One of the major reasons why Bush won the 2004 election is actually technological. The republican volunteers used PDAs to keep track of which registered republicans hadn't shown up to vote yet. This sounds exacly like the kind of thing slashdotters should be doing - go out and find a candidate you like and use all the modern technology you can muster to make people vote, preferably for "your" candidate of course..
A company that has such draconian employment contracts probably wouldn't hesitate to forbid the employees to divuldge any information on infringements by the company. If whistle-blower laws don't offer protection in such situations, there is little to stop companies from exploiting GPLed code without fear of reprecussions.
When are people going to understand that patents are good for the smaller companies and inventors? The reason big corporations benefit the most from them are that the patents are too expensive to get and to defend. Instead of banning patents because only an elite few can get them, they should be made available to everyone, i.e., make the legal stuff easier/cheaper.
Patents on business methods, however, should not be allowed since the "inventors" themselves benefit from fair competition, something that doesn't hold true when it comes to actual products.
What's the first thing you'd do if you were IBM and knew you could reform the entire PC industry with a CPU for everything (games, home theater, and ordinary work) and all in a PS3-sized box?
If you're answer is "sell of the PC department" you're right.
Interesting, let's look a fairly used Linux app: X. Lately (a couple a months ago?) the feature to change bit-depth on the fly was added. Now I'm not an X historian, but surely the program has been around for about a decade.
I do know however that Windows has had this feature since Win95 (possibly as early as NT3.x), i.e. about ten years. What I wonder is how long it took Apple to add this feature when they made OS X?
And yes I know one could open the file/usr/bin/X86whatever/XweirdconfigXfile86 in my Lisp interpreter (= Emacs) and change the bit-depth. Then all I had to do was figure out how to close X and then start it again. This is one of the reasons for why Linux (while being a great server OS) hasn't come close to being anything but a Tinker-OS for the desktop.
"nothing like argueing with RMS as an incentive to join"
Arguing with RMS is like trying to knock down a wall with skunk while denouncing GNU/Communism - in other words it makes no sense and serves no purpose.
The problem with bad GUIs and guides in open source software comes from the fact that creating a good user interface is the most boring and tedious programming task there is. One has to handle all the possible wrong uses (there are about 100 per correct usage) in a way that gives good feedbackt to the user. Since most people developing software for Linux work for free and out of their own will there usually isn't enough incentive to do the boring stuff. An employee for a software company however could lose his job if he didn't do it.
Why does everyone try to blame everything but the the absolute fix-factor: If the kids hadn't had access to guns they couldn't have shot anybody.
Why look beyond this painstakingly obvious solution? The only reason powerful enough to keep a gun law (written at the days before automatic weapons and when a marksman was someone who could hit a barn door at 100 meters) that results in ~9000 US deaths, more than the normal/capita in the western world, is money for the gun industry. The right to own a gun is useless without the right to shoot the people who gave you that right.
One argument I greatly miss in the piracy/RIAA debate is the fact that it's been held before.
To make my point: 0) When records (LPs) appeared musicians predicted the death of live music and classical music - the sales increased and the market increased many-fold. 1) When radio became big the music industry thought that no one would buy records any more - the sales boomed. 2) When tape recorders became popular the music industry predicted its own demise - the sales (of both tapes and records) increased. 3) When VCRs became popular the movie industry predicted that sales (to TV and movie theaters) would plummit - they increased (and the market of buyable tapes was created and flourished).
And now that everyone has forgotten this we repeate...
I'm also slightly confused about that there has been very little fuss from RIAAs side about bootleg CDs (which for up until a few years ago was the big threat) been in comparison to Internet-piracy.
Start to swim, not only is it cheaper than the average gym, but the girls have nicer outfits too:) Also, it doesn't put any strain on hips and knees (as running does) so you can do it for the rest of your life.
If you want funding or just som extra cash simply follow these steps:
1) set aside 1 hour a day for excersise 2) whenever you code, wear a rubber band around your dick (to make it grow) 3) spend friday afternoons in your local Red light district
Not only will you make a lot of money, but you will also get laid (somteimes even by women;)
ps. If your into the 'Dark Side' of gigoloing buy one of those 10$ spy-cameras and blackmail your customers for some extra cash.
ps2. 4) pray to God they come up with a cure for AIDS soon.
Slashdot Mirror
One of the major reasons why Bush won the 2004 election is actually technological. The republican volunteers used PDAs to keep track of which registered republicans hadn't shown up to vote yet.
This sounds exacly like the kind of thing slashdotters should be doing - go out and find a candidate you like and use all the modern technology you can muster to make people vote, preferably for "your" candidate of course..
You broke into Muddy Waters house just to steal his CD collection?
A company that has such draconian employment contracts probably wouldn't hesitate to forbid the employees to divuldge any information on infringements by the company. If whistle-blower laws don't offer protection in such situations, there is little to stop companies from exploiting GPLed code without fear of reprecussions.
Yeah, that aryan cow on the package seems to work well in Germany and Austria...
Why, oh why, did you agree to this interview? Is there a tradition of masochism at Microsoft?
When are people going to understand that patents are good for the smaller companies and inventors? The reason big corporations benefit the most from them are that the patents are too expensive to get and to defend. Instead of banning patents because only an elite few can get them, they should be made available to everyone, i.e., make the legal stuff easier/cheaper.
Patents on business methods, however, should not be allowed since the "inventors" themselves benefit from fair competition, something that doesn't hold true when it comes to actual products.
I take offense at the notion that God would be affiliated in any way with a black hole - we all know God is a straight white guy!
I guess obesity really is the biggest problem in the universe nowadays...
What's the first thing you'd do if you were IBM and knew you could reform the entire PC industry with a CPU for everything (games, home theater, and ordinary work) and all in a PS3-sized box?
If you're answer is "sell of the PC department" you're right.
I bet that Sergey Brin regrets ever putting this photo online.
A non-interpreted languages is just as portable as its compiler. Hence most compilers are written in C.
Interesting, let's look a fairly used Linux app: X. Lately (a couple a months ago?) the feature to change bit-depth on the fly was added. Now I'm not an X historian, but surely the program has been around for about a decade.
/usr/bin/X86whatever/XweirdconfigXfile86 in my Lisp interpreter (= Emacs) and change the bit-depth. Then all I had to do was figure out how to close X and then start it again.
I do know however that Windows has had this feature since Win95 (possibly as early as NT3.x), i.e. about ten years. What I wonder is how long it took Apple to add this feature when they made OS X?
And yes I know one could open the file
This is one of the reasons for why Linux (while being a great server OS) hasn't come close to being anything but a Tinker-OS for the desktop.
"nothing like argueing with RMS as an incentive to join"
Arguing with RMS is like trying to knock down a wall with skunk while denouncing GNU/Communism - in other words it makes no sense and serves no purpose.
Take it from someone who's learned it the hard way; DO NOT microwave your Visa card!
Because it's an easy measurement, estimating the worth of something given the amount of users is quite difficult.
Besides, it probably isn't a comparison you want to do if you want to sell Linux to Windows users.
The problem with bad GUIs and guides in open source software comes from the fact that creating a good user interface is the most boring and tedious programming task there is. One has to handle all the possible wrong uses (there are about 100 per correct usage) in a way that gives good feedbackt to the user.
Since most people developing software for Linux work for free and out of their own will there usually isn't enough incentive to do the boring stuff. An employee for a software company however could lose his job if he didn't do it.
If they have problems reading their own documents they should change the red ink too.
Why does everyone try to blame everything but the the absolute fix-factor: If the kids hadn't had access to guns they couldn't have shot anybody.
Why look beyond this painstakingly obvious solution?
The only reason powerful enough to keep a gun law (written at the days before automatic weapons and when a marksman was someone who could hit a barn door at 100 meters) that results in ~9000 US deaths, more than the normal/capita in the western world, is money for the gun industry.
The right to own a gun is useless without the right to shoot the people who gave you that right.
One argument I greatly miss in the piracy/RIAA debate is the fact that it's been held before.
To make my point:
0) When records (LPs) appeared musicians predicted the death of live music and classical music - the sales increased and the market increased many-fold.
1) When radio became big the music industry thought that no one would buy records any more - the sales boomed.
2) When tape recorders became popular the music industry predicted its own demise - the sales (of both tapes and records) increased.
3) When VCRs became popular the movie industry predicted that sales (to TV and movie theaters) would plummit - they increased (and the market of buyable tapes was created and flourished).
And now that everyone has forgotten this we repeate...
I'm also slightly confused about that there has been very little fuss from RIAAs side about bootleg CDs (which for up until a few years ago was the big threat) been in comparison to Internet-piracy.
Start to swim, not only is it cheaper than the average gym, but the girls have nicer outfits too :)
Also, it doesn't put any strain on hips and knees (as running does) so you can do it for the rest of your life.
Hopefully one that has a Gigabit LAN and an OC-3 connection to the net ;)
If you want funding or just som extra cash simply follow these steps:
;)
1) set aside 1 hour a day for excersise
2) whenever you code, wear a rubber band around your dick (to make it grow)
3) spend friday afternoons in your local Red light district
Not only will you make a lot of money, but you will also get laid (somteimes even by women
ps. If your into the 'Dark Side' of gigoloing buy one of those 10$ spy-cameras and blackmail your customers for some extra cash.
ps2. 4) pray to God they come up with a cure for AIDS soon.
I bet that Linksys, since the witch hunt turned to them, are thinking "Why, oh why, didn't I take the BSD pill".
Wouldn't it be better to collect the heads and servers of spammers instead?
It's a nice idea, but Ozzy would probably say "Who the fuck gives a fuck".