I'm not sure what's going on with the mods on this thread.
Yes - in hindsight, it looks like an awesome place to work on - and if you were involved in research, you might have known enough about it and really wanted to work there.
But that completely misses the question from the GP:
How many folks, during the 60s and 70s, really wanted to work for the phone company at that time?
(nerds from the present with access to wikipedia do not count)
Not sure why this is only moderated as funny - it is quite true.
But that's because the Wii graphics are not really poor - they're just adequate for the games people really play.
Of course, if you try to put something like Assasin's Creed or GTA IV on the Wii - the graphics will suck and affect the sense of immersion and gameplay.
But that's also why no one is really playing those kind of games in the Wii.
If you're designing your game to run for 30-40 Mac, it's not going to an iPhone game - you're aiming at a totally different user interface.
And if you're not making an iPhone touch-based game, then what is the point?
For that matter, if you're aiming for any market for a casual game (like those in phones) by the numbers you'd likely end up using Java anyway to cover PC/Mac/Phone markets - including those 30-40 million Macs.
There are many reasons not to dismiss the iPhone as a market - but this specific argument makes no sense.
You're missing the potential.
- If we embed computers into our brains, we'll open the door to security hacks.
- If that is possible, there will be master brain hackers.
- If there is a master brain hacker, there will be
Naked Female Robots jumping from buildings
For the average Slashdot Id, the trade off is probably worth it.
Fundamentally, different freedoms cannot always coexist in their absolute form. But they're still freedoms - it's not sophistry to label them as such.
The point is it is a VERY dangerous sophistry to confuse the restrictions from Law with Freedom. Even if one preserves the other.
If you read my post, you'll realize I fully agree with you in everything but that point. We accept the restrictions from the Law, to protect our liberty and its fruits from interference - that's the social contract, and civilization.
In the case of the license, you are Free (in the original meaning of the word) to enter the "free license" contract (or not) as either party. The contract does not give you the freedom itself - it only defines the binds that you accept.
But it is very dangerous to label the restrictions we accept voluntarily as "Freedoms" - because it opens the door to unilateral changes to the contract.
When you have governments shutting down opposing newspapers, websites and TV stations to "protect real freedom of expression" (usually under your 'freedom from libel' argument) - it is a sharp reminder of the dangers of redefining some words. We need to be very aware of what we have (freedom), and the binds we accept (the law) - so that we know when something gets taken away unilaterally.
Anyway, back to the minor problem of "free software".
"Free" in the GPL is a context specific code-word, which is common enough in contracts and legalese - and the FSF is clear enough about that in its documents, even if the community often is not.
Using it as a code-word is fine, as long as we're all aware it is a code-word and what it means, and do not expect the rest of the planet to magically start using it because some geeks used it in a software license.
Confusing it with the normal meaning of the word in normal conversation at best makes it sound absurd (e.g.: original post) - at worst dillutes the very thing it claims to protect.
Definitions 1, 2, 3, and 4 are literally opposite to the lines of a contract/license (such as the GPL) - which by its very definition is a set of restrictions. All of those freedoms are compromised in the RMS-Free meaning, by design, in order to guarantee a specific case of Definition 6.
The very term "violates the terms of a Free Software License" shows the oxymoron we are talking about here. If all of the definitions you mentioned apply per dictionary meaning, the very term 'free software license' is patently absurd.
'Free Software' in the FSF sense only has meaning with a novel and context-specific new meaning for 'free', which they conveniently define and publish in the FSF website precisely because it goes against the grain of normal language usage.
All of which is perfectly fine - if you consider that mixture of freedoms and restrictions a worthy compromise, and you need to define a legal framework for that, you may need to define some specific terminology.
But let's not pretend that it should replace common language, or worse, pretend the meanings are no different. A red quark is not really "red" in the normal sense of the word, and the "free software" concept is not that different.
Incidentally, as a latin american, I find the 'free as in libre' argument is no better (perhaps much worse).
Libertad is not something you get from signing a contract or getting a license for - it is your fundamental right as a human being to be free of imposed restrictions.
We surrender to reasonable restrictions of this liberty in law and fact for the sake of peace, security and prosperity. But you don't suddenly start calling the restrictions themselves "verdadera libertad" without opening the door for new restrictions based on new redefinitions.
History has set really bad precedents for that kind of sophistry - some disturbingly recent.
Perhaps you are the one making a basic blunder: when people outside of Slashdot talk about "Free", they mean the dictionary "Free" as abscribed to a product, not the "RMS definition of Free".
There is nothing in the article related to open source licenses, etc. They're completely irrelevant to the economic argument - and frankly, to the common mechanics of the industries that the article describes.
That's the problem with arbitrarily redefining perfectly good words in common use. Don't expect the rest of the world to suddenly adopt your new meanings for their own words - most of them don't know (or give a rat's derriere) about such terminology.
Perhaps it also has to do with the fact that Mac laptops are damn good PC laptops too... and some people are willing to pay the premium to have both a very nice OSX laptop and a great WinPC laptop that's not about to break in 12 months.
I've had experiences with my share of laptop manufacturers over time - with differing levels of disappointment - and I've seen paper machie constructions with more structural integrity than some Dell laptops.
I'm rather happy with my Lenovo these days. It's pretty solid and fast enough.
But from using current Mac laptops, I've been impressed at how well they work as a WinPC laptop (runs Vista better than any other I've tried), and the quality of hardware / design.
There's lots of competition in the PC mobile market.
But there's not that much competition for good and durable PCs in that market as one would like.
For the average user , the experience described by the parent is NOT ahead at all - it is far worse than knowing this is clearly not supported.
At least, if you knew in advance it was a dead end, you wouldn't waste time and money trying to make it work... and breaking other stuff in the way (e.g.: the hd*->sd*->hd* dance).
The thing with the "it's better than nothing, and it's free anyway" argument is that it is disturbingly common as an excuse, and it assumes time is free. But tinkering for no results is actually "worse than nothing", because time is not free or even cheap.
Of course the hackability is a plus when you KNOW you are entering unsupported scenarios, and are willing to spend the time/risk.
But one huge advantage Apple has over Linux PCs is that the bar for "supported" is high, and the supported set is very clear (if narrow). With Linux, it is the opposite... almost anything is supported in SOME way or another - it'll just take a bit of luck and a non-deterministic amount of time...
Honestly, does the average person really need photoshop?
That's a very good point: no, they don't. And recently, I'd bet they don't use/buy Photoshop (the full product) either.
But they'd be more likely to use simpler alternatives than the GIMP... such as Photoshop Elements or Picasa, or even web alternatives like Photoshop Express, etc.
GIMP has more tools and abilities than I ever would use, and I use it on Linux frequently. Do I really need Photoshop? No.
I think you miss the real problem entirely.
Tools and abilities and features are not what Linux and Linux apps lack for 'desktop readyness' - it's a matter of how much work it takes to use the few features most people need.
Most people will find a retail app superior if 10% of the features are more accessible and simpler to use. Everyone really likes 'free-as-in-beer', but given the choice between a free app that takes hours to learn, and a retail app that doesn't, they'll be happy to pay a reasonable price.
Personal time is worth a lot of money - and most people have better things to do with their time than learning some obscure application they have to use once a month - just because the Linux geek community is convinced that learning more about computers is some form of self-improvement.
Users are (and should be) as willing to deal with config files and macros as they'd be with directing the fryer's settings when ordering food at McDonalds. Few Linux apps seem to understand this.
Linux will not be 'desktop ready' until saying RTFM is taboo, rather than a point geek pride.
I have a feeling people said the same thing about Java, and it hasn't exactly made Windows irrelevant. What makes you think Flash will be more successful than Java?
Because Adobe is not Sun?
Yes, I'll get my first flamebait mod point - but sadly, it is true... E.g.: it took Silverlight (rather than AJAX/Flex) for them to respond with JavaFx, when Java could have been synonymous with RIA for years if they hadn't botched the job.
Because in using Netflix, you are NEVER going to have a Physical media for anything you watch from them. Not that you get to keep forever.
Really? I wonder what those shiny discs they keep sending me are all about in that case...
They certainly don't complain if I keep the discs for weeks out of stupidity / lazyness - isn't that the whole point? I'd think they dream of customers keeping them forever.
Then taking the 'free' M$ Exchange Server koolaid, they moved all thier systems over to Wintel, and suddenly became 'just another whitebox' seller, and couldn't understand why no one wanted to pay 2x going $$ for a Intergraph box.
If they had instead moved to Linux who knows what might have happened. They would have become 'just another linux box' seller, and wouldn't understand why no one wanted to pay 2x $$ for an Intergraph box?
Seriously, the problem you described is that they moved from a specialist market to a commodity market... how on earth would moving to Linux have made a difference?
It's free and has a lower barrier of entry for competitors... if anything, the higher prices would make even less sense.
This argument makes almost as little sense as widespread panic.
Filesystem reference implementations (like PLs and OSes) may be common enough - but innovations on any of these fields is scarce.
No one switched to ReiserFS because they had no other way to access their files - they needed the features/performance combination it provided. Same thing for any of the other choices, of course - but to pretend they're all the same is a bit absurd.
While it is not unlikely others can pick up maintenance of ReiserFS without much disruption, the value of 'yet another filesystem' was in the innovations and directions in which it differed from everything else.
How long did it take for innovations from BeOS or NextStep to be incorporated in other projects?
Having someone else pick up that torch is a lot less likely - and even if they do, it takes time and effort for a successor project to pick up speed.
I'm pretty sure if every year was "the year of the Freightliner soccer moms" there would be car reviews complaining about the lack of automatic models.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep - the factoid still seems mostly irrelevant.
By that argument, graduates' dream job right now is to work at Walmart - seeing as it is the largest employer in the US and has twice the employee count.
But I'm pretty sure even IT jobs are considered less boring than being a 'Wal-Mart greeter' by most graduates.
If Slashdot can prove anything, it's that the IT industry has no grammar or spelling requirements.
I'm not sure what's going on with the mods on this thread.
Yes - in hindsight, it looks like an awesome place to work on - and if you were involved in research, you might have known enough about it and really wanted to work there.
But that completely misses the question from the GP:
How many folks, during the 60s and 70s, really wanted to work for the phone company at that time?
(nerds from the present with access to wikipedia do not count)
Not sure why this is only moderated as funny - it is quite true.
But that's because the Wii graphics are not really poor - they're just adequate for the games people really play.
Of course, if you try to put something like Assasin's Creed or GTA IV on the Wii - the graphics will suck and affect the sense of immersion and gameplay.
But that's also why no one is really playing those kind of games in the Wii.
Er, dude...
If you're designing your game to run for 30-40 Mac, it's not going to an iPhone game - you're aiming at a totally different user interface.
And if you're not making an iPhone touch-based game, then what is the point?
For that matter, if you're aiming for any market for a casual game (like those in phones) by the numbers you'd likely end up using Java anyway to cover PC/Mac/Phone markets - including those 30-40 million Macs.
There are many reasons not to dismiss the iPhone as a market - but this specific argument makes no sense.
You're missing the potential. - If we embed computers into our brains, we'll open the door to security hacks.
- If that is possible, there will be master brain hackers.
- If there is a master brain hacker, there will be Naked Female Robots jumping from buildings
For the average Slashdot Id, the trade off is probably worth it.
The point is it is a VERY dangerous sophistry to confuse the restrictions from Law with Freedom. Even if one preserves the other.
If you read my post, you'll realize I fully agree with you in everything but that point.
We accept the restrictions from the Law, to protect our liberty and its fruits from interference - that's the social contract, and civilization.
In the case of the license, you are Free (in the original meaning of the word) to enter the "free license" contract (or not) as either party. The contract does not give you the freedom itself - it only defines the binds that you accept.
But it is very dangerous to label the restrictions we accept voluntarily as "Freedoms" - because it opens the door to unilateral changes to the contract.
When you have governments shutting down opposing newspapers, websites and TV stations to "protect real freedom of expression" (usually under your 'freedom from libel' argument) - it is a sharp reminder of the dangers of redefining some words.
We need to be very aware of what we have (freedom), and the binds we accept (the law) - so that we know when something gets taken away unilaterally.
Anyway, back to the minor problem of "free software".
"Free" in the GPL is a context specific code-word, which is common enough in contracts and legalese - and the FSF is clear enough about that in its documents, even if the community often is not.
Using it as a code-word is fine, as long as we're all aware it is a code-word and what it means, and do not expect the rest of the planet to magically start using it because some geeks used it in a software license.
Confusing it with the normal meaning of the word in normal conversation at best makes it sound absurd (e.g.: original post) - at worst dillutes the very thing it claims to protect.
Definitions 1, 2, 3, and 4 are literally opposite to the lines of a contract/license (such as the GPL) - which by its very definition is a set of restrictions. All of those freedoms are compromised in the RMS-Free meaning, by design, in order to guarantee a specific case of Definition 6.
The very term "violates the terms of a Free Software License" shows the oxymoron we are talking about here. If all of the definitions you mentioned apply per dictionary meaning, the very term 'free software license' is patently absurd.
'Free Software' in the FSF sense only has meaning with a novel and context-specific new meaning for 'free', which they conveniently define and publish in the FSF website precisely because it goes against the grain of normal language usage.
All of which is perfectly fine - if you consider that mixture of freedoms and restrictions a worthy compromise, and you need to define a legal framework for that, you may need to define some specific terminology.
But let's not pretend that it should replace common language, or worse, pretend the meanings are no different. A red quark is not really "red" in the normal sense of the word, and the "free software" concept is not that different.
Incidentally, as a latin american, I find the 'free as in libre' argument is no better (perhaps much worse).
Libertad is not something you get from signing a contract or getting a license for - it is your fundamental right as a human being to be free of imposed restrictions.
We surrender to reasonable restrictions of this liberty in law and fact for the sake of peace, security and prosperity. But you don't suddenly start calling the restrictions themselves "verdadera libertad" without opening the door for new restrictions based on new redefinitions.
History has set really bad precedents for that kind of sophistry - some disturbingly recent.
If they need those 3 things to offer the same performance, and are uglier to boot... then yeah, that's Web 2.0 all right.
Maybe they let Ops mod their servers too.
Gotta bring in the user content aspect into the picture.
Perhaps you are the one making a basic blunder: when people outside of Slashdot talk about "Free", they mean the dictionary "Free" as abscribed to a product, not the "RMS definition of Free".
There is nothing in the article related to open source licenses, etc. They're completely irrelevant to the economic argument - and frankly, to the common mechanics of the industries that the article describes.
That's the problem with arbitrarily redefining perfectly good words in common use.
Don't expect the rest of the world to suddenly adopt your new meanings for their own words - most of them don't know (or give a rat's derriere) about such terminology.
Did the guy also play the 'actor' in the PLR radio talk show?
"Being an actor is HARD!..."
Scientists genetically engineer bad-ass mouse.
Perhaps it also has to do with the fact that Mac laptops are damn good PC laptops too... and some people are willing to pay the premium to have both a very nice OSX laptop and a great WinPC laptop that's not about to break in 12 months.
I've had experiences with my share of laptop manufacturers over time - with differing levels of disappointment - and I've seen paper machie constructions with more structural integrity than some Dell laptops.
I'm rather happy with my Lenovo these days. It's pretty solid and fast enough.
But from using current Mac laptops, I've been impressed at how well they work as a WinPC laptop (runs Vista better than any other I've tried), and the quality of hardware / design.
There's lots of competition in the PC mobile market.
But there's not that much competition for good and durable PCs in that market as one would like.
For the average user , the experience described by the parent is NOT ahead at all - it is far worse than knowing this is clearly not supported.
At least, if you knew in advance it was a dead end, you wouldn't waste time and money trying to make it work... and breaking other stuff in the way (e.g.: the hd*->sd*->hd* dance).
The thing with the "it's better than nothing, and it's free anyway" argument is that it is disturbingly common as an excuse, and it assumes time is free. But tinkering for no results is actually "worse than nothing", because time is not free or even cheap.
Of course the hackability is a plus when you KNOW you are entering unsupported scenarios, and are willing to spend the time/risk.
But one huge advantage Apple has over Linux PCs is that the bar for "supported" is high, and the supported set is very clear (if narrow). With Linux, it is the opposite... almost anything is supported in SOME way or another - it'll just take a bit of luck and a non-deterministic amount of time...
Nope - the meme for "the French surrender every time" is much older than the Iraq situation.
Recent animosity may have made it popular - but it was well known and in common use last century.
Not that it invalidates the rest of your argument - but the meme predates its use for retrospective justification.
"I Am Legend" was a remake of "Omega Man", not of the original book.
And in that sense, it was a pretty decent remake.
That's a very good point: no, they don't. And recently, I'd bet they don't use/buy Photoshop (the full product) either.
But they'd be more likely to use simpler alternatives than the GIMP... such as Photoshop Elements or Picasa, or even web alternatives like Photoshop Express, etc.
I think you miss the real problem entirely.
Tools and abilities and features are not what Linux and Linux apps lack for 'desktop readyness' - it's a matter of how much work it takes to use the few features most people need.
Most people will find a retail app superior if 10% of the features are more accessible and simpler to use. Everyone really likes 'free-as-in-beer', but given the choice between a free app that takes hours to learn, and a retail app that doesn't, they'll be happy to pay a reasonable price.
Personal time is worth a lot of money - and most people have better things to do with their time than learning some obscure application they have to use once a month - just because the Linux geek community is convinced that learning more about computers is some form of self-improvement.
Users are (and should be) as willing to deal with config files and macros as they'd be with directing the fryer's settings when ordering food at McDonalds. Few Linux apps seem to understand this.
Linux will not be 'desktop ready' until saying RTFM is taboo, rather than a point geek pride.
Because Adobe is not Sun?
Yes, I'll get my first flamebait mod point - but sadly, it is true...
E.g.: it took Silverlight (rather than AJAX/Flex) for them to respond with JavaFx, when Java could have been synonymous with RIA for years if they hadn't botched the job.
There is this great Firefox extension that can translate that for you...
Really? I wonder what those shiny discs they keep sending me are all about in that case...
They certainly don't complain if I keep the discs for weeks out of stupidity / lazyness - isn't that the whole point? I'd think they dream of customers keeping them forever.
'just another whitebox' seller, and couldn't understand why no one wanted to pay 2x going $$ for a Intergraph box.
If they had instead moved to Linux who knows what might have happened. They would have become 'just another linux box' seller, and wouldn't understand why no one wanted to pay 2x $$ for an Intergraph box?
Seriously, the problem you described is that they moved from a specialist market to a commodity market... how on earth would moving to Linux have made a difference?
It's free and has a lower barrier of entry for competitors... if anything, the higher prices would make even less sense.
This argument makes almost as little sense as widespread panic.
Filesystem reference implementations (like PLs and OSes) may be common enough - but innovations on any of these fields is scarce.
No one switched to ReiserFS because they had no other way to access their files - they needed the features/performance combination it provided. Same thing for any of the other choices, of course - but to pretend they're all the same is a bit absurd.
While it is not unlikely others can pick up maintenance of ReiserFS without much disruption, the value of 'yet another filesystem' was in the innovations and directions in which it differed from everything else.
How long did it take for innovations from BeOS or NextStep to be incorporated in other projects?
Having someone else pick up that torch is a lot less likely - and even if they do, it takes time and effort for a successor project to pick up speed.
I'm pretty sure if every year was "the year of the Freightliner soccer moms" there would be car reviews complaining about the lack of automatic models.