40% of Mexicans live in poverty (Mexican poverty, which is something most people in developped countries can't some times even imagine).
Although it is always good news that a 3rd world country invests in science and technology (instead of nuclear bombs or nuclear technology with military intents) that should not stop us to describe the economic and social situation on those countries accurately.
Just google about Oaxaca to find out how "Newly Industrialized" we really are....
and if you try to define a drop as a sudden loss of value, then In Jan 17 there was one of 7.
Mechanical Turk? More like mechanical joke.
on
Yahoo! Goes To Print
·
· Score: 1
I tried it and was completely unimpressed.
If they cared at all about it they would be contacting people that registered to let them know the site is now operationsl (which at least in my case, they haven't)
Although in principle I tend to agree that the Mapuche have no real case (based in the scant evidence offered) I find very interesting the patronizing tone of many or the people replying.
Sadly this is a very typical attitude of US people. They tend to think that their way is the only way and the rest can be damned. I will not throw damning examples around, sadly we have plenty of them at this moment in time, instead I will tell an anecdote.
When one senior manager visited a branch office in an Asian country where I was working, we made presentations about several aspects of doing bussiness in Asia. One of the topics was cultural awarness.
After my colleague finished a very thorough presentation, making a clear cut bussiness case of why cultural awarness could give us a competitive advantage in the region, the reply of this individual was to question why we have presented that topic. "I want to do bussiness here, not to become culturally aware" was his most memorable comment.
So no special policies were put in place to deal with local bussinesses. Eventually many of our clients disliked us because, amongst many other things, the company was not adjusting to the local ways and patterns of doing things (as an example, deals could not be closed in one to one meetings, we needed two big cometees, that way nobody in our client's side would feel unduly exposed. We did not close several deals for this reason until I approached a local person and received an explanation of something that was obvious to them).
The manager was USian, and in my experience, not untypical of US management style which assumes the US way is the best (and only) way of doing things.
Many tribal communities have democratically elected leaders (it is not like the Greeks were the only ones that came with the nifty idea you know) or elders. UNless you know something about the Mapuche that we don't you should not be so quick to assume so much.
In Mexico for example, Mayan, Purepechan, Yaqui, Tarahumara and many other tribes refussed to let their children to assist to primary school for many decades.
The reason? Classes were in Spanish, not their native tongue.
Since primary and secondary education in native languages was introduced, uptake and performance of native children has increased dramatically.
As one Mayan teacher said (paraprhasing) : "I used to be tought mathematics in Spanish. The problem was that I barely understood Spanish! The conclussion that teachers were reaching is that we all were stupid...." I have to note here that teachers would normally have been mixed race people, coming from outside the communities and with the stated objective of teaching in Spanish to the native children.
Although the Mapuche people are completely wrong IMNSHO, how you are treated as a minority could be a human rights issue, specially when it comes to sometime as precious as your own language.
Natives in Latinamerican countries very often are treated with desdain bordering on racism (and sometimes it is racism, pure and simple).
So it does not surprise me if they may see ulterior motives when the government, an entity rarely in favour of Native's rights, and an international megacorporation, which we know has a really bad reputation, ally themsleves to do something with their language.
They are wrong, but I understand why the may be suspicious.
If you are a corporate or institutional buyer this is a non issue, your provider will ensure all your hardware works or will give you the advice so you can go and buy hardware that works.
This nonsense about comparing the problems faced by a hobbyist with the ones faced by an institutional Linux adopter are frankly comparing apples and oranges. No, like comparing oranges and caviar. Or something like that equally nonsensical.
In a time when women were not allowed to receive a proper education she pursued it with all her might. She was versed in the natural sciences, a very talented poet and playwright, musician, philosopher who also dabbled in astronomy and mathematics for good measure.
Why feminists and women rights' advocates outside Mexico have not adopted her as an icon is beyond me.
In Mexico she is rightly revered by having her image in our currency.
I went to watch a match of football (soccer for most of you uncivilized ones) some time ago, there were around 10 hooligans causing big concern and police movilization.
Since they were English everybody was saying how bad English fans were in spite that several thousend of them were peacefuly enjoying the game without bothering anybody else.
What I am tying to say is tha most people remembers when they are rudely shunned and tend to forget or to be unaware of the countless times friendly people do the right thing and lend a hand.
The internet, succesful companies like Google and Apple, and increasingly servers in datacentres all around the world, are build on top of FLOSS of one kind or another.
The last stronghold of propietary software is the desktop, and that is being eroded slowly but surely. Today you can run most of your personal computing needs using FLOSS, which means the field is ready for a real challenge to the domination of the closed software in the desktop (in spite of MS's shenanigans, even frivulous patents will eventually expire).
The problem with your reasoning is that it goes against the most basic grain of how human culture has developed.
The most fundamental freedom of any person (after covering the basic necesities) is the freedom to think.
If you come up with a method to solve a problem you should be fully entitled to get some kind of remuneration if your method is useful. But I don't see why if I come with my own method to solve the same problem I should have to pay you anything for it.
Notice here that I am talking about methods to do something. If that method describs a trinket then the trinket should be patentable, giving you protection for your efforts, ensuring other people can't look at your trinket and do their own to ssolve the same problem.
But what you are advocating is that by writing a program that adds 2 + 2 anybody should pay you money for the addition operator.
But not only that, there will be people claiming to have invented binary operators, then even others claiming they inveted operators, and then even others that will claim they invented mathematical symbolic languages and so on.
Software patents becomes a game of who can come with the most outrageous and broad claims and is prepared to support them with enough cash in a court of law.
The system is broken, anybody writing sofware is amply protected by copyright and should realize that at times he may "win" but in the long term we are all losing (all that money that goes to parasitic lawyers could be spent doing new, innovative products, then IT companies woue earn a living by actually doing useful things).
Patents should protect only objects whose construction or implementation is so complex that the inventor needs a monopoly to recoup the costs.
If somebody has an instant of genious for a little adaptation, sorry, it is great, it may have never been thought before, but if it is easy to replicate then one should call into question how innovative the artifact really is.
And in regards to software, which is just the formalization of a process of thought necessary to talk to a computer, patents are sheer madness. The equivalent in literature would be to have granted Shakespeare a patent on writing a performance about kings on te bases of any of his great plays. That is whay copyright is there for, it is high time that IT companies realize this and understand that nobody is being served by software patents.
I refer to IT companies because they are the ones that can either lobby for software patents abolition where they exist (mainly the US) or stop the idiotic push for them where they don't (the EU for example).
Specially software ones (you know, the patenting of ideas and concepts, that is speech).
In view of the last few days of sheer madness I find sad an discomforting that there are people out there still supporting what is clearly a rotten system.
Software, as explained previously, is immensily cheaper if you use Linux.
So a Windows only solution starts with a substantial disadvantage when considering the last two items: training and support.
I have lots of experience giving, receiving and organizing training, for run of the mill products like OSes and desktop applications the rates are pretty standard regardless of the product, given the applications mentioned in the article, I don't see anything that would suggest using Linux would increase training costs enormously if at all.
As for support you can get many companies to take in bulk whatever you have, regardless of OS, and if you do it internally then you will not raise the salary of your techs just because now they have to support Linux (they may need training, but that should be budgeted yearly any way, so frankly I don't see how support would be a factor in a differential in price).
So the only way I can think of that a MS solution would be cheaper is if licenses, training and support are all offered in one package and then the price cut below cost in order to keep a foot firmly in the door.
Most companies can't afford to do this, unless somebody is prepared to lose money (or some of part of what they are offering is way overvalued).
Draw your own conclussions, but the only way I see this working is if MS offers a great deal for licenses (which are terribly overvalued, piracy and confussing pricing schemes pretty much probe that) and they do the support and training for cheap. Or they could strong arm the company providing the services to do so, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that the persuade a company to lose money in a high profile company in order to keep a healthy business relationship in other projects mutually profitable.
All the people calling us, people obejctin to this deal, fear mongers, FUD spreaders and what have you.
The matter of fact is that MS does not need to go and find any code in order to claim patent violation.
If they have a patent for lets say the trash can icon )bear with me this is just for illustration purposes) they can point to the trash can icons in all OSes anc claim a violation without needing to see a single line of code./.ers should be more careful abbout the differences between copyright and patent issues.
There is no queston that MS learned from SCO that copyright claims ar a no starter if you are intent on spreading misinformation, specially when it comes to open source products, but claims of patent violation are a completely different game. Just thik about Amazon and the one-click fiasco.
That is the kind of threat that MS is laying bare in front of everybody. They want to kill or at the very list constrain Linux progress by means of of the treath of death by thousend one-click patents. Absolutely despicable.
If you feel so much revultion at the thought of a community this is mostly a free world you know, nobody is forcing you to be part of it.
The community initially included mostly developers of software, debuggers, users and finally anybody interested in free software as a cultural and political issue. In any community you will find people fully commited to the causes spoused by it, some others attracted tangentially to it, and some more just trying to reap the benefits associated to being in a group without any of the responsibilities. Call the community a neighbourhood, state, city or country, you will always identify people that broadly fits any of these patterns of behaviour. And yes you will find zealots. Wellcome to the real world, we have been missing you.
People in the FSF promoting the adoption of free software have always been quite upfront about their aims and objectives. Anybody deciding to use GPL and similar licenses should (or should have known) that behind the software developped there were a set of cultural and political objectives, implied or explicit. If people released software under such licenses and did not do their homework regarding the implications, well, they are to blame, not the folks mantaining the consistency of the licensing scheme. And they can release the software under another license of their own chosing if they feel so bad about it.
Anybody using FOSS as users should inform themeselves what is behind the licenses. If they did not want to do it that is perfectly fine, apathy is an option, but if they are distressed by the commitment of other people using or developing the software, well, the door is wide open, good bye and good luck.
You said lets be clear, and the first thing you do is to cloud the issue by playing word games.
I will not bother to find the definition of what a cult is, because it is not what you are after. What you are after is to paint a group of people in a bad light that fits your political convictions. That is cool, such is life, but your assertions should not go unanswered. To be politically commited to a cultural cause is not being part of a cult, many folks around here confuse political intransigence with cultism, but there are issues in which negotiation is not possible from an intellectual point of view.
Issues like slavery, women and children rights are no longer to be examined, they are set in stone and the political orthodoxy dictated by common sense is full intransigence. If anybody would suggest to reopen them and look about how good slavery could be of if perhaps children or women should be subjects of any rights people critizing vehmently such idiots could hardly being called zealots or cultists.
Well, guess what, many of us believe that society is damaged if software is not open for inspection and we think this is not an issue that should be open for negotiation. Nobody is forcing you to sign to this agenda. Nobody is forcing you not to develop software under a different set of principles. But we have principles, and those are not open to negotiation. If your are, that says alot about what princiles mean to you.
In regards to the Debian community, the problem is that software is not in a vaccum and has to deal with legal issues. if you are not strictly scrupulous to the point of fastidioussness you are going to be called to task sooner or later, in a litigious environment, you may be even if you are diligent. The Debian folk have taken the point of view that by mantaining a clear separation between what is fully free and what is not, keeps developers and users protected from any claims about copyright and maybe even patent infringement. Sorry that you can't differentiate between legal due diligence and cultism, but the facts are there open for all to see and draw their own conclussions.
So frankly your tirade about this cultural movement being a cult is disingenous (yes, really, it is), facile, and lacking of any substance.
They were found out and before losing, decided to settle.
Completely different to setting up a protection racket, intimidating the first fool willing to play ball, and showing it to the rest of the community as an example while pointing out to other not paying that they may not be protected.
Slashdot Mirror
... whose government tells them where they can and can't go, Mexican citizens have freedom of movement and can leave the country freely.
So the Mexican government has no reason whatsoever to stop people going abroad if so they wish.
40% of Mexicans live in poverty (Mexican poverty, which is something most people in developped countries can't some times even imagine).
Although it is always good news that a 3rd world country invests in science and technology (instead of nuclear bombs or nuclear technology with military intents) that should not stop us to describe the economic and social situation on those countries accurately.
Just google about Oaxaca to find out how "Newly Industrialized" we really are....
January 9: 43.22
November 24: 28.03
Value lost: 35%
and if you try to define a drop as a sudden loss of value, then In Jan 17 there was one of 7.
I tried it and was completely unimpressed.
If they cared at all about it they would be contacting people that registered to let them know the site is now operationsl (which at least in my case, they haven't)
Although in principle I tend to agree that the Mapuche have no real case (based in the scant evidence offered) I find very interesting the patronizing tone of many or the people replying.
Sadly this is a very typical attitude of US people. They tend to think that their way is the only way and the rest can be damned. I will not throw damning examples around, sadly we have plenty of them at this moment in time, instead I will tell an anecdote.
When one senior manager visited a branch office in an Asian country where I was working, we made presentations about several aspects of doing bussiness in Asia. One of the topics was cultural awarness.
After my colleague finished a very thorough presentation, making a clear cut bussiness case of why cultural awarness could give us a competitive advantage in the region, the reply of this individual was to question why we have presented that topic. "I want to do bussiness here, not to become culturally aware" was his most memorable comment.
So no special policies were put in place to deal with local bussinesses. Eventually many of our clients disliked us because, amongst many other things, the company was not adjusting to the local ways and patterns of doing things (as an example, deals could not be closed in one to one meetings, we needed two big cometees, that way nobody in our client's side would feel unduly exposed. We did not close several deals for this reason until I approached a local person and received an explanation of something that was obvious to them).
The manager was USian, and in my experience, not untypical of US management style which assumes the US way is the best (and only) way of doing things.
Many tribal communities have democratically elected leaders (it is not like the Greeks were the only ones that came with the nifty idea you know) or elders. UNless you know something about the Mapuche that we don't you should not be so quick to assume so much.
In Mexico for example, Mayan, Purepechan, Yaqui, Tarahumara and many other tribes refussed to let their children to assist to primary school for many decades.
The reason? Classes were in Spanish, not their native tongue.
Since primary and secondary education in native languages was introduced, uptake and performance of native children has increased dramatically.
As one Mayan teacher said (paraprhasing) : "I used to be tought mathematics in Spanish. The problem was that I barely understood Spanish! The conclussion that teachers were reaching is that we all were stupid...." I have to note here that teachers would normally have been mixed race people, coming from outside the communities and with the stated objective of teaching in Spanish to the native children.
Such blantant racist insults belong to the gutter.
Although the Mapuche people are completely wrong IMNSHO, how you are treated as a minority could be a human rights issue, specially when it comes to sometime as precious as your own language.
Natives in Latinamerican countries very often are treated with desdain bordering on racism (and sometimes it is racism, pure and simple).
So it does not surprise me if they may see ulterior motives when the government, an entity rarely in favour of Native's rights, and an international megacorporation, which we know has a really bad reputation, ally themsleves to do something with their language.
They are wrong, but I understand why the may be suspicious.
Wait after Xmas and they may very well be half price.
I have a PSP and any game I buy has been released months ago.
And whenever available I go second market.
I don't understand the need to have something as soon as it is made available.
By jumping at a buy immediately I put myself at a disadvantage as a buyer. That is fine I am starving and need to buy some food, but for a game?
If you are a corporate or institutional buyer this is a non issue, your provider will ensure all your hardware works or will give you the advice so you can go and buy hardware that works.
This nonsense about comparing the problems faced by a hobbyist with the ones faced by an institutional Linux adopter are frankly comparing apples and oranges. No, like comparing oranges and caviar. Or something like that equally nonsensical.
It is just right and proper of any thinking individual in the XXI century since the alleged birth of Jesus.
Allow me to humbly nominate my compatriot Sor Juana Ines de La Cruz
In a time when women were not allowed to receive a proper education she pursued it with all her might. She was versed in the natural sciences, a very talented poet and playwright, musician, philosopher who also dabbled in astronomy and mathematics for good measure.
Why feminists and women rights' advocates outside Mexico have not adopted her as an icon is beyond me.
In Mexico she is rightly revered by having her image in our currency.
I went to watch a match of football (soccer for most of you uncivilized ones) some time ago, there were around 10 hooligans causing big concern and police movilization.
Since they were English everybody was saying how bad English fans were in spite that several thousend of them were peacefuly enjoying the game without bothering anybody else.
What I am tying to say is tha most people remembers when they are rudely shunned and tend to forget or to be unaware of the countless times friendly people do the right thing and lend a hand.
We are talking about software in general.
The internet, succesful companies like Google and Apple, and increasingly servers in datacentres all around the world, are build on top of FLOSS of one kind or another.
The last stronghold of propietary software is the desktop, and that is being eroded slowly but surely. Today you can run most of your personal computing needs using FLOSS, which means the field is ready for a real challenge to the domination of the closed software in the desktop (in spite of MS's shenanigans, even frivulous patents will eventually expire).
.... you just throw it away.
How dare you forbid me to think for myself!
The problem with your reasoning is that it goes against the most basic grain of how human culture has developed.
The most fundamental freedom of any person (after covering the basic necesities) is the freedom to think.
If you come up with a method to solve a problem you should be fully entitled to get some kind of remuneration if your method is useful. But I don't see why if I come with my own method to solve the same problem I should have to pay you anything for it.
Notice here that I am talking about methods to do something. If that method describs a trinket then the trinket should be patentable, giving you protection for your efforts, ensuring other people can't look at your trinket and do their own to ssolve the same problem.
But what you are advocating is that by writing a program that adds 2 + 2 anybody should pay you money for the addition operator.
But not only that, there will be people claiming to have invented binary operators, then even others claiming they inveted operators, and then even others that will claim they invented mathematical symbolic languages and so on.
Software patents becomes a game of who can come with the most outrageous and broad claims and is prepared to support them with enough cash in a court of law.
The system is broken, anybody writing sofware is amply protected by copyright and should realize that at times he may "win" but in the long term we are all losing (all that money that goes to parasitic lawyers could be spent doing new, innovative products, then IT companies woue earn a living by actually doing useful things).
Patents should protect only objects whose construction or implementation is so complex that the inventor needs a monopoly to recoup the costs.
If somebody has an instant of genious for a little adaptation, sorry, it is great, it may have never been thought before, but if it is easy to replicate then one should call into question how innovative the artifact really is.
And in regards to software, which is just the formalization of a process of thought necessary to talk to a computer, patents are sheer madness. The equivalent in literature would be to have granted Shakespeare a patent on writing a performance about kings on te bases of any of his great plays. That is whay copyright is there for, it is high time that IT companies realize this and understand that nobody is being served by software patents.
I refer to IT companies because they are the ones that can either lobby for software patents abolition where they exist (mainly the US) or stop the idiotic push for them where they don't (the EU for example).
Specially software ones (you know, the patenting of ideas and concepts, that is speech).
In view of the last few days of sheer madness I find sad an discomforting that there are people out there still supporting what is clearly a rotten system.
Software, as explained previously, is immensily cheaper if you use Linux.
So a Windows only solution starts with a substantial disadvantage when considering the last two items: training and support.
I have lots of experience giving, receiving and organizing training, for run of the mill products like OSes and desktop applications the rates are pretty standard regardless of the product, given the applications mentioned in the article, I don't see anything that would suggest using Linux would increase training costs enormously if at all.
As for support you can get many companies to take in bulk whatever you have, regardless of OS, and if you do it internally then you will not raise the salary of your techs just because now they have to support Linux (they may need training, but that should be budgeted yearly any way, so frankly I don't see how support would be a factor in a differential in price).
So the only way I can think of that a MS solution would be cheaper is if licenses, training and support are all offered in one package and then the price cut below cost in order to keep a foot firmly in the door.
Most companies can't afford to do this, unless somebody is prepared to lose money (or some of part of what they are offering is way overvalued).
Draw your own conclussions, but the only way I see this working is if MS offers a great deal for licenses (which are terribly overvalued, piracy and confussing pricing schemes pretty much probe that) and they do the support and training for cheap. Or they could strong arm the company providing the services to do so, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that the persuade a company to lose money in a high profile company in order to keep a healthy business relationship in other projects mutually profitable.
If the data was useful you would have it in a current format.
Most keyboards nowadays are immensely better and there are many that are ergonomically sound. But nostalgia is an strong feeling.
All the people calling us, people obejctin to this deal, fear mongers, FUD spreaders and what have you.
/.ers should be more careful abbout the differences between copyright and patent issues.
The matter of fact is that MS does not need to go and find any code in order to claim patent violation.
If they have a patent for lets say the trash can icon )bear with me this is just for illustration purposes) they can point to the trash can icons in all OSes anc claim a violation without needing to see a single line of code.
There is no queston that MS learned from SCO that copyright claims ar a no starter if you are intent on spreading misinformation, specially when it comes to open source products, but claims of patent violation are a completely different game. Just thik about Amazon and the one-click fiasco.
That is the kind of threat that MS is laying bare in front of everybody. They want to kill or at the very list constrain Linux progress by means of of the treath of death by thousend one-click patents. Absolutely despicable.
Very few things are done to last as well as computer keyboards.
The one I am using was bought in 1995 and is still going strong.
It is one of the original MS Natural Keyboards, the last product I ever bought from them. I would recommended it but given who they are I don't do so.
Don't use it.
Quite simple frankly.
If you feel so much revultion at the thought of a community this is mostly a free world you know, nobody is forcing you to be part of it.
The community initially included mostly developers of software, debuggers, users and finally anybody interested in free software as a cultural and political issue. In any community you will find people fully commited to the causes spoused by it, some others attracted tangentially to it, and some more just trying to reap the benefits associated to being in a group without any of the responsibilities. Call the community a neighbourhood, state, city or country, you will always identify people that broadly fits any of these patterns of behaviour. And yes you will find zealots. Wellcome to the real world, we have been missing you.
People in the FSF promoting the adoption of free software have always been quite upfront about their aims and objectives. Anybody deciding to use GPL and similar licenses should (or should have known) that behind the software developped there were a set of cultural and political objectives, implied or explicit. If people released software under such licenses and did not do their homework regarding the implications, well, they are to blame, not the folks mantaining the consistency of the licensing scheme. And they can release the software under another license of their own chosing if they feel so bad about it.
Anybody using FOSS as users should inform themeselves what is behind the licenses. If they did not want to do it that is perfectly fine, apathy is an option, but if they are distressed by the commitment of other people using or developing the software, well, the door is wide open, good bye and good luck.
You said lets be clear, and the first thing you do is to cloud the issue by playing word games.
I will not bother to find the definition of what a cult is, because it is not what you are after. What you are after is to paint a group of people in a bad light that fits your political convictions. That is cool, such is life, but your assertions should not go unanswered. To be politically commited to a cultural cause is not being part of a cult, many folks around here confuse political intransigence with cultism, but there are issues in which negotiation is not possible from an intellectual point of view.
Issues like slavery, women and children rights are no longer to be examined, they are set in stone and the political orthodoxy dictated by common sense is full intransigence. If anybody would suggest to reopen them and look about how good slavery could be of if perhaps children or women should be subjects of any rights people critizing vehmently such idiots could hardly being called zealots or cultists.
Well, guess what, many of us believe that society is damaged if software is not open for inspection and we think this is not an issue that should be open for negotiation. Nobody is forcing you to sign to this agenda. Nobody is forcing you not to develop software under a different set of principles. But we have principles, and those are not open to negotiation. If your are, that says alot about what princiles mean to you.
In regards to the Debian community, the problem is that software is not in a vaccum and has to deal with legal issues. if you are not strictly scrupulous to the point of fastidioussness you are going to be called to task sooner or later, in a litigious environment, you may be even if you are diligent. The Debian folk have taken the point of view that by mantaining a clear separation between what is fully free and what is not, keeps developers and users protected from any claims about copyright and maybe even patent infringement. Sorry that you can't differentiate between legal due diligence and cultism, but the facts are there open for all to see and draw their own conclussions.
So frankly your tirade about this cultural movement being a cult is disingenous (yes, really, it is), facile, and lacking of any substance.
Do you hav
MS was poluting Java. Big time.
They were found out and before losing, decided to settle.
Completely different to setting up a protection racket, intimidating the first fool willing to play ball, and showing it to the rest of the community as an example while pointing out to other not paying that they may not be protected.
Al Capone would be proud of MS's tactics.