I hadn't heard that (don't follow MySQL issues, even though I work at Sun) but it makes sense. JIS has been open sourcing other key software products (Solaris, Java), claiming that this would help him (as you say) sell hardware and services. He had to overcome a lot of resistance and skepticism to do this. He'd look really dumb if he allowed one prominent new acquisition to deviate from this model.
MySQL had been out of startup mode for many years, and Widenius probably had a lot more control over the development of MySQL than Blogger's founders had over their baby.
That said, there is an obvious disconnect between MySQL's laid-back, decentralized corporate culture and Sun's bureaucratic, highly politicized management.
If you're going to use Klingon insults, do it in Klingon. Otherwise I'll confuse your lame Star Trek references with lame attempts at originality.
That "Klingon Shakespeare" thing was one of the silly trekkie memes that finally drove me away from Star Trek after decades of fanboydom. It's from the second-worst ("Final Frontier" was the worst) ST movie, "The Undiscovered Country". I hated it mainly for the endless mid-20th-century cultural references, including the title (which doesn't make any sense, except to make it sound more literary) and the Shakespeare thing, which was meant to echo the 60s notion (more stereotype than reality) that the Soviets were always saying "We invented it first." The premise that Federation/Klingon rivalry and reconciliation echoed 20th century history was not a bad one, but the way the script kept hitting us over the head with the idea ("don't wait for the translation!") ruined my enjoyment of what might have been a decent SF movie. And the way trekkies seized on the Shakespeare thing as if it were a serious plot point instead of a lame cultural references was the camel-back-breaking straw on a pile that took them a long time to build.
First time I've heard it. Nor does it make a lot of sense. When these kinds of legal questions get asked, I don't recall anybody saying "My lawyer told me" or "According to this Nolo book". If they did, they were drowned out by the noisy chorus of self-taught legal "experts".
Bah. Broadcasters can complain about fairness when they start acting fairly. They ignore rules about providing educational content, they no longer bother to do local journalism (except maybe a low-budget happy talk show), and they're only interested in broadcasting profitable pablum.
Try to remember that broadcast spectrum is a finite resource and that broadcasters get exclusive (and extremely profitable) use of a chunk of it in exchange for "serving the public good". Assuming you can use that last phrase without gagging.
I don't suppose it's that big a deal if a few people are cut off from this mass market crap for a couple of months. But to say that a highly profitable business that exploits a public resource is being "treated unfairly" because they have to run a few transmitters for a couple extra months is ludicrous.
You've pretty much summed it up. TFA ignores this point, and makes a silly argument about the higher per-unit profit of applications versus the OS. But that's a forest-and-trees argument: individual units aren't how you value your total profit, and MS sells a lot more OS licenses than it does licenses for any given application.
Sword enthusiasts have told me this, though none of the examples stuck in my mind. (Please share!) Trekkie web sites such as Memory Alpha and Wikipedia all assume that the weapon is purely Curry's invention.
The Bat'leth has a big advantage over a light saber: it actually works in the real world. Rick Curry, the effects dude who invented the Bat'leth, says it came from his disgust with futuristic weapons that look cool but couldn't possible work.
I think the general idea is that lawyers cost quite a lot of money per hour, while/. is completely free.
There are ways to get legal advice without spending a lot of money. Like visiting web sites and reading books authored by people with actual legal training.
Whatever the cost, the kind of legal advice you get on Slashdot can easily cost you more than you could possibly save on legal fees. The problem here is that too many Slashdotters just don't understand the law as well as they think they do. So they deliver bad advice based on a misunderstanding of the law with a sense of authority that's very dangerous.
Nor does it help that many Slashdotters have a strong libertarian bent and a strong sense of outrage over perceived social wrongs. Too often, their understanding of the law is motivated by a desire to further these principles, rather than any real understanding of how the law actually works in practice.
Yes, being stupid can be profitable. Doesn't make it intentional. Anyway, I very much doubt that anybody signs on to Slashdot specifically to complain about what's on Slashdot!
Also, what kind of document would I need to make official the public-domaining of the app?"
See. A. Lawyer.
Nobody on Slashdot is a legal expert, except in their own minds. The exceptions are the few actual lawyers who hang out here, and they all know better than to offer legal advice based on the kind of vague information you're providing.
This point gets made every time we have one of these give-me-legal-advice Ask Slashdots. It's vaguely possible that the submitter hasn't heard this before. But why do the editors refuse to hear it?
I don't see any inconsistency. It's a matter of hypocrisy (by moralists who denounce eroticism but have no trouble with what amounts to violence porn) versus bad science (by idiots like Thompson who blame all the violence on violence porn).
I actually dislike watching violence as much as Thompson does. I play FPS games with the gore settings turned down, and "action" movies alternately bore and revolt me. But if other folks get their jollies that way, I don't see the harm. If anything, immersion in fantasy violence probably channels dangerous impulses into safe outlets.
One kind of mass entertainment violence does bother me: that's the "A Team" type fantasy where bullets and explosions are everywhere, but nobody seems to actually get hurt, at least on camera. I don't care for the message that you can act violently without putting anybody at risk.
Heard an idea on the radio this morning: if a company wants to dole out huge remuneration to their execs, they have to go to the shareholders and get them to vote on it. Works for me. Free market enough for you?
Well, a server naming scheme can serve hundreds reliably if its tightly controlled and well thought-out, with a limited number of servers.
And you choose your names carfully — don't let some Tolkien geek name your servers after hard-to-spell and easy-to-confuse characters in LOTR. I myself can never remember which one is Sauron and which is Saruman.
But of course if you're going to be that serious about things, you might as well use boring names and be done with it.
The news media could give a... never mind. Anyway, the issue here is not that they screwed up, it's that they screwed up in a way that bring the Keepers of Public Virtue down on them. Screwing over your customers is no big deal. But offending the KPV can put you out of business.
I'm less bothered by the publicity this guy gets (let's face it, most "news" is cruft) than the fact that he keeps getting through the Slashdot editors' filters. Lately, they've been showing a depressing fondness for stories whose main interest is to lovers of freak shows.
Slashdot Mirror
I hadn't heard that (don't follow MySQL issues, even though I work at Sun) but it makes sense. JIS has been open sourcing other key software products (Solaris, Java), claiming that this would help him (as you say) sell hardware and services. He had to overcome a lot of resistance and skepticism to do this. He'd look really dumb if he allowed one prominent new acquisition to deviate from this model.
MySQL had been out of startup mode for many years, and Widenius probably had a lot more control over the development of MySQL than Blogger's founders had over their baby.
That said, there is an obvious disconnect between MySQL's laid-back, decentralized corporate culture and Sun's bureaucratic, highly politicized management.
If you're going to use Klingon insults, do it in Klingon. Otherwise I'll confuse your lame Star Trek references with lame attempts at originality.
That "Klingon Shakespeare" thing was one of the silly trekkie memes that finally drove me away from Star Trek after decades of fanboydom. It's from the second-worst ("Final Frontier" was the worst) ST movie, "The Undiscovered Country". I hated it mainly for the endless mid-20th-century cultural references, including the title (which doesn't make any sense, except to make it sound more literary) and the Shakespeare thing, which was meant to echo the 60s notion (more stereotype than reality) that the Soviets were always saying "We invented it first." The premise that Federation/Klingon rivalry and reconciliation echoed 20th century history was not a bad one, but the way the script kept hitting us over the head with the idea ("don't wait for the translation!") ruined my enjoyment of what might have been a decent SF movie. And the way trekkies seized on the Shakespeare thing as if it were a serious plot point instead of a lame cultural references was the camel-back-breaking straw on a pile that took them a long time to build.
That's certainly true in your case.
Ooh! A new insult! Aren't you clever!
And the counter-point gets made every time ...
First time I've heard it. Nor does it make a lot of sense. When these kinds of legal questions get asked, I don't recall anybody saying "My lawyer told me" or "According to this Nolo book". If they did, they were drowned out by the noisy chorus of self-taught legal "experts".
Bah. Broadcasters can complain about fairness when they start acting fairly. They ignore rules about providing educational content, they no longer bother to do local journalism (except maybe a low-budget happy talk show), and they're only interested in broadcasting profitable pablum.
Try to remember that broadcast spectrum is a finite resource and that broadcasters get exclusive (and extremely profitable) use of a chunk of it in exchange for "serving the public good". Assuming you can use that last phrase without gagging.
I don't suppose it's that big a deal if a few people are cut off from this mass market crap for a couple of months. But to say that a highly profitable business that exploits a public resource is being "treated unfairly" because they have to run a few transmitters for a couple extra months is ludicrous.
You've pretty much summed it up. TFA ignores this point, and makes a silly argument about the higher per-unit profit of applications versus the OS. But that's a forest-and-trees argument: individual units aren't how you value your total profit, and MS sells a lot more OS licenses than it does licenses for any given application.
Sword enthusiasts have told me this, though none of the examples stuck in my mind. (Please share!) Trekkie web sites such as Memory Alpha and Wikipedia all assume that the weapon is purely Curry's invention.
The Bat'leth has a big advantage over a light saber: it actually works in the real world. Rick Curry, the effects dude who invented the Bat'leth, says it came from his disgust with futuristic weapons that look cool but couldn't possible work.
I think the general idea is that lawyers cost quite a lot of money per hour, while /. is completely free.
There are ways to get legal advice without spending a lot of money. Like visiting web sites and reading books authored by people with actual legal training.
Whatever the cost, the kind of legal advice you get on Slashdot can easily cost you more than you could possibly save on legal fees. The problem here is that too many Slashdotters just don't understand the law as well as they think they do. So they deliver bad advice based on a misunderstanding of the law with a sense of authority that's very dangerous.
Nor does it help that many Slashdotters have a strong libertarian bent and a strong sense of outrage over perceived social wrongs. Too often, their understanding of the law is motivated by a desire to further these principles, rather than any real understanding of how the law actually works in practice.
Yes, being stupid can be profitable. Doesn't make it intentional. Anyway, I very much doubt that anybody signs on to Slashdot specifically to complain about what's on Slashdot!
Also, what kind of document would I need to make official the public-domaining of the app?"
See. A. Lawyer.
Nobody on Slashdot is a legal expert, except in their own minds. The exceptions are the few actual lawyers who hang out here, and they all know better than to offer legal advice based on the kind of vague information you're providing.
This point gets made every time we have one of these give-me-legal-advice Ask Slashdots. It's vaguely possible that the submitter hasn't heard this before. But why do the editors refuse to hear it?
You NRA types are really bad at sarcasm.
This proves his whole point! Obviously the Great Conspiracy is secretly programming video game players to kill their nemesis!
I don't see any inconsistency. It's a matter of hypocrisy (by moralists who denounce eroticism but have no trouble with what amounts to violence porn) versus bad science (by idiots like Thompson who blame all the violence on violence porn).
I actually dislike watching violence as much as Thompson does. I play FPS games with the gore settings turned down, and "action" movies alternately bore and revolt me. But if other folks get their jollies that way, I don't see the harm. If anything, immersion in fantasy violence probably channels dangerous impulses into safe outlets.
One kind of mass entertainment violence does bother me: that's the "A Team" type fantasy where bullets and explosions are everywhere, but nobody seems to actually get hurt, at least on camera. I don't care for the message that you can act violently without putting anybody at risk.
Not true! For example, enthusiasm about the "singularity" is obviously reaching a singularity!
If I have to remember .number.rack.building.region.company part, which do I need to expend the extra brain cells on the so-called fun part?
Heard an idea on the radio this morning: if a company wants to dole out huge remuneration to their execs, they have to go to the shareholders and get them to vote on it. Works for me. Free market enough for you?
Well, a server naming scheme can serve hundreds reliably if its tightly controlled and well thought-out, with a limited number of servers.
And you choose your names carfully — don't let some Tolkien geek name your servers after hard-to-spell and easy-to-confuse characters in LOTR. I myself can never remember which one is Sauron and which is Saruman.
But of course if you're going to be that serious about things, you might as well use boring names and be done with it.
Hilarious to people into fishing. A total mystery to everybody else. Which I guess is part of the joke, but not a good way to relate to your users.
But that makes life very easy indeed for your IT people. Does anybody else matter?
Right, and having two names for everything couldn't possibly cause confusion or miscommunication.
The news media could give a ... never mind. Anyway, the issue here is not that they screwed up, it's that they screwed up in a way that bring the Keepers of Public Virtue down on them. Screwing over your customers is no big deal. But offending the KPV can put you out of business.
I'm less bothered by the publicity this guy gets (let's face it, most "news" is cruft) than the fact that he keeps getting through the Slashdot editors' filters. Lately, they've been showing a depressing fondness for stories whose main interest is to lovers of freak shows.