Well, as a programmer I am happy to give away some or even most of what I do -- I still get paid. For a writer it's different. Having worked in the magazine-publishing industry I can tell you that with very few exceptions freelance writers get paid shit, and for the most part have little choice to take what they are offered -- it is a very competitive profession.
At any rate -- I expect this to effect larger companies (like the New York Times) much more than smaller periodicals. Most writers writing for small magazines in fact probably will be happy to give on-line publishing rights for free or for cheap. But frankly I don't have a lot of sympathy for large newspaper companies which are currently enjoying the largest profits ever at the expense of the writers and editors that work for them. If writers can squeeze some money out of these companies (who are much more greedy than the writers are), I say more power to them.
BTW -- there are plenty of artists and writers who do share their work for free. But at some point everyone has to make a living.
Oh yeah, those writers -- they're greedy motherfuckers. Here I am working my ass off to pay for my house and my SUV when those motherfuckers just sit back and eat their ramen noodles in luxury and collect royalty checks for stuff they did years ago. I'm sick and tired of those fat cat writers lording it all over me.
Seriously what you say makes no sense. Exactly what source of income did they destroy? Oh the websites that pay them exactly nothing for the use of their work.
The reason why the 'gift culture' model doesn't apply to writers is because writers have to actually make a living from what they would be giving away. And freelancers are still free to give away their work (and many will continue to do so) -- companies like the New York Times just can't do it for them against their will.
Well, I guess I should have put more of an emphasis on the "commercial interests [being] free to exploit it" part. At any rate, the attitude has basically been that the ultimate purpose of research is to enrich some company, and if it doesn't in some way serve a corporate interest it probably isn't worth much and isn't worth funding.
I think I understand Mundie's/Microsoft's argument re: GPL software. It basically comes down to their view of what they call the "ecosystem" of software. In their view, government and universities (funded by taxes and philanthropy) should do fundamental research, which should then be placed in the public domain where commercial interests are free to exploit it. In this view, the GPL (at least if used by these groups) is indeed a threat, for it prevents the commercialization (at least in the Microsoft way) or this research. It is certainly consistent with a certain world-view, and makes a certain amount of sense, however I think it is really an outdated view. Traditionally this made sense because one of the roles of government has been to promote the economic prosperity of its country's industries. One way of doing this was to fund research that would give a competitive advantage to companies within its borders. Now, however, most large companies are transnational, with less loyalty to their home countries than they once had. From a public policy point of view, the question is does funding the research of these corporations still provide the maximum social benefit (for our country)? I would have to say that increasingly the answer is no. I would say that the benefit of having freely available (as in GPL) research now outweighs the benefit of whatever economic benefit a company such as Microsoft would receive from the ability to commercialize such software. This benefit is both in the increased intellectual freedom that free software provides, and in the economic benefit to thousands of businesses that can improve their bottom lines by using free software.
P.S. I hope this made sense, because I slept late and now I'm late for work and writing this way to fast when I should really be eating breakfast and getting dressed (though not at the same time).
They took the latest decently licensed version
and improved it from there.
I think you're wrong about that. Since supposedly the license was never changed, only "clarified", there never was a "decently licensed version" to start from.
At any rate, from the comment on the initial CVS checkin:
Initial import of pf, an all-new ipf-compatable packet filter.
Insane amounts of work done my dhartmei. Great work!
which certainly makes it seem likes it's starting from scratch.
The iPix patent doesn't apply to software that does what you want -- only to software that takes 2 extremely wide angle (>180) pictures and stitches them to make a 360 panorama. Panorama Tools is being re-released without this feature.
We're talking about patents! Patent law does not require them to go after people to protect their rights the way trademark law does.
And anyway, the patents themselves are extremely dubious -- it's just that no one has the resources to challenge them.
The reason they're doing this is because they have an untenable business model, and the company is run by morons (and yes I speak from personal experience).
For the only upside, take a look at their stock price -- it's hovering just above the penny-stock range, down from the mid $40's. It looks like they probably won't be around much longer, thank god.
I probably shouldn't be responding to this obvious troll, but since it got modded up so high...
People in America, I have noticed, seem to think that privacy is some sort of fundamental right, when in fact it is socially constructed.
All rights are socially constructed. That doesn't mean that they aren't real -- they're real as long as we (as a society) continue to value them. The right to privacy is becoming controversial because it is highly valued by a lot of private citizens, but many corporations see it as an outdated concept that's a hindrance to higher profits.
The transparent society that is coming will mark the ascendance of our species. In the beginning we were innocent and naked and had no privacy, like Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, naked but for a fig leave each. Later, with the rise of agriculture, information became power and the notion of privacy as an absolute right was eventually invented (about as absurd as stating that gun ownership is a 'right').
This doesn't really make enough sense to respond to.
Privacy is not a right, it is a manufactured abomination, a cover for the dishonest and unnatural.
This pretty much ruins your troll, unfortunately -- you should have toned down the retoric a bit and someone would have fallen for it.
Speaking (well, writing) as someone with Tourette's, let me just say that the random use of obscene language is a very rare symptom of Tourette's syndrome. While by definition Tourette's involves some form of vocalization, in most people it usually things like grunts, coughing and/or throat-clearing. It is also closely correlated to incidence of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
Most people don't even know I have it (though they do think I'm a little wierd). Any excessive swearing on my part is probably more closely related to my working with a couple of ex-Navy guys than to my Tourette's Syndrome.
Sounds intruiging. So why has there never been a slashdot story on Extreme Programming before?
;-)
Re:Well, I see the usual anti-union bushwah
on
IT Unions?
·
· Score: 2
I know this is a bit pedantic and parallel to the discussion, but I must respond:
Person A is a cinematographer who has been working in the motion picture industry for 20 years. They're very good at their job -- They can load an Arri 535B blindfolded with one arm tied behind their back.
Person B is a relatively new videographer who has just been hired on to film Star Wars Episode II. They know nothing of film grain structures or characteristic curves. They've never even touched a light meter. Yet they can record images with the same quality as Person A, maybe even better. Why?
First of all, only a small part of the job a cinematographer is specific to the particular camera they are using, and it certainly doesn't include loading!
Secondly, a "relatively new videographer" would never get hired to shoot a $100,000,000+ film. The actual DP for Star Wars II (and ep. 1) is David Tattersall who has extensive experience shooting film, and as far as I know SWII is his first major project shooting video.
A producer would always prefer to have someone with film-experience shoot their project -- when they get an inexperienced videographer it's because that's all they can afford, and they often end up regretting the decision! (I get regular offers to shoot projects on video -- I usually turn them down because a) a prefer film, and b) most video shoots are understaffed, underpaid and generally lacking in professionalism. Of course, they don't have unions!)
A large part of what you're paying for in a DP is their experience. Sure a kid right out of film school might be able to do some nice lighting, but are they ready to be the head of a department? There's a reason why most DP's don't become a DP until their mid-to-late thirtys.
In the film industry these days the union doesn't so much protect seniority as it provides a safety baseline for a production. It is not uncommon to work 18-hour days on a non-union shoot, with 6-hour turnaround time (which basically means 4 hours of sleep, since you still need to wrap up after shooting stops, and drive home). People are litterally killed by these kinds of conditions. Remember when Brandon Lee was killed on the set of The Crow? That accident never would have happened on a union set -- any number of union-mandated safety requirements would have prevented it.
Frankly, I wonder if people realize to what extent the working conditions that they take for granted are the result of union organizing -- things like the 40-hour work week, employer-paid health insurance, paid vacations, etc. Even if you never join a union, you should be thankful that someone did!
Re:Well, I see the usual anti-union bushwah
on
IT Unions?
·
· Score: 2
What are you smoking?
Only the good stuff;-)
Seriously, there are certain compromises made for the good of society. The concept of seniority is one of them. Most of us probably make less than we're worth towards the beginning of our careers and more towards the end, and that makes a lot of sense to me. When we're young, our needs are less, and they grow throughout our lives.
Anyway, everyone needs to eat, even people who can't work for shit -- or would you rather they starve?
Re:Well, I see the usual anti-union bushwah
on
IT Unions?
·
· Score: 2
FUD. As a free citizen you pick your CEO when you pick your job. If your CEO leaves you can leave with him. If your CEO is replaced, you can choose whether to stay or go. When your in a union, your vote in contract negotiation is narrowed down to 1/n, where n is the number of people in the union. Without a union, you can negotiate 100% your contract.
It's very easy to say this all now, because despite the slowing of the economy there is still a shortage of IT workers, which gives you a disproportionate amount of power at your job. To the majority of workers in this country your asertions are really a joke. Quit my job when the CEO leaves, just to start over again somewhere else with no seniority, worse benefits, etc, etc?? (Of course for most people to have some sort of "transferable seniority" means that you're in a union in the first place).
I guess having worked in an industry (film industry) where I can confidently say that the unions save lives, I have a slightly different perspective.
It is true that in their actual operation fission plants produce little air polution, but if you factor in all emissions from the plant construction, mining, transportation, waste-processing and decommissioning processes, the emissions are not inconsequential. Granted, they are still probably better than most coal plants, but still pretty bad.
What's really funny, is that for a while (until they renumbered it) the successor to Mac OS X Server 1.2 was going to be Mac OS X Server 1.0. As it is, we're going to have Mac OS X Server 2.0 that has as its core Mac OS X 10.x. I want to know what comes next, Max OS X 11?
Wow I had forgotten completely about the Digiview. My little brother and I used to make (monochrome) 3-D photos with that thing -- take a picture w/ the red filter on, move the lens a few inches and take another w/ the blue filter. All you need are some 3-D glasses and you've got instant 3-D!
I worked at a software company when I was 17 (this was before the whole dot.com thing -- this was back in 1989). I got paid $8 an hour (it was my first job -- I didn't know any better!). Before I knew it I was coding on some of their core products and working on some custom projects. (I later found out they were billing my time to their clients at $80 an hour). Everything was done using some libraries that my boss had written (all in Pascal). These libraries has, shall I say, some "deficiencies", so I kept my own copy of them and took to improving them for one of the projects I was doing. Of course, being 17 and never having worked with a team before, I never told anyone -- but hey, they liked the results!
Somewhere around this time I found out that the two co-founders of the company had met in prison (one for Medicare fraud, the other for drug smuggling), and had some feud going on between them. One worked in an office in the city (they did hardware development), and the other (where I worked) ran the software end in an office upstate. Well, one day when my boss was out of town at a convention, a big moving van showed up and some guys came, told us we were all fired, and started taking all the computers.
About a month later I heard from my ex-boss that he had heard that no one could compile any of my code, so they had had to hire a bunch of new programmers to rewrite everything from scratch. I then told him about my custom libraries. He gave me a big pat on the back and took me out for drinks.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, as a programmer I am happy to give away some or even most of what I do -- I still get paid. For a writer it's different. Having worked in the magazine-publishing industry I can tell you that with very few exceptions freelance writers get paid shit, and for the most part have little choice to take what they are offered -- it is a very competitive profession.
At any rate -- I expect this to effect larger companies (like the New York Times) much more than smaller periodicals. Most writers writing for small magazines in fact probably will be happy to give on-line publishing rights for free or for cheap. But frankly I don't have a lot of sympathy for large newspaper companies which are currently enjoying the largest profits ever at the expense of the writers and editors that work for them. If writers can squeeze some money out of these companies (who are much more greedy than the writers are), I say more power to them.
BTW -- there are plenty of artists and writers who do share their work for free. But at some point everyone has to make a living.
Oh yeah, those writers -- they're greedy motherfuckers. Here I am working my ass off to pay for my house and my SUV when those motherfuckers just sit back and eat their ramen noodles in luxury and collect royalty checks for stuff they did years ago. I'm sick and tired of those fat cat writers lording it all over me.
Seriously what you say makes no sense. Exactly what source of income did they destroy? Oh the websites that pay them exactly nothing for the use of their work.
The reason why the 'gift culture' model doesn't apply to writers is because writers have to actually make a living from what they would be giving away. And freelancers are still free to give away their work (and many will continue to do so) -- companies like the New York Times just can't do it for them against their will.
Well, I guess I should have put more of an emphasis on the "commercial interests [being] free to exploit it" part. At any rate, the attitude has basically been that the ultimate purpose of research is to enrich some company, and if it doesn't in some way serve a corporate interest it probably isn't worth much and isn't worth funding.
I think I understand Mundie's/Microsoft's argument re: GPL software. It basically comes down to their view of what they call the "ecosystem" of software. In their view, government and universities (funded by taxes and philanthropy) should do fundamental research, which should then be placed in the public domain where commercial interests are free to exploit it. In this view, the GPL (at least if used by these groups) is indeed a threat, for it prevents the commercialization (at least in the Microsoft way) or this research. It is certainly consistent with a certain world-view, and makes a certain amount of sense, however I think it is really an outdated view. Traditionally this made sense because one of the roles of government has been to promote the economic prosperity of its country's industries. One way of doing this was to fund research that would give a competitive advantage to companies within its borders. Now, however, most large companies are transnational, with less loyalty to their home countries than they once had. From a public policy point of view, the question is does funding the research of these corporations still provide the maximum social benefit (for our country)? I would have to say that increasingly the answer is no. I would say that the benefit of having freely available (as in GPL) research now outweighs the benefit of whatever economic benefit a company such as Microsoft would receive from the ability to commercialize such software. This benefit is both in the increased intellectual freedom that free software provides, and in the economic benefit to thousands of businesses that can improve their bottom lines by using free software.
P.S. I hope this made sense, because I slept late and now I'm late for work and writing this way to fast when I should really be eating breakfast and getting dressed (though not at the same time).
D'oh! Sorry, I read too fast. My bad.
I think you're wrong about that. Since supposedly the license was never changed, only "clarified", there never was a "decently licensed version" to start from.
At any rate, from the comment on the initial CVS checkin:
which certainly makes it seem likes it's starting from scratch.
No, now they'll say sorry, never heard of it. But we can install Red Hat Database if you want!
that they should have gone with the inferior product because some day it may do what PostgreSQL does today. OK, whatever...
The iPix patent doesn't apply to software that does what you want -- only to software that takes 2 extremely wide angle (>180) pictures and stitches them to make a 360 panorama. Panorama Tools is being re-released without this feature.
We're talking about patents! Patent law does not require them to go after people to protect their rights the way trademark law does.
And anyway, the patents themselves are extremely dubious -- it's just that no one has the resources to challenge them.
The reason they're doing this is because they have an untenable business model, and the company is run by morons (and yes I speak from personal experience).
For the only upside, take a look at their stock price -- it's hovering just above the penny-stock range, down from the mid $40's. It looks like they probably won't be around much longer, thank god.
Anyone who would want to save mother Theresa obviously hasn't read this or any of the other articles or books by Christopher Hitchens on the subject!
All rights are socially constructed. That doesn't mean that they aren't real -- they're real as long as we (as a society) continue to value them. The right to privacy is becoming controversial because it is highly valued by a lot of private citizens, but many corporations see it as an outdated concept that's a hindrance to higher profits.
This doesn't really make enough sense to respond to.
This pretty much ruins your troll, unfortunately -- you should have toned down the retoric a bit and someone would have fallen for it.
Speaking (well, writing) as someone with Tourette's, let me just say that the random use of obscene language is a very rare symptom of Tourette's syndrome. While by definition Tourette's involves some form of vocalization, in most people it usually things like grunts, coughing and/or throat-clearing. It is also closely correlated to incidence of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
Most people don't even know I have it (though they do think I'm a little wierd). Any excessive swearing on my part is probably more closely related to my working with a couple of ex-Navy guys than to my Tourette's Syndrome.
It seems that the OS X package installer program doesn't allow this anymore (at least not that I could figure out.
Bummer.
Hence the ;-)
In fact I counted 4 previous articles on XP.
He has a link to his thread under "Who am I?"
Sounds intruiging. So why has there never been a slashdot story on Extreme Programming before?
;-)
First of all, only a small part of the job a cinematographer is specific to the particular camera they are using, and it certainly doesn't include loading!
Secondly, a "relatively new videographer" would never get hired to shoot a $100,000,000+ film. The actual DP for Star Wars II (and ep. 1) is David Tattersall who has extensive experience shooting film, and as far as I know SWII is his first major project shooting video.
A producer would always prefer to have someone with film-experience shoot their project -- when they get an inexperienced videographer it's because that's all they can afford, and they often end up regretting the decision! (I get regular offers to shoot projects on video -- I usually turn them down because a) a prefer film, and b) most video shoots are understaffed, underpaid and generally lacking in professionalism. Of course, they don't have unions!)
A large part of what you're paying for in a DP is their experience. Sure a kid right out of film school might be able to do some nice lighting, but are they ready to be the head of a department? There's a reason why most DP's don't become a DP until their mid-to-late thirtys.
In the film industry these days the union doesn't so much protect seniority as it provides a safety baseline for a production. It is not uncommon to work 18-hour days on a non-union shoot, with 6-hour turnaround time (which basically means 4 hours of sleep, since you still need to wrap up after shooting stops, and drive home). People are litterally killed by these kinds of conditions. Remember when Brandon Lee was killed on the set of The Crow? That accident never would have happened on a union set -- any number of union-mandated safety requirements would have prevented it.
Frankly, I wonder if people realize to what extent the working conditions that they take for granted are the result of union organizing -- things like the 40-hour work week, employer-paid health insurance, paid vacations, etc. Even if you never join a union, you should be thankful that someone did!
Only the good stuff
Seriously, there are certain compromises made for the good of society. The concept of seniority is one of them. Most of us probably make less than we're worth towards the beginning of our careers and more towards the end, and that makes a lot of sense to me. When we're young, our needs are less, and they grow throughout our lives.
Anyway, everyone needs to eat, even people who can't work for shit -- or would you rather they starve?
It's very easy to say this all now, because despite the slowing of the economy there is still a shortage of IT workers, which gives you a disproportionate amount of power at your job. To the majority of workers in this country your asertions are really a joke. Quit my job when the CEO leaves, just to start over again somewhere else with no seniority, worse benefits, etc, etc?? (Of course for most people to have some sort of "transferable seniority" means that you're in a union in the first place).
I guess having worked in an industry (film industry) where I can confidently say that the unions save lives, I have a slightly different perspective.
It is true that in their actual operation fission plants produce little air polution, but if you factor in all emissions from the plant construction, mining, transportation, waste-processing and decommissioning processes, the emissions are not inconsequential. Granted, they are still probably better than most coal plants, but still pretty bad.
What's really funny, is that for a while (until they renumbered it) the successor to Mac OS X Server 1.2 was going to be Mac OS X Server 1.0. As it is, we're going to have Mac OS X Server 2.0 that has as its core Mac OS X 10.x. I want to know what comes next, Max OS X 11?
Wow I had forgotten completely about the Digiview. My little brother and I used to make (monochrome) 3-D photos with that thing -- take a picture w/ the red filter on, move the lens a few inches and take another w/ the blue filter. All you need are some 3-D glasses and you've got instant 3-D!
pervert.
I worked at a software company when I was 17 (this was before the whole dot.com thing -- this was back in 1989). I got paid $8 an hour (it was my first job -- I didn't know any better!). Before I knew it I was coding on some of their core products and working on some custom projects. (I later found out they were billing my time to their clients at $80 an hour). Everything was done using some libraries that my boss had written (all in Pascal). These libraries has, shall I say, some "deficiencies", so I kept my own copy of them and took to improving them for one of the projects I was doing. Of course, being 17 and never having worked with a team before, I never told anyone -- but hey, they liked the results!
Somewhere around this time I found out that the two co-founders of the company had met in prison (one for Medicare fraud, the other for drug smuggling), and had some feud going on between them. One worked in an office in the city (they did hardware development), and the other (where I worked) ran the software end in an office upstate. Well, one day when my boss was out of town at a convention, a big moving van showed up and some guys came, told us we were all fired, and started taking all the computers.
About a month later I heard from my ex-boss that he had heard that no one could compile any of my code, so they had had to hire a bunch of new programmers to rewrite everything from scratch. I then told him about my custom libraries. He gave me a big pat on the back and took me out for drinks.
I think he's back in prison now.