And libraries are funded by... you got it, the government. ie it's paid education.
The only difference being you don't end up with a certificate at the end of it, and people who go to job interviews explaining that they've pumped gas for their entire lives but they can program in C because they read a book on it don't usually get jobs. --
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
Note that by 'obsolete', nobody's saying that you can't play things on this equipment anymore. But you won't be able to buy
any new media for them. No new releases will be made for any format you own. If a component of your sound system
breaks, you won't be able to replace it with anything new -- all the new audio components will have new connectors and
secure protocols, and none of it will work with your old stuff.
I'm not sure about where you live, but I can still obtain new releases on cassette, from local music stores no less, and the media is freely available everywhere I look. Cassette decks remain in stores, selling by the crapload.
The only way I can see someone describing cassette decks as "obsolete" is if they believe that technologically they're inferior to other media. But with consumer music CD writing equipment several times the cost of cassette writing equipment, not merely now but the prices that existed twenty years ago, the two aren't in real competition.
Indeed, I suspect the RIAA would rather cassettes hung around than see them replaced by CD writers. --
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
The guy who created the
game (Charles Darrow, IIRC) didn't believe in credit, so you couldn't borrow money from the bank or have to pay interest.
is flawed, and as such you're fixing a problem that really isn't there. In monopoly, as in real life, you can obtain credit guaranteed against property. You can obtain a certain amount from the bank for any item you chose to mortgage, and you have to pay it back plus "interest" - the incentive being that during the time it's in hoc you don't earn any money from it.
This is a simplified model, and substitutes the complexity of time based interest penalties for the easier to manage time based rent-collection penalties.
Most games have to have a limit on their complexity or else they'd be unplayable. In Monopoly's case, your property is your credit rating (in RL, your property factors into your credit rating, so that's not unfair), and the interest system is easy to administer. With hindsight, that's sheer brilliance on the part of Monopoly's inventor.
--
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
The $6 an hour is usually spent on living expenses, y'know, eating, having a roof over your head, not dying from hypothermia, that kind of thing. Your course assignment today is to explain how someone pumping gas can earn enough to cover living expenses and the expense of training, and also have time to actually do the training in the first place.
On my desk, first thing tomorrow morning please. --
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
If you don't have any money, it doesn't matter how "cheap" the training is. You're not going to do it.
Personally I'm in favour of paid training. But then, a anarcho-socialist libertarian like me would think that. --
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
Actually the two patents are equally ridiculous. BT didn't patent hyperlinks, it patented the idea of using them over a phone line. With GeoWorks going for the using hyperlinks over a radio link, I think they're pretty much as stupid as each other.
Quite why the BT patent keeps being described as you just did I don't quite know, except possibly that in both forms it's just so ridiculous nobody can be bothered making the correction. --
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
Which raises the question...
on
Palmtop NetBSD
·
· Score: 1
What are the chances of a Palm Pilot version?
(Yes, I know, PP's have a pre-MMU era CPU, but you can get around that using p-Codes and/or compiler restrictions) --
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
I hate to say it but a link to an osOpinion article doesn't tell us a great deal. Does anyone have any links to what Raskin actually said?
On the osOpinion piece, I'm not sure how practical what they propose actually is. If one just needs to start typing to get a word processor, how does one do nippy calculations, and distinguish between entering calculations and writing a mathematical thesis? --
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
Ok, so if I use a cellular telephone to browse the world wide web, am I violating Geoworks's (WWW over radio) and BT's (hypertext over telephone lines) patents?
Scary stuff. I blame the government. --
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
I just wonder if something cooler and politically positive could be done, something like "DMCA the movie", set in the future where paper books are non-existant, and people are unable to read electronic replacements if they haven't paid the subscription fees.
You could make this initially boring premise look pretty cool with a Matrix-style gang of subversive programmers cracking content, and people being killed through lack of critical information the moment they need it. You could throw in some "clues" about what the movie was alluding to - names of black-hats would be Valenti, Kaplan, et al. The programmers group could be called DeCSS or something similar.
I wonder how far a kick-ass movie script with the above would get in Hollywood before someone realises what it's about and quietly kills the project? --
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
...which means you can't run it in Virginia, the only place in the world where EULA's have some authority (UCITA).
Otherwise you've paid the retail price ($0), you have fair use rights. --
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
Re:I don't see it happening
on
OS X on x86?
·
· Score: 1
The Mac version will. My comments about pricing were directed at the hypothetical x86 version and what kind of prices Apple would be looking at if they wanted to avoid losing money overall. --
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
Re:I don't see it happening
on
OS X on x86?
·
· Score: 1
A good question to ask might be "How much profit is Apple making from the average Mac" and then asking if users would be willing to pay this + media + retail costs for MacOS X.
I'm guessing that if Apple is making $50-100, which seems unlikely but with an iMac coming in at $800, hardware costs making up some of that, retail costs making up even more, it might be possible, you might be able to see MacOS X for less than $200. Which is cheaper than a brand new boxed copy of Windows right now, but not by much. I doubt most Slashdotters would be willing to shell out that much. NextStep and OpenStep used to retail for around $500 IIRC, and the enthusiasm of its users was not enough to make people actually want to spend money on it.
Indeed, as superior to Windows OS's goes, the news currently is fairly bleak. Even the cheap systems, BeOS, QNX, etc, have failed to make any headway and had to go to a free (as in beer) distribution model to hold on to market share.
Then again, another question is "Would it, priced at a lower margin, attract many more times the number of users that would have otherwise been unwilling to buy a Mac". If so, then the prices might be lower, but Jobs et al would have to be very sure that they'd see a dramatic improvement in market share. If sales of Macs without x86 MacOS X would have been 1,000,000, but with the x86 platform available be half that with a mere 800,000 expected sales of x86 MacOS X, Apple wouldn't even be able to halve the price.
Right now, I don't see it as impossible that MacOS X might be released in an x86 form, but I suspect the price would be a great deal more than most people would be willing to pay, especially with most people(still!) being forced to buy Windows anyway and with little chance the x86 version will be able to run all OS X software (remember there's all the stuff designed to run on MacOS 9 that wont work)
I think Intel people who want the platform might be better of contributing to the GNUStep and Darwin projects. You wont get Aqua, but the platform will be free (as in speech and as in beer), and wont rely on Apple hardware sales to determine the level of support both now and in the future. --
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Mission critical, ready for the desktop
on
eWeek on Linux
·
· Score: 2
One of the things that hit me as soon as I read this was the question of whether or not trying to make an enterprise class operating system would conflict with attempts to also make it "ready for the desktop". It struck me that while these aren't necessary directly contradictory aims, the need for a different type of administrativeship for each application meant there are great dangers if programmers focus on one aim rather than the bigger picture.
Linux is remarkable in part because for those of us who understand enough of it to make it productive, it has extraordinary powers in both areas. Assertions that it's not a desktop operating system usually mean actually that it's not a desktop operating system for everyone. The thing is, if the Linux programming community continues to move it towards being user-friendly for everyone, idiot to kernel hacker, will that necessarily result in a loss of performance/features/etc that Linux has inhereted from it's Unix roots?
I'd be interested to know what others think. --
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
Slashdot Mirror
The only difference being you don't end up with a certificate at the end of it, and people who go to job interviews explaining that they've pumped gas for their entire lives but they can program in C because they read a book on it don't usually get jobs.
--
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
The only way I can see someone describing cassette decks as "obsolete" is if they believe that technologically they're inferior to other media. But with consumer music CD writing equipment several times the cost of cassette writing equipment, not merely now but the prices that existed twenty years ago, the two aren't in real competition.
Indeed, I suspect the RIAA would rather cassettes hung around than see them replaced by CD writers.
--
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
This is a simplified model, and substitutes the complexity of time based interest penalties for the easier to manage time based rent-collection penalties.
Most games have to have a limit on their complexity or else they'd be unplayable. In Monopoly's case, your property is your credit rating (in RL, your property factors into your credit rating, so that's not unfair), and the interest system is easy to administer. With hindsight, that's sheer brilliance on the part of Monopoly's inventor.
--
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
On my desk, first thing tomorrow morning please.
--
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
Personally I'm in favour of paid training. But then, a anarcho-socialist libertarian like me would think that.
--
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
--
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
Quite why the BT patent keeps being described as you just did I don't quite know, except possibly that in both forms it's just so ridiculous nobody can be bothered making the correction.
--
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
(Yes, I know, PP's have a pre-MMU era CPU, but you can get around that using p-Codes and/or compiler restrictions)
--
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
On the osOpinion piece, I'm not sure how practical what they propose actually is. If one just needs to start typing to get a word processor, how does one do nippy calculations, and distinguish between entering calculations and writing a mathematical thesis?
--
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
Scary stuff. I blame the government.
--
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
You could make this initially boring premise look pretty cool with a Matrix-style gang of subversive programmers cracking content, and people being killed through lack of critical information the moment they need it. You could throw in some "clues" about what the movie was alluding to - names of black-hats would be Valenti, Kaplan, et al. The programmers group could be called DeCSS or something similar.
I wonder how far a kick-ass movie script with the above would get in Hollywood before someone realises what it's about and quietly kills the project?
--
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
Otherwise you've paid the retail price ($0), you have fair use rights.
--
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
The Mac version will. My comments about pricing were directed at the hypothetical x86 version and what kind of prices Apple would be looking at if they wanted to avoid losing money overall.
--
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
I'm guessing that if Apple is making $50-100, which seems unlikely but with an iMac coming in at $800, hardware costs making up some of that, retail costs making up even more, it might be possible, you might be able to see MacOS X for less than $200. Which is cheaper than a brand new boxed copy of Windows right now, but not by much. I doubt most Slashdotters would be willing to shell out that much. NextStep and OpenStep used to retail for around $500 IIRC, and the enthusiasm of its users was not enough to make people actually want to spend money on it.
Indeed, as superior to Windows OS's goes, the news currently is fairly bleak. Even the cheap systems, BeOS, QNX, etc, have failed to make any headway and had to go to a free (as in beer) distribution model to hold on to market share.
Then again, another question is "Would it, priced at a lower margin, attract many more times the number of users that would have otherwise been unwilling to buy a Mac". If so, then the prices might be lower, but Jobs et al would have to be very sure that they'd see a dramatic improvement in market share. If sales of Macs without x86 MacOS X would have been 1,000,000, but with the x86 platform available be half that with a mere 800,000 expected sales of x86 MacOS X, Apple wouldn't even be able to halve the price.
Right now, I don't see it as impossible that MacOS X might be released in an x86 form, but I suspect the price would be a great deal more than most people would be willing to pay, especially with most people(still!) being forced to buy Windows anyway and with little chance the x86 version will be able to run all OS X software (remember there's all the stuff designed to run on MacOS 9 that wont work)
I think Intel people who want the platform might be better of contributing to the GNUStep and Darwin projects. You wont get Aqua, but the platform will be free (as in speech and as in beer), and wont rely on Apple hardware sales to determine the level of support both now and in the future.
--
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
Linux is remarkable in part because for those of us who understand enough of it to make it productive, it has extraordinary powers in both areas. Assertions that it's not a desktop operating system usually mean actually that it's not a desktop operating system for everyone. The thing is, if the Linux programming community continues to move it towards being user-friendly for everyone, idiot to kernel hacker, will that necessarily result in a loss of performance/features/etc that Linux has inhereted from it's Unix roots?
I'd be interested to know what others think.
--
Keep attacking good things as "communist"