Re:People have too much time on their hands
on
GameBoy Web Server
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
You can write a TCP/IP stack for some processor on some platform? Yeah, we all _know_ that can be done, but, why waste your time doing something useless?
I'm willing to be the guy learned a great deal by doing this. A while ago I wrote a spaceship flying demo in OpenGL. Utterly useless. It's been done before. But hey, I learned a lot about OpenGL in the process.
If you're just going to sit there doing only "useful" stuff that's completely original, you aren't going to get much done.
A clenched fist at arm's length covers about 10 degrees of sky. The sun moves about 10 degrees / hour, so seeing how many "fists" from the sun to the horizon gives a good approximation the number of hours of daylight left.
Note: this is all from hazy memory, so I may be wrong.
"Can't compete? Sue!" seems to be the going business model nowadays. In big enough cases, such as this one, it leads to the "Can't compete? Government do something!" strategy.
Rather unfortunate. Of course, the article is scant on details, but on the face of it it just seems that IBM delivered what customers wanted, and their competitors waffled. mmmmmm free market.
As for the copying, I sure hope nobody posts any opinions, because there isn't enough information here to even form one about that question.
What about all the companies that have flourished because of patents? And all the other countries that seem to be doing quite well WITH the systems in place?
Well, sure... these companies were given government granted monopolies. I guess some companies can do well under Statism, but I'd rather live without governmnet granted mononpolies, thanks.
Actually, I e-mailed the author about this, and he said that ZDNet added the words "open-source advocate" to his original text without notifying him of the change. The author was kind of peeved about that, and has written ZDNet asking them to change it back.
The original, undoctored article is available at the LWP site.
I doubt it would ever happen in the United States, which would also mean it probably wouldn't ever happen in Canada either
The real problem here (Canada), I believe (which is code for "I'm talking out of my ass, but it kind of makes sense, so bear with me") is that consumers are apathetic: except for a few tentacle Anime loving freaks, nobody here cares about region coding, because we're in Region 1, and get all the Hollywood flicks pretty cheap.
In other regions, where the region coding is used as a price control (read: gouging), consumers are little more irrate. Hence government action.
(defun insert-php-region ()
(interactive "*")
(let ((php-template '(" n p n "?>" > n )))
(tempo-insert-template 'php-template tempo-insert-region)
(mmm-parse-buffer)))
(defun my-php-hook ()
;; C-c C-f is used by pgsml
(define-key php-mode-map
"\C-cd"
'php-search-documentation)
;; C-c C-m is used by pgsml
(define-key php-mode-map
"\C-cb"
'php-browse-manual)
Personally, I think that lawyers and politicians need to keep their hands off of the 'net because they simply fail to understand it on a level necessary to make intelligent laws.
That goes for just about anything in life. Anyways... if only it were the politicians making the laws... that power is now (for all intents and purposes) in the hands of special interests and lobbyists.
Or, if you're a Canadian like me, Canadian laws are drafted by US special interests and lobbyists. Yay.
thus denying the Constitutionally given rights of content creators and copyright holders, no?
The US Constituon does not give rights to content creators and copyright holders at all. All it does is permit Congress to enact copyright legislation:
Section 8. The Congress shall have power...
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
If you don't like it blame it on Tolkien for writing a trilogy.
Tolkien didn't write a trilogy:
The Lord of the Rings is often erroneously called a trilogy, when it is in fact a single novel, consisting of six books plus appendices, sometimes published in three volumes.
From Notes on the Text, written by Douglas A. Anderson in 1993.
The central theme of the corruption and temptation of the ring is very Christian
Similar themes are seen in the stories of the Sirens in Greek mythology.
You keep using this term "very Christian". What exactly does that mean? As though pity is not found in any other mythological structure?
Like I said before... the book may draw on Christianity, but Christianity itself drew from many sources: there isn't much of anything original in the Bible. The themes in LOTR are as ancient as civilisation itself. Quoth Tolkein:
The prime motive [for writing LOTR] was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and times maybe excite them or deeply move them.
Further:
I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers.
In other words, Tolkein recognised that people will judge things through their own tinted glasses. You may see Christian influence, but I see something much deeper and more fundamentally Human.
Further:
An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experiences are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous.
Lord of the rings is a allegorically based on biblical stories.
As pointed out by others, this was explicitly denied by Tolkein himself.
One has to remember that the Biblical stories are not all that original. Death and resurrection, battles between Good and Evil, powerful staffs, the humble and unwilling hero, etc appear in all kinds of myths, not just in the Bible, and many pre-date the Bible.
This interview smacks more of a co-opting of the work to further an agenda than anything else.
You aren't free to not pay the taxes on blank media that they want (except by not buying blank media, but a lot of us have legitimate need for CDRs, etc).
That's the real problem, in my opinion. You are assumed guilty without even a chance of proving your innocence.
Ironically, the failure of my competitor is likely to kill my company, too -- EVEN IF MY PRODUCT IS SUPERIOR. (People will tolerate many shortcomings in something that's free.)
Then why doesn't Linux (*BSD, etc) own 95% of the desktop market?
The situation gets worse still if the GPL enters the picture. If the competitor's code is released under the GPL, I cannot so much as LOOK at it.
Sure you can. Just don't copy it.
Thus, the sudden release of software from companies that go out of business either into the public domain or (worse) under the GPL can cause a chain reaction which destroys any incentives to create or improve products in that category.
*laugh* Really... Microsoft continues to "compete" with Linux, KOffice, etc. Eudora competes with mutt. I'm afraid I just don't see any justification for the above statement.
Microsoft et. al. would say the exact same thing about their software.
Uhm... except you don't have access to MS code. So... what are you talking about?
i'm not a lawyer and don't want to become one; i just want to hack and make things without having to dealing with all these licenses.
Yeah... see, you just visit that "Compatible Licenses" page... if the license of the code you wish to use is compatible with the license you wish to use, proceed, else stop. Is that so difficult?
Free/open software desperately needs much, much better documentation in two areas: End user docs and architecture/design/implementation docs for other programmers who want to work on or with the code.
And how is that different from non-free/closed source software?
Personally I think Free software has much better documentation. Yes, I am counting e.g. O'Reilly titles as Free Software documentation. I glance over to my bookshelf and see such useful titles as "sed & awk", "GNU Autoconf, Automake, and Libtools", "LaTeX", "Linux Core Kernel", etc etc.
Note he writes that he couldn't sign a license agreement... hrm; like the license agreement he forces anyone who wants to put any GNU code into their projects to do ?
From the GPL, section 5:
5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not
signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or
distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are
prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by
modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the
Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and
all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying
the Program or works based on it.
You aren't forced at all. If you want to benefit from his (and others') work, then these are the rules you have to play by. You can't take without giving. If you don't like it, don't use their work. It's that simple.
That's what made open source software so nice; you could hack without worrying about strange, arbitrary laws governing which code you can use and which you can't. Just download the code you need and go; everyone is happy.
That what the page at
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLC ompatibleLicenses is for. Makes it simple.
it's becoming just as bad as (or even worse than) closed source software.
How do you figure that? You have 0 rights with closed source/non-free software.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're just going to sit there doing only "useful" stuff that's completely original, you aren't going to get much done.
Thanks for catching that.
Note: this is all from hazy memory, so I may be wrong.
Rather unfortunate. Of course, the article is scant on details, but on the face of it it just seems that IBM delivered what customers wanted, and their competitors waffled. mmmmmm free market.
As for the copying, I sure hope nobody posts any opinions, because there isn't enough information here to even form one about that question.
The original, undoctored article is available at the LWP site.
Ask Google
In other regions, where the region coding is used as a price control (read: gouging), consumers are little more irrate. Hence government action.
MMM allows you to run two major modes within the same buffer.
.emacs:
:submode php-mode
:front "")))
;; C-c C-f is used by pgsml
;; C-c C-m is used by pgsml
So first, go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/mmm-mode/
and get and install mmm-mode.
Next, get php-mode from http://php-mode.sourceforge.net/ and install that.
Then, put this in your
(require 'mmm-mode)
(setq mmm-global-mode 'maybe)
(mmm-add-mode-ext-class nil "\\.php[34]?\\'" 'html-php)
(mmm-add-classes
'((html-php
(autoload 'php-mode "php-mode" "PHP editing mode" t)
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.php[34]?\\'" . html-mode))
(defun insert-php-region ()
(interactive "*")
(let ((php-template '(" n p n "?>" > n )))
(tempo-insert-template 'php-template tempo-insert-region)
(mmm-parse-buffer)))
(defun my-php-hook ()
(define-key php-mode-map
"\C-cd"
'php-search-documentation)
(define-key php-mode-map
"\C-cb"
'php-browse-manual)
(define-key html-mode-map
"\C-c\C-p"
'insert-php-region)
(c-toggle-hungry-state t))
(add-hook 'php-mode-hook 'my-php-hook)
Now you will have HTML syntax highlighting and indenting for the HTML bits, and PHP syntax highlighting and indenting for the bits.
Or, if you're a Canadian like me, Canadian laws are drafted by US special interests and lobbyists. Yay.
Anyways, the greatest documentation of all to learn form is, was, and always will be source code.
You keep using this term "very Christian". What exactly does that mean? As though pity is not found in any other mythological structure?
Like I said before... the book may draw on Christianity, but Christianity itself drew from many sources: there isn't much of anything original in the Bible. The themes in LOTR are as ancient as civilisation itself. Quoth Tolkein:
Further: In other words, Tolkein recognised that people will judge things through their own tinted glasses. You may see Christian influence, but I see something much deeper and more fundamentally Human. Further: Amen.One has to remember that the Biblical stories are not all that original. Death and resurrection, battles between Good and Evil, powerful staffs, the humble and unwilling hero, etc appear in all kinds of myths, not just in the Bible, and many pre-date the Bible.
This interview smacks more of a co-opting of the work to further an agenda than anything else.
You aren't free to not pay the taxes on blank media that they want (except by not buying blank media, but a lot of us have legitimate need for CDRs, etc).
That's the real problem, in my opinion. You are assumed guilty without even a chance of proving your innocence.
Personally I think Free software has much better documentation. Yes, I am counting e.g. O'Reilly titles as Free Software documentation. I glance over to my bookshelf and see such useful titles as "sed & awk", "GNU Autoconf, Automake, and Libtools", "LaTeX", "Linux Core Kernel", etc etc.