Bugfixes and version upgrades do not appear out of thin air.
Bug fixes and "version upgrades" (do you mean "new features"?) are development and therefore can't be called expenses of development.
If software was... not profit-driven, this would not be the case
Software is not profit driven. Business is profit driven....most of the professional ones are commercial.
Of course. There are more commercial packages, so there are more commercial "professional" (whatever that means) software packages. But there exist in free software packages of equal professionalism. I'm not going to enumerate them, you should know them if you feel up to making such claims.
Most open-source/free software is reactive.
And you think Photoshop was not a reaction to what came before it? You think Photoshop was the first photo editing tool?
All software is reactive. There is little innovation, ideas are built on older ideas. WIMP goes back to the 60s, as does hypertext; remember the furore about the BT patents dating back decades? Yes there are plenty good ideas but they are incremental steps. You can't point at a vast collection of ideas, most of which are old and some of which are new, and say the whole is either innovative or not. The innovation is in the details, and this holds for Visicalc too.
The way you talk about Visicalc you would think no-one ever used spreadsheets before the late 70s.
Time costs money, either directly or through opportunity costs.
Quite, but we all have some spare time, whereas many of us have no money.
Who's going to pay your rent while you sit around all day and gaze at your navel?
Make sensible comments, or don't comment.
Your computer and related resources obviously cost money: at the lowest level, even electricity is not free.
That's fine, I'm not arguing that software development has zero cost.
And your "brain," i.e. your education, certainly cost you money. Have you paid off your student loans yet? If so, who gave you the money to do so? If not, where do you plan to get it?
Yes, but nearly all inudstrial activities require some education, but software development is among the few that doesn't have significant recurring expenses (raw materials, etc).
The barrier to entry in software, as in everything else, is financial. This will be true as long as time and effort have a dollar value associated with them.
No, the financial barrier to entry in software is significantly lower than other industries. Why do you think countries like India are able to outcompete western programmers? They aren't rich countries, quite on the contrary, poverty is quite rife.
Where does most useful software come from? Companies. Yes, a good deal of software, some of it quite useful, comes from hobbyists, for lack of a better term. But most of it comes from commercial development.
In terms of quantity you may be correct, but tell me, so what? And how does this observation affect the extant restrictions? It does not.
By the way, things that make software, that are not companies, are called "individuals" or "people". Not necessarily "hobbyists". You use deliberately prejudiced terms to create a derogatory tone, and pretend you don't know it.
Ownership of ideas relating to software is immoral and must be stopped.
The major barrier to entry in the field of software development is inherently intellectual, not financial. I don't need to spend money on scarce resources like raw materials and factories to produce software; I need time, a computer, and a brain. Therefore the natural initial outlay for software development is much lower than for the production of tangible goods.
This means that the development of software is not inherently restricted to those with money - rich people, and companies.
This is good for society - a wealth of intellectual commons is created, because it can be done by just about anyone with the motivation, time and know-how.
Patents in software place an artifical barrier on software development, raising the bar to those with the money to license patents - rich people, and companies. This restricts growth of the intellectual commons, and restricts how people with the motivation can spend their time.
I can't agree with your approach to operational maintenance. In my world, test servers run 2.6.6 and real servers run a stable 2.4.x until there is a good reason for them to change (and only to another 2.4.x release, until 2.7.0 has been released... get the tinkers away from the stable kernel, I say, away!
If I had any test servers, that is. Does my laptop count?
How bizarre, asking if a problem in 2.2.12 is fixed in 2.6.6!
Although I think I know what you're talking about, I had a machine (running 2.4.18 I think) which crashed regularly with bttv, but ran like a dream without it. Eventually I moved the card into another machine (same kernel, slower but better quality hardware) and there were no problems.
Don't be conflicted. Software patents are bad. Therefore this patent is bad.
The artists and producers who don't like you downloading their music are also bad. Don't support them, even if it's just by... downloading their music! (Metallica comes to mind). So don't use Kazaa or whatever, use the likes of Magnatune. By supporting independent freedom-loving musicians and producers, you register your anti-RIAA vote.
Finally, anything which attacks peer-to-peer networks will cause evolution of those networks, leading to faster, stronger, better peer-to-peer.
He explained, "Nearly all inventions are developments of existing ideas, taking them just a bit further."
The idea that an inventor creates in a vacuum is ridiculous. The whole of science, and the principles behind Free Software, demonstrate that things are not invented, they are developed from things that came before.
It's only the patent system that makes this "theft". Now, I know patents have to have an inventive step which should not be present in prior art; so if Bell had no inventive step then he didn't deserve the patent.
But it's the patent system itself that encourages this kind of land grab. Calling Bell a thief seems a bit much.
Yes but you're not telling only the owners of the lockers, you're telling everyone walking by the gym too.
Security through obscurity is wrong and stupid, but so is security through full disclosure. I hate to say it; I love Free Software and I am happier trusting the security of my data to it than I would be trusting anything proprietary, especially Windows. But I can't buy the argument that telling the world about an exploit before anyone has had a chance to patch is a good thing.
I have no idea how to solve this, it's a fairly deep question, deeper than me just now with a bottle of wine in me.
Thank you, I've never looked at Kernel Trap before; since kernel traffic hasn't been updated since mid-March I've been short on interesting reading.
And you're right, if Slashdot could get on with News for Nerds like that rather than News for Micro$oft haters, it would be much better. Don't get me wrong, I have no love for Microsoft but to be honest I don't care too much how scandalous the minumum spec of Longhorn is, I do care what's going on in the world of free software though.
Read the effing article, they're finally taking out Notepad and forcing you to use Wordpad, aka write.exe. That's why the specs are so high. Nobody else here seems to have noticed. Write is a pretty CPU intensive piece of software.
Slashdot Mirror
sex ... can usually only be obtained for money.
Nuff said.
Stop wasting your money posting on Slashdot then.
Bugfixes and version upgrades do not appear out of thin air.
... not profit-driven, this would not be the case
...most of the professional ones are commercial.
Bug fixes and "version upgrades" (do you mean "new features"?) are development and therefore can't be called expenses of development.
If software was
Software is not profit driven. Business is profit driven.
Of course. There are more commercial packages, so there are more commercial "professional" (whatever that means) software packages. But there exist in free software packages of equal professionalism. I'm not going to enumerate them, you should know them if you feel up to making such claims.
Most open-source/free software is reactive.
And you think Photoshop was not a reaction to what came before it? You think Photoshop was the first photo editing tool?
All software is reactive. There is little innovation, ideas are built on older ideas. WIMP goes back to the 60s, as does hypertext; remember the furore about the BT patents dating back decades? Yes there are plenty good ideas but they are incremental steps. You can't point at a vast collection of ideas, most of which are old and some of which are new, and say the whole is either innovative or not. The innovation is in the details, and this holds for Visicalc too.
The way you talk about Visicalc you would think no-one ever used spreadsheets before the late 70s.
I know what it means. It was a stupid hyperbolic comment without any contextual relevance.
Time costs money, either directly or through opportunity costs.
Quite, but we all have some spare time, whereas many of us have no money.
Who's going to pay your rent while you sit around all day and gaze at your navel?
Make sensible comments, or don't comment.
Your computer and related resources obviously cost money: at the lowest level, even electricity is not free.
That's fine, I'm not arguing that software development has zero cost.
And your "brain," i.e. your education, certainly cost you money. Have you paid off your student loans yet? If so, who gave you the money to do so? If not, where do you plan to get it?
Yes, but nearly all inudstrial activities require some education, but software development is among the few that doesn't have significant recurring expenses (raw materials, etc).
The barrier to entry in software, as in everything else, is financial. This will be true as long as time and effort have a dollar value associated with them.
No, the financial barrier to entry in software is significantly lower than other industries. Why do you think countries like India are able to outcompete western programmers? They aren't rich countries, quite on the contrary, poverty is quite rife.
Where does most useful software come from? Companies. Yes, a good deal of software, some of it quite useful, comes from hobbyists, for lack of a better term. But most of it comes from commercial development.
In terms of quantity you may be correct, but tell me, so what? And how does this observation affect the extant restrictions? It does not.
By the way, things that make software, that are not companies, are called "individuals" or "people". Not necessarily "hobbyists". You use deliberately prejudiced terms to create a derogatory tone, and pretend you don't know it.
Troll of the mists.
ownership is immoral and must be stopped
Ownership of ideas relating to software is immoral and must be stopped.
The major barrier to entry in the field of software development is inherently intellectual, not financial. I don't need to spend money on scarce resources like raw materials and factories to produce software; I need time, a computer, and a brain. Therefore the natural initial outlay for software development is much lower than for the production of tangible goods.
This means that the development of software is not inherently restricted to those with money - rich people, and companies.
This is good for society - a wealth of intellectual commons is created, because it can be done by just about anyone with the motivation, time and know-how.
Patents in software place an artifical barrier on software development, raising the bar to those with the money to license patents - rich people, and companies. This restricts growth of the intellectual commons, and restricts how people with the motivation can spend their time.
The IR beam senses movement by being broken; it's not competing as a means to transmit back to base, radio is the only sensible option for that.
Read this; from a google search for: openoffice footers
I can't agree with your approach to operational maintenance. In my world, test servers run 2.6.6 and real servers run a stable 2.4.x until there is a good reason for them to change (and only to another 2.4.x release, until 2.7.0 has been released... get the tinkers away from the stable kernel, I say, away!
If I had any test servers, that is. Does my laptop count?
It's done in the open, and anyone capable can play.
Aaargghhh! Why didn't I read your other post first!
How bizarre, asking if a problem in 2.2.12 is fixed in 2.6.6!
Although I think I know what you're talking about, I had a machine (running 2.4.18 I think) which crashed regularly with bttv, but ran like a dream without it. Eventually I moved the card into another machine (same kernel, slower but better quality hardware) and there were no problems.
Don't be conflicted. Software patents are bad.
Therefore this patent is bad.
The artists and producers who don't like you downloading their music are also bad. Don't support them, even if it's just by... downloading their music! (Metallica comes to mind). So don't use Kazaa or whatever, use the likes of Magnatune. By supporting independent freedom-loving musicians and producers, you register your anti-RIAA vote.
Finally, anything which attacks peer-to-peer networks will cause evolution of those networks, leading to faster, stronger, better peer-to-peer.
It's a win-win-win situation!
Don't you need:
4.5. Sue somebody
?
That was the "lawsuit" part of your parent post. He agrees with you.
From the first article you link:
He explained, "Nearly all inventions are developments of existing ideas, taking them just a bit further."
The idea that an inventor creates in a vacuum is ridiculous. The whole of science, and the principles behind Free Software, demonstrate that things are not invented, they are developed from things that came before.
It's only the patent system that makes this "theft". Now, I know patents have to have an inventive step which should not be present in prior art; so if Bell had no inventive step then he didn't deserve the patent.
But it's the patent system itself that encourages this kind of land grab. Calling Bell a thief seems a bit much.
Computer Voice: "We were discussing you, not me."
Mod up Up UP!
Thanks. Pass the screen wipes.
Or however it's spelled.
He doesn't need to write one, it's GPL ("you insensitive clod"), he can modify this one!
Finally. GNU/Marguerita.
Plus they revoked my card.
Whatever, libraries are shut at night and on Sundays, the Internet is open all hours and has pr0n.
Yes but you're not telling only the owners of the lockers, you're telling everyone walking by the gym too.
Security through obscurity is wrong and stupid, but so is security through full disclosure. I hate to say it; I love Free Software and I am happier trusting the security of my data to it than I would be trusting anything proprietary, especially Windows. But I can't buy the argument that telling the world about an exploit before anyone has had a chance to patch is a good thing.
I have no idea how to solve this, it's a fairly deep question, deeper than me just now with a bottle of wine in me.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with the approach you suggest, and I would also advocate it.
But there's no point pretending that because you've kept it a secret, no-one's going to find out.
So you have to be prepared for the worst, even if you don't ask for it.
Thank you, I've never looked at Kernel Trap before; since kernel traffic hasn't been updated since mid-March I've been short on interesting reading.
And you're right, if Slashdot could get on with News for Nerds like that rather than News for Micro$oft haters, it would be much better. Don't get me wrong, I have no love for Microsoft but to be honest I don't care too much how scandalous the minumum spec of Longhorn is, I do care what's going on in the world of free software though.
Read the effing article, they're finally taking out Notepad and forcing you to use Wordpad, aka write.exe. That's why the specs are so high. Nobody else here seems to have noticed. Write is a pretty CPU intensive piece of software.