The problem with these boxes and the TVs is that they are a closed platform. It you could buy an open source based TV now, I would wait in line to buy it. It would have great support and 1000s of apps and would be a wonderful platform. Even something running Android or Ios would be better than the completely closed crap that comes with these modern devices.
I would hope that the U.S. could make a standard driver license that would mean something in Europe. Right now if you move to Europe from the U.S. you have to go through the painful process of getting a European driver license. It is not cheap or easy.
If we had a national standard, maybe we could come up with an agreement with the EU so that our licenses would be convalidated across the pond.
Actually Andalucia is not so small as you might think. Spain is one of the major economies of the world, its just that many people from the U.S. are blind to anyone below position number 1.
In fact, articles like this show how far behind the U.S. is in terms of open source/free software and how forward thinking countries will someday dominate the silly hicks in the U.S. Who prefer their comfortable monopolies.
On a more related note, I have a cousin-in-law who works for the Junta de Andalucia (Andalucian government) in a school and they are quite advanced in the way they handle the education system here, with many programs for school management given to them by the government and data exchange going on via the Internet.
The use of Linux on their systems will just help the standardization of school systems and also give the developers a standard platform to develop future applications as well as save important Euros for spending on things that matter like educating the students.
I have never understood the reasoning behind shared DLLs personally. What the hell is wrong with an application running completely independent of other applications? Why must you share a DLL with anyone. Just install it in your own application directory and use it when you need id. Are we still concerned about saving precious storage space on our 80Gb hard drives?
Can I write a game and get free advertisement on Slashdot?
Please!
Wait. I already participate in a game that has a great user / developer relationship. It is a MUD called Genesis and it has been around since 1994. Much better game than any you can buy and there is no worry about copy protection since it is a free game.
It is encouraging to see a success story about making money in the open source world. I believe that the industry should move towards open source as much as possible, and I completly understand how companies withstand the urge to go open source.
I have planned on going the same route that the author took in my software developement career. I am planning on doing some development work on some open source projects as an experience and resume builder so that I can fill in the part that talks about experience on my resume. It is a perfect place for new programmers to gain useful experience programming, but I have concerns about a market that is totally open source.
For all products to be open source is scarey. Now I know that open source doens't necesarily mean free. It means letting everyone know what your software is doing, possibly fixing it for their own use. This type of use is great. But what should a company do if they are making some true innovations. Release that software for the world to look at.
For example, Oracle may or may not have the most scalable and fastest database. But lets say that their programmers have developed some new methods that enable there database server to be faster and more scalable than the competition. How do the open source gurus claim that opening that software up would help Oracle. This is precisely the part that I have yet to understand. It is the same as patenting a new device. It lets the inventor or inventing company protect there investment for awhile so that even doing the research to begin with is worth it. The patent gives the garantee that the innovation is protected.
The article didn't help clarify my view of the issues with open source either. There method of dealing with the problem is by having some products open source and free and other products closed source and for sale. This doesn't really answer the question of how to deal with open source software and make money, unless this happens to be the final solution.
For example, Microsft opens the source to DirectX, IE, etc.. but keeps the source on NT and Office. Of course, this isn't really the core of what they do, it would be like giving out some toys, but not the real thing. Do people think this is the answer to the open source questions, or do people really think everything can go open source?
I agree with you completely. The universe was not created for you, or me, it just is.
That doesn't give anyone a right to make money doing anything. You just do what you can to get by. Hopefully, it is in what you enjoy since you will probably spend so much time doing it.
I also agree with you on the copy stuff. We must protect ourselves from protecting ourselves too much, as well as, protecting ourselves from not protecting ourselves enough. It is a delicate unbalance.
One of the scariest parts of the article gives a terrible feeling of Super Corporate Power that is so prevalent today. We have sat back and let these large corporations dominate us and there has been little to do in the way of fighting.
America, in its beginning, was a fight against this type of domination, except that the domination was governmental instead of commercial. In our modern times of fast pace economics and telecommunication we have lots of toys hung in front of us to play with, which each costs us just a little bit of money, and we have lots of little bits of money to spend on toys to keep us satisfied for short periods of time.
Now, I am not a follower of conspiracy theories, because a conspiracy requires active colaboration of the conspirators, but the rich and powerful in the western world, which are the owners of the mega-corporations, are collectively dangling thousands of toys in front of us so that we can give them some small bits of our money. That is there goal. This naturally leads them to do anything they can to protect their ability to dangle these toys in front of our faces and keep them tempting.
The record industry is just one of many markets where this is the case. Another perfect example is... any other developed markey. That is exactly what a developed market is. A quick example, The home appliance industry, where there are only a handful of companies in the world, but they make a zillion brands to give the consumers the feeling of choice and individuality.
Now, we don't sit at our tele-personality stations complaining about the lack of power and choice in the home appliance industry. The appliance engineers might like it if there were more small appliance manufacturers out there for them to get a job with:-). (Of course, there is no one pirating dishwashers either)
Anyway, I think the main point of the article is not just whether or not Gnapster is good or bad, or even whether or not there is an important court case there. Its the power of the corporation that is at stake here.
Do we (the mostly fat, mostly dumb, mostly happy) westerners REALLY want to upset the large corporations. Isn't this economic model the one that has unemployment so low right now. Aren't these large corporations what western economic society is based on.
I say, why the hell not. Maybe some kids will go without food in France or America, but they do anyway, so lets give it a shot. Lets say no to the Big Guys if we can and take it back to the basics. Lets not let large corporation develop. Lets make a new law that prohibits a couple of things.
1. Corporations cannot own other corporations that have different names. If AOL buys Netscape then AOL MUST be printed on the box. That way we know that the Kraft Marlboro cigarettes are made by the same people that claim to make cheese that is healthy. This would allow us to at least grasp the size of these companies without hiring a private detective to research them and therefore help us decide if we like helping the creation of this large corporation.
2. There must be at least 5 companies in any one industry that are nationally owned. If there have never been more than 5 in an emerging industry or market, then the companies in that market are forced to allow competition like AT&T was. This would prevent companies from buying out the competition at an earlier stage of the game.
3. Companies that are too broad must be split up into seperate companies or not allowed to merge. Time Warner-AOL-Netscape. Too broad, let companies stay in there industry.
4. A company cannot sell off more than 60% (or whatever) of their stock. There must be someone or quantity of stock that is not splitable so that a person who owns say 10% of a startup, upon going public must keep at least 4% and at a later date cannot sell any piece of that, it is unbreakable. It would be a 6% share that must be sold as a unit. This would "help" keep the company human.
5. Etc.- To be filled in by someone much more qualified than myself.
This is what some portions of the Internet are trying to fight. When you see these new Internet companies act like this, that is the reason. They want to be the only ones to dangle that toy in front of your face so that you have to give them your money. They will do anything it takes to keep that right. In a person we would call that mentality perverse or any number of things, but at work they just say its business.
I say stand up and boycott. Boycott all of the ones that you can. Wal-Mart, McDonalds, Ford, Microsoft, Kraft, Pryca, Nokia, Sony.
Is the information superhighway system any different than the automobile superhighway system? IMHO, it shouldn't be!
If it's NOT any different, then anyone should be able to drive down that highway as long as they aren't hurting anyone. Driving relatively within the speed limit is OK on a highway, but breaking that speed limit is thought to increase the acceptable level of danger and therefore shouldn't be done. If done, it will be punished.
The same should be said for internet traffic. Internet traffic that doesn't harm anyone shouldn't be bothered about.Port scans and pings don't hurt anyone, so why should we care. DOS attacks are like speeding and should be punished.
On the automobile infrastructure we have roads to our house and driveways. Driveways belong to us, and roads belong to everyone.
The difference between the highway and the road on our information superstructure should be delineated by routers and firewalls. If you don't have a firewall or a filtering router, or both, then its like building your house on the curb of an interstate. Most days, you will go outside and avoid the traffic, but one of these days, an 18 wheeler with a load full of squeeling pigs will drive right through your living room.
The question is whether Newtons's laws effect it at all. Do quantum mechanics come in to play here, and if they do, do they have the same type of effect as Newton's third law.
In other words, do the photons just appear out of the laser or are they "propelled" out of the laser, if they are "propelled" then it would seem newton's law applies, but if the energy in the laser creates the photons and points them in the right direction, then it would seem that Newton's laws wouldn't matter.
"Interplanetary ship Mars travellor XI to planet earth, come in, come in."
"This is Houston Mars XI, we have detected the problem as well."
"Houston, how do you suppose we get back to earth now? We have already used all 3 of our spare sails, and you brilliant engineers wouldn't let us put on enough fuel to get us back to earth! New superlightweith sails don't require fuel you said! And what if the sail breaks, you have 3 backup sails thats what! They didn't do us any good this time Houston."
"Mars XI we are working on it. Give us some time. We just called in McGuyver to help us build a new sail out of your existing equipment"
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with these boxes and the TVs is that they are a closed platform. It you could buy an open source based TV now, I would wait in line to buy it. It would have great support and 1000s of apps and would be a wonderful platform. Even something running Android or Ios would be better than the completely closed crap that comes with these modern devices.
I would hope that the U.S. could make a standard driver license that would mean something in Europe. Right now if you move to Europe from the U.S. you have to go through the painful process of getting a European driver license. It is not cheap or easy.
If we had a national standard, maybe we could come up with an agreement with the EU so that our licenses would be convalidated across the pond.
If all of the postmasters out there would setup their mail servers properly SPAM would be less of a problem.
At the very least, we would know for sure exactly where it came from and could more easily filter from those domains.
The solution to SPAM is already here. The fault for SPAM lies with the postmasters.
!!!! Postmasters unite against SPAM !!!!!
Send me mail if you're a postmaster and you want more info
Actually Andalucia is not so small as you might think. Spain is one of the major economies of the world, its just that many people from the U.S. are blind to anyone below position number 1.
In fact, articles like this show how far behind the U.S. is in terms of open source/free software and how forward thinking countries will someday dominate the silly hicks in the U.S. Who prefer their comfortable monopolies.
On a more related note, I have a cousin-in-law who works for the Junta de Andalucia (Andalucian government) in a school and they are quite advanced in the way they handle the education system here, with many programs for school management given to them by the government and data exchange going on via the Internet.
The use of Linux on their systems will just help the standardization of school systems and also give the developers a standard platform to develop future applications as well as save important Euros for spending on things that matter like educating the students.
I have never understood the reasoning behind shared DLLs personally. What the hell is wrong with an application running completely independent of other applications? Why must you share a DLL with anyone. Just install it in your own application directory and use it when you need id. Are we still concerned about saving precious storage space on our 80Gb hard drives?
I generally use old computer parts, empty beer bottles, and dust to decorate my computer room.
Can I write a game and get free advertisement on Slashdot?
Please!
Wait. I already participate in a game that has a great user / developer relationship. It is a MUD called Genesis and it has been around since 1994. Much better game than any you can buy and there is no worry about copy protection since it is a free game.Duh. Unless we are all going to start using tube based computers again this is pretty obvious.
It is encouraging to see a success story about making money in the open source world. I believe that the industry should move towards open source as much as possible, and I completly understand how companies withstand the urge to go open source.
I have planned on going the same route that the author took in my software developement career. I am planning on doing some development work on some open source projects as an experience and resume builder so that I can fill in the part that talks about experience on my resume. It is a perfect place for new programmers to gain useful experience programming, but I have concerns about a market that is totally open source.
For all products to be open source is scarey. Now I know that open source doens't necesarily mean free. It means letting everyone know what your software is doing, possibly fixing it for their own use. This type of use is great. But what should a company do if they are making some true innovations. Release that software for the world to look at.
For example, Oracle may or may not have the most scalable and fastest database. But lets say that their programmers have developed some new methods that enable there database server to be faster and more scalable than the competition. How do the open source gurus claim that opening that software up would help Oracle. This is precisely the part that I have yet to understand. It is the same as patenting a new device. It lets the inventor or inventing company protect there investment for awhile so that even doing the research to begin with is worth it. The patent gives the garantee that the innovation is protected.
The article didn't help clarify my view of the issues with open source either. There method of dealing with the problem is by having some products open source and free and other products closed source and for sale. This doesn't really answer the question of how to deal with open source software and make money, unless this happens to be the final solution.
For example, Microsft opens the source to DirectX, IE, etc.. but keeps the source on NT and Office. Of course, this isn't really the core of what they do, it would be like giving out some toys, but not the real thing. Do people think this is the answer to the open source questions, or do people really think everything can go open source?
I agree with you completely. The universe was not created for you, or me, it just is.
That doesn't give anyone a right to make money doing anything. You just do what you can to get by. Hopefully, it is in what you enjoy since you will probably spend so much time doing it.
I also agree with you on the copy stuff. We must protect ourselves from protecting ourselves too much, as well as, protecting ourselves from not protecting ourselves enough. It is a delicate unbalance.
One of the scariest parts of the article gives a terrible feeling of Super Corporate Power that is so prevalent today. We have sat back and let these large corporations dominate us and there has been little to do in the way of fighting.
:-). (Of course, there is no one pirating dishwashers either)
America, in its beginning, was a fight against this type of domination, except that the domination was governmental instead of commercial. In our modern times of fast pace economics and telecommunication we have lots of toys hung in front of us to play with, which each costs us just a little bit of money, and we have lots of little bits of money to spend on toys to keep us satisfied for short periods of time.
Now, I am not a follower of conspiracy theories, because a conspiracy requires active colaboration of the conspirators, but the rich and powerful in the western world, which are the owners of the mega-corporations, are collectively dangling thousands of toys in front of us so that we can give them some small bits of our money. That is there goal. This naturally leads them to do anything they can to protect their ability to dangle these toys in front of our faces and keep them tempting.
The record industry is just one of many markets where this is the case. Another perfect example is... any other developed markey. That is exactly what a developed market is. A quick example, The home appliance industry, where there are only a handful of companies in the world, but they make a zillion brands to give the consumers the feeling of choice and individuality.
Now, we don't sit at our tele-personality stations complaining about the lack of power and choice in the home appliance industry. The appliance engineers might like it if there were more small appliance manufacturers out there for them to get a job with
Anyway, I think the main point of the article is not just whether or not Gnapster is good or bad, or even whether or not there is an important court case there. Its the power of the corporation that is at stake here.
Do we (the mostly fat, mostly dumb, mostly happy) westerners REALLY want to upset the large corporations. Isn't this economic model the one that has unemployment so low right now. Aren't these large corporations what western economic society is based on.
I say, why the hell not. Maybe some kids will go without food in France or America, but they do anyway, so lets give it a shot. Lets say no to the Big Guys if we can and take it back to the basics. Lets not let large corporation develop. Lets make a new law that prohibits a couple of things.
1. Corporations cannot own other corporations that have different names. If AOL buys Netscape then AOL MUST be printed on the box. That way we know that the Kraft Marlboro cigarettes are made by the same people that claim to make cheese that is healthy. This would allow us to at least grasp the size of these companies without hiring a private detective to research them and therefore help us decide if we like helping the creation of this large corporation.
2. There must be at least 5 companies in any one industry that are nationally owned. If there have never been more than 5 in an emerging industry or market, then the companies in that market are forced to allow competition like AT&T was. This would prevent companies from buying out the competition at an earlier stage of the game.
3. Companies that are too broad must be split up into seperate companies or not allowed to merge. Time Warner-AOL-Netscape. Too broad, let companies stay in there industry.
4. A company cannot sell off more than 60% (or whatever) of their stock. There must be someone or quantity of stock that is not splitable so that a person who owns say 10% of a startup, upon going public must keep at least 4% and at a later date cannot sell any piece of that, it is unbreakable. It would be a 6% share that must be sold as a unit. This would "help" keep the company human.
5. Etc.- To be filled in by someone much more qualified than myself.
This is what some portions of the Internet are trying to fight. When you see these new Internet companies act like this, that is the reason. They want to be the only ones to dangle that toy in front of your face so that you have to give them your money. They will do anything it takes to keep that right. In a person we would call that mentality perverse or any number of things, but at work they just say its business.
I say stand up and boycott. Boycott all of the ones that you can. Wal-Mart, McDonalds, Ford, Microsoft, Kraft, Pryca, Nokia, Sony.
Extending that large egocentric american personal bubble onto the internet I suppose.
Is the information superhighway system any different than the automobile superhighway system? IMHO, it shouldn't be!
If it's NOT any different, then anyone should be able to drive down that highway as long as they aren't hurting anyone. Driving relatively within the speed limit is OK on a highway, but breaking that speed limit is thought to increase the acceptable level of danger and therefore shouldn't be done. If done, it will be punished.
The same should be said for internet traffic. Internet traffic that doesn't harm anyone shouldn't be bothered about.Port scans and pings don't hurt anyone, so why should we care. DOS attacks are like speeding and should be punished.
On the automobile infrastructure we have roads to our house and driveways. Driveways belong to us, and roads belong to everyone.
The difference between the highway and the road on our information superstructure should be delineated by routers and firewalls. If you don't have a firewall or a filtering router, or both, then its like building your house on the curb of an interstate. Most days, you will go outside and avoid the traffic, but one of these days, an 18 wheeler with a load full of squeeling pigs will drive right through your living room.
The question is whether Newtons's laws effect it at all. Do quantum mechanics come in to play here, and if they do, do they have the same type of effect as Newton's third law.
In other words, do the photons just appear out of the laser or are they "propelled" out of the laser, if they are "propelled" then it would seem newton's law applies, but if the energy in the laser creates the photons and points them in the right direction, then it would seem that Newton's laws wouldn't matter.
That was a long sentence.
"Interplanetary ship Mars travellor XI to planet earth, come in, come in."
"This is Houston Mars XI, we have detected the problem as well."
"Houston, how do you suppose we get back to earth now? We have already used all 3 of our spare sails, and you brilliant engineers wouldn't let us put on enough fuel to get us back to earth! New superlightweith sails don't require fuel you said! And what if the sail breaks, you have 3 backup sails thats what! They didn't do us any good this time Houston."
"Mars XI we are working on it. Give us some time. We just called in McGuyver to help us build a new sail out of your existing equipment"