Let's pretend Stallman with a snap of his fingers instantly erased all proprietary software and the business depending on the sale of it. Who would pay people to write software?
Like today, most software would be written on demand, for a specific purpose. Without the shrink-wrapped software, this category would increase a lot. We'd probably see great development in ventures like Collabnet. Then there would be all the hardware manufacturers that, like today, need software written to be able to sell their products. The world would still need software and with that demand, somebody will make money by supplying it.
The software business would not go away, it would just be different.
Sweed dreams. But in these times, farming is no different than any other line of production.
You see, like it or not, we now have these things called Capitalism and Competition and whatnot. These things mean that the only way to make a living as a farmer is to turn farming into an industrial process.
There's hardly any farms in the old fashioned sense left. All farms either specialize on one thing and throw all the machinery, pesticides, gene-enhancement etc at it, or they simply don't make ends meet.
To make a living on what you're paid for your produce, you have to be a mean lean farming machine. That takes lots of investments, ie loans, and the margins are still very slim. So don't decide to be a farmer and expect a stressless life.
No kidding. Machiavelli can be interpretated in *many* ways. You have to keep in mind when reading "The Prince" that it was written by *Machiavelli*, so don't expect everything to be laid out clearly in front of you.
Remember that he wrote "The Prince" when he had just been brutally tortured and then exciled. He starts out chapter XIX on "How to avoid being despised or hated" by saying something to the meaning of "I'll deal with this very quickly" and then goes on to write what is the longest chapter of the book. It deals with conspiracies and has tips on how a ruler can avoid or defeat them. Which of course can also be read as "what to avoid when conspiring". Also, every single ruler he takes up as an example in that chapter ends up dead. Go figure.
Well, duh, if you happen to win on them they were obviously the best numbers! The "smart non-obvious" numbers would have given you nothing.
Saying that they are the worst numbers is like assuming that there's a special pre-destined day you are going to win the lottery, no matter what the numbers are. It's not like you can blow your once-in-a-lifetime-win-the-lottery-opportunity, is it?
Of course, the "obvious" numbers, like 1-2-3-4-5-6 can be said to have a lower potential reward. But does losing on "high-reward" numbers make you happier?
The real question is: how long before we see a post like this?
Kathleen, I wanted to do this in this most potentially humiliating way possible, and I figured doing it here and now, in front of a quarter of a million strangers was as good a way as any. Beeing married to you have proved more frustrating than I can describe within the limits of this tiny little story. We've been together for many days now, and I've known for most of that time that the license of this marriage isn't open enough for me. Enough rambling. I'm divorcing you. I suggest you get yourself a good lawyer.
Duh, my point is that you don't have to drive home drunk just because you can't walk home. If you can walk to the pub, fine. If you can't walk, that's when taxis, public transportation and designated drivers come into the picture. That's why I'm saying the culture is the problem, not the average distance to the pub.
Of course I didn't look up the ethymology of the word before posting. That popular "team-around" explanation is probably nothing more than just that, a popular one. According to The Swedish Academy's Dictionary the root of the word is "lag" as meaning "law". The "-om" is nothing but a dative thingie, as the other poster pointed out. So the original meaning of the word is the very dull "according to the law". I think I'll stick with the drinking story.
The origin of the word "lagom" is quite funny, and says a lot about Swedish culture.
"Lag" means crew, team, or company. "Om" means around. Imagine a bunch of people drinking together. They are passing a pitcher of beer around. How much are you supposed to drink? "Lagom" of course. Meaning enough to make you satisfied, but not too much as that will make the pitcher empty before everyone has had their share.
If someone asks you how many meatballs you'd like, the answer "lagom" will ba taken as a joke, as "lagom" for one person is not necessarily "lagom" for another. It's always correct to answer "lagom" though. That's the beauty of the word.
Either way GNU and Linux or HURD will still be there pottering round with a couple of % user base, one of which will be me.
You're predicting you will be one per cent of the user base? Will that be achieved by cloning? Or perhaps genocide? Or will that quote about a world market of five computers finally be correct?
I've always thought it means literally "per head". Please correct me if I have it wrong.
Example: Four people live in my house. One person in my house is a Gnome developer. In my house there is.25 Gnome developers per capita. Foo divided by heads gives us foo per capita. Really simple.
Now to the figures and tables in the paper. Sweden has 10 Gnome developers. Sweden is dark read in "Figure 4: Absolute Gnome Developers in Europe". Germany has 5 Gnome Developers. Germany is medium red in Figure 4. Everything checks out.
Over to "Figure 8: Gnome Developers per capita in Europe". Keep in mind that the population of Germany is about ten times the population of Sweden. Germany is dark red. Sweden has a sissy pink colour. What am I missing?
I go to the tables to check out the number.
Sweden: 10 developers, ~8M population.
Germany: 5 developers, ~80M population.
Let's see...
Sweden: Gnome developers per capita: 1.25E-6
Germany: Gnome developers per capita: 6.25E-8
The table has it listed as ~800K for sweden, ~16M for Germany. That explains the colours in Figure 8, but the math is still backwards.
So, is this some backwards conventional use of per capita I simply haven't heard of, or could someone explain to me again what per capita means?
That sounds a bit like the story about the two old lighthousekeepers.
Two old lighthousekeepers lived in, well, a lighthouse far away from pretty much everything. All they did was sitting around all day telling each other jokes. Since they had lived together in the lighthouse for many, many years, they alread knew all the jokes and didn't laugh much at them. Who likes old jokes, right? But they didn't have anything else to do so they stuck to telling the old jokes anyway. One day they came up with the idea of enumerating all the jokes. That way they spent less time telling jokes and more time saying "haha". (They were already pretty tired of the old jokes, remember.) So the days went by something like this.
Well, you get the idea. But one day something exciting happened:
Keeper1: 12!
Keeper2: Haha.
Keeper2: 14!
Keeper1: Haha.
Keeper1: 256!
And keeper2 fell off his chair and rolled around laughing his ass off, because he had never heard that one before.
Ok, now I'll go hide in the corner of combined off-topic and lame joke shame.
Great! My friend didn't beleive me when I said LeGuin wasn't a Taoist anymore. Now I can tell her I read on Slashdot that someone thought he had heard that LeGuin is a neo-pagan of some sort. That'll shut her up.
The solution is, of course, to have a button to press that makes the ATM also read what's being displayed.
The ATMs in Sweden have this functionality. It's quite fun to press the button and hang around to watch the next person that comes to use the machine. At the press of the button, the ATM says "Please insert your card". It then sits quietly until a card is inserted and it's time to say "Please enter your pin code". The voice is very loud and most people are quite startled =)
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Like today, most software would be written on demand, for a specific purpose. Without the shrink-wrapped software, this category would increase a lot. We'd probably see great development in ventures like Collabnet. Then there would be all the hardware manufacturers that, like today, need software written to be able to sell their products. The world would still need software and with that demand, somebody will make money by supplying it.
The software business would not go away, it would just be different.
Would it even be legal to distribute software under the GPL that also requires a patent license to be used?
You see, like it or not, we now have these things called Capitalism and Competition and whatnot. These things mean that the only way to make a living as a farmer is to turn farming into an industrial process.
There's hardly any farms in the old fashioned sense left. All farms either specialize on one thing and throw all the machinery, pesticides, gene-enhancement etc at it, or they simply don't make ends meet.
To make a living on what you're paid for your produce, you have to be a mean lean farming machine. That takes lots of investments, ie loans, and the margins are still very slim. So don't decide to be a farmer and expect a stressless life.
Remember that he wrote "The Prince" when he had just been brutally tortured and then exciled. He starts out chapter XIX on "How to avoid being despised or hated" by saying something to the meaning of "I'll deal with this very quickly" and then goes on to write what is the longest chapter of the book. It deals with conspiracies and has tips on how a ruler can avoid or defeat them. Which of course can also be read as "what to avoid when conspiring". Also, every single ruler he takes up as an example in that chapter ends up dead. Go figure.
Saying that they are the worst numbers is like assuming that there's a special pre-destined day you are going to win the lottery, no matter what the numbers are. It's not like you can blow your once-in-a-lifetime-win-the-lottery-opportunity, is it?
Of course, the "obvious" numbers, like 1-2-3-4-5-6 can be said to have a lower potential reward. But does losing on "high-reward" numbers make you happier?
Kathleen, I wanted to do this in this most potentially humiliating way possible, and I figured doing it here and now, in front of a quarter of a million strangers was as good a way as any. Beeing married to you have proved more frustrating than I can describe within the limits of this tiny little story. We've been together for many days now, and I've known for most of that time that the license of this marriage isn't open enough for me. Enough rambling. I'm divorcing you. I suggest you get yourself a good lawyer.
Bullshit, it's a cultural thing. There are such things as public transportations, taxis and designated drivers, you know.
"Lag" means crew, team, or company. "Om" means around. Imagine a bunch of people drinking together. They are passing a pitcher of beer around. How much are you supposed to drink? "Lagom" of course. Meaning enough to make you satisfied, but not too much as that will make the pitcher empty before everyone has had their share.
return;
}
(Bleh, stupid lameness filter. That's all the ; I could cram in there.)
You're predicting you will be one per cent of the user base? Will that be achieved by cloning? Or perhaps genocide? Or will that quote about a world market of five computers finally be correct?
(Couldn't resist. Sorry ;)
Example: Four people live in my house. One person in my house is a Gnome developer. In my house there is .25 Gnome developers per capita. Foo divided by heads gives us foo per capita. Really simple.
Now to the figures and tables in the paper. Sweden has 10 Gnome developers. Sweden is dark read in "Figure 4: Absolute Gnome Developers in Europe". Germany has 5 Gnome Developers. Germany is medium red in Figure 4. Everything checks out.
Over to "Figure 8: Gnome Developers per capita in Europe". Keep in mind that the population of Germany is about ten times the population of Sweden. Germany is dark red. Sweden has a sissy pink colour. What am I missing?
I go to the tables to check out the number.
- Sweden: 10 developers, ~8M population.
- Germany: 5 developers, ~80M population.
Let's see...- Sweden: Gnome developers per capita: 1.25E-6
- Germany: Gnome developers per capita: 6.25E-8
The table has it listed as ~800K for sweden, ~16M for Germany. That explains the colours in Figure 8, but the math is still backwards.So, is this some backwards conventional use of per capita I simply haven't heard of, or could someone explain to me again what per capita means?
Two old lighthousekeepers lived in, well, a lighthouse far away from pretty much everything. All they did was sitting around all day telling each other jokes. Since they had lived together in the lighthouse for many, many years, they alread knew all the jokes and didn't laugh much at them. Who likes old jokes, right? But they didn't have anything else to do so they stuck to telling the old jokes anyway. One day they came up with the idea of enumerating all the jokes. That way they spent less time telling jokes and more time saying "haha". (They were already pretty tired of the old jokes, remember.) So the days went by something like this.
Keeper1: 16!
Keeper2: Haha.
Keeper2: 4!
Keeper1: Haha.
Well, you get the idea. But one day something exciting happened:
Keeper1: 12!
Keeper2: Haha.
Keeper2: 14!
Keeper1: Haha.
Keeper1: 256!
And keeper2 fell off his chair and rolled around laughing his ass off, because he had never heard that one before.
Ok, now I'll go hide in the corner of combined off-topic and lame joke shame.
The ATMs in Sweden have this functionality. It's quite fun to press the button and hang around to watch the next person that comes to use the machine. At the press of the button, the ATM says "Please insert your card". It then sits quietly until a card is inserted and it's time to say "Please enter your pin code". The voice is very loud and most people are quite startled =)
$ uname -a ./ptrace-exp ./insert_shellcode 24982
Linux limbo 2.4.0 #8 sat jul 21 14:24:48 CEST 2001 i686 unknown
$ id
uid=1001(johan) gid=1001(johan) groups=1001(johan)
$ gcc insert_shellcode.c -o insert_shellcode
$ gcc ptrace-exp.c -o ptrace-exp
$
attached
exec
$ id
uid=1001(johan) gid=1001(johan) groups=1001(johan)
So what's up?
Because you're now busy doing your job by reading Slashdot?