You're trying to compare # of downloads to # of unique viewers.
Consider how many times each individual may have downloaded Quicktime, to reinstall, to upgrade, to move to a different computer, to load it on multiple computers...
Of course how they determine unique viewers is likely questionable.
Bottom line: The market (ie, consumers) are idiots. Now I don't mean that in a really bad way... but honestly, when was the last time you saw consumers en masse have any objections to the actions of a corporation stronger then "aww shucks, that's too bad."
A very large amount of education is required for the market to realise exactly how much power it has in this equation. Too often people assume that business & capitalism is about the big corporations making decisions... but it's entirely controlled by the market. If people would stand up and use that power, 99% of our corporatism problems would go away.
Distribution as source isn't as bad as it used to be. Debian for example: "apt-get -b source ".
Granted, that's not exactly what the end user's going to want to see... but if it's progressed that much recently, what'll things be like in a few years?
Isn't that exactly the point? International application of local laws brings anyone face to face with even the extremest political agendas of all countries involved.
IMHO, the inability to display customized widgets properly by a certain native toolkit is a shortcoming of the toolkit, and should be corrected there. Where there is in inability to match the stylesheet exactly, I'd (personally) much rather have the toolkit simply do it's best to match it, and fail a bit. That could just be me.
As for widgets "looking native", that's all fine and good, but I'd also really like them to feel native.
That would be great... if mozilla actually did native widgets instead of XUL stuff for... for example... scrollbars. Last I heard somebody was actually looking at how to fix this, but it's been a while since I heard an update.
If the opinion of GPL code is really that bad, why not use dual-licensing to get around it?
If you released your OSS project with a license that allowed the licensee to apply their choice of the GPL or a standard "You have no rights to redistribute" license, they might actually be more reassured. (as strange/silly as that is)
Some very interesting ideas there, especially considering that the GNU philosophy is targetted at the (eventual) removal of software copyright from the equation altogether.
As for that awkward intermediate period, the key would be including in the tax-exemption a clause covering not-quite-public-domain software with a license that allows unfettered public use. After all, the GPL is really an excellent embodiement of of what public domain is supposed to accomplish: contribution of works to anyone who wants it, in the hopes of producing more unique and creative material.
In my opinion, the secret sauce of Open Source is Transparency. Transparency teaches formerly proprietary engineering groups to trust the customer and vet plans before committing expensive resources to implementation. It generally uplevels coding quality as the potential for public embarrassment increases with increased scrutiny (the famous "massive peer review").
Wow. What strange hybrid of McEmployee and Marketroid was spawned to create paragraphs containing both the phrases "secret sauce" and "uplevels". Wow.:)
Or they're worried that someone can pay $200 for their home edition of Windows and get server-quality http and smb daemons with no limitations on the number of users, instead of paying countless thousands of dollars running a MS-based web server.
These boxes are only designed to hold a few seconds worth of data and the data is only saved and extracted after a crash. They don't keep your whole driving history and don't transmit it. I'm just astounded at the level of paranoia on Slashdot. When you have this kind of hysterical reaction to imagined problems, it undermines your credibility for real threats to personal privacy.
Okay.. But how does any of that require the unit to be hooked up to any kind of network? That was my point. The only things that would require a hook up to some larger information network that I can think of is non-crash related data.
Hmm... I've never heard that argument made in the context of Murphy's Law... this sounds like a potentially really effective way of describing the problems with things like the PATRIOT act, Holling's Bills... any various privacy concerns. I really like that, thanks.
Why on the internet? Even airplane black boxes don't appear to be hooked up for communication of any kind, otherwise people wouldn't be so concerned with finding them after a crash.
Why can't this be a similarly autonomous data-gathering device? If there's any need for it outisde of crash data recovery, clearly there's a different purpose involved.
You just named two cable companies. Neither of those are piggybacking on anything... they own their own lines, and run their cable television businesses as their primary work.
Look at the third-party dsl providers on the other hand. If they weren't doing well, they wouldn't have been offering DSL on such wide availablility for the past few _years_.
That includes updates to ALOT of software. Scientific applications, a few office suites, several databases, countless server suites, databases, games, desktop environments. You won't find that much on any Win98 CD.
Consider just the updates to critical packages of this "certain very popular Linux distro", and I'm sure you'll come up with different numbers.
It's used to distribute non-music, non-video files
It's used to distribute music by artists not covered under RIAA members
Many artists may actually want their music distributed on this network. (In which case, by the same argument that says consumers should pay for access to Kazaa, artists should pay to have their music on Kazaa. Hrm. Then where would we be?:) )
Slashdot Mirror
You're trying to compare # of downloads to # of unique viewers.
Consider how many times each individual may have downloaded Quicktime, to reinstall, to upgrade, to move to a different computer, to load it on multiple computers...
Of course how they determine unique viewers is likely questionable.
And yet another opprotunity for Douglas Adams references narrowly avoided... until now.
The secret to flying is to fall, and miss the ground.
Bottom line: The market (ie, consumers) are idiots. Now I don't mean that in a really bad way... but honestly, when was the last time you saw consumers en masse have any objections to the actions of a corporation stronger then "aww shucks, that's too bad."
A very large amount of education is required for the market to realise exactly how much power it has in this equation. Too often people assume that business & capitalism is about the big corporations making decisions... but it's entirely controlled by the market. If people would stand up and use that power, 99% of our corporatism problems would go away.
The announcement, no. The parent, yes.
Yay larger tarball! We win! ;)
Seriously, just go read the book. The books clears up all the little things that aren't really clear.
Distribution as source isn't as bad as it used to be. Debian for example: "apt-get -b source ".
Granted, that's not exactly what the end user's going to want to see... but if it's progressed that much recently, what'll things be like in a few years?
Isn't that exactly the point? International application of local laws brings anyone face to face with even the extremest political agendas of all countries involved.
IMHO, the inability to display customized widgets properly by a certain native toolkit is a shortcoming of the toolkit, and should be corrected there. Where there is in inability to match the stylesheet exactly, I'd (personally) much rather have the toolkit simply do it's best to match it, and fail a bit. That could just be me.
As for widgets "looking native", that's all fine and good, but I'd also really like them to feel native.
That would be great... if mozilla actually did native widgets instead of XUL stuff for... for example... scrollbars. Last I heard somebody was actually looking at how to fix this, but it's been a while since I heard an update.
If the opinion of GPL code is really that bad, why not use dual-licensing to get around it?
If you released your OSS project with a license that allowed the licensee to apply their choice of the GPL or a standard "You have no rights to redistribute" license, they might actually be more reassured. (as strange/silly as that is)
All the FOX dvd i own, in particular, have unskippable previews/advertisements.
I can't speak for the original poster, but I feel dirty when I have to use WMA instead of Ogg.
Some very interesting ideas there, especially considering that the GNU philosophy is targetted at the (eventual) removal of software copyright from the equation altogether.
As for that awkward intermediate period, the key would be including in the tax-exemption a clause covering not-quite-public-domain software with a license that allows unfettered public use. After all, the GPL is really an excellent embodiement of of what public domain is supposed to accomplish: contribution of works to anyone who wants it, in the hopes of producing more unique and creative material.
Now if only we could teach them perl...
Or they're worried that someone can pay $200 for their home edition of Windows and get server-quality http and smb daemons with no limitations on the number of users, instead of paying countless thousands of dollars running a MS-based web server.
Hmm... I've never heard that argument made in the context of Murphy's Law... this sounds like a potentially really effective way of describing the problems with things like the PATRIOT act, Holling's Bills... any various privacy concerns. I really like that, thanks.
Why on the internet? Even airplane black boxes don't appear to be hooked up for communication of any kind, otherwise people wouldn't be so concerned with finding them after a crash.
Why can't this be a similarly autonomous data-gathering device? If there's any need for it outisde of crash data recovery, clearly there's a different purpose involved.
You just named two cable companies. Neither of those are piggybacking on anything... they own their own lines, and run their cable television businesses as their primary work.
Look at the third-party dsl providers on the other hand. If they weren't doing well, they wouldn't have been offering DSL on such wide availablility for the past few _years_.
This is BS. My ISP piggypacks on the major provider's lines, and charges $40. (Canadian, at that). They're doing just fine thank you.
That includes updates to ALOT of software. Scientific applications, a few office suites, several databases, countless server suites, databases, games, desktop environments. You won't find that much on any Win98 CD.
Consider just the updates to critical packages of this "certain very popular Linux distro", and I'm sure you'll come up with different numbers.