"The objective of the GPL is to prevent the commercial sale of software in order to produce a gift economy in software development"
In a sense, the GNU does prevent you from making a profit from selling software directly (support is a different story).
It does not prevent people from copying your software, re-selling it, or competition from taking your ideas. So, you basically allow everything that plagues the commercial software industry legally and in essence, destroy most opportunity for making money from directly selling software (which is frowned upon on most OSS circles anyway).
Support can work to make money, but it is much more difficult and does not scale well. IE: Support gets out of control very quickly with a one man shop, but selling software is very maintainable (you can actually sell enough to make a good living before having to hire more people). I've seen both cases (support and software) first-hand..and don't think I would ever start a company that is based on support.
All the linux distro companies are not only having trouble making money but are making most of their money on support contracts and not the actual software itself (linux distro companies have a big problem: A) You need to be a savvy computer user to use linux B) Most savvy computer users will just download it for free through bittorrent or other means).
Can you make money with OSS? Yes, but you have about 10X the difficulty.
"IBM, Red Hat, Monta Vista, Google.com, and many other businesses make millions of USD, every year from GPL licensed software. Evil?"
No, but you would think more people in the community would be against this. They are basically making money off of the hard work of GNU programmers (with little given back to the community).
"Of course. Don't fall into the trap like some people who try to convince people that "slashdotters" are hypocritical, because "slashdotters" support illegal copying of proprietary software, and "slashdotters" want people copying GPL'ed programs illegally to be sued. We are not talking about "Peter A. Slashdotters" here, but of several groups of people who care about different things"
true. But when you see many people making both claims (especially GNU zealouts), it really makes you wonder...
"You don't believe the researchers? Contact them about it. You cannot site a single study to support your point of view, but you are making blind assertions based on the statements of biased parties. Whether or not you believe actual research, the numbers show that P2P networks, including Napster, have not had a statistically significant impact on content sales."
One piece of research (every slashdotter making the argument for piracy uses the exact link that you posted) is not proof. I have first-hand experience. I have been involved in many small to mid-sized software companies and I know that piracy hurts sales..without a doubt (large companies might be able to take the hit) (want proof? go to http://www.joelonsoftware.com/.. the BoS section and ask how piracy has effected sales..you will get some interesting and eye-opening responses).
I also know someone who is an independent artist and tried to sell MP3s online. His sales were great for the first month or two..until his songs started getting shared on many of the P2P networks at the time. Sales declined after that..and he eventually was forced to take all of his MP3s offline (and not offer digital downloads in the future).
For small, independent artists (the people filesharers claim to be protecting), P2p networks are only working against them. This is because the more popular a song is, the less money they will make (because it will be more available on a P2P network). For a large company or recording studio, it might take a lot longer for them to see these effects, but it will eventually happen if they allow people to share their content for free on a P2P network.
"Kazaa outdid Napster's popularity, with Napster peaking at under 30 million registered users and Kazaa peaking at over 50 million. Kazaa is also a far more efficient network than Napster was and it scales better. The RIAA has been 100% ineffective at preventing P2P traffic. This cannot be explained by anything other than people who cannot afford to buy CDs going to P2P networks instead. How is this different from the pre-Napster days of burning copies of your friends' CDs?"
Can't afford a CD? Don't fucking download it (it's just that easy). It's no excuse and it just makes my point. If you can afford high speed internet access, you can afford music.
When you burn your friends' CDs, you might only be able to get a few CDs a week/month. With P2p, you can get almost any song off of a CD whenever you want. This is the difference.
Also, Napster was in the news every other day during its peek. Kazaa might have been in the news once or twice during its popularity.
"In fact, P2P filesharing is no more dangerous to profits than CD burners, which were lobbied against, or FM radio, which was lobbied against...the RIAA has a history of vehemently opposing any new technology that allows people to hear music when they could not have afforded to otherwise. It is a group that is led by millionaires, who can afford to buy whatever music they wish to hear, not average people who have to be scrupulous in their buying decisions."
What about a radio? There are a ton of radio stations in most areas..and you can listen to music for free.
This is a typical standpoint by lazy and or naive people that have no idea what it takes to create a work of art or make money. All millionaires must have all the breaks in life....right?
Making money is fucking hard..and most people who have a lot of it..worked their ass off to get in that position (of course, there are exceptions).
"as part of a campaign against monopolistic corporations"
hmm..are they going to stop servicing monopolistic corporations too? Since many citizens work at call centers that support these corporations, I don't see this as very effective.
Actually, P2P is not a threat to anybody at all. A recent study (http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_Marc h2004.pdf) found that downloads had no impact on CD sales --
I don't think this is true at all. All of the people I know have stopped buying CDs since P2P networks became the source of free music. Many small music stores in my area also went out of business in the past couple of years, mostly because of lack of interest (during the napster days..these stores were completly empty).
in theory, this is probably because the amount of work needed to download and organize one's music wouldn't make sense if you could just afford to buy a CD. This same logic applies to DVDs; if you have the money for a $50 DVD, you will most likely just go out and buy it,
why bother? DVD copies have no loss in quality. If you get a burned/downloaded copy..there is no point in buying it.
especially considering the immense amount of time needed to download a 2+ hour movie.
on cable/dsl..you can have a complete movie in a matter of hours. This is a moot point.
P2P networks really served as a way to just increase the number of people listening to music and watching movies, and didn't really deprive anybody of sales. The fact that sales went down around 2002 is irrelevant, since ALL businesses were suffering back then, and the content industries are not some special exception. During Kazaa's most active period, CD sales were actually on the rise...
only because napster was on the decline at that point. The Record industry isn't scared of P2p on its own (pirated stuff was available for years through IRC..with almost no problems). They are afraid of it on a mass scale..when joe end user knows about P2P app X and would rather download a song than buy it. This is exactly what happened during the Napster days..and loss in CD sales during that time were a direct result.
None of the other apps even came close to napster's popularity, thanks to the RIAA.
Music, movies, and even software are similar to currency. They each have a perceived value. When P2p apps (or things like the pirate bay) gain a ton of popularity, this perceived value starts decreasing over time and will eventually reach $0.
Many people call it stealing but it's actually closer to counterfeiting. Either way it still hurts profits.
"Okay...here's the obligatory: What if you job is pretty much all about the internet? Blanket statements... Anyway, if you have a tech job, it is almost guaranteed that you will use the internet in the course of your work. Sys admins use it to look up solutions to problems. Programmers use it to "not reinvent the wheel". Etc. Etc. Etc"
it's not about those type of people. They are probably controlling the Internet in the first place. It's about the worker that does not need the Internet to get their job done, but decides to waste time on it anyway (IE: reading a "cool" email from their friend..which turns out to be spyware that infects the entire network).
even better is to use windows RDP (in case your work blocks odd ports, you can use the windows firewall (or a better, hardware firewall) to redirect it to port 80).
it's nice because you can have a bunch of things open and can minimize it all one shot (and it is faster then any thing I have ever seen). it's also encrypted traffic so it will be difficult to tell excactly where you are going.
I used this method at a computer place I worked where I was heavily watched.
"You want to know what is a crime? I'll tell you what is a crime. It's a crime that these large organisations reap the profits from pressed pieces of plastic onto which are recorded hideous noises that sound like gang-warfare in Harlem and Watts, and then use this money to harass families and children for every last red cent so they can line their pockets."
it's a crime that artists charge thousands of dollars for some paint on a canvas, so counterfeiting said painting and passing it off as the original should not be a crime.
yes, they shouldn't be harassing families.
However, if you sell a piece of shit and someone decides to buy it, you aren't committing a crime. People continue to buy the shit that the RIAA creates, it should be *no* suprise that they continue to sell it. If you want to blame someone, blame the mindless sheep for buying the crappy britney spears CDs of the world.
"Plus I figure if you add in all the costs of the Iraq war to the oil we are getting from that region it is costing Americans about $2,000 per barrel of oil. That is just dumb business to pay that much for oil. Only an idiot would pay $2,000 for a barrel of oil."
hmm..maybe because the US isn't there for just the oil. I think if bush was only interested in oil, he would not have gone after sadaam and would be making back room deals. You need to look at the big picture rather than focus on one short-sited idea of oil. The world is much more complicated than that.
"So don't tell me that an operation that was named OIL is about anything other than oil. I don't buy it. Go sell crazy somewhere else"
someone else did..and you bought it.
"America has already reached peak oil in the 1970's, we can't supply our own oil without changing the way we live... I.E., building more efficient houses, more efficient factories, more efficient computers, getting rid of SUV's, and promoting public transit. Yeah, right, like that is ever going to happen."
You can thank the environmentalists for this. We would have cheaper gas prices if we weren't so heavily reliant on the middle east. We can't even get to half of our own reserves because of hippy liberal bullshit.
"Hell, we could subsidize hydrogen production to give free energy to every American for a tenth the cost of the Iraq war. But the oil and defense companies wouldn't get rich off that plan."
good luck. If this were the case, some company would have jumped on it (such as the oil companies. They have a shitload of money, if it was possible, they would invest in hydrogen and have a monopoly on it). We don't have the technology yet to run off of hydrogen. Please take your tinfoil hat off. I think it's on a little too tight.
"Hey, didn't Bush say that all the gas prices were too high under Clinton and promise us that they would be cheaper if we elected him? I guess that is just another in a long string of lies from the bush family."
and why weren't the prices lower during clinton's time? The gas prices rose after 9/11, not the Iraq war. Get your facts straight.
"The Iraq war is a mistake. The Iraq war is illegal under international law. We should never have have gone in. We should not stay there now. The citizens of Iraq have as their first duty the necessity to free themselves from foreign rule. They are right to resist the American invasion. God, duty, and country is the creed that I was taught as a military man in the United States army. I respect anyone who stands up for their god, who stands up for their country, who does their duty no matter what the cost to themselves"
You are very naive. We helped the Iraqis get out of a bad situation, and look at the thanks we have gotten. I actually wish we hadn't gone in, so the un-grateful Iraqis can continue to get killed, beaten, and tortured. After many decades of this, they might finally be able to see what true freedom is all about (but, someone like you might be complaining that we aren't helping their people out if that were the case).
You seem to have so many opinions on why the US is a terrible country. It's funny, an Iraqi general under Sadaam released a book a few months back talking about how he helped move nuclear arms on trains into the desert (right before we invaded). This always seems to be overlooked.
Or how about the fact that bush had evidence that France, China, and Russia gave Sadaam weapons and other military secrets and kept it secret all this time to protect them.
"Why would you kill an Iraqi for their oil field?"
The war just isn't about oil. This is a naive and simple-minded approach to the situation.
it is about power and control and middle eastern leaders that are not only murdering their people but posing a direct threat to the US.
The reason our oil prices in the US is so high is because of the environmentalists. They prevent more usage of our own oil and keep us reliant on the middle east.
" just as stopping Bush from doing it today would be a good thing"
you started out alright..but this is rediculous. Comparing Bush to Hitler is laughable. If Bush really was like a hitler, there wouldn't be too many left-wing US citizens alive.
"Right... as compared to closed source, where 0% have the capability of auditing the source code."
You missed my point. Even though the source code is available, you don't get more people auditing your code. So what is the benefit?
"That sounds a lot like the proprietary model except that the 'when they have time' gets replaced with 'if they get budget approval'. I've worked on proprietary software and know, first hand, that development costs are usually dwarfed by customer support costs. In many projects, bugs only get fixed if there's a good business case for the fix."
profit is a good motive to get things done. If company X doesn't get feature Y, they might not make a profit this year. With OSS, people only work on things they feel like working on, and the result is a never completed project (or 10X the time it should take) or some things just don't get fixed/added.
With a commercial program if they aren't a big enough account to make a ripple at headquarters, then it'll never get fixed unless it happens to pop up on the radar of someone more important
If they aren't getting the support they need/want, they can go to competitor. It happens every day.
"This sounds like a strength of the open source model. Many eyes can include security auditors too. The weaknesses get reported and fixed."
This seems to be the call of the open source zealout, but it is not reality. 99% of the people using Open Office are users. The other 1% contain people that might have the ability to look at it, but may not have the time or patience.
I have been involved with many open source projects over the past couple of years and it usually ends up like this:
1) someone emails a bug to the main programming team 2) someone on the programming team (when they have time..since it is a volunteer position) will look through the code and make the changes 3) rinse and repeat
Proprietary apps actually seem to be better in this respect because at least the main programming team is usually working on it full time and can implement changes in a timely fashion (because they aren't working other jobs). In bigger corporations, this does not always happen because of corporate BS.
"Chalk this up as a win for the open source model... at least for large high visibility projects like Open Office."
Not really. Many proprietary apps still have people that can and do find flaws (much in the same way they find them in open source apps. Sure, the source code helps, but I would imagine it's easy for many of the security experts to test it from the outside).
"The closed source model doesn't offer the same level of opportunity to find flaws. Even when people do find flaws in closed source products the publishers are as likely to bury the report, deny the flaw it exists or use DMCA to sue the people who disclose the problems"
so why did the people at openoffice.org pass many of the flaws off as theoretical?
"It says something that the most succesful open source projects tend to be run on a model almost identical to a typical corporation. I believe Linus refers to it as the "benevolent dictator" model. "
I think it has more to do with the fact that there are only a few people involved in open source projects that actually have the skills, time, or interest to make major updates and keep the project going. The other 99% are just users or they make changes that aren't good enough to be considered for the next release.
There is a reason companies work in the way that they do. We have realized over many years that not everyone wants to be a leader (which is just human nature). Most people need to be led and told what to do.
The most successful open source projects mimic a standard company.
"Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it."
Hint: The US already has, it's the rest of the world that needs to learn who they can and cannot trust. The US has the duel responsiblity of getting blamed for evey problem and cleaning up everyone else's mess.
I hope you aren't from france (you seemt to be, because I can sense your pussiness). You guys already have done enough damage to the world.
"Yeah, i'm trying hard... the parent must be american whos attitude would have landed a close visit to madame guillotine during the french revolution"
and if you think everyone in the US is an asshole based on 1 response on a geek website, you really need to get out more. I met a guy from europe once and he smelled like shit. Should I assume all europeans smell like shit?
"Thats what people like you were saying in Rome sometime around the year 400AD"
posted by you: "Americans like you, who display ignorance, are adding fuel to the fire. Thousands of years implies more than 2000 years... this is why they believe uneducated barbaric infidels like yourself must be put to death"
and aren't we being just a bit hypocritical?
I don't think terrorists alone will destroy the US. It will be leftist pussies like you that rot the very foundation of the american system that will bring the country to its knees. Terrorists will use the exposed weaknesses (such as this fear everyone seems to have about racial profiling or environmentalists preventing the drilling of our own oil which in turn keeps the US reliant on the middle east supply) against us.
"And now? Our governments are trying to get us worked up over the threat that a handful of religious kooks in another hemisphere, without any real powerbase whatsoever pose? Either they're idiots, or they're much smarter than those watching Fox News, and the potential consequences of assuming the former are far worse than we would like to imagine."
People watching fox news aren't stupid. People that are biases and blinded by one side (left or right) are the real morons.
9/11 anyone (this shits on your powerbase point)? I think it's a shame that we are so politically correct that we have to take images of 9/11 out of all television and movies. Eventually, it will lose its impact and people will forget what these barbarians did.
The population of the US is starting to become a bunch of pussies (the guys need to throw a football around sometime). This may be due to the increasing number of single-parent households.
This is what will bring the US down, not a terrorist group.
"Americans like you, who display ignorance, are adding fuel to the fire. Thousands of years implies more than 2000 years... this is why they believe uneducated barbaric infidels like yourself must be put to death"
it's people like you that make me want to make the middle east a crater of molten rock after we completly destroy all of its inhabitants. They can think im a "barbaric infidel" all they want..but they just have to realize that I am from the most powerful nation in the world.
"You are being too simplistic. Consider the possibility that the number of new terrorists is dependent on what you do. Suppose that if there are N terrorists, and doing nothing will result in there being M new terrorists. Now suppose that bombing all the terrorist hideouts you know about will kill L terrorists, but it will also kill some peaceful civilians, causing O extra people to start hating you and become terrorists."
You are being too naive. It's better to protect the freedom of the world than appease the terrorists. For all you know, by not doing anything, the terrorists will pick up on this weakness and start launching suicide bombings directly in the US.
"Yeah, it was pathetic the way Britain and Poland and Russia just rolled over and let Hitler win. Good thing old Uncle Sam was there to save the day, eh? Never mind that the war could have been ended much sooner, and millions of Jewish lives saved, if there hadn't been so many pro-Hitler voices in the US Congress to delay American entry into the war."
Are you this much of a moron? Just because I mentioned the US doesn't mean I was excluding the rest the countries that helped in WW2. and the pro-hitler voices? This just shows the vast amount of morons that existed in the US during that time (similar to the anti-bush anti-war people in the US today).
"Um, by the way, what exactly does this have to do with terrorism? The actions of nation-states such as Germany are very poor models for the actions of tiny groups like al-Qaida. And I can't help noticing distinct similarities between your proposed solution to the world's problems (kill all the Muslims) and Hitler's (kill all the Jews)."
umm..this is laughable. The US isn't trying to "kill all the muslims" (and this is not my proposed solution to the worlds problem). The extremists are trying to kill everyone that does not follow their religion/way of life (hmm..kind of like hitler?). The US and other countries are just trying to prevent this, which now requires force because of the radical leaders that are beyond reason.
You need to understand that force is required to keep peace. It's been this way for 1000s of years and will most likely never change. Read a history book sometime.
Slashdot Mirror
"The objective of the GPL is to prevent the commercial sale of software in order to produce a gift economy in software development"
In a sense, the GNU does prevent you from making a profit from selling software directly (support is a different story).
It does not prevent people from copying your software, re-selling it, or competition from taking your ideas. So, you basically allow everything that plagues the commercial software industry legally and in essence, destroy most opportunity for making money from directly selling software (which is frowned upon on most OSS circles anyway).
Support can work to make money, but it is much more difficult and does not scale well. IE: Support gets out of control very quickly with a one man shop, but selling software is very maintainable (you can actually sell enough to make a good living before having to hire more people). I've seen both cases (support and software) first-hand..and don't think I would ever start a company that is based on support.
All the linux distro companies are not only having trouble making money but are making most of their money on support contracts and not the actual software itself (linux distro companies have a big problem: A) You need to be a savvy computer user to use linux B) Most savvy computer users will just download it for free through bittorrent or other means).
Can you make money with OSS? Yes, but you have about 10X the difficulty.
"IBM, Red Hat, Monta Vista, Google.com, and many other businesses make millions of USD, every year from GPL licensed software. Evil?"
No, but you would think more people in the community would be against this. They are basically making money off of the hard work of GNU programmers (with little given back to the community).
"Of course. Don't fall into the trap like some people who try to convince people that "slashdotters" are hypocritical, because "slashdotters" support illegal copying of proprietary software, and "slashdotters" want people copying GPL'ed programs illegally to be sued. We are not talking about "Peter A. Slashdotters" here, but of several groups of people who care about different things"
true. But when you see many people making both claims (especially GNU zealouts), it really makes you wonder...
"If you don't intend to share your own goodies the same way, then to heck with you -- you're not a customer, you're a leech."
I hope everyone here who is arguing this point also feels that sharing closed source software on p2p networks and such is just as wrong
"You don't believe the researchers? Contact them about it. You cannot site a single study to support your point of view, but you are making blind assertions based on the statements of biased parties. Whether or not you believe actual research, the numbers show that P2P networks, including Napster, have not had a statistically significant impact on content sales."
.. the BoS section and ask how piracy has effected sales..you will get some interesting and eye-opening responses).
One piece of research (every slashdotter making the argument for piracy uses the exact link that you posted) is not proof. I have first-hand experience. I have been involved in many small to mid-sized software companies and I know that piracy hurts sales..without a doubt (large companies might be able to take the hit) (want proof? go to http://www.joelonsoftware.com/
I also know someone who is an independent artist and tried to sell MP3s online. His sales were great for the first month or two..until his songs started getting shared on many of the P2P networks at the time. Sales declined after that..and he eventually was forced to take all of his MP3s offline (and not offer digital downloads in the future).
For small, independent artists (the people filesharers claim to be protecting), P2p networks are only working against them. This is because the more popular a song is, the less money they will make (because it will be more available on a P2P network). For a large company or recording studio, it might take a lot longer for them to see these effects, but it will eventually happen if they allow people to share their content for free on a P2P network.
"Kazaa outdid Napster's popularity, with Napster peaking at under 30 million registered users and Kazaa peaking at over 50 million. Kazaa is also a far more efficient network than Napster was and it scales better. The RIAA has been 100% ineffective at preventing P2P traffic. This cannot be explained by anything other than people who cannot afford to buy CDs going to P2P networks instead. How is this different from the pre-Napster days of burning copies of your friends' CDs?"
Can't afford a CD? Don't fucking download it (it's just that easy). It's no excuse and it just makes my point. If you can afford high speed internet access, you can afford music.
When you burn your friends' CDs, you might only be able to get a few CDs a week/month. With P2p, you can get almost any song off of a CD whenever you want. This is the difference.
Also, Napster was in the news every other day during its peek. Kazaa might have been in the news once or twice during its popularity.
"In fact, P2P filesharing is no more dangerous to profits than CD burners, which were lobbied against, or FM radio, which was lobbied against...the RIAA has a history of vehemently opposing any new technology that allows people to hear music when they could not have afforded to otherwise. It is a group that is led by millionaires, who can afford to buy whatever music they wish to hear, not average people who have to be scrupulous in their buying decisions."
What about a radio? There are a ton of radio stations in most areas..and you can listen to music for free.
This is a typical standpoint by lazy and or naive people that have no idea what it takes to create a work of art or make money. All millionaires must have all the breaks in life....right?
Making money is fucking hard..and most people who have a lot of it..worked their ass off to get in that position (of course, there are exceptions).
"as part of a campaign against monopolistic corporations"
hmm..are they going to stop servicing monopolistic corporations too? Since many citizens work at call centers that support these corporations, I don't see this as very effective.
Actually, P2P is not a threat to anybody at all. A recent study (http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_Marc h2004.pdf) found that downloads had no impact on CD sales --
I don't think this is true at all. All of the people I know have stopped buying CDs since P2P networks became the source of free music. Many small music stores in my area also went out of business in the past couple of years, mostly because of lack of interest (during the napster days..these stores were completly empty).
in theory, this is probably because the amount of work needed to download and organize one's music wouldn't make sense if you could just afford to buy a CD. This same logic applies to DVDs; if you have the money for a $50 DVD, you will most likely just go out and buy it,
why bother? DVD copies have no loss in quality. If you get a burned/downloaded copy..there is no point in buying it.
especially considering the immense amount of time needed to download a 2+ hour movie.
on cable/dsl..you can have a complete movie in a matter of hours. This is a moot point.
P2P networks really served as a way to just increase the number of people listening to music and watching movies, and didn't really deprive anybody of sales. The fact that sales went down around 2002 is irrelevant, since ALL businesses were suffering back then, and the content industries are not some special exception. During Kazaa's most active period, CD sales were actually on the rise...
only because napster was on the decline at that point. The Record industry isn't scared of P2p on its own (pirated stuff was available for years through IRC..with almost no problems). They are afraid of it on a mass scale..when joe end user knows about P2P app X and would rather download a song than buy it. This is exactly what happened during the Napster days..and loss in CD sales during that time were a direct result.
None of the other apps even came close to napster's popularity, thanks to the RIAA.
Music, movies, and even software are similar to currency. They each have a perceived value. When P2p apps (or things like the pirate bay) gain a ton of popularity, this perceived value starts decreasing over time and will eventually reach $0.
Many people call it stealing but it's actually closer to counterfeiting. Either way it still hurts profits.
I think I should remind everyone that pornotube has 99% gay (male) content.
"Okay...here's the obligatory: What if you job is pretty much all about the internet? Blanket statements... Anyway, if you have a tech job, it is almost guaranteed that you will use the internet in the course of your work. Sys admins use it to look up solutions to problems. Programmers use it to "not reinvent the wheel". Etc. Etc. Etc"
it's not about those type of people. They are probably controlling the Internet in the first place. It's about the worker that does not need the Internet to get their job done, but decides to waste time on it anyway (IE: reading a "cool" email from their friend..which turns out to be spyware that infects the entire network).
"SSH -D"
even better is to use windows RDP (in case your work blocks odd ports, you can use the windows firewall (or a better, hardware firewall) to redirect it to port 80).
it's nice because you can have a bunch of things open and can minimize it all one shot (and it is faster then any thing I have ever seen). it's also encrypted traffic so it will be difficult to tell excactly where you are going.
I used this method at a computer place I worked where I was heavily watched.
"You want to know what is a crime? I'll tell you what is a crime. It's a crime that these large organisations reap the profits from pressed pieces of plastic onto which are recorded hideous noises that sound like gang-warfare in Harlem and Watts, and then use this money to harass families and children for every last red cent so they can line their pockets."
it's a crime that artists charge thousands of dollars for some paint on a canvas, so counterfeiting said painting and passing it off as the original should not be a crime.
yes, they shouldn't be harassing families.
However, if you sell a piece of shit and someone decides to buy it, you aren't committing a crime. People continue to buy the shit that the RIAA creates, it should be *no* suprise that they continue to sell it. If you want to blame someone, blame the mindless sheep for buying the crappy britney spears CDs of the world.
"Plus I figure if you add in all the costs of the Iraq war to the oil we are getting from that region it is costing Americans about $2,000 per barrel of oil. That is just dumb business to pay that much for oil. Only an idiot would pay $2,000 for a barrel of oil."
hmm..maybe because the US isn't there for just the oil. I think if bush was only interested in oil, he would not have gone after sadaam and would be making back room deals. You need to look at the big picture rather than focus on one short-sited idea of oil. The world is much more complicated than that.
"So don't tell me that an operation that was named OIL is about anything other than oil. I don't buy it. Go sell crazy somewhere else"
someone else did..and you bought it.
"America has already reached peak oil in the 1970's, we can't supply our own oil without changing the way we live... I.E., building more efficient houses, more efficient factories, more efficient computers, getting rid of SUV's, and promoting public transit. Yeah, right, like that is ever going to happen."
You can thank the environmentalists for this. We would have cheaper gas prices if we weren't so heavily reliant on the middle east. We can't even get to half of our own reserves because of hippy liberal bullshit.
"Hell, we could subsidize hydrogen production to give free energy to every American for a tenth the cost of the Iraq war. But the oil and defense companies wouldn't get rich off that plan."
good luck. If this were the case, some company would have jumped on it (such as the oil companies. They have a shitload of money, if it was possible, they would invest in hydrogen and have a monopoly on it). We don't have the technology yet to run off of hydrogen. Please take your tinfoil hat off. I think it's on a little too tight.
"Hey, didn't Bush say that all the gas prices were too high under Clinton and promise us that they would be cheaper if we elected him? I guess that is just another in a long string of lies from the bush family."
and why weren't the prices lower during clinton's time? The gas prices rose after 9/11, not the Iraq war. Get your facts straight.
"The Iraq war is a mistake. The Iraq war is illegal under international law. We should never have have gone in. We should not stay there now. The citizens of Iraq have as their first duty the necessity to free themselves from foreign rule. They are right to resist the American invasion. God, duty, and country is the creed that I was taught as a military man in the United States army. I respect anyone who stands up for their god, who stands up for their country, who does their duty no matter what the cost to themselves"
You are very naive. We helped the Iraqis get out of a bad situation, and look at the thanks we have gotten. I actually wish we hadn't gone in, so the un-grateful Iraqis can continue to get killed, beaten, and tortured. After many decades of this, they might finally be able to see what true freedom is all about (but, someone like you might be complaining that we aren't helping their people out if that were the case).
You seem to have so many opinions on why the US is a terrible country. It's funny, an Iraqi general under Sadaam released a book a few months back talking about how he helped move nuclear arms on trains into the desert (right before we invaded). This always seems to be overlooked.
Or how about the fact that bush had evidence that France, China, and Russia gave Sadaam weapons and other military secrets and kept it secret all this time to protect them.
"http://www.pornotube.com/ [pornotube.com]
Yup, the best Youtube like site."
if you are a gay male, then yes. 99% of the top videos on their involve two guys..and im not even joking.
"Why would you kill an Iraqi for their oil field?"
The war just isn't about oil. This is a naive and simple-minded approach to the situation.
it is about power and control and middle eastern leaders that are not only murdering their people but posing a direct threat to the US.
The reason our oil prices in the US is so high is because of the environmentalists. They prevent more usage of our own oil and keep us reliant on the middle east.
" just as stopping Bush from doing it today would be a good thing"
you started out alright..but this is rediculous. Comparing Bush to Hitler is laughable. If Bush really was like a hitler, there wouldn't be too many left-wing US citizens alive.
"Right... as compared to closed source, where 0% have the capability of auditing the source code."
You missed my point. Even though the source code is available, you don't get more people auditing your code. So what is the benefit?
"That sounds a lot like the proprietary model except that the 'when they have time' gets replaced with 'if they get budget approval'. I've worked on proprietary software and know, first hand, that development costs are usually dwarfed by customer support costs. In many projects, bugs only get fixed if there's a good business case for the fix."
profit is a good motive to get things done. If company X doesn't get feature Y, they might not make a profit this year. With OSS, people only work on things they feel like working on, and the result is a never completed project (or 10X the time it should take) or some things just don't get fixed/added.
With a commercial program if they aren't a big enough account to make a ripple at headquarters, then it'll never get fixed unless it happens to pop up on the radar of someone more important
If they aren't getting the support they need/want, they can go to competitor. It happens every day.
"Well, considering that a higher proportion of the users of OSS will contribute fixes and bug reports than the equivelant for proprietary software."
This was my point: Even though the source is available, you don't really get that many more (if any or helpful) eyes looking for security issues.
"This sounds like a strength of the open source model. Many eyes can include security auditors too. The weaknesses get reported and fixed."
This seems to be the call of the open source zealout, but it is not reality. 99% of the people using Open Office are users. The other 1% contain people that might have the ability to look at it, but may not have the time or patience.
I have been involved with many open source projects over the past couple of years and it usually ends up like this:
1) someone emails a bug to the main programming team
2) someone on the programming team (when they have time..since it is a volunteer position) will look through the code and make the changes
3) rinse and repeat
Proprietary apps actually seem to be better in this respect because at least the main programming team is usually working on it full time and can implement changes in a timely fashion (because they aren't working other jobs). In bigger corporations, this does not always happen because of corporate BS.
"Chalk this up as a win for the open source model... at least for large high visibility projects like Open Office."
Not really. Many proprietary apps still have people that can and do find flaws (much in the same way they find them in open source apps. Sure, the source code helps, but I would imagine it's easy for many of the security experts to test it from the outside).
"The closed source model doesn't offer the same level of opportunity to find flaws. Even when people do find flaws in closed source products the publishers are as likely to bury the report, deny the flaw it exists or use DMCA to sue the people who disclose the problems"
so why did the people at openoffice.org pass many of the flaws off as theoretical?
"It says something that the most succesful open source projects tend to be run on a model almost identical to a typical corporation. I believe Linus refers to it as the "benevolent dictator" model. "
I think it has more to do with the fact that there are only a few people involved in open source projects that actually have the skills, time, or interest to make major updates and keep the project going. The other 99% are just users or they make changes that aren't good enough to be considered for the next release.
There is a reason companies work in the way that they do. We have realized over many years that not everyone wants to be a leader (which is just human nature). Most people need to be led and told what to do.
The most successful open source projects mimic a standard company.
"Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it."
Hint: The US already has, it's the rest of the world that needs to learn who they can and cannot trust. The US has the duel responsiblity of getting blamed for evey problem and cleaning up everyone else's mess.
I hope you aren't from france (you seemt to be, because I can sense your pussiness). You guys already have done enough damage to the world.
"Yeah, i'm trying hard... the parent must be american whos attitude would have landed a close visit to madame guillotine during the french revolution"
and if you think everyone in the US is an asshole based on 1 response on a geek website, you really need to get out more. I met a guy from europe once and he smelled like shit. Should I assume all europeans smell like shit?
"Thats what people like you were saying in Rome sometime around the year 400AD"
posted by you: "Americans like you, who display ignorance, are adding fuel to the fire. Thousands of years implies more than 2000 years... this is why they believe uneducated barbaric infidels like yourself must be put to death"
and aren't we being just a bit hypocritical?
I don't think terrorists alone will destroy the US. It will be leftist pussies like you that rot the very foundation of the american system that will bring the country to its knees. Terrorists will use the exposed weaknesses (such as this fear everyone seems to have about racial profiling or environmentalists preventing the drilling of our own oil which in turn keeps the US reliant on the middle east supply) against us.
"And now? Our governments are trying to get us worked up over the threat that a handful of religious kooks in another hemisphere, without any real powerbase whatsoever pose? Either they're idiots, or they're much smarter than those watching Fox News, and the potential consequences of assuming the former are far worse than we would like to imagine."
People watching fox news aren't stupid. People that are biases and blinded by one side (left or right) are the real morons.
9/11 anyone (this shits on your powerbase point)? I think it's a shame that we are so politically correct that we have to take images of 9/11 out of all television and movies. Eventually, it will lose its impact and people will forget what these barbarians did.
The population of the US is starting to become a bunch of pussies (the guys need to throw a football around sometime). This may be due to the increasing number of single-parent households.
This is what will bring the US down, not a terrorist group.
"Americans like you, who display ignorance, are adding fuel to the fire. Thousands of years implies more than 2000 years... this is why they believe uneducated barbaric infidels like yourself must be put to death"
it's people like you that make me want to make the middle east a crater of molten rock after we completly destroy all of its inhabitants. They can think im a "barbaric infidel" all they want..but they just have to realize that I am from the most powerful nation in the world.
I knew this would get modded to 0. Mostly because of the leftist slant of the slashdot community/moderators.
"You are being too simplistic. Consider the possibility that the number of new terrorists is dependent on what you do. Suppose that if there are N terrorists, and doing nothing will result in there being M new terrorists. Now suppose that bombing all the terrorist hideouts you know about will kill L terrorists, but it will also kill some peaceful civilians, causing O extra people to start hating you and become terrorists."
You are being too naive. It's better to protect the freedom of the world than appease the terrorists. For all you know, by not doing anything, the terrorists will pick up on this weakness and start launching suicide bombings directly in the US.
"Yeah, it was pathetic the way Britain and Poland and Russia just rolled over and let Hitler win. Good thing old Uncle Sam was there to save the day, eh? Never mind that the war could have been ended much sooner, and millions of Jewish lives saved, if there hadn't been so many pro-Hitler voices in the US Congress to delay American entry into the war."
Are you this much of a moron? Just because I mentioned the US doesn't mean I was excluding the rest the countries that helped in WW2. and the pro-hitler voices? This just shows the vast amount of morons that existed in the US during that time (similar to the anti-bush anti-war people in the US today).
"Um, by the way, what exactly does this have to do with terrorism? The actions of nation-states such as Germany are very poor models for the actions of tiny groups like al-Qaida. And I can't help noticing distinct similarities between your proposed solution to the world's problems (kill all the Muslims) and Hitler's (kill all the Jews)."
umm..this is laughable. The US isn't trying to "kill all the muslims" (and this is not my proposed solution to the worlds problem). The extremists are trying to kill everyone that does not follow their religion/way of life (hmm..kind of like hitler?). The US and other countries are just trying to prevent this, which now requires force because of the radical leaders that are beyond reason.
You need to understand that force is required to keep peace. It's been this way for 1000s of years and will most likely never change. Read a history book sometime.