My point is that Vista is, and pre-SP1 XP was, of a quality that would conventionally be referred to as a "beta", despite MS charging real money for them.
Please enlight me, because i don't know any OS or even a single complex program that gets it's right without patch from day one.
Well:
It's a matter of degree - although all code has bugs, some organisations tend to produce code that is far buggier (both in terms of quantity and seriousness of bugs.
Code that is expected to have bugs is usually marked "beta". Shipping known-buggy code without marking it as "beta" is dishonest.
Usually, beta testers are rewarded for their work. With Microsoft (and a lot of other companies, especially in the PC games field), people have to pay for the privilege.
Different quality expectations apply to code that is given away for free ("here, I wrote this - it might be useful to you, grab a copy if you want it") and code that is sold ("you give me X, I will give you software that does Y" implies that the software actually does Y and not Z).
Besides, if you look at your original post, you said "they can't win" - my response is that, if they could figure out how to ship non-buggy code, they would win - which is something I believe that a lot of people would agree to.
So if they deploy the SP later, then they have a lot of problems or just don't care for the users. If they deploy it early, they just want the people think the system is ready... So they can't win, can they?
Well, they could. There's always the option of not shipping broken code in the first place.
Thankyou for taking the time to write such a well-reasoned reply.
Just to clarify, when I was talking about the funding coming from business, I wasn't talking about voluntary donations, I meant to refer to the tax base created by the business activity, both through their corporate taxes and through the income taxes paid by their employees. In that context, neither of your examples seem so outlandish.
Although you give several good examples of people who did well despite dropping out of higher education, I would still believe that there is a strong correlation between educational level and income.
It's a nice thought that you throw tons of money at the really smart kids, but you have to appreciate that the money has to come from somewhere.
From businesses started by the previous generation's smart kids, by any chance? There's a society-wide return-on-investment issue that also has to be considered. The more you invest in this generation's smart kids, the more money will be available for the next generation's education.
This agreement is, of course, implicit, but it is the basic tenet of a capitalistic-- or, indeed, any barter-based-- society; unless the product is EXPLICITLY provided free of charge, you are assumed to have to pay for it.
I've not seen any signs explicitly saying that air is free, but it is. I think you'll find that everything that is for sale has an explicit price attached, rather than the other way round. It seems like you're using a circular argument here: we say that it's stealing because "we" define it to be so (for some value of "we" that includes you but does not include the entirety of the rest of the human race).
Ultimately, though, you want your house cleaned and decide to rent a robot. Afterwards, you refuse to pay,
Here's where I'd say the analogy breaks down (and, please note, I'm not addressing the larger issue here). In your analogy, you enter into a rental agreement, then break the deal that you've agreed to. In the movie situation, no agreement exists between the parties to break.
From my experience and observations over the last 20 years of being in this industry...
(1) There is no shortage of programmers or software engineers in the U.S.
No, but there is a shortage of competent ones, where I'm taking "competent" to mean "capable of producing at least 3x the average results. I'd rather hire a "3x+" from some other country than a "1x-" from the US for the same price. Of course, if you think this is wrong, you're free to start your own business and take risks for yourself.
In the US, 4 years a respectable college can easily top 120, probably 200K.
No, this is not realistic except for a very few exceptional cases. If you're looking for this much, you're going to be disappointed.
As for the other comments on inequality: my grandparents were farm labourers and cleaners; my parents junior clerical staff; I was the first member of my family to graduate from university. You can't control where you start, but you can control how far you travel. Instead of whining, start your own company. Take risks. You don't get to the 100-yard line without taking a chance of falling back to the 0 line. Of course, people who inherit wealth rather than work for it offend me, but so do people who aren't prepared to risk everything they have in order to improve what they've got.
Software companies that produce products will be forced to "pay up" or let the vulnerability go to said parties above.
Or, not sell broken products in the first place. Of course, that will require undoing all the buyer "education" that they've performed over the last 15 years to train the purchaser to (not) distinguish between "shiny things" and "solid and secure code".
Actually most EULA's prohibit this, thus making it illegal,
At best, breach of contract. Even if the EULA is valid, which many aren't. Plus you have to prove that the information was obtained through "illegal" means.
For the record, the above (and the sig change that I've just reverted) weren't from me. Someone (who needs a good punch in the face) was showing off their browser exploit skills.
No, this won't reinvent shit. Sorry. Go do something useful with your life, or kill yourself now and stop wasting resources. Waste of my time even posting this article, asshole.
The rights that you lose are the ability to distribute code you have developed under any license you choose (when that code is deemed a derivitive of the GPL'd work, which includes merely linking to the code in question).
You never had this one to begin with (distributing derivative works is not permitted by default), so no loss there.
You lose the right to enforce any patents you may own on that code.
Not under GPL2 - read section 7 more carefully, you can enforce, but you have to stop distribution of other people's code when you do (you can still distribute your own). GPL3 is different, I'll accept your point there.
You lose the right to control distribution and the right to control use.
Again, you never had distribution rights for derivative works in the first place. Without distribution rights, I'm not sure that control of usage is possible.
You also lose the right to control translations into other languages
Human or machine languages?
and the right to control who may derive from your work.
You still have this right - you can distribute your work with whatever restrictions you want. You can't distribute someone else's work and control downstream derivation.
In the above, i'm referring to code that is entirely written by you that merely links to GPL'd code, not where you have taken someone elses code and modified it.
If all it did was link to GPL code - i.e. it didn't use GPL'd header files and wasn't distributed with GPL binary pieces, then I suspect (IANAL, but I get involved in this stuff sometimes) that the GPL wouldn't apply. Dynamic linking is borderline already, and if the interface wasn't built by including GPL'd headers (or fragments thereof, such as descriptions of data structures passed around by the interface) then you're probably in the clear.
I agree, but fewer rights is the traditional usage. tip: use "less" for things you measure, use "fewer" for things you count.
Generally, yes. However, you have to consider it in the context of the whole sentence. Given that the contrast is with "more", "less" is preferred as it's the more familiar antonym and makes the sentence flow more smoothly. It's a fine line though, and pretty much down to personal stylistic preferences.
Anyhow, any person that believes the GPL should be respected (as I do) also needs to respect the TOS that MS sets forth.
Agreeing to the GPL gives you more rights than you would otherwise have had. Agreeing to the MS TOS gives you less rights than you would otherwise have had.
As much as Web servers need BSD, Apache, PHP and others, and Web clients need Gecko or WebKit, regular everyday people who need to make documents need better casual HTML tools.
Personally, I use TeX. HTML looks like complete crap.
My guess would actually be that it's the #1 cause where a specific cause can be determined, and that "not exercising enough" would actually be the #1 cause, given that it's a partial contribution to far more cases. However, it still is the case that we focus on smoking as a "social crime" far more (in proportion to its consequences) than other activities, and that bugs me. (I'm an ex-smoker, so have spent time on both sides of the divide).
Smoking affects the company's bottom line if they self-insure
So do skiing, riding motorcycles, eating at McDogfood, eating nitrate-cured meats, not getting off your ass and exercising enough, and lots of other things. Why do people focus so much on just that one when arguing healthcare costs?
The free market most libertarians have in mind is impossible. It is an oxymoron. It contradicts itself out of existence.
(Please don't assume I'm a frothing-at-the-mouth libertarian, btw - I tend strongly in that direction, but don't regard it as an absolute - maybe I'd be better classed as minarchist). My comment was mainly intended to say that government regulation has mixed effects. As ever, when I make a quick and imprecise slashdot post after a couple of beers, someone responds intelligently with well-reasoned content.
Laws--restrictions on people's activities--are required to create a market structure under which capitalism can thrive.
You do seem to be confusing libertarianism with anarcho-capitalism in your argument though. Remember that libertarians believe in "non-initiation of force", which includes absence of fraud. This assumes forceful enforcement of such a restriction. Now, whether such a utopia is achievable is another question entirely, which I'm not going to even start to get into here.
For example, the free market promotes theft and murder.
Hmmm... this isn't as self-evident as you seem to believe. A purely short-term market, with no tracking of past history, maybe - but it doesn't work that way. In a fully open market, you are able to examine the past interactions of the people who are inviting you to interact with them.
(That's not to make a claim about whether government regulation is good or not, just to clarify a point.)
For example, without the EPA, do you think the environment would be cleaner or dirtier than it is now?
Without the EPA, it would be dirtier. Without the EPA, *and* without the restrictions preventing me from retaliating forcefully against the people producing toxins that enter into my lungs, it would be a whole lot cleaner, and you can guess why. Consider the scope of your question carefully.
Slashdot Mirror
My point is that Vista is, and pre-SP1 XP was, of a quality that would conventionally be referred to as a "beta", despite MS charging real money for them.
Please enlight me, because i don't know any OS or even a single complex program that gets it's right without patch from day one.
Well:
It's a matter of degree - although all code has bugs, some organisations tend to produce code that is far buggier (both in terms of quantity and seriousness of bugs.
Code that is expected to have bugs is usually marked "beta". Shipping known-buggy code without marking it as "beta" is dishonest.
Usually, beta testers are rewarded for their work. With Microsoft (and a lot of other companies, especially in the PC games field), people have to pay for the privilege.
Different quality expectations apply to code that is given away for free ("here, I wrote this - it might be useful to you, grab a copy if you want it") and code that is sold ("you give me X, I will give you software that does Y" implies that the software actually does Y and not Z).
Besides, if you look at your original post, you said "they can't win" - my response is that, if they could figure out how to ship non-buggy code, they would win - which is something I believe that a lot of people would agree to.
So if they deploy the SP later, then they have a lot of problems or just don't care for the users. If they deploy it early, they just want the people think the system is ready... So they can't win, can they?
Well, they could. There's always the option of not shipping broken code in the first place.
Thankyou for taking the time to write such a well-reasoned reply.
Just to clarify, when I was talking about the funding coming from business, I wasn't talking about voluntary donations, I meant to refer to the tax base created by the business activity, both through their corporate taxes and through the income taxes paid by their employees. In that context, neither of your examples seem so outlandish.
Although you give several good examples of people who did well despite dropping out of higher education, I would still believe that there is a strong correlation between educational level and income.
It's a nice thought that you throw tons of money at the really smart kids, but you have to appreciate that the money has to come from somewhere.
From businesses started by the previous generation's smart kids, by any chance? There's a society-wide return-on-investment issue that also has to be considered. The more you invest in this generation's smart kids, the more money will be available for the next generation's education.
if/when they get tired of sending money to Britain to pay for translators.
if/when they get tired of returning a small amount of Britain's contribution back to it to pay for translators.
There, fixed that for you...
Seems awfully vague and encompassing. If this is standard to all patents (or of a certain type) then is it necessary for inclusion?
It's part of the standard boilerplate that most attorneys add when preparing a patent for filing. One patent attorney described it to me as "hopeful".
The WTO is a self made wanna-be authority that is unconstitutional,
US Constitution, Article VI, Paragraph 2
(Though I agree with you that the WTO sucks).
This agreement is, of course, implicit, but it is the basic tenet of a capitalistic-- or, indeed, any barter-based-- society; unless the product is EXPLICITLY provided free of charge, you are assumed to have to pay for it.
I've not seen any signs explicitly saying that air is free, but it is. I think you'll find that everything that is for sale has an explicit price attached, rather than the other way round. It seems like you're using a circular argument here: we say that it's stealing because "we" define it to be so (for some value of "we" that includes you but does not include the entirety of the rest of the human race).
Ultimately, though, you want your house cleaned and decide to rent a robot. Afterwards, you refuse to pay,
Here's where I'd say the analogy breaks down (and, please note, I'm not addressing the larger issue here). In your analogy, you enter into a rental agreement, then break the deal that you've agreed to. In the movie situation, no agreement exists between the parties to break.
From my experience and observations over the last 20 years of being in this industry...
(1) There is no shortage of programmers or software engineers in the U.S.
No, but there is a shortage of competent ones, where I'm taking "competent" to mean "capable of producing at least 3x the average results. I'd rather hire a "3x+" from some other country than a "1x-" from the US for the same price. Of course, if you think this is wrong, you're free to start your own business and take risks for yourself.
In the US, 4 years a respectable college can easily top 120, probably 200K.
No, this is not realistic except for a very few exceptional cases. If you're looking for this much, you're going to be disappointed.
As for the other comments on inequality: my grandparents were farm labourers and cleaners; my parents junior clerical staff; I was the first member of my family to graduate from university. You can't control where you start, but you can control how far you travel. Instead of whining, start your own company. Take risks. You don't get to the 100-yard line without taking a chance of falling back to the 0 line. Of course, people who inherit wealth rather than work for it offend me, but so do people who aren't prepared to risk everything they have in order to improve what they've got.
Software companies that produce products will be forced to "pay up" or let the vulnerability go to said parties above.
Or, not sell broken products in the first place. Of course, that will require undoing all the buyer "education" that they've performed over the last 15 years to train the purchaser to (not) distinguish between "shiny things" and "solid and secure code".
Actually most EULA's prohibit this, thus making it illegal,
At best, breach of contract. Even if the EULA is valid, which many aren't. Plus you have to prove that the information was obtained through "illegal" means.
Yep, and you can't block them.
Yes you can, at least with Sprint. They don't advertise the fact, but they can block it at the account level - you have to call and request it.
For the record, the above (and the sig change that I've just reverted) weren't from me. Someone (who needs a good punch in the face) was showing off their browser exploit skills.
(whole bunch of shiny stuff)
No, this won't reinvent shit. Sorry. Go do something useful with your life, or kill yourself now and stop wasting resources. Waste of my time even posting this article, asshole.
The rights that you lose are the ability to distribute code you have developed under any license you choose (when that code is deemed a derivitive of the GPL'd work, which includes merely linking to the code in question).
You never had this one to begin with (distributing derivative works is not permitted by default), so no loss there.
You lose the right to enforce any patents you may own on that code.
Not under GPL2 - read section 7 more carefully, you can enforce, but you have to stop distribution of other people's code when you do (you can still distribute your own). GPL3 is different, I'll accept your point there.
You lose the right to control distribution and the right to control use.
Again, you never had distribution rights for derivative works in the first place. Without distribution rights, I'm not sure that control of usage is possible.
You also lose the right to control translations into other languages
Human or machine languages?
and the right to control who may derive from your work.
You still have this right - you can distribute your work with whatever restrictions you want. You can't distribute someone else's work and control downstream derivation.
In the above, i'm referring to code that is entirely written by you that merely links to GPL'd code, not where you have taken someone elses code and modified it.
If all it did was link to GPL code - i.e. it didn't use GPL'd header files and wasn't distributed with GPL binary pieces, then I suspect (IANAL, but I get involved in this stuff sometimes) that the GPL wouldn't apply. Dynamic linking is borderline already, and if the interface wasn't built by including GPL'd headers (or fragments thereof, such as descriptions of data structures passed around by the interface) then you're probably in the clear.
I would claim that (re)distribution is one of the additional rights that is granted on agreement.
I agree, but fewer rights is the traditional usage. tip: use "less" for things you measure, use "fewer" for things you count.
Generally, yes. However, you have to consider it in the context of the whole sentence. Given that the contrast is with "more", "less" is preferred as it's the more familiar antonym and makes the sentence flow more smoothly. It's a fine line though, and pretty much down to personal stylistic preferences.
Anyhow, any person that believes the GPL should be respected (as I do) also needs to respect the TOS that MS sets forth.
Agreeing to the GPL gives you more rights than you would otherwise have had. Agreeing to the MS TOS gives you less rights than you would otherwise have had.
That's a fairly significant difference.
As much as Web servers need BSD, Apache, PHP and others, and Web clients need Gecko or WebKit, regular everyday people who need to make documents need better casual HTML tools.
Personally, I use TeX. HTML looks like complete crap.
My guess would actually be that it's the #1 cause where a specific cause can be determined, and that "not exercising enough" would actually be the #1 cause, given that it's a partial contribution to far more cases. However, it still is the case that we focus on smoking as a "social crime" far more (in proportion to its consequences) than other activities, and that bugs me. (I'm an ex-smoker, so have spent time on both sides of the divide).
Smoking affects the company's bottom line if they self-insure
So do skiing, riding motorcycles, eating at McDogfood, eating nitrate-cured meats, not getting off your ass and exercising enough, and lots of other things. Why do people focus so much on just that one when arguing healthcare costs?
The free market most libertarians have in mind is impossible. It is an oxymoron. It contradicts itself out of existence.
(Please don't assume I'm a frothing-at-the-mouth libertarian, btw - I tend strongly in that direction, but don't regard it as an absolute - maybe I'd be better classed as minarchist). My comment was mainly intended to say that government regulation has mixed effects. As ever, when I make a quick and imprecise slashdot post after a couple of beers, someone responds intelligently with well-reasoned content.
Laws--restrictions on people's activities--are required to create a market structure under which capitalism can thrive.
You do seem to be confusing libertarianism with anarcho-capitalism in your argument though. Remember that libertarians believe in "non-initiation of force", which includes absence of fraud. This assumes forceful enforcement of such a restriction. Now, whether such a utopia is achievable is another question entirely, which I'm not going to even start to get into here.
For example, the free market promotes theft and murder.
Hmmm... this isn't as self-evident as you seem to believe. A purely short-term market, with no tracking of past history, maybe - but it doesn't work that way. In a fully open market, you are able to examine the past interactions of the people who are inviting you to interact with them.
(That's not to make a claim about whether government regulation is good or not, just to clarify a point.)
For example, without the EPA, do you think the environment would be cleaner or dirtier than it is now?
Without the EPA, it would be dirtier. Without the EPA, *and* without the restrictions preventing me from retaliating forcefully against the people producing toxins that enter into my lungs, it would be a whole lot cleaner, and you can guess why. Consider the scope of your question carefully.