I can speak for myself, I'm a dumb windows-based webdesigner, and as much as I really like the idea of Linux, and the look of gnome and kde, and the coolness of using a console... you'd still have to dumb it down a bit more for me. Perhaps Apple's X... but then I hate Apple computers, it'd have to run on a PC.
"Yes, but..." is a great way to avoid responsibility for your own choices.
I'd love to use Linux, but it's not easy enough.
Apple OS X is easy enough, but I dislike the vendor.
Oh, this vendor I like has an easy Linux on PCs, but it costs money...
Look, here's a free version of the above, but I wanted internationalization...
Sheesh. If you are sticking with Windows because Linux isn't perfect to you in every conceivable way yet, forget it. You'll never change, and that's okay, because obviously Windows is good enough for you. Just let go of the "Linux isn't perfect yet" thing.
Personally, myself (and many others) do not believe that what was done with IE was anti-competitive in any way.
But at some point the court has to make a decision. Microsoft was convicted more than a year ago and has run out of appeals. If you don't like the verdict, oh well, but the judge needs to go forward. What you and I say doesn't affect the verdict.
Yes, but most decently popular Free Software (or Open Source) projects have one copyright holder, partly for this reason. You work on the code if you like, but you assign copyright to the project "owner" or leader.
And in any case, commercial licensing of GPL'd software is a fallback for cases of innocent infringement as we were discussing. It should happen rarely, if ever.
The ADTI paper has that creepy weird co-dependent feel to it, like some disturbed person whining "if you're my friend you'd solve all my problems for me..." Sheesh. What more do they want? As so many others have said here, it's not as though the GPL is any harsher than a commercial or closed-source license. The code is free to use, free to distribute, free to modify, all you have to do is pass along the source under certain very specific circumstances. They make it as though getting all those rights for free under the GPL is such a burden because those rights do have some limits.
I know I'm not disagreeing with you, this just ticks me off.
That's why they're afraid of it. I know, an employee's other bad actions, like racial discrimination, can cause legal problems for the company, too. But usually management can correct that sort of thing once it's brought to its attention. This isn't always the case with code that's been released.
A perfect opportunity for the closed-source vendor to buy an alternative license from the Open Source programmers.
The GPL doesn't have to be an exclusive license, you know.
As for your one-sided view issue; If we're talking about national security, it's going to be written from a paranoid mindset, and rightfully so. Better to be paranoid and duplicated work, with code not released to the public, than to fuck up and install a fat backdoor that lets skript kiddies fuck around with our nation's communications, for example. You know, like the private telecom system...
The private telecom system runs on closed source. Your point?
The GPL does not require that you distribute your application to the public. Nor does it require that you publish your modifications to existing GPL code.
And even if the "thousand hackers" argument weren't ridiculous from the get-go, how is it that BSD-licensed code is still safe and hunky-dory? BSD code has had a thousand hackers in it too, right?
Following the old Usenet tradition that every spelling and grammar flame must contain at least one spelling or grammar error, you meant "its." There's no apostrophe. See Bob The Angry Flower for details.
...a big part of what's holding back many telco's and cable companies in rural areas is the fact that they have to share their lines (which means they make the investment, but get no return)....
Incorrect. The ILECs can and do charge for line-sharing, often to excess depending on the pliability of state regulators.
So, imagine what internet access would be like if the govt managed the last mile. It'd take 3 days for someone to walk over to the dslam and notice that now _both_ power supplies had failed (the primary having failed 6 months prior and no one cared at the time). it'd take another 2 weeks to get someone from the Power-Supply-Installers union to replace them both (finding this person would require 2 or more layers of contracting agencies).
You described almost perfectly my nine days of downtime on a DSL line provided by... Ameritech, in Ohio.
It's not being the government that causes such inefficiency. It's the lack of competition. Or are you used to getting spectacular service from your privately owned cable company?
I've said this many times before, why are people in this kind of situation rolling out DSL? Why not just lay down new copper in the form of CAT5?
One word: right of way.
Oh, that's three words.
But the simple reason you don't just run CAT5 all over town is that the state won't allow it. You could theoretically get permission from the owner of every property the wire crosses, but even then you'd need an easement from the city or township for every crossing of a public street.
This is one of the more important reasons why one has some recourse when the ILEC won't provide a needed service. They've been given unique privileges by the state, and in return have a well-recognized legal obligation to act in the public interest.
Amazon's a really big bookstore with a lot of stuff that isn't books too.
It has some feedback features that are difficult to duplicate in a brick-n-mortar store.
It still doesn't add up to world-changing, rule-breaking, revolutionary action. Because in the end, at best, it's just a nifty way to buy stuff. Which has always been obvious to any real "geek," Jon Katz's breathlessness notwithstanding. Which is my point.
I'm not even a regular Katz-basher here, but this story is just wacky.
And in this case Katz is not just throwing the "Royal We" where it doesn't belong. He's gotten it completely backwards.
If anything, it was the geeks who said, "Yeah, selling books online. Nice niche. Good luck making money at it." It was the anti-geeks (business types, journalistic pretenders, scam artists, stockbrokers...) who thought Amazon (give me a break! Amazon of all things!) would be much more than, well, a place to buy books online at a good price.
"Amazon as revolution" doesn't even pass the initial "huh?" test. Geeks are exactly the kind of people who have the perspective to see a slightly new twist on an old idea, however cool, for what it is--not some overarching metaphor for revolutionary change.
In other words, it's just a freaking bookstore, and it's always been just a freaking bookstore. Katz needs to get over it, and himself. Failing that, how about if he just refrains from projecting his dumber ideas onto "geeks" just to knock them down, eh?
Who is this "we" character?
on
Amazon.Heartbreak
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Remember those lonely pundits, analysts and prophets wandering the talk shows, wondering aloud whether it was really okay for a company that hadn't ever turned a dime's profit to be valued so highly by stockholders and so loved by media? They were quickly shouted down or ignored by the geek digerati and bewildered journalists and analysts, dismissed as clueless old farts and reactionaries.
We wanted so much to believe that people like Bezos and companies like Amazon were re-shaping the world (I sure thought the Net would revolutionize politics and business, though I never could see how Amazon would make money with those discounts and shipping costs.) We have yet to fully acknowledge that if it survives at all, Amazon will make it as any other company has, not as part of any revolution.
Minidisc went through SSSCA-style legislation? Did it really?
I must have missed that.
The internet is just the next digital technology to come under the hammer.
But you still haven't explained the need for the geek community to provide an alternative to Hollings-style legislation. That's an extraordinary claim; it requires more than an emotional rant to be justified.
Copyright enforcement is up to the copyright holder. Why should it be different for certain favored "industries"? The burden is on them (you) to justify their intrusive legislation, not on the public.
But the real problem is that CBDTPA and its ilk are attempting to
make it impossible, in your terms, to photocopy our own
artwork on the pretense that we might also try to photocopy $20 bills.
"We" do not have a "serious problem" here. It's the "content industry" that has a problem. It is up to them to solve it or
go away.
They are looking at open source as "free beer" and saying that is against the american way, and undermines the free market economy that we have so carefully built up.
By that standard, quilting bees and church potlucks are unamerican too.
However, if they are learning the "Business" side of the systems, they will be sorely lacking in how to run MS based Windows applications, which apparently is what 90% of the computers in the world run.
Maybe so. But everyone seems to be assuming that Microsoft Office applications are so easy to learn (contrasted with the corresponding Linux equivalents)--so what's the big deal? You learn MS Office when you need to, it shouldn't take more than a few hours to get the hang of Word and Excel, right?
In any event, for the younger children what would be the point of learning all about (e.g.) Word 2000? By the time they're ready to use it in "business" it will have become Word 2010 at least, with likely a whole new interface to learn. So much can change in ten years. Why does anyone invest any importance in the "business" computing skills of six-year-old children?
If you're concerned about children falling behind in business applications, they can catch up quickly and it will all have changed by the time it matters anyway. So don't worry about it.
But last Saturday I heard from a schoolteacher in the Portland Public School District who clearly stated the opposite: the kids actually prefer the computers runing Linux because they are more stable.
My kids like Linux too; if their favorite games ran well on Linux they'd probably use it most of the time. I haven't gotten around to configuring WINE or equivalent hacks though.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe so, but that's the choice the PHBs and network admins of the world have to make then: do you want an apple, or do you want a Volvo?
Does the comparison have to be "fair" to be useful, or does it have to account for real-world results?
"Yes, but..." is a great way to avoid responsibility for your own choices.
Sheesh. If you are sticking with Windows because Linux isn't perfect to you in every conceivable way yet, forget it. You'll never change, and that's okay, because obviously Windows is good enough for you. Just let go of the "Linux isn't perfect yet" thing.
But at some point the court has to make a decision. Microsoft was convicted more than a year ago and has run out of appeals. If you don't like the verdict, oh well, but the judge needs to go forward. What you and I say doesn't affect the verdict.
And their "Safari" product is neat. I use it as a try-before-you-buy for O'Reilly technical books.
Yes, but most decently popular Free Software (or Open Source) projects have one copyright holder, partly for this reason. You work on the code if you like, but you assign copyright to the project "owner" or leader.
And in any case, commercial licensing of GPL'd software is a fallback for cases of innocent infringement as we were discussing. It should happen rarely, if ever.
The ADTI paper has that creepy weird co-dependent feel to it, like some disturbed person whining "if you're my friend you'd solve all my problems for me..." Sheesh. What more do they want? As so many others have said here, it's not as though the GPL is any harsher than a commercial or closed-source license. The code is free to use, free to distribute, free to modify, all you have to do is pass along the source under certain very specific circumstances. They make it as though getting all those rights for free under the GPL is such a burden because those rights do have some limits.
I know I'm not disagreeing with you, this just ticks me off.
A perfect opportunity for the closed-source vendor to buy an alternative license from the Open Source programmers.
The GPL doesn't have to be an exclusive license, you know.
<sarcasm> Yeah, it would be cool if you could have something like apt-get running in a cron job. Too bad that's years away. </sarcasm>
Sheesh. Kids. They see something shiny from Microsoft and think it's unique in all the world.
Following the old Usenet tradition that every spelling and grammar flame must contain at least one spelling or grammar error, you meant "its." There's no apostrophe. See Bob The Angry Flower for details.
Have you considered getting out of programming and going to work for the post office or something?
Incorrect. The ILECs can and do charge for line-sharing, often to excess depending on the pliability of state regulators.
You described almost perfectly my nine days of downtime on a DSL line provided by... Ameritech, in Ohio.
It's not being the government that causes such inefficiency. It's the lack of competition. Or are you used to getting spectacular service from your privately owned cable company?
One word: right of way.
Oh, that's three words.
But the simple reason you don't just run CAT5 all over town is that the state won't allow it. You could theoretically get permission from the owner of every property the wire crosses, but even then you'd need an easement from the city or township for every crossing of a public street.
This is one of the more important reasons why one has some recourse when the ILEC won't provide a needed service. They've been given unique privileges by the state, and in return have a well-recognized legal obligation to act in the public interest.
Amazon's a really big bookstore with a lot of stuff that isn't books too.
It has some feedback features that are difficult to duplicate in a brick-n-mortar store.
It still doesn't add up to world-changing, rule-breaking, revolutionary action. Because in the end, at best, it's just a nifty way to buy stuff. Which has always been obvious to any real "geek," Jon Katz's breathlessness notwithstanding. Which is my point.
I'm not even a regular Katz-basher here, but this story is just wacky.
And in this case Katz is not just throwing the "Royal We" where it doesn't belong. He's gotten it completely backwards.
If anything, it was the geeks who said, "Yeah, selling books online. Nice niche. Good luck making money at it." It was the anti-geeks (business types, journalistic pretenders, scam artists, stockbrokers...) who thought Amazon (give me a break! Amazon of all things!) would be much more than, well, a place to buy books online at a good price.
"Amazon as revolution" doesn't even pass the initial "huh?" test. Geeks are exactly the kind of people who have the perspective to see a slightly new twist on an old idea, however cool, for what it is--not some overarching metaphor for revolutionary change.
In other words, it's just a freaking bookstore, and it's always been just a freaking bookstore. Katz needs to get over it, and himself. Failing that, how about if he just refrains from projecting his dumber ideas onto "geeks" just to knock them down, eh?
Who the hell do you mean by "we"?
Speak for yourself, Jon.
Windows 2000 Professional is going for $271.88 at the first reseller I looked up.
That's close enough to $300.00 that the other guy is basically right.
"We have nothing to fear but fear itself."
That's why they're called "terrorists," not "deathists."
Fear is the problem, not an excuse for a poor solution.
Minidisc went through SSSCA-style legislation? Did it really?
I must have missed that.
But you still haven't explained the need for the geek community to provide an alternative to Hollings-style legislation. That's an extraordinary claim; it requires more than an emotional rant to be justified.
What makes you think the Internet is so special?
Copyright enforcement is up to the copyright holder. Why should it be different for certain favored "industries"? The burden is on them (you) to justify their intrusive legislation, not on the public.
Yes, duh. It's symmetrical. Drag the copyright violators to court, just like you said.
Clean, simple, and (unlike the crap legislation they're trying to hand us) totally constitutional.
Next problem?
"Digital economy" is a null term anyway.
But the real problem is that CBDTPA and its ilk are attempting to make it impossible, in your terms, to photocopy our own artwork on the pretense that we might also try to photocopy $20 bills.
"We" do not have a "serious problem" here. It's the "content industry" that has a problem. It is up to them to solve it or go away.
On the off chance that you're not trolling.
By that standard, quilting bees and church potlucks are unamerican too.
Maybe so. But everyone seems to be assuming that Microsoft Office applications are so easy to learn (contrasted with the corresponding Linux equivalents)--so what's the big deal? You learn MS Office when you need to, it shouldn't take more than a few hours to get the hang of Word and Excel, right?
In any event, for the younger children what would be the point of learning all about (e.g.) Word 2000? By the time they're ready to use it in "business" it will have become Word 2010 at least, with likely a whole new interface to learn. So much can change in ten years. Why does anyone invest any importance in the "business" computing skills of six-year-old children?
If you're concerned about children falling behind in business applications, they can catch up quickly and it will all have changed by the time it matters anyway. So don't worry about it.
My kids like Linux too; if their favorite games ran well on Linux they'd probably use it most of the time. I haven't gotten around to configuring WINE or equivalent hacks though.