It addresses a very similar problem with both creation and evolution: neither is falsifiable.
Natural selection and aspects of micro-evolution ARE falsifiable. Macro-evolution is not. The people that parade evolution around as the "real origin of life" are nothing more than anti-creationists with a near-religious devotion to their Big-Bang god.
And no, I'm not a creationist or an Intelligent Design proponent, that's stupid too.
I do, however have the following problems with evolution, none of which have been properly explained to do this day. I base my decisions on nothing but logic, and logic would dictate that evolutionists have taken natural selection as a theory and blown it into some religion on the theory of life.
Here they are: 1) Chance over probability. This is probably the weakest argument (because we *could* be the 1 in septendecillion instance), but it is a significant one, because many of the same individuals that believe we evolved from single-cell organisms also believe in extraterrestrial life within our own galaxy. You'd think these individuals would actually be ID proponents.
2) Second law of thermodynamics. While another somewhat weak argument in the eyes of many evolution proponents, the significance of a mutation actually increasing the intellectual properties of of an organism would be a major scientific find of unbelievable proportions and would indicate that our analysis of closed systems needs to be rethought. Specifically, I'm talking about DNA and the "information argument". Species don't just get smarter, yet it is clear that we are more intelligent than dogs, for instance. The hard part is determining *why*.
3) Fossilized records. This is one of the more common arguments so I won't focus on it, but where are the fossils of these transitory species? It is believed that many species of frogs and other amphibians which are more likely to experience natural selection have been undergoing this on a regular basis, yet no evidence has been found of such.
4) Dating methods. Another small but significant argument. Rocks that have formed within just the last century are often mis-dated as being formed billions of years previous. There are many documented accounts of this which get poo-pooed by evolutionists.
5) Spontaneous generation. It's never been proven. This is the work of 1400s urban legends about maggots forming when a cow's tail hits water, to see esteemed scientists falling to this level is nothing short of a tragedy.
6) Micro-evolution is observable and falsifiable. Macro-evolution is not falsifiable. If something is not falsiable, like creation for instance, it's considered part of a belief system or religion.
7) Evolution of the eye. We have no indication of how or why the eye evolved. Likewise, we have no indication of why there are creatures that have existed for 50 million years, like bats, and have been blind for the entire period.
8) Evolution of the vertebrae. IMHO, this may be the strongest argument against evolution. We have absolutely no idea why or how the vertebrae came into existance.
Good point, but easily explained. Some Extremely-High-Res pictures can be 300 meg in size and viewable after 5:00pm on a workstation left on using a remote desktop connection. Downloading them over a UK dialup line might be nigh impossible, but he could have taken a screenshot. He probably decided not to or didn't realize he could.
So your theory is that there is some nefarious secret ultra rich organization that loves the earth so much that they are bribing scientists to alter their studies in favor of environmentalism.
Yes, its called "the media" and the more they whore for them, the more $ they get in grants from the government to do more bullshit research. It doesn't take a genius to figure this out.
For example, I've yet to see anyone agree on the numbers for global temperature readings. Even amongst proponents of global warming. You'd think a basic "X increase in temperature" since 1970 would be enough for at least a few climatologists to settle on. Or maybe you could get them to attempt to explain the massive changes in temperature they claim is due to carbon dioxide when water vapor accounts for 95% of the greenhouse effect.
Or why 1998 is claimed to be the hottest year on record. If it was the "hottest year", then what have the last 5 years been if not "decreasing"?
I always like to describe global warming like this: "Draw a line 1.2 miles long. Be careful to try to keep it as straight as you can, and don't show any trends either down or up. At the very end, make sure the last 1 inch of line is in a slight 1 degree increase. The last foot of the line represents our existence on Earth. The last inch is recorded time. The last 1/8th of an inch is accurately recorded time.
I hate to break it to you, because people "want to believe", but global warming is a religion. Even Penn & Teller have seen enough of you normally grounded and based individuals go off on some faith-based justification for an increase in temperature that they've had to make episodes of "Bullshit!" to bring you back to sanity.
Not many of you are stock junkies I would venture to guess, and it is very important to empahsize the market capitalization point.
When it gets as high as it has for Google, no new investors enter. Which means PPS drops. It doesn't mean the company is any worse off financially, but it means that fewer people are willing to invest in something that doesn't return dividends like it should.
We've certainly got interesting times ahead. I would venture to guess Google's market capitalization will eventually reach that of ERICY, or Ericsson, which is also overvalued, about $52 billion.
At that point, the PPS will be about $194.34 and may actually fall further assuming there's some massive shorting and scare sells. You should be able to buy in sometime this year around 170 bucks. That is, given they don't do a stock split.
My dad was one of the first hundred people on the "list". He poked and chided me, saying, "Boy, I bet you Libertarians are stumped on this one, eh?" (Not Canadian, but he talks like one)
I truly didn't have an answer for him. That is, until he started getting calls to donate for a firemans' ball in another county (where he once had a speeding ticket). Then it was a policemans' ticket raffle in our county, then there was the half dozen calls for the American Heart Association. I think it was the worst though when the CDC called on a "marketing study". Last but not least, I saw a paper survey from the US Postal service. Call it coincidence.
Ironically, he still gets credit card calls, mostly from Puerto Rico or some other location where I suppose this doesn't apply. He told the last one he was on the do not call list, and the guy promptly took him off.
I asked what the policeman said who called about the raffle, "We don't have a list to take you off of." That was last year.
He got another call from the same officer last week. It's a small county/town too, so there really is no excusing it. He told me (over the phone) he was just going to buy a cell for my youngest sister and remove the phone.
I told him he'd lose Internet, but he said the phone line would still be there, just not the phone.
I guess drastic times call for... well, maybe it's not so drastic, anymore.
If it was a true culture shift you would see something like: x company has announced the hiring of 1,000 new software programmers to create a new division of security. This new division will audit all code for potential security problems before any new programs are released.
The problem with this is that of the 1,000 employees, about fifteen, or 1.5% will be knowlegeable enough to find actual exploits or vulnerabilities.
Because of this, about 95% (3.5% stick around to "manage" the 1.5% that do the work) of those employees will eventually lose their jobs, especially at companies like Wells Fargo and MBNA, where news stories drive public releases (PRs) about hiring X # of security people and then not issuing a PR when you turn around and fire 7/8 * X # of them over the next two years.
Similarly, choosing between two major party candidates for US President is like choosing between the election chair and lethal injection: I choose "getting shot in the back as I attempt to flee", AKA the Libertarian party candidate. Others I know choose: "jumping 150 feet onto solid concrete outside the prison, climbing a 30 foot barbed-wire fence, outrunning rabid K9 dogs, and surviving in the desert for a week with limited water and food," more commonly known as the Green party candidate.
I don't just see them as two evils, I don't even consider choosing between them a choice.
But then you wouldn't see how this measures up to the article in question. So I'll say it like this:
Windows XP SP2 running on a Pentium 166 mhz with 32 meg RAM, only possible with Nlite.
I ran this along with Xampp to provide myself with a nice little development box that could still use Firefox/Thunderbird so roommates could read the web, play web games, and check their email.
I didn't hear any complaining except during playback of certain XviD and DivX files in BSplayer.
Investor backing has nothing to do with this market. As others have mentioned, cafeexpress offers this service as well as some people on half.com or ebay. I even tried doing this at one point.
I ended up tossing the idea because of two main reasons:
1) To make any money, you have to sell in bulk with the same printing, and usually people just want one or two of the item; be it a shirt with a picture of dad-catching-a-fish or susies-first-bike-ride.
2) Cost. Your customers want to spend 15 dollars for a 15 dollar t-shirt with their picture on it. They don't think your service provides any value, even though it's the picture they value the most. At first it seems hard, but it's easy to explain; how much value do you put in those sweaters with your name on them that your grandmother bought for Christmas while a child?
I'm from an Aggro state, and he's entirely incorrect...
Specifically, I'm from one of the ones that has mercury pollution problems from our use of industrial power plants.
Ethanol produced from corn takes more energy than it returns. Ironically, he state this, then tries to make an argument in favor of it. The only argument one could really make is that there is something cool about turning coal-burning energy into ethanol. The argument that burning ethanol is "cleaner" is useless if you're burning coal to get the power to make it to begin with.
We need less subsidies and less bureacracy to actually be a "producing" nation that doesn't consume all the rest of the world's resources. The parent talks about buying up leftover corn and soy, but apparently they aren't from my state, where we have farmers who get paid to *not* grow crops on their farms.
Now don't get me wrong, there might eventually be something to this, but I know Ethanol from corn ain't it. The parent is right, without the subsidies to grow useless crap corn, family farmers would go bankrupt. And I gotta admit, I don't really see that as a BAD thing. They aren't using the land efficiently right now, and rely on kickbacks from the government in order to survive.
I wrote my first 2,000+ line program in 1988 at the age of 9 on a TRS-80 Model II. It was a Clue game; and yes, I used GOTO extensively and could rewrite it in one line of PERL now. I technically learned to code when I was 8 on a neighbor's computer because I didn't have my own. It took me less than a month to code "Clue" after the computer was purchased for $100 at a garage sale. We weren't exactly the best off family financially at the time. My dad worked a blue-collar job (actually wore blue and refused to join the union), and my mom did odd part-time jobs for the local paper doing typesetting. They maybe made $1,800 a month combined. It was a huge investment, I think the owners wanted $150 for it originally so my dad had to talk them down. It was also the only present I got that year, and I still consider it my favorite birthday to this day.
My parents made an investment. Did it pay off? I started my first year of my new job after graduating from college making equal salary to that of my father. Lower cost-of-living in the location is the only reason I don't make more.
C# is only moderately more complicated than Basic. Of course, that's just my opinion, but it is rational and educated. I don't program in the language on a regular basis, nor do I care to. She has written a calculator and a sorting program? I wrote fscking Clue!
As a guy from our church, whose computer I always used, said to my father when he was determining whether or not to fork over $150 for my second computer, an IBM 8088 with a 10 meg hard-drive, "He doesn't use the computer to just play games, he *writes* them."
I would be surprised if there weren't at least a few hundred individuals like me that were programming at age 10 or earlier or had written their first BBS at age 16; I had a buddy that wrote one when he was 14. If I can do it, I know I can't be the only one.
Please don't insult us by posting this drek. This little girl may end up letting attention go to her head and never bother to fine-tune her coding skills, which will set her back great strides. Then again, maybe she is a child prodigy, but I'd like to see her code before I determine that.
What about all the British, French, Spanish, Dutch colonies in the Americas? They are all happy independent nations now (for the most part) that fought wars, not necessarily with each other, but against their home nations for independence.
What in the name of God or science makes you think space is going to be any different?
Think about who would move to a space colony: a pot-smoker wanting to get away from unjust laws on his lifestyle, a Falun Dafa group seeking asylum from persecution, and a libertarian trying to get away from taxes.
Nations can do their best to try to expand into state out of fear of other nations doing so first, but it's going to be the colonists that end up fighting the wars for these nations, and eventually, wars of independence a few generations later.
Maybe not every colonist would take up arms, but my assumption is that even of the ones that don't, they will most likely achieve independence anyway (Canada), so why would the US want to be the first?
1. Move around corner 2. Light turns off 3. Loud noise 4. Option - Load Saved Game 5. Wash - Rinse - Repeat.
Bzzzt. It was actually this: 1. Move around corner 2. Light turns off 3. Loud noise 4. Turn 180 degrees to kill the demon that spawned behind you. 5. Wash - Rinse - Repeat.
I hate to break it to iD, but Doom2 killed Doom3 in setting up a scary story. Spawning demons behind the player works for about two maps/levels. After that, you get used to it.
Under BSD-licensing, I can work at home on the same subject matter that I do at my place of employment. And you have the gall to tell me that the BSD is actually *more* restrictive?
GPL requires that people not only credit me, but provide a copy of my code to whoever uses their commercial or free software. What if I don't care about that? What if I think providing the source code for my project is stupid and a waste of space?
So you seem to think that giving away code is a "selfless act". And I'd be inclined to agree. If that's what you think, then GPL promotes further selfless behavior, while BSD allows the selfish to well... be selfish. Now as the author, releasing under which license offers more selflessness?
I would define it as "who can use your code". The more people that can and will use your code, the more selfless the act.
Keeping this in mind, the GPL essentially says, "Anyone can use this code, but not only do you have to credit me, you have to provide a copy." Basically, it's requiring that you act on my behalf. It's "a positive right", and by Microsoft's definition, "a virus". I wouldn't go that far, but it does require someone act on your behalf.
BSD license similarly requires crediting the author, but since you don't have to provide a copy of the code, most people forget to credit BSD authors. Ironically, most of us just don't care. It's because we often have full-time jobs, and release the code we write at work and at home, so that they can be used in both locations without any complaints by our supervisors. It's a win-win situation for both of us.
Here's an analogy. It is rather long.
GPL analogy using copyright: James, a teenage artist the summer before his first year of college, writes the "open source song" and releases it under the GPL. The song is downloaded by millions of people in the first day and becomes an instant underground Internet hit. Since it is free, anyone can download it, and anyone can play it. Life is great.
You are a remix artist who has done several remixes of "All your base", and other songs that seem to be Internet pop culture, promoting the "open source song" by providing one of the main mirrors and telling people to download it.
A week goes by and you take the song and start your remix, adding in a killer beat, and really improving on it. On the first day of release, you have half a million downloads.
Then you remove your mirror for the original song.
Then you get in trouble from the GPL police.
Why? Because despite James's intentions, and even your own (imagine you were James, and you remixed your own song), you are not crediting the original author, nor are you providing their original song.
Never mind the fact that your remix demand is barely enough for your server to handle, you have to continue to provide the original GPL'd version of the song. The GPL would never work for music or movies, so why does it apply to software?
Why is BSD better?
One really simple reason: The only version of "free" that is truly free, is that version which has no strings attached.
BSD is a minimalist approach. It only wants to give the authors credit. How hard is it to include author names? Not very.
even in the US we have anti capitalist things like public schools, medicare, social security, subsidies for business etc.
All of which are either failing, in disarray, or joked about.
In real life nobody is a capitalist, everybody is a socialist more or less
Kind of ironic that I hate all 4 of those things you mentioned, then, isn't it?
What has RMS said that makes you believe he is not a capitalist.
I'd say he's a Green judging from his website. He suggests boycotting Coca Cola, which, despite what socialists may say, is actually a very capitalistic action, but also seems to be one of those wackos that think Bush stole the election.
Course I gotta be careful what I say for the sake of karma right? Wrong. I don't care about karma on this website, and I'm not going to censor myself just to try to fit in with the political views of the majority of Slashdot. RMS, and other like him, who find it necessary to have active political agendas with regards to coding, are indeed "wackos" and "crackpots".
Otherwise you're just doing free work for some software venture capitalist, which is stupid. I mean, if you want to help people, go spend time with sick children or something.
Apparently there are some mods who only read half of the comments.
So I suppose the Apache Foundation should just give up the work they've done? I suppose name-recognition for a popular BSD project isn't enough for you?
If anything, licensing under BSD instead of the GPL is the most selfless act a software developer can make. It means they are coding for the love of coding, not because of a political or philosophical agenda. Is there something wrong with that?
Likewise, is there something wrong with working for Habitat for Humanity, the Peace Corps, and The Hunger Project?
The GPL is one of the most exciting, innovative capitalist tools ever created.
I would imagine RMS might actually take offense to the GPL being labeled as "capitalist". Your definition of the GPL being accurate, and RMS's personal comments, would lead me to believe he's anything but "capitalist".
Slashdot Mirror
Mod parent up.
It addresses a very similar problem with both creation and evolution: neither is falsifiable.
Natural selection and aspects of micro-evolution ARE falsifiable. Macro-evolution is not. The people that parade evolution around as the "real origin of life" are nothing more than anti-creationists with a near-religious devotion to their Big-Bang god.
And no, I'm not a creationist or an Intelligent Design proponent, that's stupid too.
Disclaimer: I am not a creationist.
I do, however have the following problems with evolution, none of which have been properly explained to do this day. I base my decisions on nothing but logic, and logic would dictate that evolutionists have taken natural selection as a theory and blown it into some religion on the theory of life.
Here they are:
1) Chance over probability. This is probably the weakest argument (because we *could* be the 1 in septendecillion instance), but it is a significant one, because many of the same individuals that believe we evolved from single-cell organisms also believe in extraterrestrial life within our own galaxy. You'd think these individuals would actually be ID proponents.
2) Second law of thermodynamics. While another somewhat weak argument in the eyes of many evolution proponents, the significance of a mutation actually increasing the intellectual properties of of an organism would be a major scientific find of unbelievable proportions and would indicate that our analysis of closed systems needs to be rethought. Specifically, I'm talking about DNA and the "information argument". Species don't just get smarter, yet it is clear that we are more intelligent than dogs, for instance. The hard part is determining *why*.
3) Fossilized records. This is one of the more common arguments so I won't focus on it, but where are the fossils of these transitory species? It is believed that many species of frogs and other amphibians which are more likely to experience natural selection have been undergoing this on a regular basis, yet no evidence has been found of such.
4) Dating methods. Another small but significant argument. Rocks that have formed within just the last century are often mis-dated as being formed billions of years previous. There are many documented accounts of this which get poo-pooed by evolutionists.
5) Spontaneous generation. It's never been proven. This is the work of 1400s urban legends about maggots forming when a cow's tail hits water, to see esteemed scientists falling to this level is nothing short of a tragedy.
6) Micro-evolution is observable and falsifiable. Macro-evolution is not falsifiable. If something is not falsiable, like creation for instance, it's considered part of a belief system or religion.
7) Evolution of the eye. We have no indication of how or why the eye evolved. Likewise, we have no indication of why there are creatures that have existed for 50 million years, like bats, and have been blind for the entire period.
8) Evolution of the vertebrae. IMHO, this may be the strongest argument against evolution. We have absolutely no idea why or how the vertebrae came into existance.
Good point, but easily explained. Some Extremely-High-Res pictures can be 300 meg in size and viewable after 5:00pm on a workstation left on using a remote desktop connection. Downloading them over a UK dialup line might be nigh impossible, but he could have taken a screenshot. He probably decided not to or didn't realize he could.
So your theory is that there is some nefarious secret ultra rich organization that loves the earth so much that they are bribing scientists to alter their studies in favor of environmentalism.
Yes, its called "the media" and the more they whore for them, the more $ they get in grants from the government to do more bullshit research. It doesn't take a genius to figure this out.
For example, I've yet to see anyone agree on the numbers for global temperature readings. Even amongst proponents of global warming. You'd think a basic "X increase in temperature" since 1970 would be enough for at least a few climatologists to settle on. Or maybe you could get them to attempt to explain the massive changes in temperature they claim is due to carbon dioxide when water vapor accounts for 95% of the greenhouse effect.
Or why 1998 is claimed to be the hottest year on record. If it was the "hottest year", then what have the last 5 years been if not "decreasing"?
I always like to describe global warming like this: "Draw a line 1.2 miles long. Be careful to try to keep it as straight as you can, and don't show any trends either down or up. At the very end, make sure the last 1 inch of line is in a slight 1 degree increase. The last foot of the line represents our existence on Earth. The last inch is recorded time. The last 1/8th of an inch is accurately recorded time.
I hate to break it to you, because people "want to believe", but global warming is a religion. Even Penn & Teller have seen enough of you normally grounded and based individuals go off on some faith-based justification for an increase in temperature that they've had to make episodes of "Bullshit!" to bring you back to sanity.
Not many of you are stock junkies I would venture to guess, and it is very important to empahsize the market capitalization point.
When it gets as high as it has for Google, no new investors enter. Which means PPS drops. It doesn't mean the company is any worse off financially, but it means that fewer people are willing to invest in something that doesn't return dividends like it should.
We've certainly got interesting times ahead. I would venture to guess Google's market capitalization will eventually reach that of ERICY, or Ericsson, which is also overvalued, about $52 billion.
At that point, the PPS will be about $194.34 and may actually fall further assuming there's some massive shorting and scare sells. You should be able to buy in sometime this year around 170 bucks. That is, given they don't do a stock split.
Setting: Nice, calm and serene office for United International Pictures in the Netherlands.
Premise: Evil technocrat (Taco) unleashes hordes of his minions on the poor defenseless webserver.
My dad was one of the first hundred people on the "list". He poked and chided me, saying, "Boy, I bet you Libertarians are stumped on this one, eh?" (Not Canadian, but he talks like one)
... well, maybe it's not so drastic, anymore.
I truly didn't have an answer for him. That is, until he started getting calls to donate for a firemans' ball in another county (where he once had a speeding ticket). Then it was a policemans' ticket raffle in our county, then there was the half dozen calls for the American Heart Association. I think it was the worst though when the CDC called on a "marketing study". Last but not least, I saw a paper survey from the US Postal service. Call it coincidence.
Ironically, he still gets credit card calls, mostly from Puerto Rico or some other location where I suppose this doesn't apply. He told the last one he was on the do not call list, and the guy promptly took him off.
I asked what the policeman said who called about the raffle, "We don't have a list to take you off of." That was last year.
He got another call from the same officer last week. It's a small county/town too, so there really is no excusing it. He told me (over the phone) he was just going to buy a cell for my youngest sister and remove the phone.
I told him he'd lose Internet, but he said the phone line would still be there, just not the phone.
I guess drastic times call for
If it was a true culture shift you would see something like: x company has announced the hiring of 1,000 new software programmers to create a new division of security. This new division will audit all code for potential security problems before any new programs are released.
The problem with this is that of the 1,000 employees, about fifteen, or 1.5% will be knowlegeable enough to find actual exploits or vulnerabilities.
Because of this, about 95% (3.5% stick around to "manage" the 1.5% that do the work) of those employees will eventually lose their jobs, especially at companies like Wells Fargo and MBNA, where news stories drive public releases (PRs) about hiring X # of security people and then not issuing a PR when you turn around and fire 7/8 * X # of them over the next two years.
Similarly, choosing between two major party candidates for US President is like choosing between the election chair and lethal injection: I choose "getting shot in the back as I attempt to flee", AKA the Libertarian party candidate. Others I know choose: "jumping 150 feet onto solid concrete outside the prison, climbing a 30 foot barbed-wire fence, outrunning rabid K9 dogs, and surviving in the desert for a week with limited water and food," more commonly known as the Green party candidate.
I don't just see them as two evils, I don't even consider choosing between them a choice.
I look forward to the day when tits and guns are both so prevalent that art is, once again, art.
So the question is, Where are the new operating systems likely to come from?
Plan 9, MacOS, z/OS, AmigaOS, MorphOS, QNX, or other embedded OS.
I'd just say:
Nlite, nuff said.
But then you wouldn't see how this measures up to the article in question. So I'll say it like this:
Windows XP SP2 running on a Pentium 166 mhz with 32 meg RAM, only possible with Nlite.
I ran this along with Xampp to provide myself with a nice little development box that could still use Firefox/Thunderbird so roommates could read the web, play web games, and check their email.
I didn't hear any complaining except during playback of certain XviD and DivX files in BSplayer.
Investor backing has nothing to do with this market. As others have mentioned, cafeexpress offers this service as well as some people on half.com or ebay. I even tried doing this at one point.
I ended up tossing the idea because of two main reasons:
1) To make any money, you have to sell in bulk with the same printing, and usually people just want one or two of the item; be it a shirt with a picture of dad-catching-a-fish or susies-first-bike-ride.
2) Cost. Your customers want to spend 15 dollars for a 15 dollar t-shirt with their picture on it. They don't think your service provides any value, even though it's the picture they value the most. At first it seems hard, but it's easy to explain; how much value do you put in those sweaters with your name on them that your grandmother bought for Christmas while a child?
I'm from an Aggro state, and he's entirely incorrect...
Specifically, I'm from one of the ones that has mercury pollution problems from our use of industrial power plants.
Ethanol produced from corn takes more energy than it returns. Ironically, he state this, then tries to make an argument in favor of it. The only argument one could really make is that there is something cool about turning coal-burning energy into ethanol. The argument that burning ethanol is "cleaner" is useless if you're burning coal to get the power to make it to begin with.
We need less subsidies and less bureacracy to actually be a "producing" nation that doesn't consume all the rest of the world's resources. The parent talks about buying up leftover corn and soy, but apparently they aren't from my state, where we have farmers who get paid to *not* grow crops on their farms.
Now don't get me wrong, there might eventually be something to this, but I know Ethanol from corn ain't it. The parent is right, without the subsidies to grow useless crap corn, family farmers would go bankrupt. And I gotta admit, I don't really see that as a BAD thing. They aren't using the land efficiently right now, and rely on kickbacks from the government in order to survive.
I wrote my first 2,000+ line program in 1988 at the age of 9 on a TRS-80 Model II. It was a Clue game; and yes, I used GOTO extensively and could rewrite it in one line of PERL now. I technically learned to code when I was 8 on a neighbor's computer because I didn't have my own. It took me less than a month to code "Clue" after the computer was purchased for $100 at a garage sale. We weren't exactly the best off family financially at the time. My dad worked a blue-collar job (actually wore blue and refused to join the union), and my mom did odd part-time jobs for the local paper doing typesetting. They maybe made $1,800 a month combined. It was a huge investment, I think the owners wanted $150 for it originally so my dad had to talk them down. It was also the only present I got that year, and I still consider it my favorite birthday to this day.
My parents made an investment. Did it pay off? I started my first year of my new job after graduating from college making equal salary to that of my father. Lower cost-of-living in the location is the only reason I don't make more.
C# is only moderately more complicated than Basic. Of course, that's just my opinion, but it is rational and educated. I don't program in the language on a regular basis, nor do I care to. She has written a calculator and a sorting program? I wrote fscking Clue!
As a guy from our church, whose computer I always used, said to my father when he was determining whether or not to fork over $150 for my second computer, an IBM 8088 with a 10 meg hard-drive, "He doesn't use the computer to just play games, he *writes* them."
I would be surprised if there weren't at least a few hundred individuals like me that were programming at age 10 or earlier or had written their first BBS at age 16; I had a buddy that wrote one when he was 14. If I can do it, I know I can't be the only one.
Please don't insult us by posting this drek. This little girl may end up letting attention go to her head and never bother to fine-tune her coding skills, which will set her back great strides. Then again, maybe she is a child prodigy, but I'd like to see her code before I determine that.
...probably because it is.
What about all the British, French, Spanish, Dutch colonies in the Americas? They are all happy independent nations now (for the most part) that fought wars, not necessarily with each other, but against their home nations for independence.
What in the name of God or science makes you think space is going to be any different?
Think about who would move to a space colony: a pot-smoker wanting to get away from unjust laws on his lifestyle, a Falun Dafa group seeking asylum from persecution, and a libertarian trying to get away from taxes.
Nations can do their best to try to expand into state out of fear of other nations doing so first, but it's going to be the colonists that end up fighting the wars for these nations, and eventually, wars of independence a few generations later.
Maybe not every colonist would take up arms, but my assumption is that even of the ones that don't, they will most likely achieve independence anyway (Canada), so why would the US want to be the first?
1. Move around corner
2. Light turns off
3. Loud noise
4. Option - Load Saved Game
5. Wash - Rinse - Repeat.
Bzzzt. It was actually this:
1. Move around corner
2. Light turns off
3. Loud noise
4. Turn 180 degrees to kill the demon that spawned behind you.
5. Wash - Rinse - Repeat.
I hate to break it to iD, but Doom2 killed Doom3 in setting up a scary story. Spawning demons behind the player works for about two maps/levels. After that, you get used to it.
Transmeta's public accounting firm resigned recently as well:0 00089161805000476/f10542e8vk.htm
http://edgar.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1001193/
This doesn't happen to growing companies.
BSD code depends upon the good will and selflessness of its distributors to remain free, GPL'd code does not.
If it's BSD, it's BSD. It doesn't "change" or anything.
I think you meant to say GPL instead of BSD in that last paragraph.
Under BSD-licensing, I can work at home on the same subject matter that I do at my place of employment. And you have the gall to tell me that the BSD is actually *more* restrictive?
GPL requires that people not only credit me, but provide a copy of my code to whoever uses their commercial or free software. What if I don't care about that? What if I think providing the source code for my project is stupid and a waste of space?
So you seem to think that giving away code is a "selfless act". And I'd be inclined to agree. If that's what you think, then GPL promotes further selfless behavior, while BSD allows the selfish to well... be selfish. Now as the author, releasing under which license offers more selflessness?
I would define it as "who can use your code". The more people that can and will use your code, the more selfless the act.
Keeping this in mind, the GPL essentially says, "Anyone can use this code, but not only do you have to credit me, you have to provide a copy." Basically, it's requiring that you act on my behalf. It's "a positive right", and by Microsoft's definition, "a virus". I wouldn't go that far, but it does require someone act on your behalf.
BSD license similarly requires crediting the author, but since you don't have to provide a copy of the code, most people forget to credit BSD authors. Ironically, most of us just don't care. It's because we often have full-time jobs, and release the code we write at work and at home, so that they can be used in both locations without any complaints by our supervisors. It's a win-win situation for both of us.
Here's an analogy. It is rather long.
GPL analogy using copyright:
James, a teenage artist the summer before his first year of college, writes the "open source song" and releases it under the GPL. The song is downloaded by millions of people in the first day and becomes an instant underground Internet hit. Since it is free, anyone can download it, and anyone can play it. Life is great.
You are a remix artist who has done several remixes of "All your base", and other songs that seem to be Internet pop culture, promoting the "open source song" by providing one of the main mirrors and telling people to download it.
A week goes by and you take the song and start your remix, adding in a killer beat, and really improving on it. On the first day of release, you have half a million downloads.
Then you remove your mirror for the original song.
Then you get in trouble from the GPL police.
Why? Because despite James's intentions, and even your own (imagine you were James, and you remixed your own song), you are not crediting the original author, nor are you providing their original song.
Never mind the fact that your remix demand is barely enough for your server to handle, you have to continue to provide the original GPL'd version of the song. The GPL would never work for music or movies, so why does it apply to software?
Why is BSD better?
One really simple reason:
The only version of "free" that is truly free, is that version which has no strings attached.
BSD is a minimalist approach. It only wants to give the authors credit. How hard is it to include author names? Not very.
even in the US we have anti capitalist things like public schools, medicare, social security, subsidies for business etc.
All of which are either failing, in disarray, or joked about.
In real life nobody is a capitalist, everybody is a socialist more or less
Kind of ironic that I hate all 4 of those things you mentioned, then, isn't it?
What has RMS said that makes you believe he is not a capitalist.
I'd say he's a Green judging from his website. He suggests boycotting Coca Cola, which, despite what socialists may say, is actually a very capitalistic action, but also seems to be one of those wackos that think Bush stole the election.
Course I gotta be careful what I say for the sake of karma right? Wrong. I don't care about karma on this website, and I'm not going to censor myself just to try to fit in with the political views of the majority of Slashdot. RMS, and other like him, who find it necessary to have active political agendas with regards to coding, are indeed "wackos" and "crackpots".
Otherwise you're just doing free work for some software venture capitalist, which is stupid. I mean, if you want to help people, go spend time with sick children or something.
Apparently there are some mods who only read half of the comments.
So I suppose the Apache Foundation should just give up the work they've done? I suppose name-recognition for a popular BSD project isn't enough for you?
If anything, licensing under BSD instead of the GPL is the most selfless act a software developer can make. It means they are coding for the love of coding, not because of a political or philosophical agenda. Is there something wrong with that?
Likewise, is there something wrong with working for Habitat for Humanity, the Peace Corps, and The Hunger Project?
The GPL is one of the most exciting, innovative capitalist tools ever created.
I would imagine RMS might actually take offense to the GPL being labeled as "capitalist". Your definition of the GPL being accurate, and RMS's personal comments, would lead me to believe he's anything but "capitalist".