which would presumably skew it towards better programmers being cleared, not worse ones.
These outfits need to either figure out a way to use better programmers who don't have security clearances
I am security cleared (in the UK), and work on "List X" projects (ie ones that you need to be security cleared for). It varies from project to project, but generally, I can't even give you the spec if you're not cleared. For the projects I've worked on at least, there is *no* way to use a non-security cleared programmer; even the source code is restricted.
What XML is good for is configuration, data interchange and similar files that a human may want to read through and/or edit by hand. With XML, you can see at a glance* what it is you're editing, without having to refer to a document and count bytes in a fixed column width binary file.
(* This presupposes that the XML schema is sane, of course...)
To answer your jpeg example, people don't stuff pixels into XML because no-one in their right minds would be editing the raw pixel data by hand. The closest to that you get is editing single pixels in a visual editor, and that's still nothing like doing it in a text (or hex) editor.
It would be admitting that kernel developers knowingly used patented methods in the kernel
I don't follow your logic there at all. You can equally well argue that they knew no such thing, but are rewriting any bit that is even vaguely suspicious to remove any possibility of infringement, now that such possibility has been brought to their attention.
I do have 4 non intel systems ( 2 ppc and 2 ultrasparc ) running perceptably faster than equivalently clocked intel machines
Which proves what about the Linux kernel, exactly? Perhaps with a BSD the differences would be even more noticable; perhaps they'd be less noticable.
The point is, you can't draw any conclusions at all from that setup, except that for those exact conditions, the non-x86 machines are "perceptably faster". Maybe he's right, and if the kernel was fixed, the other machines would beat the x86 ones into the ground - you just can't tell.
Redundant my arse. The OP is countering one person's article with another person's article. Apart from the fact that we like and agree with what's said on groklaw, what reason do I have to take PJ's word over O'Gara's?
Let me put it this way - the OP said "O'Gara's an SCO-funded shill!", to which the parent replied "PJ's an IBM-funded shill!". Flamebait or troll perhaps, but *redundant*? Go look it up moderator, because you don't know what means.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof: so prove it.
What reason could you have for running a huge study on the intellectual limits of one sex or another, or one race or another, but to use that information to exclude that race or sex on the basis of their supposed lack of ability?
Perhaps in the hope of proving once and for all that no such lack of ability exists?
I don't doubt that that was not his reason, but that's certainly a reason to run such a study other than the one you posit.
Oh, I'm not ranting about not being able to do what I want to under Linux, I'm ranting at the persistent "Linux will solve all your problems!" meme that permeates most sites like this.
Contrary to popular slashdot belief, Linux is not the solution to all computing woes, and blindly promoting it as such is not helpful. There's no point telling someone to install Linux without first knowing what it is that they actually use their PC for. If they can't do what they want with it (or work out how to), not only will they go back to Windows, they'll be that much more reluctant to try it again in the future.
tobacco smokers smoke far more than pot smokers
You've clearly not smoked dope with some of the people I've smoked dope with.
[Note to mods: that's not a joke, that's a statement of fact; I've known dope smokers who smoke a lot more dope than the average cigarette smoker does tobacco]
that surely implies that it ought not to be 0wned in 5 minutes
Well, I've had two XP machines at home connected to ADSL for 2+ years and never been "0wned". I'd say it's fit for purpose, if the user it fit to use it.
I can only speak for myself, but here goes...
In my experience, most malware gets on to PCs through user intervention. Sure, there are worms and self-propogating viruses that exploit holes, but there are also an awful lot of trojans and other crap masquerading as, or piggy-backing on, useful programs (think Kazaa and Bonzi Buddy and their ilk). There is *nothing* that can be done (by a usable system) to prevent this. Even if you're not running as root, you can compromise your own account and open ports to act as a spam really or other zombie. Add to that that most users will get used to typing in the root password when prompted to install stuff, and given sufficient market share, the situation for Linux will be nearly as bad as for Windows. Less remote exploits, but plenty enough social-engineering and trojans.
The only reason you don't see that sort of thing now is because Windows is an easier target (both in terms of itself and its users) and has vastly more market share. If/when Linux becomes mainstream and attains something like comparable market share, it'll be because more less clueful users are using it. Then it'll be worth the malware writers' time and effort to target it.
Rubbish - online casinos are legal in many countries, including the UK, but the bad guys are going after them here too. The real reason is that they have money and are easily attacked. Morality has nothing to do with it.
Tell you what, I'll make you a deal - you get Linux to a state where I can use it for my everyday computing activities, and I'll reinstall it.
Until such time as it's suitable for my use, telling me to ditch Windows and install Linux is akin to telling me to solve all my (imagined) computing problems by using an abacus instead. It may well be the best tool for some jobs, but not for all my jobs.
Text files are a superior configuration method because they're easy for a person to understand, easy for a computer to read, and can be changed on multiple computers with O(1) work.
That's all fine and dandy, but we're talking about a gaming system, not a server farm. Why would you need or even want to copy those text files to multiple computers if you only have one?
Even if you did (perhaps you run some sort of commercial LAN gaming setup), what's wrong with a GUI configurator backed by a text (or even binary) file?
X11 Will Always Look like Other Platforms
But how many users are going to hop from platform to platform using OO, compared to the number who are going to stick to one platform (OS X) and hop from app to app?
When I was a teenager, I was arrested on one or another about half a dozen times... and wasn't ever actually prosecuted.... not even once.
That's because being arrested is supposed to be enough of a deterrent to make you think twice before doing it again. Would you prefer to have been hauled before a court and fined? Or would you whine even more about the waste of time and money?
If anything it means that society doesn't like those laws.
That's true, but never forget that society is just a bunch of loosely-coupled people, and sometimes people really don't know what's in their best interests. Lots of people here and elsewhere bemoan a lack of sight in corporate America - companies going for short-term gain, ignoring longer-term prospects, etc. Same thing applies here. Make it too hard to make money creating music, films, etc, and lots of people will stop. That'll cut down on the amount of dross produced for sure, but also on the amount of good stuff.
Because otherwise the *AA can use scare tactics to simply file a John Doe lawsuit against anyone, forcing them to either pay ${X}000 dollars without a chance to defend themselves, or get sued into bankruptcy.
That doesn't make sense; if it's cheap to bring the suit, it's cheap to defend it, and if you're doing nothing wrong, then you should be safe from bankruptcy, especially if the *AA has to pay your costs when they lose. Of course there will always be innocents wrongly found guilty, but on average they should be by far in the minority. Thus, either the *AAs mostly get guilty people, or they lose shedloads of money on frivolous suits.
They'll just say that they can't force downloads so anyone who has the content they provided did it willingly.
The content they provided? Surely, then, they can't prosecute downloaders, only those who download and the re-upload to others. After all, if they're making it available for download, they're the ones distributing it, which is their right as copyright holders (unless they want to sue themselves...)
Just look at the amazing things that have happened to the quake 1 engine over the past few years. It's _vastly_ superior to what ID software were selling a few years ago!
That's true, but fair's fair - at the time Q1 was released, it was state of the art. The improvements have been possible because the art moved on.
A bad pun in this case perhaps, but "launched" is commonly used when announcing that a new product or service has been created and released.
For once, I think you're being just a little hard on Michael (never thought I'd say that...)
Two words: copyright infringement. Just because something is published on the web, doesn't mean anyone has the right to reproduce/republish it, even if you're trying to do the site's owner a favour. Without permission it's infringement.
The Sun vs MS case was nothing to do with their being a monopoly, it was breach of contract, pure and simple. The Java licence says that you're not allowed to add your own packages or classes in the java.* hierarchy, and that's exactly what MS did.