The problem I see with your idea of a "commons", which I find idealogically appealing, is that the freedom & commons side would just fizzle out.
Case scenario: RedHat takes Linux and copyrights it for themselves, then RedHat sells wildly and the company start to dominate the market, because they get more revenue than before. Perhaps a few other proprietary versions come through, but it's still a market of propiretary software.
Because the public flock to household brands, proprietary Linux would dominate and the whole point of the exercise, to get people using Free Software, would be squashed. Look at how the press see Linux as it is - a stable competitor to Windows. How many articles have you seen in the mainstream press espousing the philosophy of Free Software? Now imagine if Free Software was insignificant as compared to proprietary Linux. It'd never get a mention. End of story.
RMS was right when he said copyright is the power of the coder over the user. You're right in saying "copyleft" (silly term) is the power of the coder over future coders. The commons is in effect the power of the corporation over the commons. Personally I'd opt for the "copyleft" solution, and put up with the restrictions in future coders.
The types of activism you cite are all solitary acts. You are quite right - no individual can stand up to the corporations in capitalism. But groups can, and so the best way to tackle any problem is to seek out people who think similarly to you, form a group, and campaign and recruit as a group. Over time you'd hook up with loads of other groups, and if it's an issue as global as copyright and IP, you'd probably become part of something rather huge.
Instead you sit and write a few letters then give up.
Why do you say those things about the GPL? If anything it is even better than the BSD and MIT lisences, in the way that you suggest. It uses the idea of copyright to let people grant the public *total* use of his/her work... putting it right out into the communes, and preventing anybody from ever taking that way. That's a lot better than the BSD liscence, IMO.
You need a lisence enforceable by law otherwise we're all buggered. And the GPL is about as big a hack on the law as you could manage.
He wasn't espousing a political party containing eveyr Slashdotter. One of the worst features of the American and British political systems at the moment is that they only recognise large, monolithic parties. The many interest groups that exist ge tsidelines - that's why the all the groups who have a problem with the economics & politics of today have grouped under the "anti-globalisation" umbrella, whether they're strictly anti-globalisation or not.
Back to the point though, Slashdotters could easily start by lettering MPs, Congressman, MEPs etc to voice their concerns. Pro-Microsoft Slashdotters can urge their representatives to drop proceedings. Anti-DMCS Slashdotters can urge them to re-structure the digital-law travesty. Even if the Slashdot audience divided into about 20 or 30 interest groups, it would still provide a useful and effective lobby.
As Lawrence pointed out, posting comments to Slashdot may give eveyrone here a great chance for debate, but it's not going to achieve any more than that in the long run.
I think he was spot on when he said that there are too many very intelligent, technically minded people on Slashdot who either don't think about, or actively shirk, essential issues of freedom and politics surrounding technology.
Take the way a lot of people dismiss the Free Software Foundation, for example, believing that GNU/Linux, Slashdot and other great "programs" could have been created without the ethic and philosophy behind Free Software. Anybody who talks about freedom gets called a commie and is modded down by ignaramuses who are more interested in the fine details of mallocing than the yare in being able to malloc without being sued to hell for it.
People also bitch a lot about cryptography, the DCMA, Skylarov, etc. but what do you all do about it? And you dismiss those anti-globalisation, feminism, vegan, anti-war etc. protesters out on the street at least *voicing* their concerns, however valid they may be.
It's time Slashdotters took pen to their concerns and started writing to local papers, and organising local groups to demonstrate against these problems we face. Otherwise we might as well fiddle with code while Rome burns.
You're ignorance is so astounding I don't quite know where to start. Perhaps you learn about history, and about other political spheres, from infomercials on your TV set? Whatever your education, you need to take a deep breath and actually research a little before you make such wide-reaching claims.
I'm not a marxist or leftist by any means, but the left does not propose, nor hope, that we will suddenly all care for one another implicitly, and that the term "hierachy" ill dissappear from our lives. Rather they suggest that there should be less division in society, and that those futher up the hierachy should sacrifice a little more to ensure that those at the bottom receive their basic human rights, and if possible a more pleasant life. Currently this isn't the case, and it's gotten worse for the past 20 years. 20 years ago, the richest people earned about 20% more than the average person in the UK - now it's about 250% more, and the increase is even larger in the USA. The poorest 10% have also got relatively poorer, and in many cases absolutely poorer.
As for popular revolutions - few have actually occurred. Generally hierachies change when two top powers clash. There have been quite a few revolts and revolutions in history, but they tend to occur in exceptional cases where a vast majority is oppressed. Today that simple isn't the case in the West, because most people are approaching the middle classes and don't think of themselves as oppressed (despite growing working hours for less pay, on average). And those that are oppressed (in the developing world) have no recourse to overthrow the West. THAT is why it "appears to be working well".
And for goodness' sakes don't give us that bullshit about violent protestors. On average, on protests where between 5,000 and 20,000 people attend, about 300 people are actually identified BY THE POLICE as being violent. Fewer still are arrested and prosecuted. The "violent anarchist" is a myth propogated by the media, looking for headlines.
I've not read an essay on Free Software to date that talks about a "free economy", as you suggest. There is always a very clear distinction between the economy required to make and exchange material goods (such as your food), and the economy required to make and "exchange" information.
You actually pointed out the distionction very succinctly when you said that people could "whip up a microprocessor design" but they couldn't then manufacturer the microchip on a factory scale without a market and investment, i.e. the information can be free but the material product can't.
I think people need to seperate the two halves of this article into "Free vs Open Source" and "Free Software and capitalism".
The first half gives a very informative account of the rift between Free Software and Open Source which is often overlooked, despite its being repeatedly stated by the Free Software Foundation. "Open Source" is about releasing source code for programs to increasive the quality of the product, and the productivity of the project. "Free Software" is about releasing the source code under a binding lisence to ensure all end users have the freedom to use the program as they wish. People love to scoff at "GNU/Linux" enthusiasts, but they forget that the Linux kernel is under the GNU GPL, and that without The GNU PRoject it's unlikely the Linux project would ever have grown so large.
There's also a tendency to talk of more links with proprietary software. There have been so many articles on/. of late where columnists laud StarOffice and Macromedia Flash because they're "flashy and cool", and who suggest that the open source and free software communities should embrace proprietary software, miss the point entirely. GNU/Linux only developed so quickly because of it's open source development, and we can only use it in the ways we love because so much of it is released under the GPL. It's an important point to keep in mind.
As for the discussion of Marxism in relation to Free Software, I'm sure plenty of ignoramuses will be posting saying how the author of the article must be a communist pig, and that he obviously wants to hijack Linux to take down President Bush. Hmm. Righto. It's an interesting discussion, though I get this sinking feeling whenever I hear the words "Marxism" and "contemporary" in the same sentence, given that so many of his ideas are completely outdated (like his idea of shareholders, being the workers in the companies, as opposed to the opportunist investors of today).
Not necessarily. The web suffers from two problems which make Web marketing incredibly difficult:
1 - If you put up a Web Site, the only way people will find out about it is if other pages link to it, or you directly tell people about it. At least if you open a shop, people will walk down the street and they can't miss it.
2 - The chances are that somebody has made a slightly better site than yours on the same or a similar topic. The Web is global, so you only need one or two sites for any one interest to please the global potential audience (see/.). So every new site that starts up *has* to compete with the big boys and will inevitably fail.
I've been developing Web sites for years now, and I've found that your Web Site will only survive if you want it to. If you keep putting work into it because you enjoy it, and if you can find a clique of users who will enjoy it (forums, message boards and other interactive features help here), then there's nothing to worry about. Your site may remain obscure, or it may grow. If you've done the site really well, and you maintain it well for years, it will slowly blossom. Just don't get impatient, otherwise you may as well not try!
If you really, really want a big site, then you'll just have to find a big gap in the market, put a lot of work into it, get a team to help you develop it, and put a lot of spare cash into advertising.
You miss the point. Windows gives a standard interface to end users, and on the whole asks the developers to understand the more difficult aspects of programming and setup. That is the same case with ERS's proposed idea. It will create a standard language for developers, which will mean that a standard end-interface can be created for end users, who will not need to know a thing about the language.
Windows now uses.MSI packages. Some GNU/Linux distros have tried this with.deb and.rpm packages. They're all really good if they can be standardised throughout the distro, and made easy to use, because the newbie isn't then confronted with a compile, or a version of an app with loads of options he/she doesn't want. Developers still have to learn how to set-up these packages, but it's not that much effort considering it's one consolidated "language".
The same will now apply to kernels, with a bit of luck. Developers will learn this one language (and escape a mess of Perl/Tcl/etc), and end-users will have a nice standard way of configuring their kernel!
Yes, it is. Making a GNU/Linux registry would have its ups and downs - the downs probably outweighing the ups. The up would be that it would make using the OS a lot easier for newer users. The downs would be that it would be hell to implement, it would put a lot of developers off, and it would make cross-platform compatability harder to achieve.
I would say that you're right in thinking your reaction was due to your knowing shell scripting already. I suppose old hands will find this language either pointless or too much effort to learn, whilst those nearer the newbie spectrum will find it a godsend (assuming it's well written). IT'd be good to find a compromise though.
Post compilation, configuration can only really be done with configuration files, like those used by LILO, XFree86 and various other apps. At the moment, you're right, there's no standard for the layout and internals of config files, and no standard program to interpret them. Some of the biggest steps forward have been made in this area in GUIs like KDE and GNOME, where configuration has been made simple and accessible. Although it would be a mammoth task given the number of config files in any OS already, it would be a good project to try and extend ESR's idea to formalise config files for compiled packages.
It's good to see some high profile hackers putting their minds to making GNU/Linux easier for people. This language should make it easier for hackers to fiddle with their kernel, and to get into kernel hacking, which is a great thing considering how daunting a challenge it is at the moment. It will also help people who have been playing with GNU/Linux for a short while start setting their systems up properly, instead of running on a hastily preconfigured kernel that came from their distribution installer.
It was promising then to see ESR say that he wanted this language to help GNU/Linux newbies. There's been a lot of good work recently on making the first steps more accessible, but there's been little progress in helping people who have completed the first challenge and who then want to get their OS running smoothly.
And what is wrong with that? The fact that little money has been made direcly from Free Software and Open Source Software by companies dealing exclusively on it has little bearing on the topic of the question in hand. It doesn't mean that the software is somehow doomed to bring bad profits - it just shows that nobody has yet found a way of making a vast profit from the open source model, and that the community is not, on the whole, that interested in doing so.
But Free/Open Source software is still an economic godsend for a lot of companies. And it is a noble thing to try and promote such software to companies to try and further the social and political aims of the Free Software and Open Source movements. If all people cared about was the economy, we'd have idiots for politicians and social degredation. Hmm, sounds familiar come to think of it...
I've been slowly integrating GNU/Linux into my company, but it's been a struggle. I work in an IT training company who are used to Microsoft fulfilling all their needs. They've become so used to Microsoft, their fees and their wide range of integrated products, that the notion of going with something as radically different as open source or free software just seemed ridiculous to them at first. No matter how many big names I mentioned (IBM, Sun, the EU), they just thought it wasn't for them.
I think that to start with, The Cathedral and the Bazaar is a good read. Though it's a little outdated, being somewhat in the dot-com mood, it offers some well reasoned argument behind using open source methods alongside more traditional business practices. But the real hurdle is convincing people that software written by "amateurs" (because that's how they often see unpaid programmers, unfortunately), and distributed for free, can be reliable and powerful. You also have to impress upon them how easy it is to integrate open source with their current goods, to get them out of the mindset that offices have to have Microsoft-everything.
One thing I would say is that most managers, unless they're in financial difficulties, don't jump at the "it's cheap" idea.
You've misread what he said. The first sentence says that PC format "claim" to have the first scoop. They don't - it was on Slashdot and lots of other web sites a while ago. Michael was pointing out that PC Format's "claim" was a little dubious.
Stop lashing into people because they have bias. A world without bias is a world of drones.
I don't think you can claim GNU/Linux and the Internet have made proprietary software unecessary, nor can you claim this has led to M$'s decision.
Both of the two "revolutions" have meant that M$ has had a hard time keeping its foot in the server market, which has led to diminishing returns where usually frequent upgrades are necessary. Meanwhile most home and office desktop users rely on Windows, because GNU/Linux just isn't easy enough for them, nor is it marketed half as well as Windows. So Microsoft still dominates the desktop market, and still has a foot in the server market. The point is that people aren't buying new computers or operating systems as much any more because the market is nearing saturation - almost everyone has now bought a PC. This is why they've deliberately made Windows XP so incompatable - to drive more sales.
M$ have realised that software won't be able to suppor them anymore, so they've gone back to hardware. So yeah, it's gone full circle in a sense, but not for the reasons you cite. It seems M$ are finally aiming for Bill Gates' dream which he outlines in his awful book "The Road Ahead" - a world where electronic gadgets and computers fit seamlessly into our homes, and everything we do runs off Microsoft software and Microsoft connections.
I'd be interested to know how somebody who wrote most of his work before Marx wrote his Communist Manifesto could be described as a communist pig? Perhaps because he was Russian? Or maybe because he wrote intelligently about a society which is essentially the same as ours today. Sorry I forgot, one mustn't criticise our society or the American thought police will come and moderate you down for thinking for yourself!
It should have gone straight to a local museum, to be put amongst the other great coffee pots of our era. Perhaps they could have stuck another web cam on it for posterity? One does wonder though why a public (fairly) institution like Cambidge University would auction it off rather than just donate it to a local museum or even the British Science Museum? Perhaps they thought a coffee pot to be rather insignificant. Or perhaps they wanted to join the celebrity rage of the moment - auctioning stuff off and giving a minute fraction of the revenue to a "charity"?
Nice to see some constructive comments as usual. I wonder how many posts it takes before you get a useful answer to this guy's perfectly valid question?
Well I didn't think of instances when motion in front of you can last only a few frames, even with a high FPS. I guess in instances like that it could be handy. But certainly as a guy runs across a screen it would be annoying, and as it is (as you said) it looks absolutely awful, like some middle school student's graphics project gone wrong. Maybe NVidia will sort it out a bit and get some decent worth of of buffering etc. That with a new GPU that doesn't cost upwards of £300 would be nice1:-)
Damn right. You'd get really confused, especially if an internet game got laggy. It doesn't even look that great anyway, it just looks tacky. You don't get motion blur like that in real life, do you? Last time I saw somebody running past I saw pretty much what you get in CounterStrike. Its like when they brought in lens flare... wooh, wow, whizz bang crackle and pop, adds nothing to the game it just satisfies the dumbass kids who would pay money for it.
What a silly idea. Lets hope NVidia never take this idea up, or you'd no doubt have to spend money even tho you'd just disable it later!
Slashdot Mirror
The problem I see with your idea of a "commons", which I find idealogically appealing, is that the freedom & commons side would just fizzle out.
Case scenario: RedHat takes Linux and copyrights it for themselves, then RedHat sells wildly and the company start to dominate the market, because they get more revenue than before. Perhaps a few other proprietary versions come through, but it's still a market of propiretary software.
Because the public flock to household brands, proprietary Linux would dominate and the whole point of the exercise, to get people using Free Software, would be squashed. Look at how the press see Linux as it is - a stable competitor to Windows. How many articles have you seen in the mainstream press espousing the philosophy of Free Software? Now imagine if Free Software was insignificant as compared to proprietary Linux. It'd never get a mention. End of story.
RMS was right when he said copyright is the power of the coder over the user. You're right in saying "copyleft" (silly term) is the power of the coder over future coders. The commons is in effect the power of the corporation over the commons. Personally I'd opt for the "copyleft" solution, and put up with the restrictions in future coders.
The types of activism you cite are all solitary acts. You are quite right - no individual can stand up to the corporations in capitalism. But groups can, and so the best way to tackle any problem is to seek out people who think similarly to you, form a group, and campaign and recruit as a group. Over time you'd hook up with loads of other groups, and if it's an issue as global as copyright and IP, you'd probably become part of something rather huge.
Instead you sit and write a few letters then give up.
Why do you say those things about the GPL? If anything it is even better than the BSD and MIT lisences, in the way that you suggest. It uses the idea of copyright to let people grant the public *total* use of his/her work... putting it right out into the communes, and preventing anybody from ever taking that way. That's a lot better than the BSD liscence, IMO.
You need a lisence enforceable by law otherwise we're all buggered. And the GPL is about as big a hack on the law as you could manage.
He wasn't espousing a political party containing eveyr Slashdotter. One of the worst features of the American and British political systems at the moment is that they only recognise large, monolithic parties. The many interest groups that exist ge tsidelines - that's why the all the groups who have a problem with the economics & politics of today have grouped under the "anti-globalisation" umbrella, whether they're strictly anti-globalisation or not.
Back to the point though, Slashdotters could easily start by lettering MPs, Congressman, MEPs etc to voice their concerns. Pro-Microsoft Slashdotters can urge their representatives to drop proceedings. Anti-DMCS Slashdotters can urge them to re-structure the digital-law travesty. Even if the Slashdot audience divided into about 20 or 30 interest groups, it would still provide a useful and effective lobby.
As Lawrence pointed out, posting comments to Slashdot may give eveyrone here a great chance for debate, but it's not going to achieve any more than that in the long run.
I think he was spot on when he said that there are too many very intelligent, technically minded people on Slashdot who either don't think about, or actively shirk, essential issues of freedom and politics surrounding technology.
Take the way a lot of people dismiss the Free Software Foundation, for example, believing that GNU/Linux, Slashdot and other great "programs" could have been created without the ethic and philosophy behind Free Software. Anybody who talks about freedom gets called a commie and is modded down by ignaramuses who are more interested in the fine details of mallocing than the yare in being able to malloc without being sued to hell for it.
People also bitch a lot about cryptography, the DCMA, Skylarov, etc. but what do you all do about it? And you dismiss those anti-globalisation, feminism, vegan, anti-war etc. protesters out on the street at least *voicing* their concerns, however valid they may be.
It's time Slashdotters took pen to their concerns and started writing to local papers, and organising local groups to demonstrate against these problems we face. Otherwise we might as well fiddle with code while Rome burns.
You're ignorance is so astounding I don't quite know where to start. Perhaps you learn about history, and about other political spheres, from infomercials on your TV set? Whatever your education, you need to take a deep breath and actually research a little before you make such wide-reaching claims.
I'm not a marxist or leftist by any means, but the left does not propose, nor hope, that we will suddenly all care for one another implicitly, and that the term "hierachy" ill dissappear from our lives. Rather they suggest that there should be less division in society, and that those futher up the hierachy should sacrifice a little more to ensure that those at the bottom receive their basic human rights, and if possible a more pleasant life. Currently this isn't the case, and it's gotten worse for the past 20 years. 20 years ago, the richest people earned about 20% more than the average person in the UK - now it's about 250% more, and the increase is even larger in the USA. The poorest 10% have also got relatively poorer, and in many cases absolutely poorer.
As for popular revolutions - few have actually occurred. Generally hierachies change when two top powers clash. There have been quite a few revolts and revolutions in history, but they tend to occur in exceptional cases where a vast majority is oppressed. Today that simple isn't the case in the West, because most people are approaching the middle classes and don't think of themselves as oppressed (despite growing working hours for less pay, on average). And those that are oppressed (in the developing world) have no recourse to overthrow the West. THAT is why it "appears to be working well".
And for goodness' sakes don't give us that bullshit about violent protestors. On average, on protests where between 5,000 and 20,000 people attend, about 300 people are actually identified BY THE POLICE as being violent. Fewer still are arrested and prosecuted. The "violent anarchist" is a myth propogated by the media, looking for headlines.
I've not read an essay on Free Software to date that talks about a "free economy", as you suggest. There is always a very clear distinction between the economy required to make and exchange material goods (such as your food), and the economy required to make and "exchange" information.
You actually pointed out the distionction very succinctly when you said that people could "whip up a microprocessor design" but they couldn't then manufacturer the microchip on a factory scale without a market and investment, i.e. the information can be free but the material product can't.
I think people need to seperate the two halves of this article into "Free vs Open Source" and "Free Software and capitalism".
/. of late where columnists laud StarOffice and Macromedia Flash because they're "flashy and cool", and who suggest that the open source and free software communities should embrace proprietary software, miss the point entirely. GNU/Linux only developed so quickly because of it's open source development, and we can only use it in the ways we love because so much of it is released under the GPL. It's an important point to keep in mind.
The first half gives a very informative account of the rift between Free Software and Open Source which is often overlooked, despite its being repeatedly stated by the Free Software Foundation. "Open Source" is about releasing source code for programs to increasive the quality of the product, and the productivity of the project. "Free Software" is about releasing the source code under a binding lisence to ensure all end users have the freedom to use the program as they wish. People love to scoff at "GNU/Linux" enthusiasts, but they forget that the Linux kernel is under the GNU GPL, and that without The GNU PRoject it's unlikely the Linux project would ever have grown so large.
There's also a tendency to talk of more links with proprietary software. There have been so many articles on
As for the discussion of Marxism in relation to Free Software, I'm sure plenty of ignoramuses will be posting saying how the author of the article must be a communist pig, and that he obviously wants to hijack Linux to take down President Bush. Hmm. Righto. It's an interesting discussion, though I get this sinking feeling whenever I hear the words "Marxism" and "contemporary" in the same sentence, given that so many of his ideas are completely outdated (like his idea of shareholders, being the workers in the companies, as opposed to the opportunist investors of today).
Not necessarily. The web suffers from two problems which make Web marketing incredibly difficult:
/.). So every new site that starts up *has* to compete with the big boys and will inevitably fail.
1 - If you put up a Web Site, the only way people will find out about it is if other pages link to it, or you directly tell people about it. At least if you open a shop, people will walk down the street and they can't miss it.
2 - The chances are that somebody has made a slightly better site than yours on the same or a similar topic. The Web is global, so you only need one or two sites for any one interest to please the global potential audience (see
I've been developing Web sites for years now, and I've found that your Web Site will only survive if you want it to. If you keep putting work into it because you enjoy it, and if you can find a clique of users who will enjoy it (forums, message boards and other interactive features help here), then there's nothing to worry about. Your site may remain obscure, or it may grow. If you've done the site really well, and you maintain it well for years, it will slowly blossom. Just don't get impatient, otherwise you may as well not try!
If you really, really want a big site, then you'll just have to find a big gap in the market, put a lot of work into it, get a team to help you develop it, and put a lot of spare cash into advertising.
Windows now uses .MSI packages. Some GNU/Linux distros have tried this with .deb and .rpm packages. They're all really good if they can be standardised throughout the distro, and made easy to use, because the newbie isn't then confronted with a compile, or a version of an app with loads of options he/she doesn't want. Developers still have to learn how to set-up these packages, but it's not that much effort considering it's one consolidated "language".
The same will now apply to kernels, with a bit of luck. Developers will learn this one language (and escape a mess of Perl/Tcl/etc), and end-users will have a nice standard way of configuring their kernel!
Yes, it is. Making a GNU/Linux registry would have its ups and downs - the downs probably outweighing the ups. The up would be that it would make using the OS a lot easier for newer users. The downs would be that it would be hell to implement, it would put a lot of developers off, and it would make cross-platform compatability harder to achieve.
I would say that you're right in thinking your reaction was due to your knowing shell scripting already. I suppose old hands will find this language either pointless or too much effort to learn, whilst those nearer the newbie spectrum will find it a godsend (assuming it's well written). IT'd be good to find a compromise though.
Post compilation, configuration can only really be done with configuration files, like those used by LILO, XFree86 and various other apps. At the moment, you're right, there's no standard for the layout and internals of config files, and no standard program to interpret them. Some of the biggest steps forward have been made in this area in GUIs like KDE and GNOME, where configuration has been made simple and accessible. Although it would be a mammoth task given the number of config files in any OS already, it would be a good project to try and extend ESR's idea to formalise config files for compiled packages.
It's good to see some high profile hackers putting their minds to making GNU/Linux easier for people. This language should make it easier for hackers to fiddle with their kernel, and to get into kernel hacking, which is a great thing considering how daunting a challenge it is at the moment. It will also help people who have been playing with GNU/Linux for a short while start setting their systems up properly, instead of running on a hastily preconfigured kernel that came from their distribution installer.
It was promising then to see ESR say that he wanted this language to help GNU/Linux newbies. There's been a lot of good work recently on making the first steps more accessible, but there's been little progress in helping people who have completed the first challenge and who then want to get their OS running smoothly.
And what is wrong with that? The fact that little money has been made direcly from Free Software and Open Source Software by companies dealing exclusively on it has little bearing on the topic of the question in hand. It doesn't mean that the software is somehow doomed to bring bad profits - it just shows that nobody has yet found a way of making a vast profit from the open source model, and that the community is not, on the whole, that interested in doing so.
But Free/Open Source software is still an economic godsend for a lot of companies. And it is a noble thing to try and promote such software to companies to try and further the social and political aims of the Free Software and Open Source movements. If all people cared about was the economy, we'd have idiots for politicians and social degredation. Hmm, sounds familiar come to think of it...
I've been slowly integrating GNU/Linux into my company, but it's been a struggle. I work in an IT training company who are used to Microsoft fulfilling all their needs. They've become so used to Microsoft, their fees and their wide range of integrated products, that the notion of going with something as radically different as open source or free software just seemed ridiculous to them at first. No matter how many big names I mentioned (IBM, Sun, the EU), they just thought it wasn't for them.
I think that to start with, The Cathedral and the Bazaar is a good read. Though it's a little outdated, being somewhat in the dot-com mood, it offers some well reasoned argument behind using open source methods alongside more traditional business practices. But the real hurdle is convincing people that software written by "amateurs" (because that's how they often see unpaid programmers, unfortunately), and distributed for free, can be reliable and powerful. You also have to impress upon them how easy it is to integrate open source with their current goods, to get them out of the mindset that offices have to have Microsoft-everything.
One thing I would say is that most managers, unless they're in financial difficulties, don't jump at the "it's cheap" idea.
The prize is £1500 (approx $2100), as it says on their Web Site.
Isn't it odd how offtopic Slashdot posts get? ;-)
You've misread what he said. The first sentence says that PC format "claim" to have the first scoop. They don't - it was on Slashdot and lots of other web sites a while ago. Michael was pointing out that PC Format's "claim" was a little dubious.
Stop lashing into people because they have bias. A world without bias is a world of drones.
I don't think you can claim GNU/Linux and the Internet have made proprietary software unecessary, nor can you claim this has led to M$'s decision.
Both of the two "revolutions" have meant that M$ has had a hard time keeping its foot in the server market, which has led to diminishing returns where usually frequent upgrades are necessary. Meanwhile most home and office desktop users rely on Windows, because GNU/Linux just isn't easy enough for them, nor is it marketed half as well as Windows. So Microsoft still dominates the desktop market, and still has a foot in the server market. The point is that people aren't buying new computers or operating systems as much any more because the market is nearing saturation - almost everyone has now bought a PC. This is why they've deliberately made Windows XP so incompatable - to drive more sales.
M$ have realised that software won't be able to suppor them anymore, so they've gone back to hardware. So yeah, it's gone full circle in a sense, but not for the reasons you cite. It seems M$ are finally aiming for Bill Gates' dream which he outlines in his awful book "The Road Ahead" - a world where electronic gadgets and computers fit seamlessly into our homes, and everything we do runs off Microsoft software and Microsoft connections.
I'd be interested to know how somebody who wrote most of his work before Marx wrote his Communist Manifesto could be described as a communist pig? Perhaps because he was Russian? Or maybe because he wrote intelligently about a society which is essentially the same as ours today. Sorry I forgot, one mustn't criticise our society or the American thought police will come and moderate you down for thinking for yourself!
It should have gone straight to a local museum, to be put amongst the other great coffee pots of our era. Perhaps they could have stuck another web cam on it for posterity? One does wonder though why a public (fairly) institution like Cambidge University would auction it off rather than just donate it to a local museum or even the British Science Museum? Perhaps they thought a coffee pot to be rather insignificant. Or perhaps they wanted to join the celebrity rage of the moment - auctioning stuff off and giving a minute fraction of the revenue to a "charity"?
Nice to see some constructive comments as usual. I wonder how many posts it takes before you get a useful answer to this guy's perfectly valid question?
Well I didn't think of instances when motion in front of you can last only a few frames, even with a high FPS. I guess in instances like that it could be handy. But certainly as a guy runs across a screen it would be annoying, and as it is (as you said) it looks absolutely awful, like some middle school student's graphics project gone wrong. Maybe NVidia will sort it out a bit and get some decent worth of of buffering etc. That with a new GPU that doesn't cost upwards of £300 would be nice1 :-)
Damn right. You'd get really confused, especially if an internet game got laggy. It doesn't even look that great anyway, it just looks tacky. You don't get motion blur like that in real life, do you? Last time I saw somebody running past I saw pretty much what you get in CounterStrike. Its like when they brought in lens flare... wooh, wow, whizz bang crackle and pop, adds nothing to the game it just satisfies the dumbass kids who would pay money for it. What a silly idea. Lets hope NVidia never take this idea up, or you'd no doubt have to spend money even tho you'd just disable it later!