You are talking about the smug triumph of orthodoxy.
Of course the price of change is great and frequently underestimated (just remember the last time you upgraded your OS)
New ideas for change should always be discussed and debated. If they hold little merit, or the merit they hold is outweighed at the time by the cost of change then of course orthodoxy should triumph.
But to say "After 5,000 years of societal evolution we have reached the pinnacle of political development and will go no further" thats just dumb.
And to say "We will evaluate no opportunities for change" well thats the path of stagnation.
Of course maybe its just America's turn to stagnate (its been a long ride at the top for you people). Thats your choice as a nation.
Maybe a nation with a more pressing need for change (a number of asian nations spring to mind but their social constructs have in the past mitigated against positive revolutionary/evolutionary change) will throw off its chains and build something brighter and better.
The failure of imagination that was communist revolution has meant the last 80 years of revolution in search of social justice has been wasted.
That doesn't mean the next big idea won't be a better one.
But hopefully while those in greatest need of change revolve, the western democarcies can find the strength and imagination to evolve.
Your, mine, anyone elses right to live, thrive and survive is not mutually exclusive OR inclusive of your right to own whats in your head.
You play a song to me it becomes mine as much as yours. If i don't hear it then to me it never exists.. except possibly in terms of its effect on others.
My point is that ownership of ideas is immensely more complicated (and philosophical) than ownership of lawnmowers.
And if treated the same way becomes intolerably tyrannical.
Why do businesses use open source / free products?
We use them because even we can evaluate 20 of them without having to get spending authorisation every time.
even if it's small potatoes the bean counters tend to go red if i ask for another cheque every day without deploying anything.
photoshop may or may not be better than the GIMP. but its easier to write plug-ins for the GIMP, its easier to experiment with it before committing to it (because its free) and the GIMP revs more often (its getting better faster).
That and the uncomfortable truth that RMS is a prophet. And like all prophets he says things we don't want to hear, smells like something we don't want to smell, and look slike something we don't want to hear.
And much to our chagrin he's probably right. At least the things he says are not self serving.
So i've got more reason to trust him than the rest of the liars out there.
If you've got a limitless budget and want to be lazy then pay for something off the shelf from a bozo trapping you into an upgrade path.
or you can buy a book, learn something new, and make something better.
Actually Hewlett Packard tried to sell touch-screens in a big way in the mid 80's
They found people hated them because the monitor was too far to traverse from the keyboard.
Any solution you have has to cover nearly the whole range of things people will want to do. Changing tools to change function is going to be unpopular.
The mouse/keyboard thing only works because the mouse is near keyboard and mouseing and typing are rarely done at the same time.
This is notable as an interesting insight into the mind of the MS indoctrinated.
To these guys the software is something they don't understand and what they pay for is reassurance.
More to the point, having paid all this money what they really want, more so than a working system, is for someone to tell them that they've spent their money wisely.
But i think this is great.
Let the big corps go on paying too much for too little.
This is what gives us litle people a chance to swim in their pool without getting eaten.
In time, when the superior product is not only free, but readily available, it is going to win.
And all the CFO's scared of the technology, and scared of knowing less than their staff (and being seen to know less), buying from the company that buys them the nicest lunch and invites them to the best parties, are just giving the rest of us enough time to grow big and strong and eat them alive.
In Australia the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (very powerful government agency) said inr esponse to the Microsoft ruling that the ruling had destroyed the notion that Intellectual Property could be used to justify anti-competitive practice.. click here for the media release
Actually straight vertical re-entry is really easy
Its orbital or extra-orbital re-entry that egts fiendish beacuse of the unmatched velocities
the heat sheilds they need for re-entry are because they are using the atmosphere as a brake to match speeds with the bit of ground they want to hit (and brake's get hot)
The Academy is made up of Hollywood professionals.
They don't allow TV movies to ensure that cinema release maintains its primacy. This ruling is just following in that line.
The Academy has always been a whore and always will be.
Their choice of winners has improved in recent times as studio execs (who are the members of the Academy)have taken to changing company every few years instread of staying put for life.
But this is straight up protection of commerical interest and trying to shut out rivals.
There is a jurisdictionl hitch as the Expedition law predates by 2 years the law which allowed State Attorney's-General to file federal anti-trust suits.
So the 19 State cases against MS may have to be taken through the appeals court while the DOJ case goes straight to the Supreme Court.
a) CAPTURE manages Duplexing so that double sided docs all end up with the pages in the right order YES other software does this as well but its a good start
b) CAPTURE REVIEWER highlights all the words it is uncertain of and isn't sure about the spelling. you can go through and approve or change depending on what it has done. Words left as suspect will be placed as image into the PDF. while REVIEWER isn't perfect i've tried demos of every other OCR package out there and they aren't in the same ballpark
c) because the OCR'd Reviewed output is PDF is will keep all the messy bits of image tied up with the words in the right place. Thats why large scale doc scanning needs a PDF output.
for our business where we scan lots of docs on important letterhead for further distribution its still the only way to go
we have licences for Capture 1.0 which doesn't charge per page, having said that we find that the saved staff time using the superior algorithms in Capture 3 make it worth the 5c per page.
so thats why Capture is an option.
not a good one but until linux gets a good OCR that outputs to ps/pdf with a credible review stage its something we are stuck with.
So what are the legitimate "good professions" that only good people will undertake pray-tell?
unless you want a try at lynch justice, which would be a VERY bad thing for most./er's given social acceptance of a great number here, then we need an advocacy-based legal system.
you/we/i know nothing about this guy or his firm.
maybe he's a hired gun? i don't know.
A lot of lawyers ARE scum, they pervert our justice system and society for personal gain.
But a lot of lawyers give 1/10th of their billable hours for pro bono work (think of them like hackers doing open source after hours)
how about we judge people by their actions and their intentions, not by the clothes they wear, the way they speak, or because they have values that differ from our own.
14 years ago when we were all younger and our hair was longer I had never heard a metallica song.
I'd seen a few t-shirts and heard some buzz but there was no way in hell our radio stations were going to play anything like what you guys were doing then.
14 years olds don't have much in the way of cd buying money either.
I heard your stuff from tapes made of tapes made of tapes. I loved it, i was hooked.
And when i had cd buying money it was your cd's i bought.
Can you tell me how Napster is any different from the cassette copying that made you what you are today in spite of the "mainstream" opinion?
10 years ago metallica couldn't get played on the radio. Their only means of distribution was kiddies handing around bootlegged recordings on cassette.
If napster had been around when they were starting out they would have been HUGE years earlier.
now having made it to the top they seem to be trying to shut down the means for newer younger hungrier bands (that still have long hair) to get out there.
because the whole lawful/chaos/neutral spectrum sat on top of good and evil as i recall.
any decision to take action without regard to right, while not inherently wrong, is inevitably wrong.
I'm not going to dictate to anyone what actually constitutes what is right and wrong. (if anyone seeks my opinion i will share it.. thats another issue)
But i will contest the idea that amorality, that is stepping away from notions of morality, can be anything other than a rationalisation of immorality.
as long as others choose to enforce copyright then the GPL is needed to defend free source from exploitation by copyright users as well as exploitation
if/when the blessed day dawns and companies abandon the ownership of ideas then everyone can use GPL'd material without reference to the licence.
GPL doesn't restrict anyone who claims no ownership of what they gain from it
this is the digital world. we can share without loss.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course the price of change is great and frequently underestimated (just remember the last time you upgraded your OS)
New ideas for change should always be discussed and debated. If they hold little merit, or the merit they hold is outweighed at the time by the cost of change then of course orthodoxy should triumph.
But to say "After 5,000 years of societal evolution we have reached the pinnacle of political development and will go no further" thats just dumb.
And to say "We will evaluate no opportunities for change" well thats the path of stagnation.
Of course maybe its just America's turn to stagnate (its been a long ride at the top for you people). Thats your choice as a nation.
Maybe a nation with a more pressing need for change (a number of asian nations spring to mind but their social constructs have in the past mitigated against positive revolutionary/evolutionary change) will throw off its chains and build something brighter and better.
The failure of imagination that was communist revolution has meant the last 80 years of revolution in search of social justice has been wasted.
That doesn't mean the next big idea won't be a better one.
But hopefully while those in greatest need of change revolve, the western democarcies can find the strength and imagination to evolve.
Spaceflight on the other hand has what? nearly 10 deaths?
And whats the total of people carried? maybe in the low hundreds?
still a LONG way to go there.
Your, mine, anyone elses right to live, thrive and survive is not mutually exclusive OR inclusive of your right to own whats in your head.
You play a song to me it becomes mine as much as yours. If i don't hear it then to me it never exists.. except possibly in terms of its effect on others.
My point is that ownership of ideas is immensely more complicated (and philosophical) than ownership of lawnmowers.
And if treated the same way becomes intolerably tyrannical.
Information only exists in terms of people.
The distance of the earth to the Sun is empirical. But its meaningless AND unknown without human interpretation.
Information only exists insofar as we can interpret it.
I do agree that making better information is the anser to stealing it.
But information rights should not be measured as property rights.
If you take my house i'm homeless.
If you copy my cd collection i still have it.
And the artist who amde it will always be the artist who made it.
We use them because even we can evaluate 20 of them without having to get spending authorisation every time.
even if it's small potatoes the bean counters tend to go red if i ask for another cheque every day without deploying anything.
photoshop may or may not be better than the GIMP. but its easier to write plug-ins for the GIMP, its easier to experiment with it before committing to it (because its free) and the GIMP revs more often (its getting better faster).
That and the uncomfortable truth that RMS is a prophet. And like all prophets he says things we don't want to hear, smells like something we don't want to smell, and look slike something we don't want to hear.
And much to our chagrin he's probably right. At least the things he says are not self serving.
So i've got more reason to trust him than the rest of the liars out there.
If you've got a limitless budget and want to be lazy then pay for something off the shelf from a bozo trapping you into an upgrade path.
or you can buy a book, learn something new, and make something better.
melting its way back UP could be very tricky indeed.
They found people hated them because the monitor was too far to traverse from the keyboard.
Any solution you have has to cover nearly the whole range of things people will want to do. Changing tools to change function is going to be unpopular.
The mouse/keyboard thing only works because the mouse is near keyboard and mouseing and typing are rarely done at the same time.
To these guys the software is something they don't understand and what they pay for is reassurance.
More to the point, having paid all this money what they really want, more so than a working system, is for someone to tell them that they've spent their money wisely.
But i think this is great.
Let the big corps go on paying too much for too little.
This is what gives us litle people a chance to swim in their pool without getting eaten.
In time, when the superior product is not only free, but readily available, it is going to win.
And all the CFO's scared of the technology, and scared of knowing less than their staff (and being seen to know less), buying from the company that buys them the nicest lunch and invites them to the best parties, are just giving the rest of us enough time to grow big and strong and eat them alive.
Let there be more of these guys!
very few people noticed it in the broader hoo-ha.
Entry/re-entry of the atmosphere is only the issue because things tend to be able to go so dang fast once they escape friction.
Its the use of the atmosphere as a brake that makes re-entry difficult if "other means" to match velocities were used then it wouldn't be a big deal.
"other means" have to date been more difficult of course
Its orbital or extra-orbital re-entry that egts fiendish beacuse of the unmatched velocities
the heat sheilds they need for re-entry are because they are using the atmosphere as a brake to match speeds with the bit of ground they want to hit (and brake's get hot)
They don't allow TV movies to ensure that cinema release maintains its primacy. This ruling is just following in that line.
The Academy has always been a whore and always will be.
Their choice of winners has improved in recent times as studio execs (who are the members of the Academy)have taken to changing company every few years instread of staying put for life.
But this is straight up protection of commerical interest and trying to shut out rivals.
Nothing to see here folks, move on.
Think on that for a second
Then consider the pack behaviour of most of the more successful species (Lions, even some sharks)
Then consider the more caring, less callous, nature of the more successful societies on earth.
Evolution isn't as simple as it seems to fascists.
perhaps you meant Darwin?
So the 19 State cases against MS may have to be taken through the appeals court while the DOJ case goes straight to the Supreme Court.
Which may be a big problem, or may not
b) CAPTURE REVIEWER highlights all the words it is uncertain of and isn't sure about the spelling. you can go through and approve or change depending on what it has done. Words left as suspect will be placed as image into the PDF. while REVIEWER isn't perfect i've tried demos of every other OCR package out there and they aren't in the same ballpark
c) because the OCR'd Reviewed output is PDF is will keep all the messy bits of image tied up with the words in the right place. Thats why large scale doc scanning needs a PDF output.
for our business where we scan lots of docs on important letterhead for further distribution its still the only way to go
we have licences for Capture 1.0 which doesn't charge per page, having said that we find that the saved staff time using the superior algorithms in Capture 3 make it worth the 5c per page.
so thats why Capture is an option.
not a good one but until linux gets a good OCR that outputs to ps/pdf with a credible review stage its something we are stuck with.
To my knowledge the freedom of capital per se has NO place in ANY constitution on this earth...
It exists as a manifestation of many personal freedoms but has never been an end unto itself, merely a widely acknowledged means to the end.
Capitalism serves the people, not the other way around...
unless you want a try at lynch justice, which would be a VERY bad thing for most ./er's given social acceptance of a great number here, then we need an advocacy-based legal system.
you/we/i know nothing about this guy or his firm.
maybe he's a hired gun? i don't know.
A lot of lawyers ARE scum, they pervert our justice system and society for personal gain.
But a lot of lawyers give 1/10th of their billable hours for pro bono work (think of them like hackers doing open source after hours)
how about we judge people by their actions and their intentions, not by the clothes they wear, the way they speak, or because they have values that differ from our own.
wouldn't that be nice?
but don't they have to sign the copyright over to another party (like the FSF)?
Or they can at a later date (when someone's made the damm thing work properly) reclaim it?
or am i hopelessly confused here?
"This virus works on the honour system:
If you're running a variant of unix or linux, please forward this message to everyone you know and delete a bunch of your files at random."
I'd seen a few t-shirts and heard some buzz but there was no way in hell our radio stations were going to play anything like what you guys were doing then.
14 years olds don't have much in the way of cd buying money either.
I heard your stuff from tapes made of tapes made of tapes. I loved it, i was hooked.
And when i had cd buying money it was your cd's i bought.
Can you tell me how Napster is any different from the cassette copying that made you what you are today in spite of the "mainstream" opinion?
If napster had been around when they were starting out they would have been HUGE years earlier.
now having made it to the top they seem to be trying to shut down the means for newer younger hungrier bands (that still have long hair) to get out there.
doesn't money just change everything?
because the whole lawful/chaos/neutral spectrum sat on top of good and evil as i recall.
any decision to take action without regard to right, while not inherently wrong, is inevitably wrong.
I'm not going to dictate to anyone what actually constitutes what is right and wrong. (if anyone seeks my opinion i will share it.. thats another issue)
But i will contest the idea that amorality, that is stepping away from notions of morality, can be anything other than a rationalisation of immorality.
You can try to be right or you will be wrong.
just my opinion
as long as others choose to enforce copyright then the GPL is needed to defend free source from exploitation by copyright users as well as exploitation
if/when the blessed day dawns and companies abandon the ownership of ideas then everyone can use GPL'd material without reference to the licence.
GPL doesn't restrict anyone who claims no ownership of what they gain from it
this is the digital world. we can share without loss.
there might well be parts of Nvidia acting on this in good faith.
but its very likely there are other sections of management working on a "ask no questions hear no lies" strategy.
the other part of open source is of course that if they don't recontribute then they don't get their changes absorbed into the main body of code
is that a problem for card drivers tho?