Well, some FOSS supporters on Slashdot are known to equivocate about what "Linux" consists of. When trying to compare functionality with other OS's they consider the entire distro, when comparing stability or security the definition shrinks down to only the kernel.
I agree. While I haven't paid any attention to WIRED for a number of years, I remember that their magazine was harder to read than anything I'd seen before.
Actually, I barely found the process tolerable with the 8 real players. I was like making a movie: two days of "play" amounted to about 45 minutes of actual playtime.
a) Get some of our money back by encouraging MS to aggressively pursue any patent violations in Linux, collect licensing fees, and pass the money to us? b) Discourage other companies from suing MS for patent violations to lower the cost of MS software?
OK, I admit that I love to draw contrary conclusions from poorly-reasoned arguments.
I think part of postgresql's problem is its awful name. Just about anything would have been better (e.g. TurboSQL, AgileSQL, FastSQL, UglySQL, FatDumbAndHappySQL, etc).
In both cases companies are lobbying the government. They were concerned about MS only to the extent that they couldn't compete in the marketplace with them, so they decided to take the fight to the government. MS took the hit because they weren't playing the lobbying game at the time. Now MS has learned its lesson and is fighting fire with fire.
I remember years ago when Scott McNealy mocked MS about needing a word processor, forbid the use of PowerPoint at Sun and made a big show of handing out whiteboards and markers to his employees.. until StarOffice came along. The suddenly he thought that "office" applications were great.
has every suggested to a politician that their financial support or vote might be in jeopardy if he didn't support their position. Apparently many politicians have become suddenly interested in the details of file formats because they certainly weren't informed by anyone pushing open standards. That might be seen as lobbying and that's wrong.
I hate to break it to you, but the vast majority of people on the planet are still working in the fields and don't have the ability to easily create and/or distribute creative works even if they had the free time available to do it.
In any case, I don't think this has much to do with copyright. The originators of copyright law may have performed some spin to say it was all about the good of society, but I suspect greed was just as much a factor then as it is now.
According to ShieldW0lf, it's going away with or without your efforts.
But seriously, how was the civil rights movement in the US and elsewhere able to bring about change when the powerful were against them? I'd hardly compare the importance of ending copyright to ending racial segregation, but the point is that change is possible if enough people are willing to sacrifice for what they believe in (Note that downloading songs illegally doesn't qualify as a sacrifice).
I did some further research and discovered that we're both right. Original Laser discs used only analog for both audio and video, later some disks were available with digital audio.
Right, but it is a crime as you acknowledge. Many people believe that breaking the law in a democracy without a very good reason is unethical. Wanting to avoid payment doesn't usually qualify as a good reason because it's self-serving.
"It shouldn't even be a crime."
Work to change the law, then.
"It's an obsolete social mechanism that causes more than enough harm to offset any socially redeeming qualities it has."
What is the great harm to society that you allude to?
"If you make any long term plans around copyright continuing to exist, you're a fool, because it's not going to."
"If records really want to make a comeback, they'll come up with a nondestructive way to read the disc, like a laser beam. Oops, they did that. It's called a CD."
No, I think it's called a laser disk, since laser disks are a nondestructive analog medium.
To be fair, this is a trade-off. Generics in Java allow backward compatibility which you pay for with type erasure (i.e. generics provide compile-time autocasting so the JVM still thinks everything is an object).
If you're maintaining an existing Java application, it's not likely that you're going to rewrite it in C# anyway. If you are starting from scratch without any commitment, I think C#'s approach to generics is better (I'm just talking about this particular issue, I'm not saying that C# is better than Java for all new projects).
"I don't get what you're asking for. It seems to be two mutually-incompatible things. You can't tweak for a particular hardware/software configuration, and its particular idiosyncrasies, while also retaining broad compatibility."
I'm not asking for anything, you're essentially making the same point I have. I'm just saying that if lock-in is a problem at all, it's going to be with applications that target specific features of a platform.
"We're past the time when developing on a particular platform meant that you software will only run there."
Well, I developed Atari 2600 games on Unix back in the early eighties, so the ability to develop on a different platform than you intend to run on isn't a recent capability.
"It's trivial, if you really want to, to produce software that can be run basically anywhere. But it requires making compatibility a priority, and in most software development that just isn't at the top of the list."
I'm not sure I'd agree that it's trivial, but it's often possible as long as you're willing to compromise performance or functionality to get there (or just write multiple versions from scratch). In my view, however, it's rarely justified in a business sense particularly for in-house apps where management can mandate any platform it chooses. Windows, Linux, and OS X are likely to outlive most applications, so targeting any of those should be safe.
I was talking about general lock-in. You're talking about a category you've created specifically to exclude anything except MS Office (how well you've done it, I don't know or care).
Certainly one can choose to use only applications that will run on multiple platforms, but that is going to eliminate any advantage of selecting a particular platform and give you only the least common denominator functionality. One could choose command line applications written in C using standard libraries originally targeted to UNIX and have them work fine on Windows after being compiled for that platform. Yet I doubt that many would agree that Windows has no lock-in on that basis.
The real issue of lock-in concerns applications that take advantage of the platform they're written for. Linux and Windows can't run standard OS X GUI applications. Macs and Windows can't run GNOME apps etc. Sure, they'll always be dual-boot strategies, virtual environments, compatibility layers, etc, but I'm talking about real compatibility without hacks.
Generally, I'd say there are many programs that lock you into a single vendor, not just MS Office. I'd also say that forcing you to upgrade is an entirely separate issue that might actually encourage people to switch despite the lock-in.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, some FOSS supporters on Slashdot are known to equivocate about what "Linux" consists of. When trying to compare functionality with other OS's they consider the entire distro, when comparing stability or security the definition shrinks down to only the kernel.
I agree. While I haven't paid any attention to WIRED for a number of years, I remember that their magazine was harder to read than anything I'd seen before.
Actually, I barely found the process tolerable with the 8 real players. I was like making a movie: two days of "play" amounted to about 45 minutes of actual playtime.
a) Get some of our money back by encouraging MS to aggressively pursue any patent violations in Linux, collect licensing fees, and pass the money to us?
b) Discourage other companies from suing MS for patent violations to lower the cost of MS software?
OK, I admit that I love to draw contrary conclusions from poorly-reasoned arguments.
Since when did D&D become primarily a "Geek" thing? When I used to play, only 25% of our group were geeks.
I think part of postgresql's problem is its awful name. Just about anything would have been better (e.g. TurboSQL, AgileSQL, FastSQL, UglySQL, FatDumbAndHappySQL, etc).
In both cases companies are lobbying the government. They were concerned about MS only to the extent that they couldn't compete in the marketplace with them, so they decided to take the fight to the government. MS took the hit because they weren't playing the lobbying game at the time. Now MS has learned its lesson and is fighting fire with fire.
They didn't, many Slashdotter's have.
is it no longer true that you don't need one?
.. until StarOffice came along. The suddenly he thought that "office" applications were great.
I remember years ago when Scott McNealy mocked MS about needing a word processor, forbid the use of PowerPoint at Sun and made a big show of handing out whiteboards and markers to his employees
No, I made it sound like the same thing.
That women are smarter than men. Given the bleak prospects for CS graduates in the future, it makes perfect sense to choose a better career.
did step up. They were the "Men in Black" 10 or 15 years ago that lobbied the government to start antitrust proceedings against MS.
has every suggested to a politician that their financial support or vote might be in jeopardy if he didn't support their position. Apparently many politicians have become suddenly interested in the details of file formats because they certainly weren't informed by anyone pushing open standards. That might be seen as lobbying and that's wrong.
I've been around too long to make such predictions. My generation thought we'd have flying cars by now.
I hate to break it to you, but the vast majority of people on the planet are still working in the fields and don't have the ability to easily create and/or distribute creative works even if they had the free time available to do it.
In any case, I don't think this has much to do with copyright. The originators of copyright law may have performed some spin to say it was all about the good of society, but I suspect greed was just as much a factor then as it is now.
According to ShieldW0lf, it's going away with or without your efforts.
But seriously, how was the civil rights movement in the US and elsewhere able to bring about change when the powerful were against them? I'd hardly compare the importance of ending copyright to ending racial segregation, but the point is that change is possible if enough people are willing to sacrifice for what they believe in (Note that downloading songs illegally doesn't qualify as a sacrifice).
I did some further research and discovered that we're both right. Original Laser discs used only analog for both audio and video, later some disks were available with digital audio.
"Copyright infringement isn't stealing."
Right, but it is a crime as you acknowledge. Many people believe that breaking the law in a democracy without a very good reason is unethical. Wanting to avoid payment doesn't usually qualify as a good reason because it's self-serving.
"It shouldn't even be a crime."
Work to change the law, then.
"It's an obsolete social mechanism that causes more than enough harm to offset any socially redeeming qualities it has."
What is the great harm to society that you allude to?
"If you make any long term plans around copyright continuing to exist, you're a fool, because it's not going to."
Then you should be happy.
"If records really want to make a comeback, they'll come up with a nondestructive way to read the disc, like a laser beam. Oops, they did that. It's called a CD."
No, I think it's called a laser disk, since laser disks are a nondestructive analog medium.
To be fair, this is a trade-off. Generics in Java allow backward compatibility which you pay for with type erasure (i.e. generics provide compile-time autocasting so the JVM still thinks everything is an object).
If you're maintaining an existing Java application, it's not likely that you're going to rewrite it in C# anyway. If you are starting from scratch without any commitment, I think C#'s approach to generics is better (I'm just talking about this particular issue, I'm not saying that C# is better than Java for all new projects).
by donating $1 for each game sold to make up for the financial loss they suffered when they lost their jobs in the video game crash.
As a former Atari 2600 programmer, I'd be happy to handle the distribution of your most welcome contributions.
"I don't get what you're asking for. It seems to be two mutually-incompatible things. You can't tweak for a particular hardware/software configuration, and its particular idiosyncrasies, while also retaining broad compatibility."
I'm not asking for anything, you're essentially making the same point I have. I'm just saying that if lock-in is a problem at all, it's going to be with applications that target specific features of a platform.
"We're past the time when developing on a particular platform meant that you software will only run there."
Well, I developed Atari 2600 games on Unix back in the early eighties, so the ability to develop on a different platform than you intend to run on isn't a recent capability.
"It's trivial, if you really want to, to produce software that can be run basically anywhere. But it requires making compatibility a priority, and in most software development that just isn't at the top of the list."
I'm not sure I'd agree that it's trivial, but it's often possible as long as you're willing to compromise performance or functionality to get there (or just write multiple versions from scratch). In my view, however, it's rarely justified in a business sense particularly for in-house apps where management can mandate any platform it chooses. Windows, Linux, and OS X are likely to outlive most applications, so targeting any of those should be safe.
I was talking about general lock-in. You're talking about a category you've created specifically to exclude anything except MS Office (how well you've done it, I don't know or care).
Certainly one can choose to use only applications that will run on multiple platforms, but that is going to eliminate any advantage of selecting a particular platform and give you only the least common denominator functionality. One could choose command line applications written in C using standard libraries originally targeted to UNIX and have them work fine on Windows after being compiled for that platform. Yet I doubt that many would agree that Windows has no lock-in on that basis.
The real issue of lock-in concerns applications that take advantage of the platform they're written for. Linux and Windows can't run standard OS X GUI applications. Macs and Windows can't run GNOME apps etc. Sure, they'll always be dual-boot strategies, virtual environments, compatibility layers, etc, but I'm talking about real compatibility without hacks.
Generally, I'd say there are many programs that lock you into a single vendor, not just MS Office. I'd also say that forcing you to upgrade is an entirely separate issue that might actually encourage people to switch despite the lock-in.