You argue as though domain experts can't translate their needs into a set of software requirements.
It's done all the time. Just because you couldn't find a nurse that you were chatting up who had a software need that could be described effectively to you doesn't really say much.
This bears repeating. RMS is quite clear that "free software" has nothing to do with the price
"free software" is effectively free in the sense of price since once the source is out there and there are no restrictions on its use, the product becomes available... for free.
Selling or giving software to someone, but retaining control on what they can do with it (like stopping them from modifying it) is a social evil.
I call bullshit on that statement. As long as there isn't monopolistic control on the ability to write software, retaining control vs price is just a part of the negotiation between developers and customers.
I do it all the time as a software consultant. If a client wants an application that I might want to resell to others and they don't want to pay me the full cost of writing it - I charge them less but don't give them the source and restrict their use of the product.
If a client wants to pay me for the full value of my time and effort, then I give them the source for the product.
There's nothing evil about it. I place some value on control and if they let me keep it, I charge them less.
That sounds suspicious on the surface. To which industries are you referring as being afforded special protection?
Even if there are cases of corporate protection against the use of free speech, the most obvious free speech suppression I've seen lately is coming from the left. It started with political correctness, which was made law with so called "hate speech" laws. The left is also the side pushing for "equal time" from private broadcasters.
Didn't the right-majority Supreme Court just take a huge blow for freedom of speech in the Snyder vs Phelps case?
That reasoning sounds a bit contrived and strains hard to support a thesis of "the man is keeping us down".
If anything, it looks like the law was designed to PROTECT a workers right to work without being attacked from the outside by those with means. It's likely that the tortious interference law was in place before the internet even existed, when the media controllers had to be prevented from going after the little guy.
I know what you mean. I can't seem to muster much sympathy for dipshits that go to oppressive foreign countries, do illegal things, and get busted.
That includes you stupid hikers who go looking for trouble on the "borders" of Iran or North Korea. You're fools and we waste far too much time giving a damn about how you fucked up your lives.
Oh, and before anyone tries to correct me. I know what Stallman means when he says "free" (perpetually confusing as the overloaded use of the term will be).
When it comes to getting paid for your work, it means the same thing. As soon as the source is available, even my mom's quilting software source will be downloaded and recompiled by some mom's little darling and then no one pays for more copies.
Stallman is always such a fundamentalist. Any philosophy taken too far no longer makes sense.
'The existence and use of non-free software [which] is a social problem. It's an evil. And our aim is a world without that problem.
Okay, so my mom uses a program to help her with her quilting. Who in the hell is going to write that for her if no one is paid to do it?
The whole "programmers scratching an itch" model fails rather dramatically in the realm of applications that lack any programmer interest.
Open source and open standards are cool and a great way to manage a part of the software industry, but it seems obvious that there will always be a need to have proprietary software that is sold by the copy.
Stallman's message would be a lot more inteligible and acceptable if it weren't so ridiculously out there.
I don't disagree that it's mostly an engineering task.
The title of the linked article is "Scientists set NASA space priorities; can it carry them out?". I don't care if they're engineers, astrophysicists, or herpetologists... if they're setting the priorities for NASA, I want them to get their heads out of their asses and focus NASA on solving the engineering problems to get us to the Moon. Otherwise, we need more pragmatic folks setting NASA's priorities.
Personally, I think that if we're not moving primarily toward colonization of space, then we have better things we could be spending those billions of dollars on. Cut NASA's budget and shut it down. Restart it later when we're not in a worldwide depression.
We need to figure out what it takes to colonize the Moon. We need to build the infrastructure that can keep us there and commercialize the exploitation of the Moon and nearby asteroids. We have almost all of the materials and the technology to build a working Lunar space elevator now. Once we have that, getting supplies and raw materials on and off the Lunar surface is practically free.
There are so many great reasons for tackling the Moon first as we venture out into space.
To me, going to Mars or Uranus with probes vs going to the Moon means that we don't want to build up the technology and infrastructure to become a space faring species. It says that we're more interested in satisfying a few scientific curiosities rather than figuring out how to live away from the Earth's surface.
I find their list to be extremely disappointing. I was hoping to see mankind take its first real steps toward the stars in my lifetime. Ah well...
You seem to have made the classic slashdot mistake of assuming that knowing calculus, physics, or computers makes you intrinsically better than the derided jocks and socialites.
I spent my youth with one foot in the jocks group and one foot in the geeks group. I never found that being smart about academics was a liability. Being stupid about social conventions was -- and I think that's the source of a lot more geek unpopularity than folks around here ever seem to admit.
The so-called "non-intellectuals" know a lot more about life and the power of being an active participant in social networks and society than you give them credit for. Obviously they know enough to dominate much of the society we have today.
Fear not, though. The geeks are still on the rise. Take Bill Gates and the Google founders for examples.
I think he meant that it was religion in the derogatory sense of not being based on facts, since the article referred to it as "fact-free science", which is an oxymoron.
There's definitely a bias in the conclusions of the article, although if you just look at the facts presented, I read:
1. The Left popularized the notion of fighting the scientific community to achieve its own political goals. 2. The Right picked up on the tactic and has incorporated it into their playbook.
Result: We used to like the tactic, but no longer do. (and please don't look behind that curtain)
Meh. Guy pasting huge black and white close-ups of peoples' faces in troubled areas of the world like Palestine in no way compares to the amazingness of a self-driving car.
The Google car represents the forward-looking frontier of science and technology that is remaking the world and transforming mankind.
JR's "project" represents a look backward at the primitive side of mankind where artistic statements are used to emotionally stir idiots who are still killing each other over believing in the wrong invisible friend.
Nah, I don't think the bar will be raised that high to prove the technology.
Way before the technology is perfected to that extent, technology companies (probably Google) will lobby congress to pass laws limiting the liability of autonomously-driven vehicles. They'll be able to use statistics to show that although the cars aren't perfect, if we replaced human drivers with autonomously-driven vehicles, we'd save 10k lives or 20k lives per year and create a new industry for American companies.
The cars will probably need to meet some minimum standard to be certified as safe on the road; but after that I don't think congress will fight the opportunity to spur the new industry forward.
New laws can dramatically increase the burden of proving that the autonomous vehicle was negligently to blame for the accident.
I'm not understanding the summary for this story in the context of what you've written. Why does it say that he has "completed his long awaited conclusion" to the series when there are still two more novels after it to be written and released. Poking around, I read that he may have written a few chapters in later books... but is that it?
EXACTLY why I refuse to read Stephen R. Donaldson's latest Thomas Covenant series. That jackass can release the last one before I even crack open the first one. I bugged my local SciFi bookstore for ages when I was in high school, waiting for White Gold Wielder.
I'm actually thankful to Robert Jordan for making the later books of the WoT series unreadable, thus saving me from caring about how the series would have ended had he written it.
Slashdot Mirror
You argue as though domain experts can't translate their needs into a set of software requirements.
It's done all the time. Just because you couldn't find a nurse that you were chatting up who had a software need that could be described effectively to you doesn't really say much.
This bears repeating. RMS is quite clear that "free software" has nothing to do with the price
"free software" is effectively free in the sense of price since once the source is out there and there are no restrictions on its use, the product becomes available... for free.
Selling or giving software to someone, but retaining control on what they can do with it (like stopping them from modifying it) is a social evil.
I call bullshit on that statement. As long as there isn't monopolistic control on the ability to write software, retaining control vs price is just a part of the negotiation between developers and customers.
I do it all the time as a software consultant. If a client wants an application that I might want to resell to others and they don't want to pay me the full cost of writing it - I charge them less but don't give them the source and restrict their use of the product.
If a client wants to pay me for the full value of my time and effort, then I give them the source for the product.
There's nothing evil about it. I place some value on control and if they let me keep it, I charge them less.
Failing that, she and her quilting friends can pay a programmer and have it written as Free Software.
Not likely. The cost of the labor needs to be spread out over a lot more people than the half dozen people in her little group.
Bah, that bitch gave me a $10 iTunes gift card. She can go to hell if she thinks I'm writing her some fancy shmancy quilting assist program.
Here mom, have this piece of free software:
10 print "suck it, mom"
20 goto 10
However, with the swing to the far right
That sounds suspicious on the surface. To which industries are you referring as being afforded special protection?
Even if there are cases of corporate protection against the use of free speech, the most obvious free speech suppression I've seen lately is coming from the left. It started with political correctness, which was made law with so called "hate speech" laws. The left is also the side pushing for "equal time" from private broadcasters.
Didn't the right-majority Supreme Court just take a huge blow for freedom of speech in the Snyder vs Phelps case?
That reasoning sounds a bit contrived and strains hard to support a thesis of "the man is keeping us down".
If anything, it looks like the law was designed to PROTECT a workers right to work without being attacked from the outside by those with means. It's likely that the tortious interference law was in place before the internet even existed, when the media controllers had to be prevented from going after the little guy.
The sad thing is that there are enough moderators to rate up illogical drivel to +5 instead of -1 flamebait.
I know what you mean. I can't seem to muster much sympathy for dipshits that go to oppressive foreign countries, do illegal things, and get busted.
That includes you stupid hikers who go looking for trouble on the "borders" of Iran or North Korea. You're fools and we waste far too much time giving a damn about how you fucked up your lives.
All too true.
I especially like how Stallman is always bitching about calling it "GNU/Linux" rather than just "Linux".
Guess what, Stallman, the name of the damned thing is FREE. Your pathological pursuit of freedom apparently doesn't extend to what we call things.
We're free to use it and modify it as we wish. We want to call it Linux so you can suck it.
Oh, and before anyone tries to correct me. I know what Stallman means when he says "free" (perpetually confusing as the overloaded use of the term will be).
When it comes to getting paid for your work, it means the same thing. As soon as the source is available, even my mom's quilting software source will be downloaded and recompiled by some mom's little darling and then no one pays for more copies.
Stallman is always such a fundamentalist. Any philosophy taken too far no longer makes sense.
'The existence and use of non-free software [which] is a social problem. It's an evil. And our aim is a world without that problem.
Okay, so my mom uses a program to help her with her quilting. Who in the hell is going to write that for her if no one is paid to do it?
The whole "programmers scratching an itch" model fails rather dramatically in the realm of applications that lack any programmer interest.
Open source and open standards are cool and a great way to manage a part of the software industry, but it seems obvious that there will always be a need to have proprietary software that is sold by the copy.
Stallman's message would be a lot more inteligible and acceptable if it weren't so ridiculously out there.
I don't disagree that it's mostly an engineering task.
The title of the linked article is "Scientists set NASA space priorities; can it carry them out?". I don't care if they're engineers, astrophysicists, or herpetologists... if they're setting the priorities for NASA, I want them to get their heads out of their asses and focus NASA on solving the engineering problems to get us to the Moon. Otherwise, we need more pragmatic folks setting NASA's priorities.
Personally, I think that if we're not moving primarily toward colonization of space, then we have better things we could be spending those billions of dollars on. Cut NASA's budget and shut it down. Restart it later when we're not in a worldwide depression.
We need to figure out what it takes to colonize the Moon. We need to build the infrastructure that can keep us there and commercialize the exploitation of the Moon and nearby asteroids. We have almost all of the materials and the technology to build a working Lunar space elevator now. Once we have that, getting supplies and raw materials on and off the Lunar surface is practically free.
There are so many great reasons for tackling the Moon first as we venture out into space.
To me, going to Mars or Uranus with probes vs going to the Moon means that we don't want to build up the technology and infrastructure to become a space faring species. It says that we're more interested in satisfying a few scientific curiosities rather than figuring out how to live away from the Earth's surface.
I find their list to be extremely disappointing. I was hoping to see mankind take its first real steps toward the stars in my lifetime. Ah well...
You seem to have made the classic slashdot mistake of assuming that knowing calculus, physics, or computers makes you intrinsically better than the derided jocks and socialites.
I spent my youth with one foot in the jocks group and one foot in the geeks group. I never found that being smart about academics was a liability. Being stupid about social conventions was -- and I think that's the source of a lot more geek unpopularity than folks around here ever seem to admit.
The so-called "non-intellectuals" know a lot more about life and the power of being an active participant in social networks and society than you give them credit for. Obviously they know enough to dominate much of the society we have today.
Fear not, though. The geeks are still on the rise. Take Bill Gates and the Google founders for examples.
I think he meant that it was religion in the derogatory sense of not being based on facts, since the article referred to it as "fact-free science", which is an oxymoron.
There's definitely a bias in the conclusions of the article, although if you just look at the facts presented, I read:
1. The Left popularized the notion of fighting the scientific community to achieve its own political goals.
2. The Right picked up on the tactic and has incorporated it into their playbook.
Result: We used to like the tactic, but no longer do. (and please don't look behind that curtain)
Warning: Do not make eye-contact with a driving robot that uses LASERs for eyes.
Meh. Guy pasting huge black and white close-ups of peoples' faces in troubled areas of the world like Palestine in no way compares to the amazingness of a self-driving car.
The Google car represents the forward-looking frontier of science and technology that is remaking the world and transforming mankind.
JR's "project" represents a look backward at the primitive side of mankind where artistic statements are used to emotionally stir idiots who are still killing each other over believing in the wrong invisible friend.
Right, like you won't be exterminated for being useless by that time.
Would pedestrians feel irrationally unsafe crossing a road with robot drivers on it?
God, I'd rather have an old Apple II+ driving a car barreling down on me in a crosswalk than your average teenage girl texting her BFF, OMG, LOL!
Nah, I don't think the bar will be raised that high to prove the technology.
Way before the technology is perfected to that extent, technology companies (probably Google) will lobby congress to pass laws limiting the liability of autonomously-driven vehicles. They'll be able to use statistics to show that although the cars aren't perfect, if we replaced human drivers with autonomously-driven vehicles, we'd save 10k lives or 20k lives per year and create a new industry for American companies.
The cars will probably need to meet some minimum standard to be certified as safe on the road; but after that I don't think congress will fight the opportunity to spur the new industry forward.
New laws can dramatically increase the burden of proving that the autonomous vehicle was negligently to blame for the accident.
I'm not understanding the summary for this story in the context of what you've written. Why does it say that he has "completed his long awaited conclusion" to the series when there are still two more novels after it to be written and released. Poking around, I read that he may have written a few chapters in later books... but is that it?
Ouch. I guess I missed the news that Eddings had died.
I have great memories in high school when I happened upon Pawn of Prophecy. It's the first series that I ever took the time to read twice.
I read Sanderson's Elantris. Not great, but it kept my interest.
EXACTLY why I refuse to read Stephen R. Donaldson's latest Thomas Covenant series. That jackass can release the last one before I even crack open the first one. I bugged my local SciFi bookstore for ages when I was in high school, waiting for White Gold Wielder.
I'm actually thankful to Robert Jordan for making the later books of the WoT series unreadable, thus saving me from caring about how the series would have ended had he written it.
Don't be silly. Sacrifice is for OTHER people.