Linux source control would not be affected by the whims of a closed source sompany.
After all these years of OSS existence and advocacy I don't understand how there are people out there that don't understand why open is better in the long term.
Anybody with delussion of the contrary can go ans waste their money starting a "software" company.
MS knows it, that is why they tried to start subscription services for theiy wares and why they entered the online gaming market (servicing software by another name).
IBM knows it.
The companies making the more money in the IT industry are the ones providing services.
But here we are, once again, sombody decrying that what economics are mandating should be avoided by all means.
You go ahead budy, become the Don Quixote of the software shop. Those windmills are called market forces and are going to give you a beating to remember.
Scientists use the rate of mutation in bacteria or viruses during their study.
The HIV has a well known ancestral history from the first strains known until the current ones. Some mutated to be less lethal in order not to kill the host too fast, thus allowing easier propagation.
That is all for starters, some animals adapted in early Industrial England by changing colour (to black) to make use of the coal coated buildings of the day. In his novel and TV serial "Cosmos", Carl Sagan presents a crab that has developed the likeness of a samurai face on its belly since fishermen have bee sparing crabs with anything resembling human faces since time immemorial.
Finally, how do you know we, as an example, are more complicated or simpler than our ancestors? And how do you measure that in terms that make sense from a thermodynamic point of view?
Are you Billy Gates? Then yes, by all means pay somebody else to get a computer, your time may be literally valued at millions.
Are you a regular guy that would be doing something else completely unproductive otherwise? Then your time is not worth as much as you think, saving 100 bucks could be worth the hassle.
... don't like the mess, then they could stop offering the refunds when one does not agree to the EULA.
But they will not do it because then they would fall foul of legislation in most places that forbids to tie in sales of one product (computer) only if you buy another (Windows).
The offer of the refund is not from the goodness of their hearts. Making almost imposible for consumers to get something they are entitled to is immoral and your criticism of people trying to get what is rightly theirs is ridiculous and preposterous.
I have never met the types you are mentioning, but alas, the Linux people I meet move in business circles.
I am also tired about this notion that to be passionate about something is to have no life.
By those harsh standards somebody completely obsessed about music (Beethoven), Natural Sciences (Newton) or Mathematics (Ramanujan) did not have a life.
Having a life has many forms and shapes, people commited fully to one field of expertise have dcided to live in a certain way and frankly they should not be criticized for that.
As for social skills, they are overrated. Social skills are a matter of context, and nobody has the right social skills for all the situations.
Hackers and FLOSS advocates have the right social skills to relate to their peers, some of them (names please) may not have the skills to realate to *some* non tehcnical people.
Stereotypes are rarely true, I would not mod up somebody using them with such relish.
I go and tell my boss why we should use Linux. Sometimes I am told to fuck off. Some other times we test a systems that eventually becomes production grade, or I get some people interested in using it on their desktops and after a while they don't need Windows anymore.
And in some contexts your boss could not give a toss about the technical decissions you are making, it is your own fear and inertia which make you reach for the "boss"
Big company grabs FLOSS project but it does not quite fit the bill.
Big company hires programmer, who needs to pay mortgage, to customize FLOSS project to their own needs.
Programmer gets paid, programmer pays mortgage.
Programmer, realizing that the more free software there is out there the more programmers will be needed, contributes to a FLOSS project, lobies company that just paid him to release the changes.
Pay per software will day out because it is banking on a stupid idea: to sell thought and ideas.
For as far as humanity has existed ideas have been shared freeley, it is only during the last 100 or so years that people have been trained to believe ideas can be sold.
We live in an abnormal era, programmers should forget about this nonsense and understand that the more ideas are available out there (in the form of sofware) the more work they will have.
How the bloody hell do you Linux people know for sure you're not all compromised?
First of all experience. When people technically competent, without a direct interest in a given product (i.e. you can't believe Mr. Gates when he says Windows is secure) are in general agreement, I think you can trust what you are hearing.
MS has, in purpose, which is the more silly, made their OSes more vulnerable. By design they expose you to userland applications to do whatever they want, a sure recipe for disaster as experience has shown.
Linux, learning from years of experience of UNIX, separates userland from the kernel at the outset, and as time has gone by, fine tunning of userland applications have made the full thing more secure.
Also the way the two entities react to security threats is telling. MS tries to hide the fact that a vulnerabilty is found and has gone as far a hinting that people disclosing security problems should be somehow liable.
In Linux, the sooner a vulnerability is exposed, analyzed and understood, the better. This enables patches to be out there faster. The people exposing the vulnerabiliteis are praised for their skills.
Under this scenario it is very easy for me to know which environment I can trust more.
... provided by USian company. Millions would benefit while a few thousends, at most, would suffer (a bit, who wold be first snapped by the US company to run operations in Indonesia?).
If the inventors can't get a head start, they would not have deserved to keep control of the technology.
Slashdot Mirror
Since reverse Engineering is a perfect fine activity to replace something else if done correctly.
You are embarrasing yourself, badly.
Linux source control would not be affected by the whims of a closed source sompany.
After all these years of OSS existence and advocacy I don't understand how there are people out there that don't understand why open is better in the long term.
Fortunately those are relative terms.
... not like a hacker.
Hacker do not have deadlines, they do things for the pleasure fo doing them and the knoledge acquired.
Linus should have never used BK.
Red Hat or SuSe perhaps should have.
... for Linux kernel development of using a tool like BK.
But many now are fully entitled to tell him "we told you so"....
Anybody with delussion of the contrary can go ans waste their money starting a "software" company.
MS knows it, that is why they tried to start subscription services for theiy wares and why they entered the online gaming market (servicing software by another name).
IBM knows it.
The companies making the more money in the IT industry are the ones providing services.
But here we are, once again, sombody decrying that what economics are mandating should be avoided by all means.
You go ahead budy, become the Don Quixote of the software shop. Those windmills are called market forces and are going to give you a beating to remember.
... that, thank goodness, reverse engineering is not illegal? (not yet at least, many fine folks are making a big effort to make it not so anymore).
That is it really.
If Linus, and you, don't understand about software freedom, about our right to share knowledge, you are both deluded.
Tridgell is not copying something, he is thinkering with it, finding how it works, and producing his own version that does the same.
That is perfectly legitimate and Linus and his friend are on the wrong this time.
Linus lambasting reverse Engineering is so idiotic in so many ways that it is not funny.
You can define your willigness to receive a message in programmable terms, thus spam could be:
-Messages whose senders I have not authorized to send me messages (that authorization could take the form of signed emails, white lists, etc)
Scientists use the rate of mutation in bacteria or viruses during their study.
The HIV has a well known ancestral history from the first strains known until the current ones. Some mutated to be less lethal in order not to kill the host too fast, thus allowing easier propagation.
That is all for starters, some animals adapted in early Industrial England by changing colour (to black) to make use of the coal coated buildings of the day. In his novel and TV serial "Cosmos", Carl Sagan presents a crab that has developed the likeness of a samurai face on its belly since fishermen have bee sparing crabs with anything resembling human faces since time immemorial.
Finally, how do you know we, as an example, are more complicated or simpler than our ancestors? And how do you measure that in terms that make sense from a thermodynamic point of view?
A god that dumb (thinkering at such low level to start life) would be dreadful.
So I will go for the safe, logical alternative. We don't know. Yet.
From TFA:
Under Virginia law, sending unsolicited bulk e-mail itself is not a crime unless the sender masks his identity.
Fraud anyone?
... sarcastic, dislexic or forgetful?
Are you Billy Gates? Then yes, by all means pay somebody else to get a computer, your time may be literally valued at millions.
Are you a regular guy that would be doing something else completely unproductive otherwise? Then your time is not worth as much as you think, saving 100 bucks could be worth the hassle.
... don't like the mess, then they could stop offering the refunds when one does not agree to the EULA.
But they will not do it because then they would fall foul of legislation in most places that forbids to tie in sales of one product (computer) only if you buy another (Windows).
The offer of the refund is not from the goodness of their hearts. Making almost imposible for consumers to get something they are entitled to is immoral and your criticism of people trying to get what is rightly theirs is ridiculous and preposterous.
Their choice to use software they did not write without giving anything back when they re-distribute it?
Well, I can live with that. I have never liked freeloaders anyway.
I have never met the types you are mentioning, but alas, the Linux people I meet move in business circles.
I am also tired about this notion that to be passionate about something is to have no life.
By those harsh standards somebody completely obsessed about music (Beethoven), Natural Sciences (Newton) or Mathematics (Ramanujan) did not have a life.
Having a life has many forms and shapes, people commited fully to one field of expertise have dcided to live in a certain way and frankly they should not be criticized for that.
As for social skills, they are overrated. Social skills are a matter of context, and nobody has the right social skills for all the situations.
Hackers and FLOSS advocates have the right social skills to relate to their peers, some of them (names please) may not have the skills to realate to *some* non tehcnical people.
Stereotypes are rarely true, I would not mod up somebody using them with such relish.
That is a moronic, defeatist view of the world.
I go and tell my boss why we should use Linux. Sometimes I am told to fuck off. Some other times we test a systems that eventually becomes production grade, or I get some people interested in using it on their desktops and after a while they don't need Windows anymore.
And in some contexts your boss could not give a toss about the technical decissions you are making, it is your own fear and inertia which make you reach for the "boss"
A lot of businesses make their money by hiring developers and selling software
Most software is in-house, tailored software.
Software houses are in a diminishing minority when it comes to produce software.
Big company grabs FLOSS project but it does not quite fit the bill.
Big company hires programmer, who needs to pay mortgage, to customize FLOSS project to their own needs.
Programmer gets paid, programmer pays mortgage.
Programmer, realizing that the more free software there is out there the more programmers will be needed, contributes to a FLOSS project, lobies company that just paid him to release the changes.
Pay per software will day out because it is banking on a stupid idea: to sell thought and ideas.
For as far as humanity has existed ideas have been shared freeley, it is only during the last 100 or so years that people have been trained to believe ideas can be sold.
We live in an abnormal era, programmers should forget about this nonsense and understand that the more ideas are available out there (in the form of sofware) the more work they will have.
How the bloody hell do you Linux people know for sure you're not all compromised?
First of all experience. When people technically competent, without a direct interest in a given product (i.e. you can't believe Mr. Gates when he says Windows is secure) are in general agreement, I think you can trust what you are hearing.
MS has, in purpose, which is the more silly, made their OSes more vulnerable. By design they expose you to userland applications to do whatever they want, a sure recipe for disaster as experience has shown.
Linux, learning from years of experience of UNIX, separates userland from the kernel at the outset, and as time has gone by, fine tunning of userland applications have made the full thing more secure.
Also the way the two entities react to security threats is telling. MS tries to hide the fact that a vulnerabilty is found and has gone as far a hinting that people disclosing security problems should be somehow liable.
In Linux, the sooner a vulnerability is exposed, analyzed and understood, the better. This enables patches to be out there faster. The people exposing the vulnerabiliteis are praised for their skills.
Under this scenario it is very easy for me to know which environment I can trust more.
They do so because they have lousy policing techniques.
Two policemen can have full control of a situation with only one suspect if they are properly trained.
Handcuffing is the lazy alternative preferred by the ignorant and the armies of dictators.
Because I am not a cheap bastard....
Cheap bastard.
... provided by USian company. Millions would benefit while a few thousends, at most, would suffer (a bit, who wold be first snapped by the US company to run operations in Indonesia?).
If the inventors can't get a head start, they would not have deserved to keep control of the technology.