Of course, according to p54 of the offering document, Rob can be terminated without cause at any time. When you get fire you tend to lose creative control.
Whereupon Rob takes a copy of slash (GPL!), starts up a new web server, and "dotslash.org" goes live. We all update our bookmarks, traffic on the now Taco-less slashdot drops to near zero... and Andover.net is left looking pretty damned foolish.
Not bloody likely. The value in the ownership of slashdot is mostly contained within the skulls of CmdrTaco and Hemos, and Andover knows it.
OR&A has lately been publishing "CD Bookshelf" editions, collecting books on a single topic (Perl, UNIX, Network admin) on CD in HTML, together with a hardcopy of the most heavily-used reference in the group (usually the relevant Nutshell book).
So how about making the CD Bookshelf editions hardbound? We're already paying extra for the value-add of the CD, and the cost of the hard binding would not be that much more of an increase.
Thinking about this, I wonder how a parody of this would do? Seems like you could do almost the same thing, play it totally for laughs, and have a watchable movie that could still be made for next to nothing.
My idea for a sequel: do a Spinal Tap-style mockumentary about the failed attempt to make a sequel to BWP. Heather, Mike, and Josh are back, but they've "gone Hollywood", and are all primadonnas now. Execs from Artisan do the usual meddling-exec damage. As the whole thing falls apart, the directors, in desperation, release the "making-of" documentary footage as the movie itself. Working title: "The BWP2 Project".
First of all, thanks to Wired for getting my day off to a depressing start. (I'm 36, and unaccustomed to thinking of myself as a "geezer"...)
Really, though, this should be a cautionary tale for anyone who wants to make a life of technology: don't sit still. Keep learning, keep acquiring new skills; don't be afraid to say goodbye to technologies you spent a long time mastering (I wrote some damned good FORTRAN code in the mid-1980s); and when job-hunting, look for employers that use mainstream tech, and avoid technological dead-ends (RPG-III, anyone?) as if they were ebola.
I started out writing FORTRAN on an NEC mainframe and a VAX 11/750; my current job is Web programming in a mix of Perl, HTML, and JavaScript. When it comes time to look for another job, I can prove that I can transition to new technologies because I have already done so several times before.
"I'm not dead yet... I don't want to go on the cart... I feel happy..."
The people that are getting all upset about this guy's death are the people who remember seeing him as a little kid in the white house. For the rest of us, it's old history.
True. Thing is, that generation is now running the TV networks and other news outlets, so what's important to them as a generation is what gets covered.
(I am 36; I was 11 months old when JFK was killed, and (naturally) have no first-hand memory of it or of the administration that preceded it. I frankly don't "get" the Kennedy mystique; they seem to me a pretty awful bunch, of whom JFK2 may have been the least objectionable.)
Anyone who has followed Amazon from a business/investor perspective, rather than as a customer, has known for a long time now that Amazon's ambition extends well beyond the bookseller's market; that's why they used a non-descriptive name like "Amazon", rather than something with "Book" in the title. Their real intended competition is Wal-Mart, K-Mart, and Dayton Hudson (Target); if anything, that's more revolutionary than taking on small-fry like Borders or B&N.
I can see being upset with Amazon for pulling controversial books, videos, or albums (which they have done). I can see being upset if their expansion into new product lines caused their bookselling service to suffer; but that doesn't seem to be the case.
But throwing a fit just because they have started offering a new line of merchandise is just downright silly.
(BTW, I normally by technical books from Bookpool; they usually have the best prices, and I haven't had any problems with them yet.)
The real driving force behind the GPL flame wars (like this one) is a conflict between philosophies. On one side, we have people who cannot understand motivations other than profits...
Gosh, yes, those FreeBSD folks are such greed-heads...:-)
Really, there's no need to be insulting. The fact that someone disagrees with your principles does not mean that they have no principles. (Are you listening, RMS?)
The real root of the GPL/BSD flame wars -- waged between two groups of hackers, both of whom give away their software for free -- is a conflict of goals.
GPL partisans want to change the world. They want to use a (very mild) form of legal compulsion to get others to imitate their own behavior.
BSD partisans don't want to change the world, other than to make the software better. If they persuade others to do as they do, it is only through leadership-by-example (the best kind of leadership).
I prefer the BSD approach. There is nothing morally wrong with GPL; releasing software under any free/open license is an act of generosity. But to me, the BSD license corresponds to my own sense of the word "freedom", which means allowing people to do things of which you disapprove.
But, I guess that just makes me a rabid anti-GPL fanatic. More flames, anyone?
A bit off the center line of this idea but something that comes to mind is the concept of a type of stock system for artists, something that addresses the concern of pricing something too low initially or having a huge hit on ones hands and feeling a bit robbed of the returns.
How about this as a way of calibrating "runaway hits": artist announces a new song is available, it will be released in one year -- and each $100 contributed will move up the release date by one day. (Set the dollars-per-day amount higher or lower depending on the artist's popularity.)
The song eventually gets released, even if no one donates a dime; but if enough people are interested and contribute, the song could be released almost immediately, and the artist will instantly be $36,500 richer.
Alternately, the song is to be released in six months, but a contribution total of $1 knocks one week off the release, $2 for two weeks, $4 for three weeks... each additional doubling knocks off another week. This makes it theoretically possible for the artist to earn up to $32M (not bloody likely for just one song), and eliminates the need to calibrate the pricing to the artist.
I think the author meant that the source should be distributed under an OSI-certified license (such as GPL, LGPL, Artistic, BSD).
Re:"Few" indispensable vocations?
on
GEEK Unions?
·
· Score: 1
"The Roads Must Roll", by Robert A. Heinlein. It was anthologized in "The Man Who Sold The Moon" and "The Past Through Tomorrow", both of which seem to be out of print.
Next time you read it, keep in mind that it was written in 1940, well before the first big Teamster strikes. Kinda prophetic...
So far the biggest whole that I've found, that can't be easily explained by an attempt at some literary depth, is the fact that the droids (C3PO for sure at least) later have no recollection of Tatooine despite having been their previously. Hopefully, this will be "repaired" in the next two movies.
"Tomorrow, I want you to take that droid into Anchorhead and have its memory erased. It belongs to us now." -- Owen Lars, from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
At some point -- presumably the end of Episode III -- Artoo and Threepio get their minds reformatted and reinstalled. (Now where did I put that Red Hat 6.0 CD?)
Others have wondered why Vader didn't recognize Artoo and Threepio. But unless I mis-recall, Vader never comes face-to-faceplate with Artoo in the original trilogy, and the only time he sees Threepio, the droid is disassembled and being carried in Chewie's backpack; not too surprising that he wasn't recognizable.
Jerry Pournelle once said that he did not particularly care how our leaders were chosen -- democracy, heredity, spelling bee, drawing straws -- so long as, the vast majority of the time, that government would leave him alone. It's the scope and power wielded by government that matters more than anything else. Democracies can over-reach or act mercilessly just as dictatorships do; it's called "mob rule".
I don't think Lucas's disdain is directed so much at democracy -- note that Amidala, who seems meant to be an admirable character, was elected -- but rather, at the apparent disorder that rules in a checked-and-balanced government, a limited government. Lucas's references to a "benevolent dictator" who can "get things done" -- without regard for messy things like accountability or the rule of law -- point towards a disdain for limited government, not democratic government.
I won't go as far as Pournelle myself; I think that it does matter how leaders and representatives are chosen. An hereditary ruler is somewhat more likely to overstep the bounds of his office than an elected, term-limited President. Though obviously, neither is proof to temptation.
(Personally I'd like to try election by spelling bee, even if it meant that no one on Slashdot would stand a chance of winning.:)
IIRC, Google existed as a research project (at Stanford?) before it became an independent entity. I remember getting to it through a ".edu" domain before "www.google.com" came on-line.
At the risk of being ridiculed for naivete: Has the US govt actually censored anything about Kosovo? Keeping secrets and restricting access, that I can believe. Asking news orgs to keep mum about something, I can believe. Even bald-faced lying about it, I can believe.
But have they actually gone to any news organization or web site, and shut them up or shut them down through force or intimidation?
After all, this is just a war, not something important like a sex scandal.
(Speaking of which... Jon, you're still sore about the Starr report? Relax, it's over, Bill got away with it. Let it go.)
If you substitute in the word "coprocessor" where they use the word "battery", the plot makes more sense: human brains are used as processors for the global computer network. But how do you explain what a coprocessor is to a computer-illiterate moviegoing public?
Talking to a couple of techie friends of mine who had seen the movie separately, they had both spotted the same problem, and and both come up with the same alternative premise. It didn't ruin the movie for any of us.
If you have to have an in-context explanation of why Morpheus would offer this bogus reasoning, you could simply say that the rebels did not fully understand what the Matrix was or what it was for.
The reason it's not done that way here in America is because it's not cost-effective...
The reason it's not done here in America is that breeder reactors have been mis-characterized as Tools of Satan (rather than being, as you point out, a real solution to the nuclear waste problem). It is not merely un-economical for private companies to build breeders; it's illegal.
... it looks like the GPL is the most successful of any of these "free" licenses.
BSD is the most successful of the free/open licenses. The BSD is so successful, and the BSD tools so ubiquitous, that we tend to forget about them. Not all UNIX vendors bundle emacs, but they do all bundle vi.
Similarly, the X Window System, with a similarly unrestrictive license, has become the unquesitoned standard in the UNIX world. (This despite not being the technically best solution, nor even the best free solution. I remember someone at Bell Labs -- Dennis Ritchie maybe? -- saying at the time, "I've never seen anything fill a vacuum so fast, and still suck.")
If you can't abide anyone making a profit, GPL is definitely the way to go. But if your goal is widespread adoption ("world domination"?) then BSD/X has a much better track record, and still allows everyone to play with the source.
Slashdot Mirror
Whereupon Rob takes a copy of slash (GPL!), starts up a new web server, and "dotslash.org" goes live. We all update our bookmarks, traffic on the now Taco-less slashdot drops to near zero ... and Andover.net is left looking pretty damned foolish.
Not bloody likely. The value in the ownership of slashdot is mostly contained within the skulls of CmdrTaco and Hemos, and Andover knows it.
How about this:
OR&A has lately been publishing "CD Bookshelf" editions, collecting books on a single topic (Perl, UNIX, Network admin) on CD in HTML, together with a hardcopy of the most heavily-used reference in the group (usually the relevant Nutshell book).
So how about making the CD Bookshelf editions hardbound? We're already paying extra for the value-add of the CD, and the cost of the hard binding would not be that much more of an increase.
Check it out: The Blah Witch Project.
My idea for a sequel: do a Spinal Tap-style mockumentary about the failed attempt to make a sequel to BWP. Heather, Mike, and Josh are back, but they've "gone Hollywood", and are all primadonnas now. Execs from Artisan do the usual meddling-exec damage. As the whole thing falls apart, the directors, in desperation, release the "making-of" documentary footage as the movie itself. Working title: "The BWP2 Project".
First of all, thanks to Wired for getting my day off to a depressing start. (I'm 36, and unaccustomed to thinking of myself as a "geezer"...)
Really, though, this should be a cautionary tale for anyone who wants to make a life of technology: don't sit still. Keep learning, keep acquiring new skills; don't be afraid to say goodbye to technologies you spent a long time mastering (I wrote some damned good FORTRAN code in the mid-1980s); and when job-hunting, look for employers that use mainstream tech, and avoid technological dead-ends (RPG-III, anyone?) as if they were ebola.
I started out writing FORTRAN on an NEC mainframe and a VAX 11/750; my current job is Web programming in a mix of Perl, HTML, and JavaScript. When it comes time to look for another job, I can prove that I can transition to new technologies because I have already done so several times before.
"I'm not dead yet ... I don't want to go on the cart ... I feel happy ..."
True. Thing is, that generation is now running the TV networks and other news outlets, so what's important to them as a generation is what gets covered.
(I am 36; I was 11 months old when JFK was killed, and (naturally) have no first-hand memory of it or of the administration that preceded it. I frankly don't "get" the Kennedy mystique; they seem to me a pretty awful bunch, of whom JFK2 may have been the least objectionable.)
Jon, if you just can't bear the sight of consumer electronics when you go to Amazon, then just change your bookmark from
to and everything will be as it once was.Anyone who has followed Amazon from a business/investor perspective, rather than as a customer, has known for a long time now that Amazon's ambition extends well beyond the bookseller's market; that's why they used a non-descriptive name like "Amazon", rather than something with "Book" in the title. Their real intended competition is Wal-Mart, K-Mart, and Dayton Hudson (Target); if anything, that's more revolutionary than taking on small-fry like Borders or B&N.
I can see being upset with Amazon for pulling controversial books, videos, or albums (which they have done). I can see being upset if their expansion into new product lines caused their bookselling service to suffer; but that doesn't seem to be the case.
But throwing a fit just because they have started offering a new line of merchandise is just downright silly.
(BTW, I normally by technical books from Bookpool; they usually have the best prices, and I haven't had any problems with them yet.)
Gosh, yes, those FreeBSD folks are such greed-heads ... :-)
Really, there's no need to be insulting. The fact that someone disagrees with your principles does not mean that they have no principles. (Are you listening, RMS?)
The real root of the GPL/BSD flame wars -- waged between two groups of hackers, both of whom give away their software for free -- is a conflict of goals.
GPL partisans want to change the world. They want to use a (very mild) form of legal compulsion to get others to imitate their own behavior.
BSD partisans don't want to change the world, other than to make the software better. If they persuade others to do as they do, it is only through leadership-by-example (the best kind of leadership).
I prefer the BSD approach. There is nothing morally wrong with GPL; releasing software under any free/open license is an act of generosity. But to me, the BSD license corresponds to my own sense of the word "freedom", which means allowing people to do things of which you disapprove.
But, I guess that just makes me a rabid anti-GPL fanatic. More flames, anyone?
How about this as a way of calibrating "runaway hits": artist announces a new song is available, it will be released in one year -- and each $100 contributed will move up the release date by one day. (Set the dollars-per-day amount higher or lower depending on the artist's popularity.)
The song eventually gets released, even if no one donates a dime; but if enough people are interested and contribute, the song could be released almost immediately, and the artist will instantly be $36,500 richer.
Alternately, the song is to be released in six months, but a contribution total of $1 knocks one week off the release, $2 for two weeks, $4 for three weeks ... each additional doubling knocks off another week. This makes it theoretically possible for the artist to earn up to $32M (not bloody likely for just one song), and eliminates the need to calibrate the pricing to the artist.
I think the author meant that the source should be distributed under an OSI-certified license (such as GPL, LGPL, Artistic, BSD).
Next time you read it, keep in mind that it was written in 1940, well before the first big Teamster strikes. Kinda prophetic...
"Tomorrow, I want you to take that droid into Anchorhead and have its memory erased. It belongs to us now."
-- Owen Lars, from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
At some point -- presumably the end of Episode III -- Artoo and Threepio get their minds reformatted and reinstalled. (Now where did I put that Red Hat 6.0 CD?)
Others have wondered why Vader didn't recognize Artoo and Threepio. But unless I mis-recall, Vader never comes face-to-faceplate with Artoo in the original trilogy, and the only time he sees Threepio, the droid is disassembled and being carried in Chewie's backpack; not too surprising that he wasn't recognizable.
I don't think Lucas's disdain is directed so much at democracy -- note that Amidala, who seems meant to be an admirable character, was elected -- but rather, at the apparent disorder that rules in a checked-and-balanced government, a limited government. Lucas's references to a "benevolent dictator" who can "get things done" -- without regard for messy things like accountability or the rule of law -- point towards a disdain for limited government, not democratic government.
I won't go as far as Pournelle myself; I think that it does matter how leaders and representatives are chosen. An hereditary ruler is somewhat more likely to overstep the bounds of his office than an elected, term-limited President. Though obviously, neither is proof to temptation.
(Personally I'd like to try election by spelling bee, even if it meant that no one on Slashdot would stand a chance of winning. :)
IIRC, Google existed as a research project (at Stanford?) before it became an independent entity. I remember getting to it through a ".edu" domain before "www.google.com" came on-line.
But have they actually gone to any news organization or web site, and shut them up or shut them down through force or intimidation?
After all, this is just a war, not something important like a sex scandal.
(Speaking of which ... Jon, you're still sore about the Starr report? Relax, it's over, Bill got away with it. Let it go.)
Talking to a couple of techie friends of mine who had seen the movie separately, they had both spotted the same problem, and and both come up with the same alternative premise. It didn't ruin the movie for any of us.
If you have to have an in-context explanation of why Morpheus would offer this bogus reasoning, you could simply say that the rebels did not fully understand what the Matrix was or what it was for.
The reason it's not done here in America is that breeder reactors have been mis-characterized as Tools of Satan (rather than being, as you point out, a real solution to the nuclear waste problem). It is not merely un-economical for private companies to build breeders; it's illegal.
Kevin Shaum
Ban dihydrogen monoxide!
BSD is the most successful of the free/open licenses. The BSD is so successful, and the BSD tools so ubiquitous, that we tend to forget about them. Not all UNIX vendors bundle emacs, but they do all bundle vi.
Similarly, the X Window System, with a similarly unrestrictive license, has become the unquesitoned standard in the UNIX world. (This despite not being the technically best solution, nor even the best free solution. I remember someone at Bell Labs -- Dennis Ritchie maybe? -- saying at the time, "I've never seen anything fill a vacuum so fast, and still suck.")
If you can't abide anyone making a profit, GPL is definitely the way to go. But if your goal is widespread adoption ("world domination"?) then BSD/X has a much better track record, and still allows everyone to play with the source.