> Judging by the vast amount of MP3's available on Kazaa, I see no reason why they shouldn't trust people who have shown time and time again that they'll happily make copyrighted material available to everyone for free.
You missed the other half of the formula, "if (we) give people what they are asking for in terms of value".
Your cynicism may be justified, but the full formula hasn't been tested for about a generation now. (I refer not just to the subjective quality of the music, but also to the price of the media. CDs' steep pricing was originally justified on the basis that they were retooling the industry and the output was limited, but curiously the prices never did come down. Except of course among counterfeiters, who can sell them for $1/disc and still make a killing.)
> But that's Hollywood for you - you can't just make one great movie and leave it alone. You have to squeeze every dollar out of the franchise while you can!
Be a while before they catch up to Planet of the Apes...
>...ex-manager of technology strategy and outreach at Princeton University, one should hope. That kind of stupidity can't go unrewarded, can it?
Think CIS, and it will simultaneously explain the stupidity and the anti-Free sentiment.
And this rant will probably be rewarded with big donations so he can do more of this kind of "research" for the needy software businesses who feel threatened by FOSS.
> I agree that linux as a whole isn't ready for the desktop, unless you have a nearby linux geek who doesn't mind do the occasional difficult administrative things that a normal user can't.
By that standard, what OS is ready for the desktop?
> Calling Simonyi stupid, is, well, stupid. Or at the very least ignorant. He's brilliant. And he invented his notation while writing in C, a language not known for its abstraction.
If he's so smart, why didn't he just use a language that already did what he wanted?
> I'm not agreeing with the quote but what is your problem with Powerpoint? It is a tool and therefore I don't see how it can be called "evil." Typically inanimate objects don't have moral affiliations.
Typically, yes. But PowerPoint is one of those rare exceptions!
> And the fact that people misuse Powerpoint and create awful presentations does not mean that Powerpoint should be abandoned
No, for it's the evil incarnate in in PowerPoint that causes them to do so.
> Overhead transparencies can yield just as bad presentations as Powerpoint.
Yes, but they are the result of bad slide design rather than metaphysical compulsion.
> Wasn't COBOL orignally written in order to allow the user to bypass the programmer? One of the lessons they learned from that experiment was that, even given a simplified language, most people don't understand computers well enough to write a program.
In my experience, most people don't understand what they're trying to do well enough to write a program, let alone understand 'computers' well enough to write it. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to explain to a PHB that it's useless to generate reports that total the number of pounds, pallets, and railcars (all together) of all the apples + oranges (all together) that shipped last month.
The reason there's no silver bullet for programming is that the problem doesn't lie in the programming languages; the problem lies in the problems we apply programming languages to.
You can teach a moderately intelligent person everything there is to know about the sytax of Scheme in half an hour, but even experienced programmers still tend to have trouble thinking out how to write useful programs in it.
A decade ago the trade journals were chock full of articles about nifty "fourth generation languages" that would let PHBs cut programmers out of the loop, and we all know how that turned out.
Slashdot Mirror
> So, what's gonna crack it this time? Green felt tip pen? Rubbing a small kitten on the disc? Looking at it funny? Placing sliced cheese on it?
Click the "play" button?
> Trust has to be earned.
> Judging by the vast amount of MP3's available on Kazaa, I see no reason why they shouldn't trust people who have shown time and time again that they'll happily make copyrighted material available to everyone for free.
You missed the other half of the formula, "if (we) give people what they are asking for in terms of value".
Your cynicism may be justified, but the full formula hasn't been tested for about a generation now. (I refer not just to the subjective quality of the music, but also to the price of the media. CDs' steep pricing was originally justified on the basis that they were retooling the industry and the output was limited, but curiously the prices never did come down. Except of course among counterfeiters, who can sell them for $1/disc and still make a killing.)
> What are the Linux COBOL solutions?
Run the COBOL apps on a different partition of the mainframe...
> Is this a step towards creating quantum-effect neural networks (i.e., thinking machines)?
No, it's just a memory technology.
> Nanoguitar, nanodrum, nanoharp...
Think of the spam!
Groupies DO care about the size of your instrument!
> Aren't most COBOL applications deployed on big iron?
They're anticipating that you'll have to have a mainframe on your desktop to run the next release of Windows...
> If I were a SCO stockholder, I would want to have some answers from Darl & company, fast.
Trouble is, you have to be a stockholder in order to sue.
Heh... Canopy Group buys up dying company for its lawsuit value, shareholders buy up dying company stock for its lawsuit value.
Maybe that's what's proping SCOX prices up.
> Oooh Wow. You just showed a pic of Don R shaking hands with Saddam.
No no no! That wasn't a handshake, Rummy was just reaching out to pat him down for hidden WMD!
> Remember when Phantom Menace came out and everyone was still saying that it was up to par with the Original Trilogy?
No, I remember when TPM came out and everyone but the fanboys said it sucked.
> WTFM!
It's customary to merely read it, you pervert.
> The Wachowski brothers have delivered a dud so disappointing, they may as well have bussed in Ewoks
> But that's Hollywood for you - you can't just make one great movie and leave it alone. You have to squeeze every dollar out of the franchise while you can!
Be a while before they catch up to Planet of the Apes...
> You may be interested to know that the Earth was warmer over the vast majority of its history.
Fortunately, we didn't have to live through those times.
Most of the universe is a hard vacuum, but I kind of like having the local fluke we call "the atmosphere".
> Now I don't want to respond to the article's claims, since that'll only spark a flame war I don't want to fight
Shit or get off the pot!
> And as we all know, it's not worth doing unless you're going to be the undisputed dominator.
Have your G/F give me a call, and I'll give her some tips that'll have you singing a different tune by Monday!
> Cougaar is an open-source Java-based architecture for the construction of distributed agent-based applications.
I heard it was just a variant of the Nigerian e-mail scam.
>
Think CIS, and it will simultaneously explain the stupidity and the anti-Free sentiment.
And this rant will probably be rewarded with big donations so he can do more of this kind of "research" for the needy software businesses who feel threatened by FOSS.
> I've heard more coherent arguments from Rush Limbaugh.
Yeah, but Rush had drugs to help him out.
What happened to BSD?
> I agree that linux as a whole isn't ready for the desktop, unless you have a nearby linux geek who doesn't mind do the occasional difficult administrative things that a normal user can't.
By that standard, what OS is ready for the desktop?
> Runs on IIS.
And there's a gaping hole right there on their front page.
> Calling Simonyi stupid, is, well, stupid. Or at the very least ignorant. He's brilliant. And he invented his notation while writing in C, a language not known for its abstraction.
If he's so smart, why didn't he just use a language that already did what he wanted?
> I'm not agreeing with the quote but what is your problem with Powerpoint? It is a tool and therefore I don't see how it can be called "evil." Typically inanimate objects don't have moral affiliations.
Typically, yes. But PowerPoint is one of those rare exceptions!
> And the fact that people misuse Powerpoint and create awful presentations does not mean that Powerpoint should be abandoned
No, for it's the evil incarnate in in PowerPoint that causes them to do so.
> Overhead transparencies can yield just as bad presentations as Powerpoint.
Yes, but they are the result of bad slide design rather than metaphysical compulsion.
> Problem is that does anyone want to write an operating system in such a high level language, where the optimization is questionable?
No problem...
> Wasn't COBOL orignally written in order to allow the user to bypass the programmer? One of the lessons they learned from that experiment was that, even given a simplified language, most people don't understand computers well enough to write a program.
In my experience, most people don't understand what they're trying to do well enough to write a program, let alone understand 'computers' well enough to write it. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to explain to a PHB that it's useless to generate reports that total the number of pounds, pallets, and railcars (all together) of all the apples + oranges (all together) that shipped last month.
The reason there's no silver bullet for programming is that the problem doesn't lie in the programming languages; the problem lies in the problems we apply programming languages to.
You can teach a moderately intelligent person everything there is to know about the sytax of Scheme in half an hour, but even experienced programmers still tend to have trouble thinking out how to write useful programs in it.
A decade ago the trade journals were chock full of articles about nifty "fourth generation languages" that would let PHBs cut programmers out of the loop, and we all know how that turned out.