I'm not very familiar with this topic, and of course Microsoft-bashing
is easy in this forum, but still: What kind of attitude is that?
Making extensions to a specification and publishing them for everybody
else to use? So that's the way standards are defined in the Microsoft
universe? I thought "making a standard" meant getting together with
everybody else (or at least some approximation of that) and work
things out together?
How is this different than MS providing stuff for free and everyone else suing them because they can't compete?
Microsoft is earning something along the lines of $30-80 on every single PC that leaves the shelf anywhere in the world. I wouldn't call that "providing stuff for free". But even that is not what people clamor about; it's that the software which every PC in the world comes installed with is closed-source, proprietary, so that nobody is able to make competing software that performs the same function.
There isn't really agreement among historians on the cause of the fire.
You are right, I stand corrected. The subject is covered very well in Wikipedia.
When I said that religious people burned the library, I was referring to just one of the stories, probably a legend, that's being told about the destruction. It is the story where Caliph Omar in the 7th century is quoted as saying that if the books of the library did not contain the teachings of the Qur'an, they were useless and should be destroyed; if the books did contain the teachings of the Qur'an, they were superfluous and should be destroyed (quoted from Wikipedia).
This story may very well be a legend, probably told by Christians to portray Muslims as barbarians, but I still find the quote very typical for the fundamentalist way of thinking even today, regardless of which actual religion it refers to. I actually know it from direct experience, because I was once a religious fundamentalist myself, and I thought in very similar ways about "worldly wisdom" at that time.
This just to counter the view that religion would naturally foster literacy. It usually doesn't, that's at least my experience.
But it's also worth pointing out that the library of Alexandria, the most comprehensive collection of literary wisdom in the ancient world, was burned by religious people who couldn't possibly think of any use for those books. They are lost forever.
if you are a merchant, you are liable. if you stand on a street corner (or virtual corner) and give it away then your liability is orders of magnitude less (read: zero).
Absolutely. But the point I made in the GP goes beyond that. Some users of software (corporate users mostly) need a level of support that the guy standing on the street corner cannot (and should not) provide. This may include liability in case of damage resulting from the software. If the support & liability business is separate from the coding business, then that excellent piece of the software that the guy standing on the corner wrote can still be used in such a context.
To be held liable for every line of code that you write goes very much
contrary to the free software / open source world, where developers
often simply scratch their personal itch, or work out of a genuine
interest in the matter. It is impossible for such individuals to get
the financial backing (i.e. insurance) so that they can take this
level of responsibility for their creations.
The solution, I think, is that the realms of coding and of liability
need to be separated. Let the coders code and let service companies
such as IBM work together with them to provide support and, if needed,
liability for customers that need it. This is exactly what happens
when IBM "sells" Linux to Wallstreet, for example. They sell the
kind of responsibility for the software that individual developers
could by no means provide.
What sort of telescope would be ideal for an amateur astronomer such as myself to view such a planetary event?
The event itself (meaning the triple-constellation) is probably best observed with the naked eye, or a simple pair of binoculars, because any decent telescope will have a smaller field of view than the area the three planets will be spread out over.
Even with binoculars (when mounted to a tripod), you will be able to see a faint indication of Saturn's rings (indicated by the fact that it doesn't look like a symmetric blob, but just a little stretched along the horizontal axis. Galileo, when he first saw this with similar equipment, thought he was seeing three bodies right next to each other). You will also see some of Saturn's moons, and the current phase of Venus.
Real astronomer's equipment can of course get you much much further.
As to users giving you feed back. HA! The best I get is once in a while someone tells me that something crashes. I might die of shock if someone sent me fixed source code.
Remember what ESR wrote about this? "If you treat your users as if they were your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource."
In other words, I think this is all about community-building, and I grant you that this may be beyond what you can do as a single developer who simply shares some code with the world. Still, I have found ESR's statement to be quite true in my own projects, and it only takes a small effort to express this attitude in the e-mails you send to your bug reporters.
Even if it were, it wouldn't matter for cell phones. Typical Faraday cages, such as a car, are not effective in this frequency range. As is shown every day by the cellphone-talking driver in front of you. And by the phone calls that made it through just perfectly during 9/11.
Relax. You are probably right that the average Mac user is not very likely to run SETI@home. But is the average Windows user likely to? Is he, Joe Average Windows User, more likely to run it than is Jane Average Aesthetically-Inclined Mac User? I don't know. I don't think this would blow the whole stat vastly out of proportion, though. 2-5% for the Mac is a fairly realistic estimate, I'd say.
The one group where SETI@home usage, relative to the total install base, is significantly higher than under the other OS's is surely Linux -- no questions about that I guess.
Now, this data is obviously skewed with respect to the total distribution, since the people who run something like SETI@home are probably more technologically inclined than the average computer user. This would mean that the percentage of non-Windows OSes is higher in this sample. On the other hand, the software for BOINC (SETI@home) is still somewhat Windows-centric, which would in turn increase the Windows share in the sample.
Start earlier, Microsoft. You won't be able to make somebody aged
14-17 think something that he would not naturally think. Especially
when your method has indoctrination so obviously written all
over it.
So start earlier. I recommend early childhood, age 4-6. I recommend
showing movies to those kids where "thought thieves" are evil, dark
figures that, preferably, linger under kids' beds. You'll make very
powerful subconscious fears your ally that way.
Alternatively, start later. Most teenagers and students will really
like the idea of sharing thoughts, and software, and music, and they
will only part with it when they enter business life and get a chance
to make money themselves by stopping to share. I recommend offering
every potential free software/open source developer a large amount of
money if they license their stuff to you, exclusively. If that
doesn't work, offer them a job at Microsoft, and pay them well. Very
well. You might be able to stem the tide that way.
But seriously, I don't think you will. There have always been
developments in history that were so natural and unstoppable that it
made those who tried to stop them extremely funny to look at. You're
in the process of becoming such a comic figure, Microsoft.
This looks like a market that is already in the hands of certain proprietary vendors. If you want to enter that market, you need a competitive edge. Being free/open source would be such an edge, definitely, but you need patience to let that concept sink in with the people you're trying to win as customers.
And no, selling it as a proprietary product won't buy them anything, I'm sure. If the customers don't want to use it when it's free they surely won't pay for it, either.
Ahh, sorry, I stand corrected. Thanks for pointing this out. The source code is indeed there. I had just missed it when I glanced over the page the first time.
You could download Nasa Worldwind software for free.
Doesn't run on free operating systems though... Doesn't let you even look at the source code. But I still applaud NASA for such a great project. That's really the right spirit -- well almost:-).
On the other hand, ESA has always been stingy in giving access to data. It took them a while to release Titan images; as opposed to Nasa who makes them available almost instanteneously.
I guess thats the difference between the cultures!
Looks like it. But surely, that's a difference between space-organisation cultures, not so much society in general. Europe tends to be very free-software friendly these days -- rather more so than the US. Makes it even more sad that ESA doesn't really seem to get it.
That looks all very well, but if you dig a little deeper into that
site, you'll come across the page where ESA describes
its licensing
terms. This data is only gonna be given to (a) scientists who are
deemed serious by ESA, and who will report twice a year about their
findings, and (b) to commercial users at "market rates".
Well but isn't this data for which I've paid with my tax euros
already? Why does the public who financed it not get free access to
that data?
While we're at it, can other Slashdotters perhaps point to links of
freely available satellite imagery? Is there any kind of systematic
coverage of the planet we live on which is freely available to
everyone who does happen to live here?
The Plaintiff is arguing [...] that the FSF is essentially "dumping" software on the market at zero price, depriving him of earning a living as a programmer, developing competing products (no mention is made of what products he has developed, or intends to develop). As such, he argues, they should be legally and financially punished, and he should, of course, derive some benefit from that punishment.
Well put. The laws against dumping exist to protect companies from being driven out of the market by somebody with deeper pockets. Well, it's the explicit intention of the FSF to drive the proprietary software model out of the market, and the companies that embody this model along with it (unless these companies manage to adapt their business model to the free software idea before it's too late for them).
Of course, the laws against dumping normally protect companies against competing companies. In this case, it's a new economic idea and an idealistically motivated not-for-profit organization that threatens to drive them out of the market. But from the proprietary vendors' standpoint, it would seem like a perfectly legitimate tactic to try and defend themselves by accusing their "competitor" of dumping.
The question is whether the courts would realize that the economic realities are changing, or whether they would try to protect the status quo. Given recent history, I would expect the latter. Given not so recent history, it is clear that developments such as this cannot be blocked ad infinitum.
But, in summary, I cannot help but thinking that this price-fixing or dumping idea is not the worst that the proprietary side has come up with so far.
but at the end of the day there will always be software that companies need that noone wants to develop for fun and someone is going to have to pay to have that software developed because they need to use it.
Yes, but the question is what happens to that software after it has been developed? Is it going to be freely available to everyone (and thus, did the programmer get paid like any other worker, for the hours he actually spent working), or will it be proprietary, letting the copyright holder achieve revenue that is not directly related to the actual work that went into the product.
It would be better for the economy if it were freely available. The idea to withhold the source so you can make money from it over an indefinite period is not only questionable economically, it also puts up technical barriers where they wouldn't have to be.
There is an unspoken premise in your post that free software is only developed for fun, as a hobby. That is not so. It is a perfectly economic thing to do, just that the modes of payment, revenue, and licensing are different than for the proprietary model. They are different in such a way that everybody benefits, and people can still make a living by writing software.
Really? What about a C hashtable? or a Pascal hashtable? or even a VB hashtable? (some people get very tired of Java programmers who think that they invented everything)
Not me, sir. I learned my trade on totally different languages; I was just referring to Java hashtables because the article was about Java to begin with. For languages such as C, I'll happily grant you another order of magnitude if you wish:-)
Except, this isn't at the "Brightest and smartest" level. This is basic caching. If this was a discussion of the relative merits of linked lists vs doubly linked lists vs hash maps for various different data types, and read/write patterns, we can start thinking best and brightest.
Absolutely agreed. And the things that you mention are those that you'd wish your expensive IBM consultant was capable of. I stand by my statement however, that
there are shops where none of the in-house developers is aware of the option to cache frequently-used data in the app's memory, and of the vast performance benefits this can bring
yet still, such a shop might be a successful enterprise that manages to maintain its position in the market. Sometimes they hit upon a consultant that helps them to improve their stuff vastly, and it's all the better (both for the consultant and the company:-)
This is not "best and brightest", absolutely. But it is a realistic description of what you find out there, quite frequently.
On the other hand, there's a good take-away here. If this "revolutionary technique" was so mind-bending to IBM consulting services, I know where I won't be spending my consulting dollars...
It's interesting though, that this kind of "revolutionary technique" can be indeed a step forward in the I-don't-know-how-many projects where developers aren't aware of these simple issues. I'm in the consulting business, I've seen them. For them, this kind of consultant might actually be worth the money, and there's nothing ridiculous about it. Some shops simply have no need to have the brightest and smartest developers in-house.
Sorry I don't get it. Of course, when you load your data from
a cache in main memory, even from within the same address space, you
are several orders of magnitude faster than if you make the trip to
the database each time. And by several orders of magnitude I mean
six to seven orders: you'll easily be a million times faster for a
given operation. (A database roundtrip is on the order of tens of
milliseconds, while a lookup in a Java hashtable takes mere
nanoseconds on typical hardware.)
What's the point? Since when is Slashdot a forum for random tech tips
(and not very thrilling ones at that)? Did IBM pay to get this
posted? Is Slashdot trying to make fun of IBM by actually posting
it?
No. The idea of the Free Software movement is a world in which there is no restriction on software - everyone has access to the source and can do with it what they wish. Modify it, give it away, print it out and eat it, whatever.
You're correct -- I was referring to implications, not really the basic ideas, which are refreshingly simple, and don't bother to delve in utopianism.
Economics don't come into it *at all*
Beg to differ. The GNU Manifesto is a profoundly economic treatise, and it does envision a different economy, the post-scarcity world.
Merely having access to the source of the software you use does not automatically lead to everyone living well.
Very true. But the idea is that the resources for everyone to live well are there in the first place. It's just that our economic system brings about so much injustice that not everybody gets to benefit from it. Free Software is an important step in that direction.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not very familiar with this topic, and of course Microsoft-bashing is easy in this forum, but still: What kind of attitude is that? Making extensions to a specification and publishing them for everybody else to use? So that's the way standards are defined in the Microsoft universe? I thought "making a standard" meant getting together with everybody else (or at least some approximation of that) and work things out together?
Microsoft is earning something along the lines of $30-80 on every single PC that leaves the shelf anywhere in the world. I wouldn't call that "providing stuff for free". But even that is not what people clamor about; it's that the software which every PC in the world comes installed with is closed-source, proprietary, so that nobody is able to make competing software that performs the same function.
Controversial. I did some reading on the subject now. Please see my other response.
You are right, I stand corrected. The subject is covered very well in Wikipedia.
When I said that religious people burned the library, I was referring to just one of the stories, probably a legend, that's being told about the destruction. It is the story where Caliph Omar in the 7th century is quoted as saying that if the books of the library did not contain the teachings of the Qur'an, they were useless and should be destroyed; if the books did contain the teachings of the Qur'an, they were superfluous and should be destroyed (quoted from Wikipedia).
This story may very well be a legend, probably told by Christians to portray Muslims as barbarians, but I still find the quote very typical for the fundamentalist way of thinking even today, regardless of which actual religion it refers to. I actually know it from direct experience, because I was once a religious fundamentalist myself, and I thought in very similar ways about "worldly wisdom" at that time.
This just to counter the view that religion would naturally foster literacy. It usually doesn't, that's at least my experience.
But it's also worth pointing out that the library of Alexandria, the most comprehensive collection of literary wisdom in the ancient world, was burned by religious people who couldn't possibly think of any use for those books. They are lost forever.
The solution, I think, is that the realms of coding and of liability need to be separated. Let the coders code and let service companies such as IBM work together with them to provide support and, if needed, liability for customers that need it. This is exactly what happens when IBM "sells" Linux to Wallstreet, for example. They sell the kind of responsibility for the software that individual developers could by no means provide.
The event itself (meaning the triple-constellation) is probably best observed with the naked eye, or a simple pair of binoculars, because any decent telescope will have a smaller field of view than the area the three planets will be spread out over.
Even with binoculars (when mounted to a tripod), you will be able to see a faint indication of Saturn's rings (indicated by the fact that it doesn't look like a symmetric blob, but just a little stretched along the horizontal axis. Galileo, when he first saw this with similar equipment, thought he was seeing three bodies right next to each other). You will also see some of Saturn's moons, and the current phase of Venus.
Real astronomer's equipment can of course get you much much further.
Remember what ESR wrote about this? "If you treat your users as if they were your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource."
In other words, I think this is all about community-building, and I grant you that this may be beyond what you can do as a single developer who simply shares some code with the world. Still, I have found ESR's statement to be quite true in my own projects, and it only takes a small effort to express this attitude in the e-mails you send to your bug reporters.
Even if it were, it wouldn't matter for cell phones. Typical Faraday cages, such as a car, are not effective in this frequency range. As is shown every day by the cellphone-talking driver in front of you. And by the phone calls that made it through just perfectly during 9/11.
Relax. You are probably right that the average Mac user is not very likely to run SETI@home. But is the average Windows user likely to? Is he, Joe Average Windows User, more likely to run it than is Jane Average Aesthetically-Inclined Mac User? I don't know. I don't think this would blow the whole stat vastly out of proportion, though. 2-5% for the Mac is a fairly realistic estimate, I'd say.
The one group where SETI@home usage, relative to the total install base, is significantly higher than under the other OS's is surely Linux -- no questions about that I guess.
They have
Now, this data is obviously skewed with respect to the total distribution, since the people who run something like SETI@home are probably more technologically inclined than the average computer user. This would mean that the percentage of non-Windows OSes is higher in this sample. On the other hand, the software for BOINC (SETI@home) is still somewhat Windows-centric, which would in turn increase the Windows share in the sample.
An interesting data point, nonetheless.
So start earlier. I recommend early childhood, age 4-6. I recommend showing movies to those kids where "thought thieves" are evil, dark figures that, preferably, linger under kids' beds. You'll make very powerful subconscious fears your ally that way.
Alternatively, start later. Most teenagers and students will really like the idea of sharing thoughts, and software, and music, and they will only part with it when they enter business life and get a chance to make money themselves by stopping to share. I recommend offering every potential free software/open source developer a large amount of money if they license their stuff to you, exclusively. If that doesn't work, offer them a job at Microsoft, and pay them well. Very well. You might be able to stem the tide that way.
But seriously, I don't think you will. There have always been developments in history that were so natural and unstoppable that it made those who tried to stop them extremely funny to look at. You're in the process of becoming such a comic figure, Microsoft.
And no, selling it as a proprietary product won't buy them anything, I'm sure. If the customers don't want to use it when it's free they surely won't pay for it, either.
Ahh, sorry, I stand corrected. Thanks for pointing this out. The source code is indeed there. I had just missed it when I glanced over the page the first time.
Doesn't run on free operating systems though... Doesn't let you even look at the source code. But I still applaud NASA for such a great project. That's really the right spirit -- well almost :-).
Looks like it. But surely, that's a difference between space-organisation cultures, not so much society in general. Europe tends to be very free-software friendly these days -- rather more so than the US. Makes it even more sad that ESA doesn't really seem to get it.
Well but isn't this data for which I've paid with my tax euros already? Why does the public who financed it not get free access to that data?
While we're at it, can other Slashdotters perhaps point to links of freely available satellite imagery? Is there any kind of systematic coverage of the planet we live on which is freely available to everyone who does happen to live here?
Well put. The laws against dumping exist to protect companies from being driven out of the market by somebody with deeper pockets. Well, it's the explicit intention of the FSF to drive the proprietary software model out of the market, and the companies that embody this model along with it (unless these companies manage to adapt their business model to the free software idea before it's too late for them).
Of course, the laws against dumping normally protect companies against competing companies. In this case, it's a new economic idea and an idealistically motivated not-for-profit organization that threatens to drive them out of the market. But from the proprietary vendors' standpoint, it would seem like a perfectly legitimate tactic to try and defend themselves by accusing their "competitor" of dumping.
The question is whether the courts would realize that the economic realities are changing, or whether they would try to protect the status quo. Given recent history, I would expect the latter. Given not so recent history, it is clear that developments such as this cannot be blocked ad infinitum.
But, in summary, I cannot help but thinking that this price-fixing or dumping idea is not the worst that the proprietary side has come up with so far.
Yes, but the question is what happens to that software after it has been developed? Is it going to be freely available to everyone (and thus, did the programmer get paid like any other worker, for the hours he actually spent working), or will it be proprietary, letting the copyright holder achieve revenue that is not directly related to the actual work that went into the product.
It would be better for the economy if it were freely available. The idea to withhold the source so you can make money from it over an indefinite period is not only questionable economically, it also puts up technical barriers where they wouldn't have to be.
There is an unspoken premise in your post that free software is only developed for fun, as a hobby. That is not so. It is a perfectly economic thing to do, just that the modes of payment, revenue, and licensing are different than for the proprietary model. They are different in such a way that everybody benefits, and people can still make a living by writing software.
Not me, sir. I learned my trade on totally different languages; I was just referring to Java hashtables because the article was about Java to begin with. For languages such as C, I'll happily grant you another order of magnitude if you wish :-)
Absolutely agreed. And the things that you mention are those that you'd wish your expensive IBM consultant was capable of. I stand by my statement however, that
- there are shops where none of the in-house developers is aware of the option to cache frequently-used data in the app's memory, and of the vast performance benefits this can bring
- yet still, such a shop might be a successful enterprise that manages to maintain its position in the market. Sometimes they hit upon a consultant that helps them to improve their stuff vastly, and it's all the better (both for the consultant and the company
:-)
This is not "best and brightest", absolutely. But it is a realistic description of what you find out there, quite frequently.It's interesting though, that this kind of "revolutionary technique" can be indeed a step forward in the I-don't-know-how-many projects where developers aren't aware of these simple issues. I'm in the consulting business, I've seen them. For them, this kind of consultant might actually be worth the money, and there's nothing ridiculous about it. Some shops simply have no need to have the brightest and smartest developers in-house.
No need to post anything else in this thread! ROTFL
What's the point? Since when is Slashdot a forum for random tech tips (and not very thrilling ones at that)? Did IBM pay to get this posted? Is Slashdot trying to make fun of IBM by actually posting it?
You're correct -- I was referring to implications, not really the basic ideas, which are refreshingly simple, and don't bother to delve in utopianism.
Beg to differ. The GNU Manifesto is a profoundly economic treatise, and it does envision a different economy, the post-scarcity world.
Very true. But the idea is that the resources for everyone to live well are there in the first place. It's just that our economic system brings about so much injustice that not everybody gets to benefit from it. Free Software is an important step in that direction.