Your point 1 is flat wrong. I call Dell and say "I want 250 systems. Can you knock $50 off the your web site price?" Sales guy goes to sales manager, who checks with regional manager, who talks with sales VP, who has already seen this hundreds of times and understands that the issue is either (1) Dell makes LESS profit (but still makes profit) or (2) Dell LOSES sale. Since Dell is not paying for a license on these machines, it means they have a fatter profit margin and can choose to cut that. If the choice is for me to buy from Dell (putting money in their pockets) or for me to buy from White Boxes, Inc. down the street from me, which will they choose?
Re:Good idea for nuclear waste?
on
Going Up?
·
· Score: 2
Adding delta V? Increasing the rate of acceleration? Don't you think you just meant "a lot of delta V"?
Pick, pick, pick =)
\
Re:It's fair, but uninformative.
on
Going Up?
·
· Score: 2
There are Pacific islands that have no thunderstorms. The native cultures do not have a word for lightning. But yeah, before I ride up in this thing, I want to know what happens if it's hit by lightning...
Re:the most important point of the article
on
Distributed Security
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
what if they sharpen the edge of a credit card? isn't that more dangerous than a nail clipper?
Yup. Flint knapping is a not-unheard of hobby. Wonder if I could get a piece of deer antler and some rocks past a security guard. Or a CD - ever break one of those? How about a laptop computer? They're full of sheet metal, and you can make an expedient knife out of sheet metal.
Since "bank" has two meanings in English, you don't translate it; instead, you translate "river's edge or moneylender" into the other lanaguage. When translating "banco" from Spanish to English, you'd translate it as "bank (place where you save money)."
Either way, if the ambiguity is known, it can be explicitly worked around and the listener can decide which of two ambiguous meanings to use. A good machine translator ought will point out ambiguous words and suggest synonyms.
The sad thing is that over ten thousand have started the tale but only seven thousand have finished. What has happened to the other three thousand, I wonder...
How about three of them in the same sentence? Would you like to insert a few sentences of explaination, including a few paragraphs of cultural references?
Yes. Why is this a problem? FWIW, though, if I'm speaking with someone who doesn't speak English well, I try to formulate sentences to use only simple words. Compare...
Well, barkeep, some of your finest nutty brown ale.
To the bank. "Either to the river's edge or the money lenders."
That ambiguity exists in English, too...it just takes longer if you make it explicit. The listener should still be able to figure it out; context interpretation is only a problem for machines. I think a human being would have no more problem with my translation that with the original sentence. Although the typical American is going to look at you a bit strangely if you use my translation.
It is VERY RARE that glossolalia (speaking/praying in tongues) is comprehensible to any mortal man.
Read Acts 2. I would suggest that it's not incomprehensible to any mortal man...it's just that we rarely pray in the presence of groups of people from every nation under heaven.
I don't use open source because of the software I need to run, and the configuration and use taking too long.
So, you use Windows. Tell me about... cacls find change mode/user rmtshare shutgui
Don't know them? Don't understand them? Don't even have them? That's right...because Windows out of the box has nowhere near the functionality of Linux. How many programming languages come with Windows? (shell, vbscript, maybe jscript -no compiled languages). How many development environments come with Windows? (one - notepad. Unless you count copy con). All the nifty management tools that let you see what's going on...separate purchase. How many DBMS's come with Windows? None.
It is STUPID to compare the features of Windows to any major LInux distro - the feature set of Windows is a slim subset of Linux. Windows offers EXACTLY two things:
1. Automated installations 2. A GUI that we've taken 12 years to learn
Apart from that, Linux offers FAR more than Windows.
What matters to the typical "I don't care how it works I just want it to work" consumer? Easy. They want it to work. They want it to work the way they know (ie like MS Windows). They don't about much else. If you want to do some serious Linux advocacy, pick a package and FIX the user interface so that it works the way people expect it to after a decade of working with Windows.
Re:Why is this a Good Thing (tm)?
on
Penguin Airlines
·
· Score: 2
Ok, we're building this airline ourselves and we've got to have software. Ummm...why don't we just use Linux because we all know it really well? Objection...something else might be better. Yeah, but then we'd A have to hire someone or B waste valuable time learning something. Don't we want to learn stuff? Sure, but we can do that after we've made tons of money and retired. Cool... Ok, are we all agreed? Yeah...given the needs of the business, our resources, and our time limits, we're agreed that Linux is the best tool for our situation.
Can we run it on Macs?
Um....no. Macs are evil.
Re:Get it out of the way
on
Penguin Airlines
·
· Score: 1, Troll
Takes a team of 4 people reading faqs for 2 hours just to figure out how to get the damn landing gear to retract.
...but the landing gear on the airplanes that THOSE people operate will NEVER fail.
MS: Click here to retract landing gear.
Q105832 The "Click here to retract landing gear" button has no corresponding button to deploy landing gear. This will be addressed in the next hotfix or service pack or feature upgrade or automatic update. Please remain in the air until this is released. Your purchase is important to us.
Linux: OK, now that you've finished studying physics, chemistry, metallurgy, aeronautical engineering, and CNC mill operation (ie how to machine your own parts from raw bits of metal - preferable ones you cast yourself, but if you want to be a non-free kinda guy you can buy the metal), it should be obvious to you that turning this crank will open/close the landing bay doors while lowering/raising the landing gear, depending on whether you turn it clockwise/counterclockwise. Visit the GNOME project for instructions on installing an electric motor with a button that will retract the landing gear. There's not a corresponding instructions for installing a motor for deployment because MS aircraft don't work that way, but feel free to turn the crank manually.
Most theoretical physics (and I mean the pencil-pushing "theory", not the engineering field "experimentation") is really just a subset of applied mathematics.
3. They're afraid that multiple versions of a tape may cause consumer confusion that weakens demand for videos in general. This general principle is why so few people are using US quarters these days. It's also why the Pokemon game was so unpopular. It's also why no one went to see the 20th anniversary version of Star Wars, and why no one bought the video version. It's why the sales of DVDs are approximately zero (all those scenes! all those options! too confusing!)
Indeed. And let's hope no one ever ties Dickens to reforming the industrialized wasteland that was England. Oh, wait...
And let's hope that no one ever ties Steinbeck to the uplifting of the downtrodden. Oh, wait...
Sterling is one of the finest writers of the era. Let's hope that he is remembered for his writing and that his future readers tie him to the software freedom movement.
And let's hope that no one ever ties Stephen King to Windows.
The Post Office Amtrak Nuclear power Remodeled houses in the inner city
These are all the recipients of heavy, heavy subsidies. USPS is now theoretically independent, but try putting a UPS or FedEx package into your mailbox.
Tobacco survives only because of its lawyers; they survive currently in a legislative environment hostile to them.
Go watch "That Thing You Do," a cute movie about a one-hit wonder band. They get a recording contract. They are told they can't record the songs they want to.
Music companies' albums are marketing efforts. They are generally not artistic efforts.
My (not too clear) point was that if you accept money to sleep with someone else, you're a prostitute. Everything else is haggling over price. By analogy, if you license your code, you are restricting someone else's actions. Everything else is haggling over price (ie, what actions you restrict in exchange for use of the code).
Well lets see, I've got CDex version 1.3b8 which is serveral years old right here.... Great. Now prove it to someone who is hostile to you. Date/time stamps on hard drive files? Aren't those just bits? Couldn't you have manually edited them yesterday? Print outs dated four years ago? Couldn't you have done this in a word processor and printed it out yesterday?
un-free licenses If you want people to be free to do what they like with your code, you place it in the public domain. If you wish to restrict what people do with your code, you license it. THAT is the qualitative difference between free and non-free (as you are using the word). It's a bit like the Grouch Marx routine:
"Would you sleep with me for a billion dollars?" "A billion dollars, Groucho? Of course!" "OK, how about five?" "What kind of woman do you think I am!" "We've already established that; now we're just haggling over price."
If you license your code in ANY WAY, you are using the law to restrict the actions of others, so don't talk to me about your BSD license.
This is wrong, legally and morally. HP is a corporation; their lawyeres are a part of them. The non-corporate analogy would be a little like punching someone in the nose and then saying "I didn't do it! It was my hands!" Someone who honestly presented this as a defense would be encouraged to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. I see NO difference in HP's behavior. Their attorneys, BY LAW, represent HP. Attorneys are not allowed to do things their clients don't want. Any action an attorney takes is legally the action of the client; that's what the word "attorney" means. When your attorney threatens legal action, YOU are threatening legal action; the attorney was hired by YOU to take actions YOU want by using the tool of the American legal system. The attorney may suggest courses of action; YOU decide what your legal representative will do.
The ONLY time I'd be willing to make an exception to this is if the corporation fires their lawyers or files suit against their law firm for legal malpractice.
Anyone who tries to tell you that it's not their fault because their attorney did it needs to be punched in the face.
I believe the exact opposite is true. If you donate to a charitable organization, they can use the funds any way they want. By law you cannot specify how the funds will be used. Thus the Red Cross/World Trade Center scandal - millions were donated to the Red Cross to support families of victims of 9/11 and the Red Cross decides to build out a call center. If the law were other than I believe then there would be lawsuits and criminal charges against the Red Cross. Instead, the Red Cross merely pledges to do better next time (rather like a politician in an election year).
I don't know if universities are considered charitable organizations or not, and I don't know how Canadian law works.
Regardless, if you want to donate, you should contact the library and find out how you can help financially and how you can be assured that your funds will go to help the restoration of this collection. Otherwise, you might be buying knick-knacks to decorate the home of the university's president (or regent, or chancellor, or whatever he's called).
So you're saying Bush should have been trying to drum up support for the assassination of Mugabe? Or do you think there's some other long-term plan that Mugabe can't sabotage? Perhaps you think that caring for the people of Iraq means teaching them to lick the hands of the dog that won't feed them?
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Your point 1 is flat wrong. I call Dell and say "I want 250 systems. Can you knock $50 off the your web site price?" Sales guy goes to sales manager, who checks with regional manager, who talks with sales VP, who has already seen this hundreds of times and understands that the issue is either (1) Dell makes LESS profit (but still makes profit) or (2) Dell LOSES sale. Since Dell is not paying for a license on these machines, it means they have a fatter profit margin and can choose to cut that. If the choice is for me to buy from Dell (putting money in their pockets) or for me to buy from White Boxes, Inc. down the street from me, which will they choose?
Adding delta V? Increasing the rate of acceleration? Don't you think you just meant "a lot of delta V"?
Pick, pick, pick =)
\
There are Pacific islands that have no thunderstorms. The native cultures do not have a word for lightning. But yeah, before I ride up in this thing, I want to know what happens if it's hit by lightning...
what if they sharpen the edge of a credit card? isn't that more dangerous than a nail clipper?
Yup. Flint knapping is a not-unheard of hobby. Wonder if I could get a piece of deer antler and some rocks past a security guard. Or a CD - ever break one of those? How about a laptop computer? They're full of sheet metal, and you can make an expedient knife out of sheet metal.
Since "bank" has two meanings in English, you don't translate it; instead, you translate "river's edge or moneylender" into the other lanaguage. When translating "banco" from Spanish to English, you'd translate it as "bank (place where you save money)."
Either way, if the ambiguity is known, it can be explicitly worked around and the listener can decide which of two ambiguous meanings to use. A good machine translator ought will point out ambiguous words and suggest synonyms.
The sad thing is that over ten thousand have started the tale but only seven thousand have finished. What has happened to the other three thousand, I wonder...
How about three of them in the same sentence? Would you like to insert a few sentences of explaination, including a few paragraphs of cultural references?
Yes. Why is this a problem? FWIW, though, if I'm speaking with someone who doesn't speak English well, I try to formulate sentences to use only simple words. Compare...
Well, barkeep, some of your finest nutty brown ale.
I buy beer?
To the bank.
"Either to the river's edge or the money lenders."
That ambiguity exists in English, too...it just takes longer if you make it explicit. The listener should still be able to figure it out; context interpretation is only a problem for machines. I think a human being would have no more problem with my translation that with the original sentence. Although the typical American is going to look at you a bit strangely if you use my translation.
Email your scripture-based argument to me.
It is VERY RARE that glossolalia (speaking/praying in tongues) is comprehensible to any mortal man.
Read Acts 2. I would suggest that it's not incomprehensible to any mortal man...it's just that we rarely pray in the presence of groups of people from every nation under heaven.
I don't use open source because of the software I need to run, and the configuration and use taking too long.
/user
So, you use Windows. Tell me about...
cacls
find
change mode
rmtshare
shutgui
Don't know them? Don't understand them? Don't even have them? That's right...because Windows out of the box has nowhere near the functionality of Linux. How many programming languages come with Windows? (shell, vbscript, maybe jscript -no compiled languages). How many development environments come with Windows? (one - notepad. Unless you count copy con). All the nifty management tools that let you see what's going on...separate purchase. How many DBMS's come with Windows? None.
It is STUPID to compare the features of Windows to any major LInux distro - the feature set of Windows is a slim subset of Linux. Windows offers EXACTLY two things:
1. Automated installations
2. A GUI that we've taken 12 years to learn
Apart from that, Linux offers FAR more than Windows.
What matters to the typical "I don't care how it works I just want it to work" consumer? Easy. They want it to work. They want it to work the way they know (ie like MS Windows). They don't about much else. If you want to do some serious Linux advocacy, pick a package and FIX the user interface so that it works the way people expect it to after a decade of working with Windows.
Ok, we're building this airline ourselves and we've got to have software. Ummm...why don't we just use Linux because we all know it really well? Objection...something else might be better. Yeah, but then we'd A have to hire someone or B waste valuable time learning something. Don't we want to learn stuff? Sure, but we can do that after we've made tons of money and retired. Cool... Ok, are we all agreed? Yeah...given the needs of the business, our resources, and our time limits, we're agreed that Linux is the best tool for our situation.
Can we run it on Macs?
Um....no. Macs are evil.
Takes a team of 4 people reading faqs for 2 hours just to figure out how to get the damn landing gear to retract.
...but the landing gear on the airplanes that THOSE people operate will NEVER fail.
MS: Click here to retract landing gear.
Q105832 The "Click here to retract landing gear" button has no corresponding button to deploy landing gear. This will be addressed in the next hotfix or service pack or feature upgrade or automatic update. Please remain in the air until this is released. Your purchase is important to us.
Linux: OK, now that you've finished studying physics, chemistry, metallurgy, aeronautical engineering, and CNC mill operation (ie how to machine your own parts from raw bits of metal - preferable ones you cast yourself, but if you want to be a non-free kinda guy you can buy the metal), it should be obvious to you that turning this crank will open/close the landing bay doors while lowering/raising the landing gear, depending on whether you turn it clockwise/counterclockwise. Visit the GNOME project for instructions on installing an electric motor with a button that will retract the landing gear. There's not a corresponding instructions for installing a motor for deployment because MS aircraft don't work that way, but feel free to turn the crank manually.
No story here, move along.
Your jedi mind tricks will only work on the weak...ooh, a shiny new distro!
Most theoretical physics (and I mean the pencil-pushing "theory", not the engineering field "experimentation") is really just a subset of applied mathematics.
3. They're afraid that multiple versions of a tape may cause consumer confusion that weakens demand for videos in general.
This general principle is why so few people are using US quarters these days. It's also why the Pokemon game was so unpopular. It's also why no one went to see the 20th anniversary version of Star Wars, and why no one bought the video version. It's why the sales of DVDs are approximately zero (all those scenes! all those options! too confusing!)
Indeed. And let's hope no one ever ties Dickens to reforming the industrialized wasteland that was England. Oh, wait...
And let's hope that no one ever ties Steinbeck to the uplifting of the downtrodden. Oh, wait...
Sterling is one of the finest writers of the era. Let's hope that he is remembered for his writing and that his future readers tie him to the software freedom movement.
And let's hope that no one ever ties Stephen King to Windows.
The Post Office
Amtrak
Nuclear power
Remodeled houses in the inner city
These are all the recipients of heavy, heavy subsidies. USPS is now theoretically independent, but try putting a UPS or FedEx package into your mailbox.
Tobacco survives only because of its lawyers; they survive currently in a legislative environment hostile to them.
Go watch "That Thing You Do," a cute movie about a one-hit wonder band. They get a recording contract. They are told they can't record the songs they want to.
Music companies' albums are marketing efforts. They are generally not artistic efforts.
My (not too clear) point was that if you accept money to sleep with someone else, you're a prostitute. Everything else is haggling over price. By analogy, if you license your code, you are restricting someone else's actions. Everything else is haggling over price (ie, what actions you restrict in exchange for use of the code).
Well lets see, I've got CDex version 1.3b8 which is serveral years old right here....
Great. Now prove it to someone who is hostile to you. Date/time stamps on hard drive files? Aren't those just bits? Couldn't you have manually edited them yesterday? Print outs dated four years ago? Couldn't you have done this in a word processor and printed it out yesterday?
The world sucks sometimes, doesn't it...
un-free licenses
If you want people to be free to do what they like with your code, you place it in the public domain. If you wish to restrict what people do with your code, you license it. THAT is the qualitative difference between free and non-free (as you are using the word). It's a bit like the Grouch Marx routine:
"Would you sleep with me for a billion dollars?"
"A billion dollars, Groucho? Of course!"
"OK, how about five?"
"What kind of woman do you think I am!"
"We've already established that; now we're just haggling over price."
If you license your code in ANY WAY, you are using the law to restrict the actions of others, so don't talk to me about your BSD license.
HP blames the snafu on... their lawyers!
This is wrong, legally and morally. HP is a corporation; their lawyeres are a part of them. The non-corporate analogy would be a little like punching someone in the nose and then saying "I didn't do it! It was my hands!" Someone who honestly presented this as a defense would be encouraged to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. I see NO difference in HP's behavior. Their attorneys, BY LAW, represent HP. Attorneys are not allowed to do things their clients don't want. Any action an attorney takes is legally the action of the client; that's what the word "attorney" means. When your attorney threatens legal action, YOU are threatening legal action; the attorney was hired by YOU to take actions YOU want by using the tool of the American legal system. The attorney may suggest courses of action; YOU decide what your legal representative will do.
The ONLY time I'd be willing to make an exception to this is if the corporation fires their lawyers or files suit against their law firm for legal malpractice.
Anyone who tries to tell you that it's not their fault because their attorney did it needs to be punched in the face.
I believe the exact opposite is true. If you donate to a charitable organization, they can use the funds any way they want. By law you cannot specify how the funds will be used. Thus the Red Cross/World Trade Center scandal - millions were donated to the Red Cross to support families of victims of 9/11 and the Red Cross decides to build out a call center. If the law were other than I believe then there would be lawsuits and criminal charges against the Red Cross. Instead, the Red Cross merely pledges to do better next time (rather like a politician in an election year).
I don't know if universities are considered charitable organizations or not, and I don't know how Canadian law works.
Regardless, if you want to donate, you should contact the library and find out how you can help financially and how you can be assured that your funds will go to help the restoration of this collection. Otherwise, you might be buying knick-knacks to decorate the home of the university's president (or regent, or chancellor, or whatever he's called).
So you're saying Bush should have been trying to drum up support for the assassination of Mugabe? Or do you think there's some other long-term plan that Mugabe can't sabotage? Perhaps you think that caring for the people of Iraq means teaching them to lick the hands of the dog that won't feed them?