When binary modules are allowed it doesn't help linux in any way....
In general, users don't care if it helps Linux. They care if it helps them.
Who is it more important for the Linux community to keep happy, a dozen kernel developers or 2,000 users who want to user their 3D card's capabilities? Think about it for a minute before answering.
All i know is that if project managers went on strike for a week, they would come back to find the entire project had been completely redesigned from scratch
Really? I think it would be more likely that without a PM, the programmers would spend Monday through Thursday playing Quake 3 Arena, and then cut out on early Friday afternoon.
Look at it this way: would you rather have the wristwatch that is hand crafted to perfection, works better, and will last forever, or would you rather buy the watch that came off of the assembly line, always loses time, and will break on you in a year or two?
Well... which brand do you think sells a greater number of watches per year, "Rolex" or "Wal-Mart House Brand"?
Professionals outside the world of engineering usually get a degree in communications or the like because it is the path of least resistance to getting a college degree, not because they are particularly interested.
Suuuure they do.
Yes, engineers are the only people who actually LEARN anything at college, right? Everyone else just got a gimme degree but really just wasted their time, right?
An attitude like that doesn't say much about one's ability to work well with people of different backgrounds.
The pricing for the games are outstanding, I'd definately pay $6.00 for a game. These current prices of $40.00+ for just one game though is a definate turn off.
That's one of the downsides of living in the First World, isn't it? Entertainment companies know you have the disposable income to spend $40 on a game and so that's what they'll charge you.
> 1. GPL has never been involved in a court > case, so some buisnesses see it as unproven IBM is not "some businesses" nor would IBM waste it's legal resources looking into matters that concern "some businesses".
To quote an IBM motto, "Think."
IBM would very much like to sell its Linux solutions to "some businesses". If IBM can demonstrate to those businesses that GNU Public Licensing IS a proven and legitimate model, IBM can make more money.
Each case of copyright infringement must be examined individually. Precedent plays no part.
That's true, once it gets to court. But IBM's goal is the discourage these baseless copyright nuisance suits from even making it into court. The message they want to send is, "If you even THINK about suing us, we will destroy you."
Since when did lawyers make important monetary decisions based on their emotions?
Since when does ANY person, lawyer or otherwise, make decisions without at least being minorly influenced by emotions?
So now,tell me now where a doctor is special and gets off charging three times the rate of any OTHER profession!
How many years of schooling do you have to go through to qualify for your job? How much did that education cost?
And most significantly... if you mess up at YOUR job, does anyone die?
So how come I can't charge Lawyer/Doctor rates?
Feel free to try. If you're new to the whole Economics thing, it might be helpful for you to know that prices are determined by what people are willing to pay. Since patients and health insurers feel that $100 for a brief medical consultation is acceptable, that's how much it costs.
All you can do to change this is not pay amounts you think are exorbitant, and if that's not possible then raise hell about the amounts you do have to pay.
The reason you're locked in is because your carrier pays a large subsidy upfront for your expensive cell phone.
I wonder how much of a rebate/discount this poster got when he purchased his cell phone receiver. I'm guessing it was somewhere in the neightborhood of $170 off MSRP. Coincidence?
If you walk in with your own phone, no one is stopping you from getting a no-contract service.
Although from the slight amount of research I've done, it appears that Sprint will gladly offer you no-contract service... if you pay an extra $10/month.
Your analogy only makes sense if parking tickets are issued not based on who has violated the law, but instead on who they can get the most money in fines out of. Unless you're arguing that issuing parking tickets is fundamentally unethical, in which case I don't know how to argue against you.
(Granted, you are probably more likely to be issued a parking ticket in Hollywood than in South Central, and the fine will probably be larger. But is this an intentional revenue generation scheme by the LAPD? Or do the cops in affluent neighborhoods simply have more time to issue parking tickets because there's less violent crime to be dealt with?)
Well, if you need your business softare "now" and can't wait for someone else to develop it, chances are your competitors feel the same way. So they're not going to wait for you to develop a product and release the source -- they're going to start a concurrent development process, which may be either open or closed source.
Maybe no one would have a legal case against Dell if they advocated spyware removal and some other software ended up broken, but there would still be irate customers calling up and shouting about how the advice they gave 'em made their computer stop working.
Dell doesn't want to deal with those people. Worst case scenario, they get dragged into court and have to prove that they have no liability. If they're lucky, the customer simply never buys a Dell again.
I cannot honestly believe that Dell is scared of breaking some totally unenforceable third-party EULAs.
Well, of course they are.
If the EULA for some third-party software (let's say, oh, Kazaa (non-Lite)) is determined to be unenforceable, then the EULA of any software produced or distributed by Dell themselves would also be unenforceable.
Understandably, they're not exactly eager to open that can of worms.
although ocw.mit.edu is a purely static.html site, it is produced with a database-backed content management system.
So?
There are a lot of reasons why you would want to serve static HTML from your webservers, even if the content has its origins in a more complex databased CMS. If the content rarely or never changes -- and once a course syllabus has been completed, there's no reason to go back and edit it -- you'll see tremendous performance benefits by never having to dynamically build your content on request.
The author seems to be implying that developers chose a solution that was overwrought and inappropriate for the project, but I don't see that at all.
Slashdot Mirror
You sound like an unreformed Windows-using home/consumer PC builder.
Is this supposed to be an insult?
When binary modules are allowed it doesn't help linux in any way....
In general, users don't care if it helps Linux. They care if it helps them.
Who is it more important for the Linux community to keep happy, a dozen kernel developers or 2,000 users who want to user their 3D card's capabilities? Think about it for a minute before answering.
Apparently the man has never written a kernel.
Writing a kernel is easy.
It's designing a kernel that's the hard part.
All i know is that if project managers went on strike for a week, they would come back to find the entire project had been completely redesigned from scratch
Really? I think it would be more likely that without a PM, the programmers would spend Monday through Thursday playing Quake 3 Arena, and then cut out on early Friday afternoon.
Look at it this way: would you rather have the wristwatch that is hand crafted to perfection, works better, and will last forever, or would you rather buy the watch that came off of the assembly line, always loses time, and will break on you in a year or two?
Well... which brand do you think sells a greater number of watches per year, "Rolex" or "Wal-Mart House Brand"?
Professionals outside the world of engineering usually get a degree in communications or the like because it is the path of least resistance to getting a college degree, not because they are particularly interested.
Suuuure they do.
Yes, engineers are the only people who actually LEARN anything at college, right? Everyone else just got a gimme degree but really just wasted their time, right?
An attitude like that doesn't say much about one's ability to work well with people of different backgrounds.
Re: the difference between highly-skilled programmers and low-skilled coders...
If all the coding jobs go overseas, how will American coders ever be able to improve their skillsets and become programmers?
Answer? Open source development.
What happens if someone has an identical twin sibling? How do you prevent them from misauthenticating as each other?
The pricing for the games are outstanding, I'd definately pay $6.00 for a game. These current prices of $40.00+ for just one game though is a definate turn off.
That's one of the downsides of living in the First World, isn't it? Entertainment companies know you have the disposable income to spend $40 on a game and so that's what they'll charge you.
> 1. GPL has never been involved in a court
> case, so some buisnesses see it as unproven
IBM is not "some businesses" nor would IBM waste it's legal resources looking into matters that concern "some businesses".
To quote an IBM motto, "Think."
IBM would very much like to sell its Linux solutions to "some businesses". If IBM can demonstrate to those businesses that GNU Public Licensing IS a proven and legitimate model, IBM can make more money.
Each case of copyright infringement must be examined individually. Precedent plays no part.
That's true, once it gets to court. But IBM's goal is the discourage these baseless copyright nuisance suits from even making it into court. The message they want to send is, "If you even THINK about suing us, we will destroy you."
Since when did lawyers make important monetary decisions based on their emotions?
Since when does ANY person, lawyer or otherwise, make decisions without at least being minorly influenced by emotions?
9600 baud perhaps IS the limit for a POTS line. But the "bits per second" rating can exceed 9600 without making the previous statement false.
Remember, baud != bps.
So now,tell me now where a doctor is special and gets off charging three times the rate of any OTHER profession!
How many years of schooling do you have to go through to qualify for your job? How much did that education cost?
And most significantly... if you mess up at YOUR job, does anyone die?
So how come I can't charge Lawyer/Doctor rates?
Feel free to try. If you're new to the whole Economics thing, it might be helpful for you to know that prices are determined by what people are willing to pay. Since patients and health insurers feel that $100 for a brief medical consultation is acceptable, that's how much it costs.
All you can do to change this is not pay amounts you think are exorbitant, and if that's not possible then raise hell about the amounts you do have to pay.
The reason you're locked in is because your carrier pays a large subsidy upfront for your expensive cell phone.
I wonder how much of a rebate/discount this poster got when he purchased his cell phone receiver. I'm guessing it was somewhere in the neightborhood of $170 off MSRP. Coincidence?
If you walk in with your own phone, no one is stopping you from getting a no-contract service.
Although from the slight amount of research I've done, it appears that Sprint will gladly offer you no-contract service... if you pay an extra $10/month.
What about CLaP!?
They were MY favorite ANSi GRooP.
Your analogy only makes sense if parking tickets are issued not based on who has violated the law, but instead on who they can get the most money in fines out of. Unless you're arguing that issuing parking tickets is fundamentally unethical, in which case I don't know how to argue against you.
(Granted, you are probably more likely to be issued a parking ticket in Hollywood than in South Central, and the fine will probably be larger. But is this an intentional revenue generation scheme by the LAPD? Or do the cops in affluent neighborhoods simply have more time to issue parking tickets because there's less violent crime to be dealt with?)
The bottom line: Do you trust Microsoft? That's ultimately what this is all about.
If you DON'T trust Microsoft, you shouldn't have a single byte of MS software on your computer.
It's a deceptively simple philosophy.
I clean their system and buy a new pair of boots because my old left boot is embedded in their ass...
You ought to alternate between left and right. That way you'd only have to buy new boots half as often...
Well, if you need your business softare "now" and can't wait for someone else to develop it, chances are your competitors feel the same way. So they're not going to wait for you to develop a product and release the source -- they're going to start a concurrent development process, which may be either open or closed source.
professionalism is precisely what is lacking in OSS. The prevailing rule seems to be, "Close is good enough!"
And this is different from proprietary software somehow...?
Since when does copyright protect the "right" to restrict people from removing information?
I don't see anything about copyright here. What are you referring to?
I would think ripping an unwanted page out of a book and throwing it away would be unquestionably fair use.
Sure, but the publisher of the book has no obligation to make sure you know if you don't like that page, you can just rip it out.
so............
you remove a lot of microsoft products then?
This doesn't even make sense. It's just gratuitous Microsoft-bashing.
Shame on everyone who modded this up.
Maybe no one would have a legal case against Dell if they advocated spyware removal and some other software ended up broken, but there would still be irate customers calling up and shouting about how the advice they gave 'em made their computer stop working.
Dell doesn't want to deal with those people. Worst case scenario, they get dragged into court and have to prove that they have no liability. If they're lucky, the customer simply never buys a Dell again.
I cannot honestly believe that Dell is scared of breaking some totally unenforceable third-party EULAs.
Well, of course they are.
If the EULA for some third-party software (let's say, oh, Kazaa (non-Lite)) is determined to be unenforceable, then the EULA of any software produced or distributed by Dell themselves would also be unenforceable.
Understandably, they're not exactly eager to open that can of worms.
It just isn't worth my time to dick around with windows 98
It's not worth ANYONE's time to dick around with a 5-year-old OS release with virtually no security.
There's no reason any Windows user shouldn't be running Win2K or XP. If your hardware doesn't support these, it's time to upgrade.
although ocw.mit.edu is a purely static .html site, it is produced with a database-backed content management system.
So?
There are a lot of reasons why you would want to serve static HTML from your webservers, even if the content has its origins in a more complex databased CMS. If the content rarely or never changes -- and once a course syllabus has been completed, there's no reason to go back and edit it -- you'll see tremendous performance benefits by never having to dynamically build your content on request.
The author seems to be implying that developers chose a solution that was overwrought and inappropriate for the project, but I don't see that at all.