Because, as you've alluded to yourself, gnu/Linux is not a for profit entity; it is a community. It is countless individuals, for profit companies, and non-profit companies together working on countless pieces of software that fit together. Furthermore, back-alley deals and software designed to lock you into an ecosystem is not a natural part of any collaborative system. Collaboration encourages open standards and guidelines that all developers can use. Is this counter intuitive for a pro profit business? I don't think so. It's definitely counter intuitive to short term profit motivated ideals driven by greed; but I think (and hope) that most industry is starting to realize that that mentality benefits no one in the long term, even the greediest that it's supposed to benefit.
In all these cases I find it frustrating that gnu/Linux bears the blame. Microsoft office, Adobe products, video games, and major video cards software drivers are all 3rd party software products made by 3rd party companies that choose not to support Linux. There might be very good reasons why Photoshop doesn't have a Linux version and why most games use direct x, but given the direction Microsoft has taken lately all parties concerned should reevaluate whether this is still a prudent direction to take.
And almost certainly less accurate. That's the simple unfortunate truth of making a bullet slower. I'd rather not have the guys protecting us shooting less accurately than the other guy.
I'd like to expand on this for clarification. I don't think the world *always* needs more conservatism. I'm not a card carrying conservative. I am a swing voter. For example, during the civil rights movement and abolition of slavery progressive ideas, social programs, and liberal thinking were needed. But right now, I think we need the opposite. We need to get back to basics, shrink the impact of the government, critically analyse and evaluate broken social programs, and exercise fiscal conservatism. However, at the same time we need progressive reform of long in place political and financial policy. The democrats were supposed to do this in the last 8 years. They didn't. It would seem no one can. In which case I think it's prudent to neuter these corrupt and ineffective institutions as much as possible.
I couldn't agree more. I call them gangs; because that's what they are. Political parties are nothing more than a slight evolution of the same social structures formed by chimpanzees. A constituent from my area should not be pressured to align with the broad ideals that happen to go against the "enemies" of our larger area. There's no wonder the western political system simply seems broken. The real wonder is why the people haven't become disillusioned enough to seek reform. Charismatic politicians like Obama seem like they can provide the answer in good faith, but they can't, and the illusion that democratic election has any power under the current structure persists. If you need to fix a structure of any kind you start with the foundation. Anything else is patchwork.
As a non-usian I can honestly say the term makes a lot more sense than democrat. Not only *is* the US a republic, but besides having a democratically elected republic, it's not a real democracy. And, rightfully so. A true democracy would be terrible. After all, a democracy can be two wolf and a sheep deciding what to have for supper.
To put "the republicans" more in line with what every other country in the world calls that party: they are conservative. Conservatives, free from corruption, are for small government. They prioritize tradition over progressive ideas, saving over spending, and the free market over social bureaucracy.
The world needs more conservatism. The problem is that a proclivity towards private enterprise makes them easy targets for corruption. This is precisely why we need to keep the government's impact and their ability to monetize self interest as small as possible. The US (and others) political system has done a terrible job of this so far. A good start would be to remove corporate contributions to political campaigns.
If American's vote this guy in I might actually lose faith in humanity and jump off a tall building. "Evildoers"? Seriously? What are you 8? You can't even invent your own horribly ignorant and disconnected term for people that don't like you? Even worse you blindly copy your big brother (arguably the worst president in US history)? Fuck it... Goodbye cruel, retarded world.
Im curious, you boycott flash for what reason? It sucks... I get it. I can't watch a flash video and run a Windows virtual machine without a new i7 processor. It's seriously brutal. But to go far as to not have it all seems a bit extreme. Are you worried about security? If you work at the pentagon you might have an argument.. although you probably shouldn't be browsing slashdot on your work computer regardless.
I think your grandfather who worked 16 hour days 7 days a week with no job security would disagree with you. Fox news might not. Regardless, your opinion is neither new nor enlightened.
I'm pretty sure there are clear probable causes to the climate change in Egypt and they have to do with the end of the last ice age. Now, what causes ice ages? There's many theories but no one knows. Many theories, such as the changing of Earth's eccentricity, have a good reasoned basis supported by evidence. Others, like crustal displacement, are completely speculative. The truth is, nobody knows, and with regards to anthropomorphic planet warming: it doesn't matter. The question is: do emission from our industrial society impact the climate? I'm not an expert in the field, but nearly all the actual experts seem to agree that they do.
It has to only work gmail to gmail, in which case it's entirely dependent on how the receiver is accessing their gmail account. If they are accessing their account through an application like outlook using imap or the native extension then it's probably not going to work. Also there's the obvious problems of screenshot and copy paste. All in all this is probably a terrible idea as it will do nothing more than offer a false sense of security to people who don't know any better.
What your suggesting they do is not legal within the GPL. If it's GPL code they can't publish it and then delay anything. Now if it's their own proprietary code that they GPL chunks of occasionally, that would be right in line with what most companies do including Red Hat and Novell.
They release their code because they want to encourage adoption which will hopefully encourage licensing of the closed version and support contracts. This is the only way to monetize open source currently and hence the crux of the problem. AdaCore can easily give to the GPL but can't really benefit from it. That encourages them to develop under their own license and use these little tricks you dislike.
Re:GPL *perfectly* covers all needs. Flawed?!?
on
On Being Pro-GPL
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· Score: 1
You don't understand the purpose of the GPL. It's not intended to just give you things for free, but rather to give you freedom with your software. You want free stuff, and the GPL is good enough to provide you with that? Ok then. But the core premise of freedom with software should not be limited due to errors in design, and it currently is as you pointed out with games and other software, like hardware drivers.
I don't think they would. Red Hat and Novell write code under a proprietary license and then, a lot of the time, release chunks of it under the GPL after a certain amount of time. That's why the open source versions of their os have different names and often lag behind. Some software, like GroupWise, forever remains closed.
They practice exactly what I'm suggesting they just aren't able to as easily take back from the GPL as they are to give to it. So when they have to make big changes to pure GPL code they have little way to monetize it outside providing support.
Further on that point, those companies have been able to leverage their software into support contracts or cloud offerings. It's pretty difficult to a sell a support contract for a video game or hardware driver, which was my point entirely.
I've long believed the GPL has a major flaw that excludes it from wide adoption: there are too few ways to monetize GPL code. Now I'm sure some people are thinking "good, that's what the GPL is about", but they'd be wrong. The GPL is about freedom, and it's flaws force those interested in being paid for their work to often reinvent GPL code to monetize the software; closing it up entirely.
This problem is especially prelevant in industries like computer games, and hardware drivers; coincidentally two of the areas GPL code has constantly lagged behind. To fix this I would propose a provision, or perhaps a sub license that would allow a person or organisation to keep secret their source modifications for a period of time. Perhaps something like 1 or 2 years. This would give incentive to enterprise to build their products upon current GPL code as they could save money by not "reinventing the wheel", while also ensuring that their modifications would have a monetization period.
A well articulated and informed argument. Of course what you're touching on here is the old chestnut of nationalisation vs. privatization. It's an argument older than anyone alive today and the answer is for sure complex. However, judging from the successful countries in the world the answer seems to be that you need to strike a balance between the two. You can neither centralise, nor privatize everything and hope to have a healthy economy.
I'm Canadian so I'll use my country as an example. In the public sector we have schools, healthcare, employment insurance, old age pension, utilities, and traffic infrastructure as examples. The shared component with all of these is that they are fundamental to each citizens welfare. How each is managed is different and they all aren't run perfectly. Healthcare, for example, is a big beaurocracy. It's tightly controlled with little private sector influence and therefore is rife with waste and inefficiencies. Traffic infrastructure, by contrary, only centralises the power and decision making. Private enterprise bids on the actual work and thus competes and enjoys the benefits of market economics. This seems to be the best way to protect a public need, while maintaining efficiency.
As for the money supply. Money is of course the blood of any economy. It's vitally important and therefore becomes an interest of public welfare. Just like we can't have private enterprise building roads only to the guys business that pays the most, we can't have private enterprise controlling the money supply for their own interests. We learn these lessons slowly, and the hard way, and every time we learn a new lesson we build a shiny new regulation to deal with it. These regulations are like putting a bandaid on gangreen and only serve to create exactly what you hate in the first place: government bureaucracy.
Centralizing money creation by centralizing fractional reserve loans can be efficient just as traffic infrastructure is efficient. The government needs to merely: certify brokers, keep a national credit database, approve/deny loan requests, maintain interest rates. I wouldn't advocate setting up "Our Nations Bank" on every corner. Citibank will still give you your car loan, tack their couple of percent on the rate, maintain customer relations, and have to do so in a manner that is competitive in the market. They just don't get to control the power and decision making for the bloodflow of our economy.
It is utterly preposterous to use it IN SPITE of it being a rolling release, and to wish it wasn't.
Mine NEVER breaks, by the way.
Some value stability over the latest and greatest, but lucky you. If we all had the same hardware, software installed, and use-cases as you then your "opinion" might make sense. Many people use arch in SPITE of it having rolling releases and that certainly isn't preposterous. Suggesting that it is makes you, at best, a mindless fanboi, and at worst, an obtuse zealot.
I'm on arch, so way too often if you ask me. To specifically answer the question: at least once a week, with probably a new kernel update every couple of weeks. I make sure I have LVM snapshots between each update procedure as at least 1/4 of the time something breaks. I really wish arch didn't use rolling updates, but the vast AUR repository unique to arch is more than worth it.
Its wealth redistribution from everyone....right into the pockets of the already wealthy! Is it any wonder there are enough people fed up with it to create little niche markets like bitcoin?
It's no wonder. In fact, it's surprising more people aren't upset. Don't get me wrong, bitcoin has great intentions. I was very enthusiastic about it in the begining, but ultimately it's problems are too great to overcome. Ultimately I don't believe you can have a healthy decentralized economic system.
The biggest problem the west has economically is simple: corruption. Or more accurately I think: flawed fundamentals compounded by corruption. The most flawed of which being private enterprise controlling everything from investment speculation to the actual money supply.
If I were in a position of authority I would propose a gradual transfer of power from the private sector to a national central bank. Something like an increase on the fractional reserve ratio for all private enterprise by 2% per year until it hits 100. "New money" should then only be lent out by the central bank through private institutions acting as brokers. Profits from loans then go into the public treasury. Interest rates can then be controlled by a central authority who's core interest in is the welfare of the people, rather than shareholder profits. Periods of increased economic growth would result in increased social and public infrastructure spending, while periods of slower growth result in higher rates that help deflate bubbles and encourage saving.
There's still problems with corruption to be solved to ensure a central authority's ongoing interest in the public welfare (like corporate campaign donations) but you have to start somewhere.
Slashdot Mirror
Because, as you've alluded to yourself, gnu/Linux is not a for profit entity; it is a community. It is countless individuals, for profit companies, and non-profit companies together working on countless pieces of software that fit together. Furthermore, back-alley deals and software designed to lock you into an ecosystem is not a natural part of any collaborative system. Collaboration encourages open standards and guidelines that all developers can use. Is this counter intuitive for a pro profit business? I don't think so. It's definitely counter intuitive to short term profit motivated ideals driven by greed; but I think (and hope) that most industry is starting to realize that that mentality benefits no one in the long term, even the greediest that it's supposed to benefit.
In all these cases I find it frustrating that gnu/Linux bears the blame. Microsoft office, Adobe products, video games, and major video cards software drivers are all 3rd party software products made by 3rd party companies that choose not to support Linux. There might be very good reasons why Photoshop doesn't have a Linux version and why most games use direct x, but given the direction Microsoft has taken lately all parties concerned should reevaluate whether this is still a prudent direction to take.
And almost certainly less accurate. That's the simple unfortunate truth of making a bullet slower. I'd rather not have the guys protecting us shooting less accurately than the other guy.
Also this.
Windows 10 is already spyware. Nothing is free.
Friedman economics. Privatize everything. What could go wrong right? Whatever you say you're wrong.... he won a noble prize!
I don't know anything about technology, but you sound you deserve a job here.
Looking forward to paying you a ridiculous salary,
- Silicon Valley HR Department
The world needs more conservatism
I'd like to expand on this for clarification. I don't think the world *always* needs more conservatism. I'm not a card carrying conservative. I am a swing voter. For example, during the civil rights movement and abolition of slavery progressive ideas, social programs, and liberal thinking were needed. But right now, I think we need the opposite. We need to get back to basics, shrink the impact of the government, critically analyse and evaluate broken social programs, and exercise fiscal conservatism. However, at the same time we need progressive reform of long in place political and financial policy. The democrats were supposed to do this in the last 8 years. They didn't. It would seem no one can. In which case I think it's prudent to neuter these corrupt and ineffective institutions as much as possible.
I couldn't agree more. I call them gangs; because that's what they are. Political parties are nothing more than a slight evolution of the same social structures formed by chimpanzees. A constituent from my area should not be pressured to align with the broad ideals that happen to go against the "enemies" of our larger area. There's no wonder the western political system simply seems broken. The real wonder is why the people haven't become disillusioned enough to seek reform. Charismatic politicians like Obama seem like they can provide the answer in good faith, but they can't, and the illusion that democratic election has any power under the current structure persists. If you need to fix a structure of any kind you start with the foundation. Anything else is patchwork.
As a non-usian I can honestly say the term makes a lot more sense than democrat. Not only *is* the US a republic, but besides having a democratically elected republic, it's not a real democracy. And, rightfully so. A true democracy would be terrible. After all, a democracy can be two wolf and a sheep deciding what to have for supper.
To put "the republicans" more in line with what every other country in the world calls that party: they are conservative. Conservatives, free from corruption, are for small government. They prioritize tradition over progressive ideas, saving over spending, and the free market over social bureaucracy.
The world needs more conservatism. The problem is that a proclivity towards private enterprise makes them easy targets for corruption. This is precisely why we need to keep the government's impact and their ability to monetize self interest as small as possible. The US (and others) political system has done a terrible job of this so far. A good start would be to remove corporate contributions to political campaigns.
If American's vote this guy in I might actually lose faith in humanity and jump off a tall building. "Evildoers"? Seriously? What are you 8? You can't even invent your own horribly ignorant and disconnected term for people that don't like you? Even worse you blindly copy your big brother (arguably the worst president in US history)? Fuck it... Goodbye cruel, retarded world.
Seriously. They shouldn't have killed them all.
Im curious, you boycott flash for what reason? It sucks... I get it. I can't watch a flash video and run a Windows virtual machine without a new i7 processor. It's seriously brutal. But to go far as to not have it all seems a bit extreme. Are you worried about security? If you work at the pentagon you might have an argument.. although you probably shouldn't be browsing slashdot on your work computer regardless.
I think your grandfather who worked 16 hour days 7 days a week with no job security would disagree with you. Fox news might not. Regardless, your opinion is neither new nor enlightened.
I'm pretty sure there are clear probable causes to the climate change in Egypt and they have to do with the end of the last ice age. Now, what causes ice ages? There's many theories but no one knows. Many theories, such as the changing of Earth's eccentricity, have a good reasoned basis supported by evidence. Others, like crustal displacement, are completely speculative. The truth is, nobody knows, and with regards to anthropomorphic planet warming: it doesn't matter. The question is: do emission from our industrial society impact the climate? I'm not an expert in the field, but nearly all the actual experts seem to agree that they do.
Ya, it's called logging into chrome. Have you seen their market share lately?
It has to only work gmail to gmail, in which case it's entirely dependent on how the receiver is accessing their gmail account. If they are accessing their account through an application like outlook using imap or the native extension then it's probably not going to work. Also there's the obvious problems of screenshot and copy paste. All in all this is probably a terrible idea as it will do nothing more than offer a false sense of security to people who don't know any better.
What your suggesting they do is not legal within the GPL. If it's GPL code they can't publish it and then delay anything. Now if it's their own proprietary code that they GPL chunks of occasionally, that would be right in line with what most companies do including Red Hat and Novell.
They release their code because they want to encourage adoption which will hopefully encourage licensing of the closed version and support contracts. This is the only way to monetize open source currently and hence the crux of the problem. AdaCore can easily give to the GPL but can't really benefit from it. That encourages them to develop under their own license and use these little tricks you dislike.
You don't understand the purpose of the GPL. It's not intended to just give you things for free, but rather to give you freedom with your software. You want free stuff, and the GPL is good enough to provide you with that? Ok then. But the core premise of freedom with software should not be limited due to errors in design, and it currently is as you pointed out with games and other software, like hardware drivers.
I don't think they would. Red Hat and Novell write code under a proprietary license and then, a lot of the time, release chunks of it under the GPL after a certain amount of time. That's why the open source versions of their os have different names and often lag behind. Some software, like GroupWise, forever remains closed.
They practice exactly what I'm suggesting they just aren't able to as easily take back from the GPL as they are to give to it. So when they have to make big changes to pure GPL code they have little way to monetize it outside providing support.
Further on that point, those companies have been able to leverage their software into support contracts or cloud offerings. It's pretty difficult to a sell a support contract for a video game or hardware driver, which was my point entirely.
I've long believed the GPL has a major flaw that excludes it from wide adoption: there are too few ways to monetize GPL code. Now I'm sure some people are thinking "good, that's what the GPL is about", but they'd be wrong. The GPL is about freedom, and it's flaws force those interested in being paid for their work to often reinvent GPL code to monetize the software; closing it up entirely.
This problem is especially prelevant in industries like computer games, and hardware drivers; coincidentally two of the areas GPL code has constantly lagged behind. To fix this I would propose a provision, or perhaps a sub license that would allow a person or organisation to keep secret their source modifications for a period of time. Perhaps something like 1 or 2 years. This would give incentive to enterprise to build their products upon current GPL code as they could save money by not "reinventing the wheel", while also ensuring that their modifications would have a monetization period.
A well articulated and informed argument. Of course what you're touching on here is the old chestnut of nationalisation vs. privatization. It's an argument older than anyone alive today and the answer is for sure complex. However, judging from the successful countries in the world the answer seems to be that you need to strike a balance between the two. You can neither centralise, nor privatize everything and hope to have a healthy economy.
I'm Canadian so I'll use my country as an example. In the public sector we have schools, healthcare, employment insurance, old age pension, utilities, and traffic infrastructure as examples. The shared component with all of these is that they are fundamental to each citizens welfare. How each is managed is different and they all aren't run perfectly. Healthcare, for example, is a big beaurocracy. It's tightly controlled with little private sector influence and therefore is rife with waste and inefficiencies. Traffic infrastructure, by contrary, only centralises the power and decision making. Private enterprise bids on the actual work and thus competes and enjoys the benefits of market economics. This seems to be the best way to protect a public need, while maintaining efficiency.
As for the money supply. Money is of course the blood of any economy. It's vitally important and therefore becomes an interest of public welfare. Just like we can't have private enterprise building roads only to the guys business that pays the most, we can't have private enterprise controlling the money supply for their own interests. We learn these lessons slowly, and the hard way, and every time we learn a new lesson we build a shiny new regulation to deal with it. These regulations are like putting a bandaid on gangreen and only serve to create exactly what you hate in the first place: government bureaucracy.
Centralizing money creation by centralizing fractional reserve loans can be efficient just as traffic infrastructure is efficient. The government needs to merely: certify brokers, keep a national credit database, approve/deny loan requests, maintain interest rates. I wouldn't advocate setting up "Our Nations Bank" on every corner. Citibank will still give you your car loan, tack their couple of percent on the rate, maintain customer relations, and have to do so in a manner that is competitive in the market. They just don't get to control the power and decision making for the bloodflow of our economy.
It is utterly preposterous to use it IN SPITE of it being a rolling release, and to wish it wasn't.
Mine NEVER breaks, by the way.
Some value stability over the latest and greatest, but lucky you. If we all had the same hardware, software installed, and use-cases as you then your "opinion" might make sense. Many people use arch in SPITE of it having rolling releases and that certainly isn't preposterous. Suggesting that it is makes you, at best, a mindless fanboi, and at worst, an obtuse zealot.
I'm on arch, so way too often if you ask me. To specifically answer the question: at least once a week, with probably a new kernel update every couple of weeks. I make sure I have LVM snapshots between each update procedure as at least 1/4 of the time something breaks. I really wish arch didn't use rolling updates, but the vast AUR repository unique to arch is more than worth it.
Its wealth redistribution from everyone....right into the pockets of the already wealthy! Is it any wonder there are enough people fed up with it to create little niche markets like bitcoin?
It's no wonder. In fact, it's surprising more people aren't upset. Don't get me wrong, bitcoin has great intentions. I was very enthusiastic about it in the begining, but ultimately it's problems are too great to overcome. Ultimately I don't believe you can have a healthy decentralized economic system.
The biggest problem the west has economically is simple: corruption. Or more accurately I think: flawed fundamentals compounded by corruption. The most flawed of which being private enterprise controlling everything from investment speculation to the actual money supply.
If I were in a position of authority I would propose a gradual transfer of power from the private sector to a national central bank. Something like an increase on the fractional reserve ratio for all private enterprise by 2% per year until it hits 100. "New money" should then only be lent out by the central bank through private institutions acting as brokers. Profits from loans then go into the public treasury. Interest rates can then be controlled by a central authority who's core interest in is the welfare of the people, rather than shareholder profits. Periods of increased economic growth would result in increased social and public infrastructure spending, while periods of slower growth result in higher rates that help deflate bubbles and encourage saving.
There's still problems with corruption to be solved to ensure a central authority's ongoing interest in the public welfare (like corporate campaign donations) but you have to start somewhere.