It's not about trying to mold your views. It's about trying to put pressure on hardware companies to produce open source drivers. We decided at the last Ubuntu summit to make it as easy as possible to get hardware to just work. However this gets rid of any incentive for hardware makers to release open source drivers, since they know users won't notice. However it makes the job of a developer a lot more difficult, not to mention the job of the distributor. Showing a warning to the user was the best compromise.
As a specific example, yesterday I found that the reason my HP printer only worked half the time was because of a firmware bug. Now HP has fixed the bug, but sets the license to make it impossible for Ubuntu to actually distribute. In the next version of Ubuntu there will be a GUI tool to try to automatically download the firmware from HP directly, but this of course will only work if you are connected to the internet, and if HP doesn't change the url, and if you have time to wait for the download. If we don't show any warning to the user about this, then for a large amount of users it will just work. But a small number of people will be screwed. However it we do show the warning, then it puts a small amount of pressure on HP to just fix their license, and everybody wins.
>> Eventually, all free software users understand the benefits of real freedom and shuns non free. > As always you fall into the trap of thinking people (normal people, you know, out there in the real world) somehow subscribe to your unquestionable religious techno babble rather than simply wanting to use their computers to get work done.
Ah, the age old philisophical question. Most people don't particularly think about or even particularly understand the benefits of the freedom that their country gives them. They just want to live comfortably. They don't care for 'religious' politics about freedom, as you so eloquently put it.
And yet, they would quickly miss the freedoms if they went. It's a funny ol' world.
Checking over your comment history, you argued before that when the OASIS committee formed, ODF was nowhere near done. But here you say only minor changes were made.
What part are you saying no to? Like you say, over half of the members of the ODF groups weren't part of Sun, and it was reviewed in the open for 3 years. Comments and suggestions were made, and the ODF proposal was changed as a result.
And saying that the patent pledge is similar to MS's is a bit of an insult, given that MS's pledge is pretty awful, last time I looked. They protect only the first version of OOXML. The next revision would have no guarantee of being protected.
(They might have compromised on this point from pressure against it - I remember it being a big issue at the time. Anyone know?)
What are you talking about? ODF was designed by the OASIS group - a group of a dozen different companies. It was open for any to participate in. Even Microsoft themselves were at the start involved, but they decided to drop out.
It was then developed in the open over a period of 3 years. It reuses as many previous open standards as possible (MathML for math stuff, SVG for vector graphics, etc).
In what possible way can you claim that this is a proprietary proposal and not an open design process? It seems your love for MS has blinded you.
Actually there was a leaked report from Microsoft from their marketting department that showed that customers were not impressed by their FUD, and that it actually encouraged people to take Linux seriously. It was why they stepped down the Get The Facts Campaign.
Then you set up a moral hazard. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard ). A school would have the incentive to not improve, because improving would mean being punished with their funding being cut.
> Additionally, some of the things they asked us to prove, I kind of looked at and went "well, that is just obviously true", but I didn't have the ability to recall which silly theorems might be used to prove it.
I used to think in a similar way, but you'd be surprised how often that isn't true:)
All the big advances in physics were when people went back over the most basic of assumptions and ended up realising that they were wrong. The same thing happens in math.
For example, is a*b equal to b*a ? In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle is the idea that you can't measure the position and speed of something at the same time. This comes down to because a*b does not equal b*a (where a is the speed tensor, and b is the position tensor). It's not important what a tensor is, but what is important is that 'obviously true' is often wrong:-)
I spoke to my Headmaster and got him to agree to letting me take Math a year early. This meant that I spent a year studying by myself. My Math teacher opposed this strongly, and disliked me for doing this. I really did not understand why. A strange world.
> I could also tell you the story of the person with two E grades in physics and mathematics, who got in to the University of Cambridge when his contemporary with four A levels, at grade A, didn't.
Sorry for the stupid question, but does that mean you don't have standardized tests?
In the UK we all do the same test (well, there's about 5 different ones to chose from, which introduces its own set of stupid problems). Thus theoretically everyone in the country who gets an A should be roughly at the same ability.
But if you can "raise the esteem" of the school, you'll increase the funding that the school gets. That in turn will allow you to teach the children better.
Therefore to teach the children better, you _must_ stoop to "raising the esteem" of the school.
For water to form, it requires the planet to have a certain temperature. This in turn requires the planet to be a certain distance from the Sun. We are at that distance, and hence funnily enough none of the other planets in our solar system are.
Around other stars, it is quite likely that if there are planets at the correct distance from the sun, then they water on them.
I don't know where you got the idea that it's extremely rare. We really don't know, but current estimates are that there should be millions of such planets just within our own small galaxy.
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It's not about trying to mold your views. It's about trying to put pressure on hardware companies to produce open source drivers. We decided at the last Ubuntu summit to make it as easy as possible to get hardware to just work. However this gets rid of any incentive for hardware makers to release open source drivers, since they know users won't notice.
However it makes the job of a developer a lot more difficult, not to mention the job of the distributor. Showing a warning to the user was the best compromise.
As a specific example, yesterday I found that the reason my HP printer only worked half the time was because of a firmware bug. Now HP has fixed the bug, but sets the license to make it impossible for Ubuntu to actually distribute.
In the next version of Ubuntu there will be a GUI tool to try to automatically download the firmware from HP directly, but this of course will only work if you are connected to the internet, and if HP doesn't change the url, and if you have time to wait for the download.
If we don't show any warning to the user about this, then for a large amount of users it will just work. But a small number of people will be screwed. However it we do show the warning, then it puts a small amount of pressure on HP to just fix their license, and everybody wins.
>> Eventually, all free software users understand the benefits of real freedom and shuns non free.
> As always you fall into the trap of thinking people (normal people, you know, out there in the real world) somehow subscribe to your unquestionable religious techno babble rather than simply wanting to use their computers to get work done.
Ah, the age old philisophical question. Most people don't particularly think about or even particularly understand the benefits of the freedom that their country gives them. They just want to live comfortably. They don't care for 'religious' politics about freedom, as you so eloquently put it.
And yet, they would quickly miss the freedoms if they went. It's a funny ol' world.
What do you mean by counterproductive?
It worked for Trolltech - they opened up their licenses and made Qt Free.
The 'hate' also got the FSF to produce truly Free version of Pine and Pico.
I'm not sure what's going on with the Icaza thing, so I can't comment there.
Your argument isn't helped much by that you had to resort to calling it a religion btw.
At google, there's no unhealthy food around at all. All the drinks are smoothies, fruit drinks, etc. And all free.
Interesting difference in culture.
(Actually I think there might have been a few cans of fizzy drink in the cafeteria. Can't quite remember)
Checking over your comment history, you argued before that when the OASIS committee formed, ODF was nowhere near done. But here you say only minor changes were made.
Are you a MS shrill? Be honest now.
Right, which is reasonable. As opposed to the MS way of doing it.
What part are you saying no to? Like you say, over half of the members of the ODF groups weren't part of Sun, and it was reviewed in the open for 3 years. Comments and suggestions were made, and the ODF proposal was changed as a result.
And saying that the patent pledge is similar to MS's is a bit of an insult, given that MS's pledge is pretty awful, last time I looked. They protect only the first version of OOXML. The next revision would have no guarantee of being protected.
(They might have compromised on this point from pressure against it - I remember it being a big issue at the time. Anyone know?)
What are you talking about? ODF was designed by the OASIS group - a group of a dozen different companies. It was open for any to participate in. Even Microsoft themselves were at the start involved, but they decided to drop out.
It was then developed in the open over a period of 3 years. It reuses as many previous open standards as possible (MathML for math stuff, SVG for vector graphics, etc).
In what possible way can you claim that this is a proprietary proposal and not an open design process? It seems your love for MS has blinded you.
It was the Halloween Document 7: http://catb.org/esr/halloween/halloween7.html
You run from a live cd, then chroot in. Thus the dpkg executable that you'll run is the one installed. i.e. the compromised one.
I know it's open source etc, but I don't think the actual hacker comes round and works with you...
So complaining about, for example, this farce with OOXML is just fundamentalism? You live in a strange world.
Actually there was a leaked report from Microsoft from their marketting department that showed that customers were not impressed by their FUD, and that it actually encouraged people to take Linux seriously. It was why they stepped down the Get The Facts Campaign.
Then you set up a moral hazard. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard ). A school would have the incentive to not improve, because improving would mean being punished with their funding being cut.
Fun fun.
> Additionally, some of the things they asked us to prove, I kind of looked at and went "well, that is just obviously true", but I didn't have the ability to recall which silly theorems might be used to prove it.
:)
:-)
I used to think in a similar way, but you'd be surprised how often that isn't true
All the big advances in physics were when people went back over the most basic of assumptions and ended up realising that they were wrong. The same thing happens in math.
For example, is a*b equal to b*a ? In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle is the idea that you can't measure the position and speed of something at the same time. This comes down to because a*b does not equal b*a (where a is the speed tensor, and b is the position tensor). It's not important what a tensor is, but what is important is that 'obviously true' is often wrong
I spoke to my Headmaster and got him to agree to letting me take Math a year early. This meant that I spent a year studying by myself. My Math teacher opposed this strongly, and disliked me for doing this. I really did not understand why. A strange world.
> I could also tell you the story of the person with two E grades in physics and mathematics, who got in to the University of Cambridge when his contemporary with four A levels, at grade A, didn't.
:)
Do tell!
Sorry for the stupid question, but does that mean you don't have standardized tests?
In the UK we all do the same test (well, there's about 5 different ones to chose from, which introduces its own set of stupid problems). Thus theoretically everyone in the country who gets an A should be roughly at the same ability.
But if you can "raise the esteem" of the school, you'll increase the funding that the school gets. That in turn will allow you to teach the children better.
Therefore to teach the children better, you _must_ stoop to "raising the esteem" of the school.
*nod*. That makes sense. It would restrict the maximum amount of land and so on.
What's the difference between leasing some land with a guaranteed contract, and buying some land and then having to pay tax on it?
Well it's a pulsed laser - 30 nanosecond pulses at 3mJ or so each.
:-)
So that would be 100000000 milliwatts.
For what it's worth, my laser was 30nm pulse of about 3 mJ at 440nm (blue).
For water to form, it requires the planet to have a certain temperature. This in turn requires the planet to be a certain distance from the Sun. We are at that distance, and hence funnily enough none of the other planets in our solar system are.
Around other stars, it is quite likely that if there are planets at the correct distance from the sun, then they water on them.
I don't know where you got the idea that it's extremely rare. We really don't know, but current estimates are that there should be millions of such planets just within our own small galaxy.
A DVD laser is in the order of 220mW