Your point has been repeated over and over. You are -1, Redundant.
Linus Torvalds is not a great thinker, but he has some reasonable ideas. Not long ago he said that innovation is overrated. Anybody can come up with new ideas. The thing is implementing them, and good. Xerox was great, but Macintosh was more important in bringing the desktop to people. There are good ideas everywhere, we don't need new ideas, we already know what we want, what is needed is good implementations. Aside from that, MS is not that good an innovator, either. They didn't come up with WIMP, they didn't come up with the idea of selling it to the masses. They didn't come up with office productivity software. They didn't come up with media players, consoles, mouses, anything. The thing they are good at is building a product that is good enough (good, when it comes to hardware), and selling it. They rule at marketing. They are the kings of it. They are innovators in that area. But that doesn't benefit the users, so I think it's not important for us, but for their shareholders.
GNU/Linux is a way to get good software, on _my_ terms. It's what I want, and it works. There are alternatives, a lot worse in most regards, and somewhat better in other, but they are not provided on terms that are fair to me, so it's a no-brainer who I will choose. It's not about innovation either. It's about fulfilling my needs, without asking for my first born baby in return.
I know, I was just nitpicking. If there was a point, it was that putting examples is hard, and not mandatory, so sometimes it's better to just say what you mean, and avoid confusion by exemplifying with counter-examples.
I think you chose the wrong example on advertising. I thought Garoto and Lindt. Garoto is the tastiest chocolate in the world, Brazilian, and they very very seldom advertise it in my country. Lindt, I knew from a friend who loves it, tasted it, and found it was good. So, taste and "mellowness", no advertisements.
Google was recommended to me from a friend who said it was good, back in the day. Quality is what kept me there for years, before Google ads. They didn't advertise anywhere else.
And Cola, well, you started it. Cola is a part of the name. If you were saying "beverage", I would say beer, and I have some brands. Non alcoholic drinks... passion fruit juice, Perrier. If it has to be "cola", alright, Coca Cola.
I mean, you make some interesting points, somewhat in the right direction, but man, your examples suck.
Miguel encourages free software developers to work in the patent mined field that is Mono. That is a move _against_ free software. Don't get me wrong, I think Mono is nice, and a good platform to program in, only that it's bad from a software freedom standpoint. From that I infer he doesn't care about free software. That, or he is acting against his beliefs.
Miguel de Icaza is not that much of a free software fan, though. I think of them like the Count Dooku of software development. The guy has a vision, and doesn't care about how to get there, even if it means putting all of us at risk.
It's true that bitching can get you far. But it doesn't guarantee results. Making a good bug report is more work, but has better chances of working. Paying to have the thing fixed might be the most effective, and it's encouraged in lots of projects.
Wow!! And how did you manage to type that? When I type the same, it keeps showing as < . You seem to be always a step ahead. You are something, man.
The cold war has really messed you up. Corporations are not the only way to do things efficiently.
Cooperation can work easily, in some very particular cases. Public doesn't mean state-run. An antenna by itself is useless. If you get together with other people who share your interests, you can build a small network, that allows you to reach other people and for example play low latency games. In rural areas, it's better to have a free, fast alternative to whatever there is available, even if it's not up 24/7.
Alright. Good for you you are using Gobuntu. I was not clear, then. You asked _how_ checking MS software was different than software that had its source available. I clarified a little bit. I say it's different. It's a similar problem, only that one is treatable in practice, and the other isn't.
And for the record, I am not an "Open Source" zealot, whatever you mean by that. I am a saint of the church of GNU (well, not all the time), and a freedom zealot, thank you very much.
Unfortunately for you, in the past years, clever and unscrupulous people across the world, specially in India and China, found ways to exploit those same rules to take advantage of America. This is very sad, about as sad as it was before for a good part of the rest of the world. And it would be only fair to quote you back all the helpful things uttered about this in the past by Americans, but that would be petty-minded.
You are mostly right, but the part where you say this is "about as sad" as the other thing is obscene.
US people are losing _some_ jobs right now. Other jobs are being created from the same policies. Lots of money that the US collective is sitting on right now comes from that kind of trade.
When trade inequalities hit farmers in other countries, those farmers go broke, starve and die. And they get nothing in return.
The fact that the GP says that less taxes for workers is unfair competition would be amusing if it weren't so sad.
If less taxes for workers is unfair, then what is agricultural subsidies, and grain "donations", systematically reducing farming ability in less developed countries?
And we are not talking about losing jobs to other people. This is starving and dying to keep other people standard of living.
I understand that the word "community" means nothing to you.
Say, the Debian community is a group of people who care about freedom, and contains some experts, and nitpicking smartasses who would be happy to find errors in code. And they have the source.
The Microsoft "community" is an heterogeneous group of people, that probably contains people who would like to find issues. The thing is that they don't have the source.
The source can be analyzed in different ways, even automatic, and changes from version to version are relatively small, and tagged. It's a human task to check line by line all the changes in a Debian release.
While it probably could be reduced to the same complexity class, to check Vista disassembly is not a problem treatable by an ordinary human or group of individually motivated humans.
Never could figure out why they thought that was a good idea. Either send the changes upstream (you know, the open source way) or leave them the hell alone.
Debian is about free software, not open source. They are publishing their code. Cooperation is more difficult.
Java is the answer to any question. It's the most portable embedded solution, where it matters to be portable. Slow startup times with java not an issue. They are not really slow to start with, for quick scripts it's good enough. For time sensitive production environments you can always compile it with GCJ. I mean, that is if you actually commit to using Java. It's not that bash or perl load that much faster than Java.
Maybe efficiency is not the main goal. We are talking about utility-like quality of service. That is not necessarily efficient. I am sure the power grid would be much more efficient if it didn't have to account for peak usage. But they do, because their core value is not efficiency, but high availability. I don't know if the guy meant something like that, but "efficiency" is not the right word here, either.
Come on, just because you don't know how to deal with them it doesn't mean it's OK that you kill them. Really flawed logic. Incompetence doesn't make human rights disappear.
What I mean exactly is that we are talking about crimes that are understood to be dangerous to the societies where they happen. We are also talking about unusually harsh punishments. I was trying to point out that killing someone is always wrong, even if it's performed by the government, and that it is never OK.
What I mean adding rapists to the list is that some western people don't just talk about killing murderers, like an eye for an eye thing, they want to kill individuals perceived as big threats to society, trying to protect society from their harm.
About apostasy, for a non secular state, it could be perceived as a very dangerous crime, because it might go against the foundation of the nation itself. Lots of western countries encourage you to be a believer, even take oaths on bibles and stuff, religion is not neutral for most governments. Killing people for apostasy _is_ extreme, but I don't think it's fundamentally different from others, specially if we look at history, some of centuries back. Robbery is unusual for that kind of punishment, but again, it's not the first time or place it's punished by death.
What I mean is that the real qualitative difference in principle starts when the government declares killing as bad with no exceptions, and stops killing people, period. Everything else is light or (very) dark shades of accepting institutionalized murder.
About Iran, in _my_ particular opinion, all nations should be secular, and respect people's rights, but if we respect self-determination principles or at least history, we should understand that it's better not to mess with them, both better in principle, and in practice.
They kill robbers, and talk about killing apostates. Other countries kill murderers, and want to kill rapists. There is a difference, but it's not a fundamental difference. It's only a matter of being more moderate or more radical. The values that determine what is a crime and what should be punished by death is slowly changing.
A civilized country doesn't kill their people, period. A civilized country doesn't impose religion on their people, in an way.
Some countries are getting more civilized, for some others it's harder. Anyhow, history has taught us that war doesn't accelerate this process, and some times it makes it go backwards.
Slashdot Mirror
Your point has been repeated over and over. You are -1, Redundant.
Linus Torvalds is not a great thinker, but he has some reasonable ideas. Not long ago he said that innovation is overrated. Anybody can come up with new ideas. The thing is implementing them, and good.
Xerox was great, but Macintosh was more important in bringing the desktop to people.
There are good ideas everywhere, we don't need new ideas, we already know what we want, what is needed is good implementations.
Aside from that, MS is not that good an innovator, either. They didn't come up with WIMP, they didn't come up with the idea of selling it to the masses. They didn't come up with office productivity software. They didn't come up with media players, consoles, mouses, anything.
The thing they are good at is building a product that is good enough (good, when it comes to hardware), and selling it. They rule at marketing. They are the kings of it. They are innovators in that area. But that doesn't benefit the users, so I think it's not important for us, but for their shareholders.
GNU/Linux is a way to get good software, on _my_ terms. It's what I want, and it works. There are alternatives, a lot worse in most regards, and somewhat better in other, but they are not provided on terms that are fair to me, so it's a no-brainer who I will choose. It's not about innovation either. It's about fulfilling my needs, without asking for my first born baby in return.
I know, I was just nitpicking. If there was a point, it was that putting examples is hard, and not mandatory, so sometimes it's better to just say what you mean, and avoid confusion by exemplifying with counter-examples.
I think you chose the wrong example on advertising.
I thought Garoto and Lindt. Garoto is the tastiest chocolate in the world, Brazilian, and they very very seldom advertise it in my country.
Lindt, I knew from a friend who loves it, tasted it, and found it was good.
So, taste and "mellowness", no advertisements.
Google was recommended to me from a friend who said it was good, back in the day. Quality is what kept me there for years, before Google ads. They didn't advertise anywhere else.
And Cola, well, you started it. Cola is a part of the name. If you were saying "beverage", I would say beer, and I have some brands. Non alcoholic drinks... passion fruit juice, Perrier. If it has to be "cola", alright, Coca Cola.
I mean, you make some interesting points, somewhat in the right direction, but man, your examples suck.
At a dollar a piece, I'd buy a few. But what would you do with 200 of them?
Sell them at the (two) dollar store.
And what the hell is 200 hundred?
Twenty thousand.
Next customer!!
A solution to nasty-tasting seawater! Lemonade oceans FTW!
Yum! Salty lemonade, my favourite!
It's not that bad. In Guatemala, that is called "cimarrona", and it's supposed to get rid of your hangover.
If you add beer, it becomes a chelada.
Miguel encourages free software developers to work in the patent mined field that is Mono. That is a move _against_ free software.
Don't get me wrong, I think Mono is nice, and a good platform to program in, only that it's bad from a software freedom standpoint.
From that I infer he doesn't care about free software. That, or he is acting against his beliefs.
Miguel de Icaza is not that much of a free software fan, though.
I think of them like the Count Dooku of software development. The guy has a vision, and doesn't care about how to get there, even if it means putting all of us at risk.
Bribe them.
That might work.
It's true that bitching can get you far. But it doesn't guarantee results.
Making a good bug report is more work, but has better chances of working.
Paying to have the thing fixed might be the most effective, and it's encouraged in lots of projects.
ought
by typing &lt;
Wow!!
And how did you manage to type that?
When I type the same, it keeps showing as < . You seem to be always a step ahead. You are something, man.
I don't know, how about the part where it's a stupid idea and he should just invest in a PC that isn't more than 10 years old?
Don't feed the trolls but...
There are those of us that like old cars, old planes, old trains, old things, for whatever reason.
Call me old fashioned, but I like my women older than 10, too.
WAY older!
The cold war has really messed you up. Corporations are not the only way to do things efficiently.
Cooperation can work easily, in some very particular cases. Public doesn't mean state-run.
An antenna by itself is useless. If you get together with other people who share your interests, you can build a small network, that allows you to reach other people and for example play low latency games.
In rural areas, it's better to have a free, fast alternative to whatever there is available, even if it's not up 24/7.
joe
Alright. Good for you you are using Gobuntu. I was not clear, then. You asked _how_ checking MS software was different than software that had its source available. I clarified a little bit.
I say it's different. It's a similar problem, only that one is treatable in practice, and the other isn't.
And for the record, I am not an "Open Source" zealot, whatever you mean by that.
I am a saint of the church of GNU (well, not all the time), and a freedom zealot, thank you very much.
Unfortunately for you, in the past years, clever and unscrupulous people across the world, specially in India and China, found ways to exploit those same rules to take advantage of America. This is very sad, about as sad as it was before for a good part of the rest of the world. And it would be only fair to quote you back all the helpful things uttered about this in the past by Americans, but that would be petty-minded.
You are mostly right, but the part where you say this is "about as sad" as the other thing is obscene.
US people are losing _some_ jobs right now. Other jobs are being created from the same policies. Lots of money that the US collective is sitting on right now comes from that kind of trade.
When trade inequalities hit farmers in other countries, those farmers go broke, starve and die.
And they get nothing in return.
The fact that the GP says that less taxes for workers is unfair competition would be amusing if it weren't so sad.
If less taxes for workers is unfair, then what is agricultural subsidies, and grain "donations", systematically reducing farming ability in less developed countries?
And we are not talking about losing jobs to other people. This is starving and dying to keep other people standard of living.
It's not "about as sad".
Go back to your cave, troll.
I understand that the word "community" means nothing to you.
Say, the Debian community is a group of people who care about freedom, and contains some experts, and nitpicking smartasses who would be happy to find errors in code. And they have the source.
The Microsoft "community" is an heterogeneous group of people, that probably contains people who would like to find issues. The thing is that they don't have the source.
The source can be analyzed in different ways, even automatic, and changes from version to version are relatively small, and tagged. It's a human task to check line by line all the changes in a Debian release.
While it probably could be reduced to the same complexity class, to check Vista disassembly is not a problem treatable by an ordinary human or group of individually motivated humans.
Item 2, addendum: And modifies said projects.
Never could figure out why they thought that was a good idea. Either send the changes upstream (you know, the open source way) or leave them the hell alone.
Debian is about free software, not open source.
They are publishing their code. Cooperation is more difficult.
But PONIEZ are not free.
BUNNIEZ, on the other hand... http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/
Java is the answer to any question.
It's the most portable embedded solution, where it matters to be portable.
Slow startup times with java not an issue. They are not really slow to start with, for quick scripts it's good enough. For time sensitive production environments you can always compile it with GCJ. I mean, that is if you actually commit to using Java.
It's not that bash or perl load that much faster than Java.
Come on. You are in the same time zone as San Francisco. You gotta be kidding with that last remark.
Maybe efficiency is not the main goal.
We are talking about utility-like quality of service.
That is not necessarily efficient.
I am sure the power grid would be much more efficient if it didn't have to account for peak usage. But they do, because their core value is not efficiency, but high availability.
I don't know if the guy meant something like that, but "efficiency" is not the right word here, either.
Come on, just because you don't know how to deal with them it doesn't mean it's OK that you kill them. Really flawed logic. Incompetence doesn't make human rights disappear.
What I mean exactly is that we are talking about crimes that are understood to be dangerous to the societies where they happen. We are also talking about unusually harsh punishments. I was trying to point out that killing someone is always wrong, even if it's performed by the government, and that it is never OK.
What I mean adding rapists to the list is that some western people don't just talk about killing murderers, like an eye for an eye thing, they want to kill individuals perceived as big threats to society, trying to protect society from their harm.
About apostasy, for a non secular state, it could be perceived as a very dangerous crime, because it might go against the foundation of the nation itself. Lots of western countries encourage you to be a believer, even take oaths on bibles and stuff, religion is not neutral for most governments. Killing people for apostasy _is_ extreme, but I don't think it's fundamentally different from others, specially if we look at history, some of centuries back.
Robbery is unusual for that kind of punishment, but again, it's not the first time or place it's punished by death.
What I mean is that the real qualitative difference in principle starts when the government declares killing as bad with no exceptions, and stops killing people, period.
Everything else is light or (very) dark shades of accepting institutionalized murder.
About Iran, in _my_ particular opinion, all nations should be secular, and respect people's rights, but if we respect self-determination principles or at least history, we should understand that it's better not to mess with them, both better in principle, and in practice.
They kill robbers, and talk about killing apostates. Other countries kill murderers, and want to kill rapists. There is a difference, but it's not a fundamental difference. It's only a matter of being more moderate or more radical. The values that determine what is a crime and what should be punished by death is slowly changing.
A civilized country doesn't kill their people, period. A civilized country doesn't impose religion on their people, in an way.
Some countries are getting more civilized, for some others it's harder. Anyhow, history has taught us that war doesn't accelerate this process, and some times it makes it go backwards.