Well, I assumed "Obama Photographer" referred to the dude who puts stuff on Obama's flickr stream, since he mainly seems to follow Obama. But yeah, the word "Obama" needs to be in the title somewhere.
Nobody disputes that Gates is one of the important personalities in computer history, on par with Jobs, Torvalds, Wirth or Stallman. However, the idea that we would still use client-server computer with VAXen were it not for Microsoft is, at best, revisionism. I would guess the older ones among us did not have their first PC experience with a DOS or Windows computer, but with an Apple II or something along those lines.
If somebody said something like "Hey, check out this Linux distro", I would expect an operating system running on a desktop or laptop computer with the Linux kernel and X. Something like Ubuntu Netbook Remix would not surprise me, but if somebody showed me webOS and called it a Linux distro, that would surprise me, even though it technically is a Linux distro.
My point is that there's a difference between what a word actually means, and how people use that word, and that it's kind of pointless to start flamewars over this.
"Would you invest millions with your company in a new technology - which will take 2 or 3 generations of your product to cover the research costs, if you know that by the second generation - your competitors will have 'copied' your product and got those millions worth of research for free?"
Can you provide a concrete example?
The only one I can come up with would be drug development, which I agree would have to be solved otherwise; presumably by funding more scientific research in universities and the like.
Other than that, the disadvantages of patents seem to far outweigh the advantages. In fact, I work in a small startup, and our problem is not that others might copy our stuff (they're free to do so, we're better than them and will move faster than they can); our main problem is that we may be vulnerable to patent trolls and larger competitors.
"Now the problem is that software doesn't cost a thing to reproduce."
It doesn't really matter that the two languages are different. Just like you can compile C to assembly, you can compile Java to JavaScript if you want to. Not sure what GP was talking about (maybe GWT), but it's certainly possible.
"The web" is basically an application framework. You write applications in JavaScript, with HTML and CSS as a display layer. Web applications currently can't do some things "native" apps can (let's see, simple access to the HD, hardware acceleration and similar things), but they're catching up fast.
Complaining about web apps is like complaining about.Net/Mono apps or Java apps. It doesn't really matter how the apps you use are written, as long as they do what you want them to do, and do it well. As the "web framework" becomes more advanced, the difference between web apps and native apps will become smaller and smaller until it will eventually go away entirely.
Complaining about an application's underlying framework is kind of stupid (like all the Mac people whining about how they don't want to use Carbon apps).
My guess would be that they are replacing X with something much simpler. Presumably, they don't really need moving windows, client/server detachement, network transparency and other things. All they need is one huge window with a browser inside, and perhaps a way to show alerts or popups.
While it is technically a Linux distro, it's not what you would expect if somebody told you it was a Linux distro. Typically, if I say "Hey, look at this Linux distro", you expect a Linux kernel, X, and probably KDE or Gnome. People don't typically call Android a Linux distro, either.
Studies actually show that you can buy happiness - as long as you don't spend your money for yourself. Giving money to others increases happiness. Here's a link.
...is a lie. When I studied comp sci, my 60-years-old profs were writing whole operating systems. There are a lot of older programmers who do awesome work, Steve Gibson comes to mind. The reason why there are few old programmers is that the profession has been growing so quickly that we younger ones outnumber the older ones purely on growth. Also, a lot of competent programmers get promoted into management.
So, if you like coding, keep doing it. There's no reason why you would have to go into management if you don't want to.
I think the gist of it is that a lot of "western" software engineers don't want to work as "code monkeys"; programmers just doing their job without any sense of ownership of the project. I don't want to disparage people doing that job, but great software requires that programmers have a sense of ownership of the project and their code. I don't think the "top down" style of software engineering - where you have a few project leaders and an army of willing coders - is going to yield the same product quality as a smaller team of programmers who own part of their project and may not be as easy to guide.
Presumable, the idea is that there's not enough local talent to start a business or a local studio. It's possible, I guess; it seems that currently, there are not enough well-trained software engineers, and the way it is going, this problem may actually yet become worse.
Ron Paul was in the news more than his actual chances warranted, and I don't think I've seen any statistic that showed Obama getting a lot more media coverage than McCain. I believe Obama's coverage was on average more positive than McCain's, but then, McCain did everything to ensure that this was the case. Palin got depicted as a crazy country bumpkin because she was unable to answer even softball questions like "what papers do you read."
It's easy to see some kind of narrative when there is none. In this case, I believe you're vastly exaggerating what actually happened.
I have a pretty simple setup. I block all Flash, but otherwise allow ads. I don't block Flash because I want to block Flash ads, I block it because it's almost always annoying and pointless and crashing my computer or slowing it down, regardless of whether it is an ad or not. The fact that Flash ads are blocked is collateral damage.
And I've found that I don't mind most non-Flash ads. I barely ever click on any (save for Google search results), but I don't mind them 99% of the time. And if I do mind them, I just close the window and find the same content on a different site.
So here's a simple rule: If you want me to see your ad, don't use Flash.
Slashdot Mirror
This is not about distribution of the original work, but about the creation of a derivative work.
His point was that the people he listed don't even qualify as Davids. I don't think you were reading what you thought you were reading :-)
Well, I assumed "Obama Photographer" referred to the dude who puts stuff on Obama's flickr stream, since he mainly seems to follow Obama. But yeah, the word "Obama" needs to be in the title somewhere.
Imagine if you could decide who gets what information.
There was also Bob.
Nobody disputes that Gates is one of the important personalities in computer history, on par with Jobs, Torvalds, Wirth or Stallman. However, the idea that we would still use client-server computer with VAXen were it not for Microsoft is, at best, revisionism. I would guess the older ones among us did not have their first PC experience with a DOS or Windows computer, but with an Apple II or something along those lines.
If somebody said something like "Hey, check out this Linux distro", I would expect an operating system running on a desktop or laptop computer with the Linux kernel and X. Something like Ubuntu Netbook Remix would not surprise me, but if somebody showed me webOS and called it a Linux distro, that would surprise me, even though it technically is a Linux distro.
My point is that there's a difference between what a word actually means, and how people use that word, and that it's kind of pointless to start flamewars over this.
"Would you invest millions with your company in a new technology - which will take 2 or 3 generations of your product to cover the research costs, if you know that by the second generation - your competitors will have 'copied' your product and got those millions worth of research for free?"
Can you provide a concrete example?
The only one I can come up with would be drug development, which I agree would have to be solved otherwise; presumably by funding more scientific research in universities and the like.
Other than that, the disadvantages of patents seem to far outweigh the advantages. In fact, I work in a small startup, and our problem is not that others might copy our stuff (they're free to do so, we're better than them and will move faster than they can); our main problem is that we may be vulnerable to patent trolls and larger competitors.
"Now the problem is that software doesn't cost a thing to reproduce."
We're talking about patents, not copyright.
Canvas. Gears. Next question?
A lot of Google's web apps run just fine while offline.
It doesn't really matter that the two languages are different. Just like you can compile C to assembly, you can compile Java to JavaScript if you want to. Not sure what GP was talking about (maybe GWT), but it's certainly possible.
"The web" is basically an application framework. You write applications in JavaScript, with HTML and CSS as a display layer. Web applications currently can't do some things "native" apps can (let's see, simple access to the HD, hardware acceleration and similar things), but they're catching up fast.
Complaining about web apps is like complaining about .Net/Mono apps or Java apps. It doesn't really matter how the apps you use are written, as long as they do what you want them to do, and do it well. As the "web framework" becomes more advanced, the difference between web apps and native apps will become smaller and smaller until it will eventually go away entirely.
Complaining about an application's underlying framework is kind of stupid (like all the Mac people whining about how they don't want to use Carbon apps).
My guess would be that they are replacing X with something much simpler. Presumably, they don't really need moving windows, client/server detachement, network transparency and other things. All they need is one huge window with a browser inside, and perhaps a way to show alerts or popups.
While it is technically a Linux distro, it's not what you would expect if somebody told you it was a Linux distro. Typically, if I say "Hey, look at this Linux distro", you expect a Linux kernel, X, and probably KDE or Gnome. People don't typically call Android a Linux distro, either.
Does anyone actually really believe that companies will suddenly stop innovating if patents go away?
Studies actually show that you can buy happiness - as long as you don't spend your money for yourself. Giving money to others increases happiness. Here's a link.
...is a lie. When I studied comp sci, my 60-years-old profs were writing whole operating systems. There are a lot of older programmers who do awesome work, Steve Gibson comes to mind. The reason why there are few old programmers is that the profession has been growing so quickly that we younger ones outnumber the older ones purely on growth. Also, a lot of competent programmers get promoted into management.
So, if you like coding, keep doing it. There's no reason why you would have to go into management if you don't want to.
I think the gist of it is that a lot of "western" software engineers don't want to work as "code monkeys"; programmers just doing their job without any sense of ownership of the project. I don't want to disparage people doing that job, but great software requires that programmers have a sense of ownership of the project and their code. I don't think the "top down" style of software engineering - where you have a few project leaders and an army of willing coders - is going to yield the same product quality as a smaller team of programmers who own part of their project and may not be as easy to guide.
"The US created these industries without massive immigration"
Wait, Indians invented the computer all by themselves? Damn, I must really have been asleep during my history classes.
Binary also uses 0 and 1.
Presumable, the idea is that there's not enough local talent to start a business or a local studio. It's possible, I guess; it seems that currently, there are not enough well-trained software engineers, and the way it is going, this problem may actually yet become worse.
Ron Paul was in the news more than his actual chances warranted, and I don't think I've seen any statistic that showed Obama getting a lot more media coverage than McCain. I believe Obama's coverage was on average more positive than McCain's, but then, McCain did everything to ensure that this was the case. Palin got depicted as a crazy country bumpkin because she was unable to answer even softball questions like "what papers do you read."
It's easy to see some kind of narrative when there is none. In this case, I believe you're vastly exaggerating what actually happened.
So technicians can't be artists? WTF?
I have a pretty simple setup. I block all Flash, but otherwise allow ads. I don't block Flash because I want to block Flash ads, I block it because it's almost always annoying and pointless and crashing my computer or slowing it down, regardless of whether it is an ad or not. The fact that Flash ads are blocked is collateral damage.
And I've found that I don't mind most non-Flash ads. I barely ever click on any (save for Google search results), but I don't mind them 99% of the time. And if I do mind them, I just close the window and find the same content on a different site.
So here's a simple rule: If you want me to see your ad, don't use Flash.