But as more and more software becomes free I can see fewer developers getting paid to program.
There are so many open positions programming free software in the poston area right now, that sometimes I wonder why people are complaining about the job market being poor. I make a very good living writing free software. People will still need software, and programmers will still need food, so programmers will still get paid even if software is open.
Trust me, it is not my machine, nor is it the dozens of other machines I have tried it on.
/me types this into Mozilla 1.0.1 on Win2K
The only time I have to wait for anything on my Win2K box (Mozilla included) is when it's spun the hard drives down due to 3 hours on inactivity. With quick launch, the limiting factor in getting Mozilla on the screen is my video card, and I have a Geforce 4 Ti 4200. If I had to guess I'd say it taks 3-4 frames to come up at 1600x1200x85Hz. Granted, my machine is a little faster than most,(Dual XP1800+ w/1GB RAM) but even on older hardware, quick launch should bring up mozilla before you can get your mouse from the start menu to the address bar. It sounds to me like your probelm is that you've got like 128Mb of RAM, and a slowass hard drive, and all your system memory is being used by the OS. (Win2K uses ~100MB of memory on my system without anything loaded right after boot.)
If you include page loads in the timing between IE and Mozilla, it's no contest. Slashdot is loaded practically instantly in Mozilla, and takes seconds to render in IE.
You've only tried really low end Win2K boxes, haven't you?
That sound you hear is a million Macintosh zealots twitching and convulsing while they try and convince themselves that lack of upgradeability is a GOOD thing because it's "less confusing".:)
Actually it's the sound of them pointing and laughing because the only thing to do with year old PC components is "pluck and chuck" as the man said. The mac zealots are all watching their two year old hardware draw bids on ebay and taking more than half of their original purchase price to the bank. And people say macs are more expensive than PCs...
I'm sure you're correct. Those types of photographers aren't typically availbale to take a family photo or something similar, though. Either you have to buy a photographer for a year (pay his/her salary) or you have to pay to get a picture taken that you don't have the rights to afterward.
I have been unable to find a photographer who will give up a copyright to their work under work-for-hire. If you ask, they turn down the job. Independant photographers included.
Lots of professionals are able to hold on to a piece of their work, even if they did it under contract/salary. Think Hollywood, songwriters, photographers, some journalists, etc.
Actually, photographers are the only group that is true for. If you pay somebody to create something, then it should be yours at the end. If it's worth more then what was paid, then that should have been taken into account during negotiations. (A royalties split would be a good way to do it)
Photographers shouldn't get to keep rights over work you pay them to do.
Bullshit. That's what the FCC mandate is for. This law is not necissary for that. The real reason for this is payback for large campaign contributions.
Why not? Physical access should only be allowed to those with administrator access anyway. You haven't really protected your data by not having a password recovery mechanism, because somebody can walk out with the drive and access the data in a non-conventional manner. You loose money by not having authorized users able to access the data though. Bottom line: lock up the servers and have a password recovery mechanism.
Your server room should be locked anyway, because all your hardware that runs a real OS has a password recovery system, and I'm including your switches and routers in that too.
The OS MUST make password recovery possible. If not, then you can loose your valuable data.
You cannot key off the kernel version to build a device driver for advanced server. This may not affect video, but it definitaly affects I/O drivers. Instead of putting in your code:
#ifdef kernel_version 2.4.10
You have to do something special in your build system to determine if it's advanced server. It can be transparent to the end user, but it's a pain for the developer. I bet both of those drivers you mentioned needed a new release to work on advanced server dispite 2.4.9 having been supported for over a year.
Two wrongs never make a right. The people who should be punished are the people responsible, not the messanger. Why should UUNET pay the price for the child pornographer's wrongdoing?
Just because you use the word children doesn't make you right.
Using child pornography as an excuse for injustice is worce then just the child pornography alone. Prioritize.
I don't know if it's intentional or not, but they're doing a great job providing vendor lockin. With their versioning, it's practically impossible to make things work with both advanced server and other distros automatically. For example, they say that the kernel is version 2.4.9, but it's got practically everything from 2.4.17 in it, and alot of stuff from the 2.5 tree. It you want to ship a 3rd party device driver, you need to have a special build process for advanced server. That's a pain in the ass.
No, they should make it so that you can push a key sequence at boot on the local console, or something similar. Yes, it is the OS' responsibility to make this possible. It is unacceptable to have no recourse against lost passwords.
If you do what you are saying, you then have an archive of all kinds of crap that you don't want to watch more than once, you don't get automated selection of shows to record, you've got to swap disks when you're not home, you need to have a PC dedicated to the task, and you waste an infinite amount of media.
I'd rather spend $100 and get a TiVo, plug it in and have it work, and delete the shows when I'm done with them. I love the suggestions, too.
What you suggested isn't TiVo like at all. It's a VCR with a fancy interface and discs instead of tapes.
Change his story such that everybody who knows the admin password gets hit by a bus, and all the buildings where you store a physical copy of the password burn down simultaniously. How do you preplan for that?
Password protected systems should have built in password recovery that you don't need to contact the manufacturer to activate.
All local security should be overrideable with suitable physical access to the equipment. Period.
If the administrator password is lost, somebody with the right physical item should be able to recover it without having to pay money to the software author, or wait for somebody you don't have control over.
Don't confuse strong security with stupid security. The security doesn't do anybody any good if nobody has access.
Authorship is very relevant to the author. Just ask any author.
"Hey, me, do you care if anybody knows that you wrote a particular program?"
"Nope, only that people can find out who owns the copyright to negotiate new terms and most users don't do that."
Seriously, though, authorship is usually irrelevant because most authors don't hold the copyright. It's the copyright holder that is relevant; and even then, only when the user wants to do something that is not allowed by the license. If all you want to do is use software within the license, then why does the user need to know who wrote the program, and why does the author care if the user knows?
For once a restrictive legislation would get 99% support... you don't see that everyday. like I mentionned before, I don't get our politicians, they say they work for us, they try to find clever ways to tax us, remove control that we used to have and all, but something on which they would get unprecedented support, they are simply sitting on the issue...
Perhaps the problem is that the law would gain them less votes then a few hundred thousand dollars in campaing financing would. A large portion of the population isn't online, and a large portion of those who are don't care about spam, so your politician doesn't care either.
Since this is such a trivial technical problem to solve, it's not really a big deal either way. I daily reduce 800 spam messages to five or six that make it through to my inbox just using procmail scoring, and I haven't had a false positive in years. I spend five minutes updating my procmailsc every six months to keep it effective. I suppose that I could use an automated system to generate my score file similar to what Paul Graham described, but when I only spend ten minutes a year updating my rules, it's going to be alot of years before it was faster to have written all that code. No need for sweeping legislation.
Where does it say anything in there about "evil Empires," Open Source, or geekiness? I don't understand why you think we were reading any of that into this.
From the GPL section 2c: "when started running for such interactive use"
If they had a splash screen that displayed the authors and copyright, then they would be in violation. About boxes are not covered. The about box is certainly not the only way to determine the license, and it you care enough about what the license is, you would be able to find it. (I hope this doesn't make people start including splash screens, because unless the splash screen is there to inform the user that the program is taking time to load in the background, splash screens are evil.)
They are a GUI application's primary means of informing the user of authorship
Authorship is irrelevent, and like I said, the license and copyright are still available to those who are interested enough to look for them.
That was what Redhat was doing until KDE raised a stink about it.
If they made it impossible to find the original maintainer by removing the about box, then how were they pushing support back on said maintainer for the modified release? It seems to me like there were some people who were really digging for a reson to be upset with redhat about this without coming out and saying "we're pissed because gnome 5ux0r5, and you made us look like them."
Is there any way that redhat could blur the lines between Gnome and KDE witout starting a flame war? If you ask me, they should hve just picked one of the two and not shipped the other one.
Slashdot Mirror
But as more and more software becomes free I can see fewer developers getting paid to program.
There are so many open positions programming free software in the poston area right now, that sometimes I wonder why people are complaining about the job market being poor. I make a very good living writing free software. People will still need software, and programmers will still need food, so programmers will still get paid even if software is open.
The only time I have to wait for anything on my Win2K box (Mozilla included) is when it's spun the hard drives down due to 3 hours on inactivity. With quick launch, the limiting factor in getting Mozilla on the screen is my video card, and I have a Geforce 4 Ti 4200. If I had to guess I'd say it taks 3-4 frames to come up at 1600x1200x85Hz. Granted, my machine is a little faster than most,(Dual XP1800+ w/1GB RAM) but even on older hardware, quick launch should bring up mozilla before you can get your mouse from the start menu to the address bar. It sounds to me like your probelm is that you've got like 128Mb of RAM, and a slowass hard drive, and all your system memory is being used by the OS. (Win2K uses ~100MB of memory on my system without anything loaded right after boot.)
If you include page loads in the timing between IE and Mozilla, it's no contest. Slashdot is loaded practically instantly in Mozilla, and takes seconds to render in IE.
You've only tried really low end Win2K boxes, haven't you?
Dude, can you do math?
The percentage of money you can get for your old PC hardware is *much* less then that of a mac.
That sound you hear is a million Macintosh zealots twitching and convulsing while they try and convince themselves that lack of upgradeability is a GOOD thing because it's "less confusing". :)
Actually it's the sound of them pointing and laughing because the only thing to do with year old PC components is "pluck and chuck" as the man said. The mac zealots are all watching their two year old hardware draw bids on ebay and taking more than half of their original purchase price to the bank. And people say macs are more expensive than PCs...
I'm sure you're correct. Those types of photographers aren't typically availbale to take a family photo or something similar, though. Either you have to buy a photographer for a year (pay his/her salary) or you have to pay to get a picture taken that you don't have the rights to afterward.
I have been unable to find a photographer who will give up a copyright to their work under work-for-hire. If you ask, they turn down the job. Independant photographers included.
Lots of professionals are able to hold on to a piece of their work, even if they did it under contract/salary. Think Hollywood, songwriters, photographers, some journalists, etc.
Actually, photographers are the only group that is true for. If you pay somebody to create something, then it should be yours at the end. If it's worth more then what was paid, then that should have been taken into account during negotiations. (A royalties split would be a good way to do it)
Photographers shouldn't get to keep rights over work you pay them to do.
Bullshit. That's what the FCC mandate is for. This law is not necissary for that. The real reason for this is payback for large campaign contributions.
RedHat's regular kernels are bad, but they don't change driver interfaces (which is my gripe), and they don't take code from 2.5. Neither does SuSe.
The user may have patched their kernel in a way that makes it incompatible with your driver.
Then that's the user's responsibility. An systems vendor should be more well behaved then that.
Why not? Physical access should only be allowed to those with administrator access anyway. You haven't really protected your data by not having a password recovery mechanism, because somebody can walk out with the drive and access the data in a non-conventional manner. You loose money by not having authorized users able to access the data though. Bottom line: lock up the servers and have a password recovery mechanism.
Your server room should be locked anyway, because all your hardware that runs a real OS has a password recovery system, and I'm including your switches and routers in that too.
The OS MUST make password recovery possible. If not, then you can loose your valuable data.
You cannot key off the kernel version to build a device driver for advanced server. This may not affect video, but it definitaly affects I/O drivers. Instead of putting in your code:
#ifdef kernel_version 2.4.10
You have to do something special in your build system to determine if it's advanced server. It can be transparent to the end user, but it's a pain for the developer. I bet both of those drivers you mentioned needed a new release to work on advanced server dispite 2.4.9 having been supported for over a year.
Two wrongs never make a right. The people who should be punished are the people responsible, not the messanger. Why should UUNET pay the price for the child pornographer's wrongdoing?
Just because you use the word children doesn't make you right.
Using child pornography as an excuse for injustice is worce then just the child pornography alone. Prioritize.
I don't know if it's intentional or not, but they're doing a great job providing vendor lockin. With their versioning, it's practically impossible to make things work with both advanced server and other distros automatically. For example, they say that the kernel is version 2.4.9, but it's got practically everything from 2.4.17 in it, and alot of stuff from the 2.5 tree. It you want to ship a 3rd party device driver, you need to have a special build process for advanced server. That's a pain in the ass.
Well, then this guy's story is bogus.
That is a stupid recovery system though.
No, they should make it so that you can push a key sequence at boot on the local console, or something similar. Yes, it is the OS' responsibility to make this possible. It is unacceptable to have no recourse against lost passwords.
RedHat's Advanced Server is selling better than expected, with a reported 8,000 units sold so far.
It's amazing how marketing can get people to throw their money away.
If you do what you are saying, you then have an archive of all kinds of crap that you don't want to watch more than once, you don't get automated selection of shows to record, you've got to swap disks when you're not home, you need to have a PC dedicated to the task, and you waste an infinite amount of media.
I'd rather spend $100 and get a TiVo, plug it in and have it work, and delete the shows when I'm done with them. I love the suggestions, too.
What you suggested isn't TiVo like at all. It's a VCR with a fancy interface and discs instead of tapes.
Change his story such that everybody who knows the admin password gets hit by a bus, and all the buildings where you store a physical copy of the password burn down simultaniously. How do you preplan for that?
Password protected systems should have built in password recovery that you don't need to contact the manufacturer to activate.
All local security should be overrideable with suitable physical access to the equipment. Period.
If the administrator password is lost, somebody with the right physical item should be able to recover it without having to pay money to the software author, or wait for somebody you don't have control over.
Don't confuse strong security with stupid security. The security doesn't do anybody any good if nobody has access.
Authorship is very relevant to the author. Just ask any author.
"Hey, me, do you care if anybody knows that you wrote a particular program?"
"Nope, only that people can find out who owns the copyright to negotiate new terms and most users don't do that."
Seriously, though, authorship is usually irrelevant because most authors don't hold the copyright. It's the copyright holder that is relevant; and even then, only when the user wants to do something that is not allowed by the license. If all you want to do is use software within the license, then why does the user need to know who wrote the program, and why does the author care if the user knows?
For once a restrictive legislation would get 99% support... you don't see that everyday. like I mentionned before, I don't get our politicians, they say they work for us, they try to find clever ways to tax us, remove control that we used to have and all, but something on which they would get unprecedented support, they are simply sitting on the issue...
Perhaps the problem is that the law would gain them less votes then a few hundred thousand dollars in campaing financing would. A large portion of the population isn't online, and a large portion of those who are don't care about spam, so your politician doesn't care either.
Since this is such a trivial technical problem to solve, it's not really a big deal either way. I daily reduce 800 spam messages to five or six that make it through to my inbox just using procmail scoring, and I haven't had a false positive in years. I spend five minutes updating my procmailsc every six months to keep it effective. I suppose that I could use an automated system to generate my score file similar to what Paul Graham described, but when I only spend ten minutes a year updating my rules, it's going to be alot of years before it was faster to have written all that code. No need for sweeping legislation.
how exactally do you enforce this banner-ad showing program for free wireless access?
Transparent proxy. I think you're right about this guy not having a clue though.
/me rereads slashdot story a few times...
Where does it say anything in there about "evil Empires," Open Source, or geekiness? I don't understand why you think we were reading any of that into this.
From the GPL section 2c: "when started running for such interactive use"
If they had a splash screen that displayed the authors and copyright, then they would be in violation. About boxes are not covered. The about box is certainly not the only way to determine the license, and it you care enough about what the license is, you would be able to find it. (I hope this doesn't make people start including splash screens, because unless the splash screen is there to inform the user that the program is taking time to load in the background, splash screens are evil.)
They are a GUI application's primary means of informing the user of authorship
Authorship is irrelevent, and like I said, the license and copyright are still available to those who are interested enough to look for them.
That was what Redhat was doing until KDE raised a stink about it.
If they made it impossible to find the original maintainer by removing the about box, then how were they pushing support back on said maintainer for the modified release? It seems to me like there were some people who were really digging for a reson to be upset with redhat about this without coming out and saying "we're pissed because gnome 5ux0r5, and you made us look like them."
Is there any way that redhat could blur the lines between Gnome and KDE witout starting a flame war? If you ask me, they should hve just picked one of the two and not shipped the other one.