How is a monopoly granted by the state any different than a monopoly put together one city at a time? It's much less work (:
Yeah, I hate when socialist-leaning people talk about the failure of "the free market". What free market? Maybe "the free market" is as illusional as true communism as a goal, but I think working towards a free market is less harmful than working towards true communism.
I dunno, the summary seems cooler than the story to me. I was expecting an article about aliens mounting a war against mammoths, and was quite disappointed.
Hehe, that's especially funny because to anyone besides a linux nerd, it just sounds like you're calling a black man a monkey... not equating him with a cool OS.
Secession should be considered a fundamental right. An enlightened government would understand the need for the ability to change government without violent revolution (I am someone who doesn't consider voting a viable way of changing government, at least in the current US system).
Secession could easily be non-violent. What if a whole state decided not to pay federal taxes en mass? What could possibly stop such a revolt?
Finally, I think that people need to realize that paying federal taxes may against their morals if they thought it through. If more of your tax dollars contribute to programs that you are opposed to than programs you support, you can't pay federal taxes with a clear conscience. What you do for pragmatic reasons is another matter...
Well, it's always disappointing to see people who you respect for their good work (if you consider reiserfs good, which I do) getting accused of something heinous.
As irrational as it is, I'm sure many of us would feel less inclined to use reiserfs if reiser was found guilty.
Well, there's always zfs at least... is anyone writing a zfs patch for linux? If not, why not? I did a quick google search, but I couldn't turn up anything.
Although your example would apparently benefit Linux and therefore is a positive case scenario, you've overlooked the gist of the problem.
> "isn't worth much to Microsoft".
Maybe it's not, but you're stating the value in wishy-washy terms. The good thing about assessing damages on the value of a full product is that you have a concrete value (price of product * products distributed). A laywer may argue that, since an OS is rather pointless without a filesystem, it's a VERY valuable piece of the OS, and, assuming that FAT is the third most common filesystem in linux installations (I have no idea, really) it would be big damages.
Valuing intellectual property is an insanely difficult prospect, with the only good approximation being what the market will buy. Take that away and you're left with pure speculation.
I think this legislation is a good thing, and I'll tell you why:
Encryption should be ubiquitous in modern communication, and this is just another argument for it. Privacy and freedom aren't things we should take for granted. They need to be actively maintained, because there will always be nefarious elements working to undermine them. The day that encryption becomes illegal, or the day that we are required to give encryption keys to law enforcement upon request is the day that I leave this country.
Yours is a good post, but one that I disagree with.
Well, I actually would agree with you that there is less money in open source software. However, I think this indicates not a failing of open source, but of commercial development. I agree with you that the commercial software ecosystem is very vibrant, with great profit potential. But I view this as a drain on the rest of the economy. Just think about how many web startups are using a LAMP stack... would their businesses be possible in a purely commercial software world?
I'm not looking to see the software industry destroyed, or even crippled, since I hope to soon get a job developing software. I think there is money in development on demand, where developers make money for their labor in custom-tailoring software to a customer's demand. The software would be free, but of course the labor wouldn't.
Now, this kind of business won't thrive in current climates, because there is more money and easier money in commercial software. But eventually free software will dominate, because in the long term how can something be more attractive than free? Of course there is support to think of, but I don't see any inherent reason that free software should be more expensive to support.
So I think that whether we like it or not, free software is the future. And I choose to see that as a positive future, where software becomes more pervasive in our environment, more adapted to our specific needs.
There'll always be money in software development until we create machines that are smarter than us in every way.
But what does the "teach yourself" skillset consist of?
I think self discipline and motivation is pretty much all you need, and that any other learning "skills" are things that we are born with, hard-wired into us; this skillset is probably almost isomorphic to intelligence.
I think the idea that "teaching people how to teach themselves" is even plausible is harmful.
Your argument for what school should be is my argument for why school shouldn't be.
Yes, but how do you measure ignorance? If you could find some metric for ignorance, and took a ignorant stupid person (ok, you'd also have to measure intelligence, which would be its own can of worms) and an equally ignorant smart person, then sure... neither would be more qualified to make a good (to say well-informed) vote.
But the nice thing about smart people is sometimes they can bridge their ignorance with inferences that stupid people cannot make. Whether those inferences make them less ignorant (because they're perhaps less ignorant for knowing how to use them) is a question I'm not gonna attempt to answer.
Also, and I should have addressed this first: Appeal to authority?! are you equating authority with intelligence? Surely you must not be very familiar with authority. Plus, if one is an "authority" on a particular subject, they have knowledge about it... the opposite of ignorance, and the definition of what this debate is (or should be) about.
"File transfer seems to be improved in this version as well. I've tried file transfer before with Gaim, between Gaim and other folks on the AIM network, and it never has seemed to work. This time around, the file transfer seems to work fine. I logged two accounts into AIM at the same time and sent a few files back and forth, and then tried it with a user on the AIM network using the Windows AIM client. The files went through just fine each time."
So yes, I guess. This is also the feature I'm most looking forward to. I'm not going to hope for folder transfers, because as I understand, that's part of aim's more proprietary featureset.
Oh... I once wrote a plugin (for 1.5) that would allow you to send people files from the commandline. I found it handy to send a list of files, like *.mp3 or `grep -i -l "that thing we talked about" *`
If anyone is interested in this, maybe I'll work on this for the 2.0 release.
How come noone has mentioned the language Joy? I've looked into it a couple times, and it seems pretty neat. In a word, functional concatenation. Plus, as we all know, functional languages are so much more fun than procedural.
I want to try this game. I've always thought that fps/rts hybrids had more potential. I can't seem to find an active download link for it, though. It's free now? I'll be downloading #2 as soon as it's released, since apparently they will be having a free trial version.
First of all, I hate when people say such and such a thing is unfair. I think that the concept of fairness stems from a sense of entitlement, and the unwillingness to deal with with a changing environment.
Second of all, I don't think saving money is such a great virtue. In the end money is meant to be spent, and if you're going to be saving it, you should be able to justify that action with the idea that your money will be earning you more money in some sort of investment.
If you're unwilling to spend your money while you're alive, I don't see why you should be allowed to spend money when you're dead. If you have a large estate and you're concerned about it not going to your children, then give it up and live more modestly. If you're unwilling to sacrifice for your children's benefit now, they're probably not worthy of your money after you're dead.
Of course the suits can never be wrong. They're your bosses, they're your superiors. The chain of command must be preserved, and admitting they're wrong threatens to disrupt that.
Re:DICOM Part 10 image viewer - in ASCII
on
ASCII World Cup
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· Score: 1
Why would you ever do such a thing? It's not fair... I can't work up enough motivation to even write simple games or chat clients or dynamic webpages.
What is interesting to me, is the thought that pulling out could potentially do more good in China than staying out could have.
Consider this situation: Google abruptly ends service in China, replacing their main page with a brief message that says something like, "Google is halting search service in china because they are unable to comply with Chinese law." They could post this with no explanation, and then later they could post an explanation that gave their moral stance, with justification by example (I.E. Tiananmen Square). This would be blocked quickly of course, but if their original posting created sufficient mystery, maybe chinese would be inclined to research the issue, and I assume some would see the explanation, and be able to spread the word. Creating mystery is a good way to create awareness.
Being a popular search engine in China gets them more visibility than if they'd decided to stay out of China from the beginning.
However, maybe causing public unrest is amoral. Destabilizing the Chinese government is no good unless the people really have good idea of what they'd replace it with, how they'd do it, and if they'd really have the commitment to see it through.
The one of the Chinese government's roles is to protect people against themselves, and I think they do this fairly well. Are lack of political freedoms worth a revolution that could severely reduce the quality of life in the country? I imagine it would be much worse than Iraq, if the leadership fell.
I confess to being a google apologist/fanboy/whatever. I think only the innocently idealistic would found a company with the corporate slogan "do no evil". I don't think their self-censoring presence in china is amoral.
I don't really believe in morality. It's just another banner for people to wave to justify their actions.
I believe in trying to be good and in reflection on past actions, but I don't believe in the condensing good down into general principles. People make rules, and they turn off their brain.
And you can talk about short-term consequences of your actions, and you can talk about long term consequences, but human lives are short when taken into the life of all humanity, and we haven't reached any sort of conclusion where we can sit back and reflect on what was truely good, and what was truely bad. Maybe the Holocaust provided a terrible lesson that will stay in the cultural conscious and prevent possible future ethnic cleansings. And so it would be good. It could be both good and bad.
Damn, this is my most indugent, rambling post ever.
Distros will not be able to come equipped with the ability to play all the patent-encumbered media formats, so linux newbies will say, "what, ubuntu doesn't play my mp3s on a fresh install? I'm switching back to windows."
And when new linux users complain of drivers not being installed automatically, they're probably thinking of their new ATI or Nvidia card that have proprietary, GPL unfriendly drivers.
I hear where you're coming from; I think that all software should have a "hands-free" install option with sane defaults.
However, I really like the command line environment as well. I'm not sure, but it seems to me that I'm more productive when I'm using the command line; it seems I get stuff done faster. I have put some significant time into learning how to do stuff in the command line, but perhaps that investment pays off in increased productivity.
Considering how steep the command line learning curve is, and the fact that it still is a major factor in most unix environments, it seems to me that there must be some significant benefits to using it.
Now, I like to consider myself to have a healthy cynicism, but to me the idea that money is the only incentive to be creative... seems a little harsh.
Perhaps our tastes differ, but virtuousity in a given medium is not my standard of good art. What I enjoy the most in art is passion. You can't buy that.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I hate when socialist-leaning people talk about the failure of "the free market". What free market? Maybe "the free market" is as illusional as true communism as a goal, but I think working towards a free market is less harmful than working towards true communism.
I dunno, the summary seems cooler than the story to me. I was expecting an article about aliens mounting a war against mammoths, and was quite disappointed.
Hehe, that's especially funny because to anyone besides a linux nerd, it just sounds like you're calling a black man a monkey... not equating him with a cool OS.
Secession should be considered a fundamental right. An enlightened government would understand the need for the ability to change government without violent revolution (I am someone who doesn't consider voting a viable way of changing government, at least in the current US system).
Secession could easily be non-violent. What if a whole state decided not to pay federal taxes en mass? What could possibly stop such a revolt?
Finally, I think that people need to realize that paying federal taxes may against their morals if they thought it through. If more of your tax dollars contribute to programs that you are opposed to than programs you support, you can't pay federal taxes with a clear conscience. What you do for pragmatic reasons is another matter...
Well, it's always disappointing to see people who you respect for their good work (if you consider reiserfs good, which I do) getting accused of something heinous.
As irrational as it is, I'm sure many of us would feel less inclined to use reiserfs if reiser was found guilty.
Well, there's always zfs at least... is anyone writing a zfs patch for linux? If not, why not? I did a quick google search, but I couldn't turn up anything.
Although your example would apparently benefit Linux and therefore is a positive case scenario, you've overlooked the gist of the problem.
> "isn't worth much to Microsoft".
Maybe it's not, but you're stating the value in wishy-washy terms. The good thing about assessing damages on the value of a full product is that you have a concrete value (price of product * products distributed). A laywer may argue that, since an OS is rather pointless without a filesystem, it's a VERY valuable piece of the OS, and, assuming that FAT is the third most common filesystem in linux installations (I have no idea, really) it would be big damages.
Valuing intellectual property is an insanely difficult prospect, with the only good approximation being what the market will buy. Take that away and you're left with pure speculation.
I think this legislation is a good thing, and I'll tell you why:
Encryption should be ubiquitous in modern communication, and this is just another argument for it. Privacy and freedom aren't things we should take for granted. They need to be actively maintained, because there will always be nefarious elements working to undermine them. The day that encryption becomes illegal, or the day that we are required to give encryption keys to law enforcement upon request is the day that I leave this country.
you must be referring to 120 proof alcohol
Yours is a good post, but one that I disagree with.
Well, I actually would agree with you that there is less money in open source software. However, I think this indicates not a failing of open source, but of commercial development. I agree with you that the commercial software ecosystem is very vibrant, with great profit potential. But I view this as a drain on the rest of the economy. Just think about how many web startups are using a LAMP stack... would their businesses be possible in a purely commercial software world?
I'm not looking to see the software industry destroyed, or even crippled, since I hope to soon get a job developing software. I think there is money in development on demand, where developers make money for their labor in custom-tailoring software to a customer's demand. The software would be free, but of course the labor wouldn't.
Now, this kind of business won't thrive in current climates, because there is more money and easier money in commercial software. But eventually free software will dominate, because in the long term how can something be more attractive than free? Of course there is support to think of, but I don't see any inherent reason that free software should be more expensive to support.
So I think that whether we like it or not, free software is the future. And I choose to see that as a positive future, where software becomes more pervasive in our environment, more adapted to our specific needs.
There'll always be money in software development until we create machines that are smarter than us in every way.
But what does the "teach yourself" skillset consist of?
I think self discipline and motivation is pretty much all you need, and that any other learning "skills" are things that we are born with, hard-wired into us; this skillset is probably almost isomorphic to intelligence.
I think the idea that "teaching people how to teach themselves" is even plausible is harmful.
Your argument for what school should be is my argument for why school shouldn't be.
Yes, but how do you measure ignorance? If you could find some metric for ignorance, and took a ignorant stupid person (ok, you'd also have to measure intelligence, which would be its own can of worms) and an equally ignorant smart person, then sure... neither would be more qualified to make a good (to say well-informed) vote.
But the nice thing about smart people is sometimes they can bridge their ignorance with inferences that stupid people cannot make. Whether those inferences make them less ignorant (because they're perhaps less ignorant for knowing how to use them) is a question I'm not gonna attempt to answer.
Also, and I should have addressed this first: Appeal to authority?! are you equating authority with intelligence? Surely you must not be very familiar with authority. Plus, if one is an "authority" on a particular subject, they have knowledge about it... the opposite of ignorance, and the definition of what this debate is (or should be) about.
From TFA:
"File transfer seems to be improved in this version as well. I've tried file transfer before with Gaim, between Gaim and other folks on the AIM network, and it never has seemed to work. This time around, the file transfer seems to work fine. I logged two accounts into AIM at the same time and sent a few files back and forth, and then tried it with a user on the AIM network using the Windows AIM client. The files went through just fine each time."
So yes, I guess. This is also the feature I'm most looking forward to. I'm not going to hope for folder transfers, because as I understand, that's part of aim's more proprietary featureset.
Oh... I once wrote a plugin (for 1.5) that would allow you to send people files from the commandline. I found it handy to send a list of files, like *.mp3 or `grep -i -l "that thing we talked about" *`
If anyone is interested in this, maybe I'll work on this for the 2.0 release.
I assume you're speaking of aljazeera's reputation in America. Do you think that this reputation is deserved?
How come noone has mentioned the language Joy?
I've looked into it a couple times, and it seems pretty neat. In a word, functional concatenation.
Plus, as we all know, functional languages are so much more fun than procedural.
I want to try this game. I've always thought that fps/rts hybrids had more potential. I can't seem to find an active download link for it, though. It's free now?
I'll be downloading #2 as soon as it's released, since apparently they will be having a free trial version.
First of all, I hate when people say such and such a thing is unfair. I think that the concept of fairness stems from a sense of entitlement, and the unwillingness to deal with with a changing environment.
Second of all, I don't think saving money is such a great virtue. In the end money is meant to be spent, and if you're going to be saving it, you should be able to justify that action with the idea that your money will be earning you more money in some sort of investment.
If you're unwilling to spend your money while you're alive, I don't see why you should be allowed to spend money when you're dead. If you have a large estate and you're concerned about it not going to your children, then give it up and live more modestly. If you're unwilling to sacrifice for your children's benefit now, they're probably not worthy of your money after you're dead.
And yes boys, if you want to find a date, respecting the object of your affections may be a good place to start!
finding the date is not the difficult part. Getting the date in the bag without too much kicking is the challenge.
Of course the suits can never be wrong. They're your bosses, they're your superiors.
The chain of command must be preserved, and admitting they're wrong threatens to disrupt that.
Why would you ever do such a thing?
It's not fair... I can't work up enough motivation to even write simple games or chat clients or dynamic webpages.
What is interesting to me, is the thought that pulling out could potentially do more good in China than staying out could have.
Consider this situation: Google abruptly ends service in China, replacing their main page with a brief message that says something like, "Google is halting search service in china because they are unable to comply with Chinese law." They could post this with no explanation, and then later they could post an explanation that gave their moral stance, with justification by example (I.E. Tiananmen Square). This would be blocked quickly of course, but if their original posting created sufficient mystery, maybe chinese would be inclined to research the issue, and I assume some would see the explanation, and be able to spread the word. Creating mystery is a good way to create awareness.
Being a popular search engine in China gets them more visibility than if they'd decided to stay out of China from the beginning.
However, maybe causing public unrest is amoral. Destabilizing the Chinese government is no good unless the people really have good idea of what they'd replace it with, how they'd do it, and if they'd really have the commitment to see it through.
The one of the Chinese government's roles is to protect people against themselves, and I think they do this fairly well. Are lack of political freedoms worth a revolution that could severely reduce the quality of life in the country? I imagine it would be much worse than Iraq, if the leadership fell.
I confess to being a google apologist/fanboy/whatever. I think only the innocently idealistic would found a company with the corporate slogan "do no evil". I don't think their self-censoring presence in china is amoral.
I don't really believe in morality. It's just another banner for people to wave to justify their actions.
I believe in trying to be good and in reflection on past actions, but I don't believe in the condensing good down into general principles. People make rules, and they turn off their brain.
And you can talk about short-term consequences of your actions, and you can talk about long term consequences, but human lives are short when taken into the life of all humanity, and we haven't reached any sort of conclusion where we can sit back and reflect on what was truely good, and what was truely bad. Maybe the Holocaust provided a terrible lesson that will stay in the cultural conscious and prevent possible future ethnic cleansings. And so it would be good. It could be both good and bad.
Damn, this is my most indugent, rambling post ever.
because there are too many legal hurdles.
Distros will not be able to come equipped with the ability to play all the patent-encumbered media formats, so linux newbies will say, "what, ubuntu doesn't play my mp3s on a fresh install? I'm switching back to windows."
And when new linux users complain of drivers not being installed automatically, they're probably thinking of their new ATI or Nvidia card that have proprietary, GPL unfriendly drivers.
Yes, but apparently they were also able to overclock it by 1GHz with no raise in core voltage.
I hear where you're coming from; I think that all software should have a "hands-free" install option with sane defaults.
However, I really like the command line environment as well. I'm not sure, but it seems to me that I'm more productive when I'm using the command line; it seems I get stuff done faster. I have put some significant time into learning how to do stuff in the command line, but perhaps that investment pays off in increased productivity.
Considering how steep the command line learning curve is, and the fact that it still is a major factor in most unix environments, it seems to me that there must be some significant benefits to using it.
Now, I like to consider myself to have a healthy cynicism, but to me the idea that money is the only incentive to be creative... seems a little harsh.
Perhaps our tastes differ, but virtuousity in a given medium is not my standard of good art. What I enjoy the most in art is passion. You can't buy that.
I wasn't going to watch these commercials, but I suppose now I'll have to.