Nothing I'd be willing to share; it's an unpublished work, as of now. But you can get a general idea if you try importing/opening any -formatted- document (OOo or DOC) in OOo over, say, 30 pages in length and/or with graphics. This may not be teh case with 3.0GHz+ machines (at least as much of a case, at least), but it is with anything under, say, 2GHz-2.3GHz.
I can also note that I've got a friend who was trying to use OOo 2.x on his thesis about a year back (9 months?) and he had continual problems relating to document size (mainly the sluggishness and freezing). He tried OOo 1.x for a while and then finally bit the bullet and bought a copy of office (OOo 2.x wasn't working properly, and 1.x didn't have teh features, so...)
I'll back it up - and I not only hate MS Office and MS's behavior, but I have a philosophical fondness for open source. I have quite a few 'operational problems' and frustrations when I attempt to use the later versions of MSO; I cut my teeth on word processing with WP511, and then later with MSO 95/97. But it's still "better" (and I have similar 'problems' with OOo, too).
In my mind there are two, maybe three things which make MS Office simply "better" than OOo. And they're not simply features which MSO has that OOo doesn't. These differences are:
1) Simple document scrolling. If I have a 30 page document with images in it (or even without images, as is often the case) on a system with a 2Ghz processor and 512Mb+ RAM, hitting the 'page down' key should not result in a lengthy delay. Neither should I see "typing lag", even if I'm editing in the middle of a large document. OOo does all this (and more, including outright momentary and permanent freezes while editing), and I've only experienced brief freezes/lag while opening large MSO documents. 2) Stability and file support. I've lost close to 20 pages of (single spaced, fictional/creative) writing to OOo 2.x's ODF now, whether it's due to the program crashing while I'm working before a save, or the document getting corrupted on save/crash (likewise for the backup, in two instances). This is why I'll use the older 1.x OOo strain over 2.x if I'm going to use OOo. 3) It's slow. This pertains to the first two, but it does NOT feel like finessed code in the least bit! (largely a criticism of 2.x, again).
If IBM can help 'fix' the first two problems, they'll be well on their way to an 'enterprise' application - and they'll likely fix #3 simply in the process.
In addition to the "trying to out boy the boys" problem, you'll sometimes have a female who isn't all that feminine and, as such, gets treated as a guy regardless of her overt intent. And that's an equal problem, because the female can still get away with claims of sexual harassment even if none ever occurred.
Here's an idea: why doesn't someone in the know create a 'game development' library base which could be dropped somewhere in/usr (or/opt or whatever's standard today) and be used as a stable-as-debian, cross-linux library base for games. Include all the standard things like SD, and optionally have them built to local base libraries - or whatever else is needed, I'm not really up on specific gaming libraries. But, at the least, it'd create a stable environment which game developers (and proprietary application developers, for that matter) could develop towards in the same fashion that they do for Windows.
Another idea, or possibility: while I'm not 100% sure it's possible or preferable, why not use a 'scheduler scheduler' to allow for active switching between scheduler profiles in a manner similar to how ACPI and APM work? I'm not going to want the same behavior while doing 'office' work as I would while watching a movie or gaming. It'd not make much sense on a server, I don't think, but on a workstation the ability to switch between task-oriented micro-schedulers seems like a pretty good idea, even if there's a several-percentage point processor performance hit. I imagine the loss would be made up in more task-appropriate performance if the user could be allowed to customize it: use x scheduler when x1 and x2 binaries are running, and y when y1 and y2 are running...
I realize that support is probably a marginal percentage of network infrastructure cost in a large organization, but wouldn't this tend to increase the overall cost of an organization's network operating cost due to the increased need for different skillsets (ok, specialized professionals, not skillsets) to maintain the different architectures, compatibility issues, and the time overall integration time?
I would think the money would be better spent with a software monoculture and then finding solutions for the specialty applications. Say: OS X and/or Linux with WINE/VMWare for Windows apps - even if special development is necessary, I'd think it'd be cheaper and easier to manage overall than what he proposes (because at least then the foundational communication and productivity apps could be identical), and you'd be able to get away from Windows.
My opinion is that there is something more going on than what we see on the surface. That much money doesn't just fly around unless Human Nature is involved. Someone, somewhere, is going to be making money off of this; companies don't just operate humanitarian efforts for fun, effectively wasting valuable resources which they could be better putting to use increasing their stock value (stock holders would have a fit if it wasn't otherwise). And I highly doubt they'll be "creating a new market" with these at this price. The overall shitty nature of Africa will remain the same, because they're not fixing any of the underlying social problems which have attributed to the poverty, lack of education, and warfare. (Same goes for the free food programs.)
Just wait: 6 months to a year after they make their way to Africa, there will be a huge scandal.
At the very least, we'll see a lot more "Nigerian scams" popping up. For school children my ass! (Like the adults wouldn't just take them...)
The sad thing? I actually had a professor do something very similar to that as an "introduction" to a Java course... and not as a "hey, this is how to not code" example, either.
Personally, I suspect that the increased brain cells, which assist 'learning' processes, are there not to make women 'smarter' but to make them more adaptable to the personality quirks of their mate. In an evolutionary sense, I can see how this would be advantageous: she's more able to cope with (and even thrive in) his bullshit (to a limit) and he doesn't get as irritated by her female silliness as a result. Maybe it's a female adaptation to try and make up for the male propensity to fuck-and-run, and to have multiple mates (vs. the primarily female biological drive to just have one)?
See the other comments that have been made about abused women sticking to their man. The same principle can be applied in a positive light, too.
I wonder if this might suggest that a woman's marriage is more likely to "work out" if she puts out more regularly? Considering the stereotype of women freezing over as soon as the 2nd band of metal is placed on their hands, and the average marriage only lasting a couple years...
This approach is useless for one simple reason: it would appear to be inapplicable as long as one side is unwilling to muster its full ability to project force.
If the model is looking at our current situation, it is not taking into account the fact that we have the ability to drastically improve our ability to win, if needbe - whereas the terrorists/insurgents/Islamists do not. We are not utilizing our Air Force or Navy in the least bit, and our Army and Marines are serving as (mostly) police. We have not used even the level of tactics we displayed during WWII in Europe, let alone the level of force (which is now substantially more potent than in 1943).
In short, we could win this hands down. Yes, there would be untold collateral damage. But the problem would be neutralized and the people subdued: fuck around with your trivial religious differences or attempt to enslave a people, and you'll have the hammer drop.
If the insurgents and separatists were afraid of us and that we'd likely decimate a neighborhood which opened fire on us, do you really think they'd be willing to attack us? For that matter, don't you think the Iraqis would put up with the insurgents operaitng out of their neighborhoods?
What's more, a field in it's first year of going to seed will produce more biomass energy than the same acreage of fertilized corn. I'm not sure on the specifics, but some Europeans did a study on it, basically debunking the use of plants as a supplicant for petroleum fuels. Not only did they find that just growing weeds - like are commonly found in wildlife preserves, game production areas, crop rotation programs, and what have you - was more energy efficient at fuel production time than the use of corn (ignoring the energy put into the field to produce the corn, even), but even if every arable acre of land on the face of the earth were used in such a fashion, we would still be unable to meet current energy usage. It's a completely, physically impossible proposition, seemingly put in place solely for financial monopoly by agribusiness.
The solution isn't a simple one, but the problem is industrialized farming - in every manner. Not only does industrialized farming require more finite resources in its production, but it is consumptive of the environment through poisoning of the soil with caustic fertilizers to produce the highest yield and pesticides which poison the soil and water, killing off plant life and destroying ecosystems, to make no mention of the petroleum which is consumed in the production of fuel, fertilizer, and pesticides for the operation.
Some of those things are largely unavoidable due to the urbanization of the world and increasing world populations, but our lifestyle here in the West isn't helping matters, either. McDonald's here, Burger King there; when we're not eating out, we're eating an already-prepared freezer food or something from a bag or can.
Personally, I think we need to return to more of an agrarian society. Not necessarily just as it was, where everyone fended for themselves, nor necessarily communist either. Independence on a community level, with interpersonal dependence. I'm not saying do out with industrial things, either; those would, of course, remain being necessary. But, at the very least, if people were to start producing more of their own food again - gardens in their back yard, chickens for eggs - heck, even something like the "victory gardens" of WWII - we could do a lot to fix what is wrong with America.
Well, that's just the thing. They haven't become more effective at fulfilling their civil duties - the jobs they've been charged with, whether it's as a bureaucrat or a law enforcement officer. While all these intrusive technologies have been spreading throughout the very fiber of the UK, the impact has not resulted in a [i]decrease[/i] in crime. It didn't necessarily result in an increase, either, but the crime rate - muggings, burglaries, assault, etc. - has gone up substantially.
Not even the near-total ban on firearms has resulted in a decrease in crimes perpetrated with firearms. Amazingly enough, even though the place is a bloody island (or series of), firearms are being used more often in crimes: the only people they've disarmed are those who might use them in self defence.
What it comes down to, from my perspective, is that computers offer them no perceived benefit. I know quite a few people who feels this way, and I've come to see their point. Simply: computers complicate life. Many of these people don't watch TV, either. They prefer living their lives outside of the complications and convolutions of a "digital lifestyle", instead preferring to rely on a more traditional communication method: word of mouth and the printed word. While it may not be as 'efficient' or as immediate, and there is a trade-off in various other aspects, it is certainly beneficial to their world view of simplicity and reliance on conservative, community and family-based values.
It seems to work quite well for them. They have more family time and spend a great deal more time actually socializing with other like-minded people than most "connected" people seem to do. You can't replace human interaction without detrimental affects.
You're a semi-celebrity. This may be due to your skill or your political/software opinions, or other reasons - I can't recall the basis of your celebrity at the moment. But that doesn't matter. The point is, I don't doubt that you get by, to some degree, on name alone. Not everyone can be an A-list; there simply isn't enough social room for that many people to do the same thing.
What does matter is that the software economy could not thrive solely on open source. If people had to produce code - small people who do back office work and what have you - and then rely on installation, support, and various other charges, they couldn't make enough to live. They'd have to leverage some combination of charging extravagant amounts for their services, producing a horrible product (which nobody would use, defeating the point of charging for support), or figuring out a way to lock people in through some other method. The reality is that people these days have no moral hang-ups about copying software if they can get away with it and don't need support, for the most part, and for small to medium sized businesses, chances are they can get by without your paid-for support.
As near as I can tell, it's not about destroying copyright in the least bit, at least not by the reasonable, non-communist interests involved. It's about reasonable use, plain and simple - but, as is the case whenever someone brings the word "reasonable" into the debate, the specifics are often unclear and not all that plain or simple.
I think that, in an abstract sense, what those who support open source yet attack copyright are really attacking is the perception of a lack of integrity in the determination of copyright, and not so much an attack on copyright itself, but on those who are attempting to enforce it with draconian levels of restriction. For instance, those who stand for open source often also attack or disagree with much of the more restrictive OEM licensing which encourages and fosters vendor lock-in and an economic shackling to the provider of that copyrighted material. This applies whether it's a book, a CD, an iTunes song, or a movie. What the "establishment" copyright holders would like is that you've got an exclusive right to listen to it for a limited time, and then you've got to pay again - while at the same time giving the impression of permanence. It's not an honest approach.
What it comes down to in the end is: what is the person purchasing when they pay for copyrighted material, and to what end can they use it? When it is stated, it's usually after the fact and in complex and lengthy legalese, and the more technologically advanced (that is, new) the copyrighted material is, the seemingly more misunderstanding is encountered, and the more restrictions are put in place. We have no misunderstanding as to what is legal in regard to printed material, such as books, libraries, and the like. Online textual information is becoming quite widely understood as well, both in terms of social contract and legal outline. The only place where there is significant conflict - and confusion - is where there are monolithic economic interests involved, namely large corporations (Microsoft) or industry interests (RIAA/MPAA) leveraging for an economic control to guarantee their revenue. These groups are able to accomplish this solely on the basis of a lack of market competition - competition which is further limited through their stratified consolidation of control.
Again, it's not about the destruction of copyright. It's about copyright in the hands of original producers, for reasonable periods of time, with restrictions on those copyrights which prevent the copyright holder from keeping the users of their works hostage - economically, culturally, or otherwise. Copyright and open source are not contradictive; they are indeed supplementary - but only when copyright doesn't come to mean vendor lock-in.
Actually, gamers will likely not be pushed to Vista. They'll be pushed to the Xbox - or whatever its descendants are. Piracy is a big issue with PC games, and developers seem to prefer developing for platforms due to it requiring less testing and having fewer compatibility issues. The fact that its more difficult to pirate on a console also is a benefit to the developers will mean MS will not face any stonewalling from them, either.
End result: more revenue for MS, more revenue for the developers (and that's not always a mutually exclusive relationship). Along the way, I think the traditional "PC" will be phased out almost entirely by Microsoft (by making increasingly unappealing desktop OSes) as they try and monopolize the home entertainment market and the office market (by making a 'desktop client OS' and a 'server OS'). Everyone at home will just get their software from MS (or other companies through a Steam-like Windows tool) as a service,
Of course, the hardcore computer people will either transition to OS X, BSD, or Linux, or simply pirate the 'business' software for home use. The gamers and casual computer users will just use the MS service software on their XBox # (which they bought for $399 at Walmart) on their hi-def televisions or LCDs/CRTs (which are now capable of being used in lieu of a traditional television with no major setbacks).
I'd bet that the majority would return to the females, if the study were to be adjusted against people who just go online to look up porn. I'd not be surprised in the least bit if 50% of males who 'go online' use the Internet exclusively for porn (and maybe a little online gaming).
Politicians only move so fast as the populace will allow them to. They're very sensitive to rebellion, and so much will only be permitted before the politican seriously considers changing his act - and, in a Republic, or even a democracy, that threshold is pretty low because they can also be voted out and replaced (albiet with another goon).
If you walk away from a pot of water you've put on the stove and come back to it, you're more likely to find it in a boil - needing attention - than if you sit there and wait for it through the whole simmering cycle (because you're likely to deal with it before it actually enters a boil). Then you'll have acted too soon, expending a great deal of energy watching instead of doing something else productive.
What'd they say would be there? All the intangibles (or users), like backward compatibility, a completely rewritten operating system ('from the ground up', 'from scratch', etc.), new/different underpinnings for the security mechanisms (yeah, they changed them, but they weren't what was promised), and software that didn't interfere with applications when run as a normal user... and I seem to recall a couple others, but can't be bothered to look it up.
As for WinFS? That was a fucking huge feature; it wasn't just a single feature, but an entire platform of features in and of itself. The fact that it wasn't included would give more merit to saying that Vista has no software whatsoever than to say that Vista shipped with the majority of what they were promising.
Absolutely! Amazingly enough, this is probably the first piece of legislation in the history of the world which, while typically failing to do what they claimed it would do, had a positive affect: it increased the quality of life for those it impacted! I've personally been overjoyed to have an extra hour of daylight, allowing me to go out and do things in the evening which I'd not normally be able to do during the evening, instead having to wait for the weekend - ie, going to the park with my son, going for a bike ride, or going shooting. I'm not really using more energy (I'm outdoors most of the time), and I don't have to confine my leasure activity to the weekend!
Well, now that the deed is done, let me be the first (or 12th, or whatever) to say: who cares? I'm personally quite pleased with the results of DLS: it's made the usable time in the day perceiveably longer, at least in the evening. This is really nice, since it's the time of the year when it's just starting to get nice outdoors again, and I can go do things!
If I were referring to a situation I'd not experienced, that's quite possibly true. But I wasn't. I've had such threats made against me; indeed, I've had someone point a gun at me before. So I know what it feels like. Cowering in the corner and shrieking like a beaten monkey isn't going to make things better, short term or long term. Only standing up and facing your demons can possibly defeat them.
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Nothing I'd be willing to share; it's an unpublished work, as of now. But you can get a general idea if you try importing/opening any -formatted- document (OOo or DOC) in OOo over, say, 30 pages in length and/or with graphics. This may not be teh case with 3.0GHz+ machines (at least as much of a case, at least), but it is with anything under, say, 2GHz-2.3GHz.
I can also note that I've got a friend who was trying to use OOo 2.x on his thesis about a year back (9 months?) and he had continual problems relating to document size (mainly the sluggishness and freezing). He tried OOo 1.x for a while and then finally bit the bullet and bought a copy of office (OOo 2.x wasn't working properly, and 1.x didn't have teh features, so...)
I'll back it up - and I not only hate MS Office and MS's behavior, but I have a philosophical fondness for open source. I have quite a few 'operational problems' and frustrations when I attempt to use the later versions of MSO; I cut my teeth on word processing with WP511, and then later with MSO 95/97. But it's still "better" (and I have similar 'problems' with OOo, too).
In my mind there are two, maybe three things which make MS Office simply "better" than OOo. And they're not simply features which MSO has that OOo doesn't. These differences are:
1) Simple document scrolling. If I have a 30 page document with images in it (or even without images, as is often the case) on a system with a 2Ghz processor and 512Mb+ RAM, hitting the 'page down' key should not result in a lengthy delay. Neither should I see "typing lag", even if I'm editing in the middle of a large document. OOo does all this (and more, including outright momentary and permanent freezes while editing), and I've only experienced brief freezes/lag while opening large MSO documents.
2) Stability and file support. I've lost close to 20 pages of (single spaced, fictional/creative) writing to OOo 2.x's ODF now, whether it's due to the program crashing while I'm working before a save, or the document getting corrupted on save/crash (likewise for the backup, in two instances). This is why I'll use the older 1.x OOo strain over 2.x if I'm going to use OOo.
3) It's slow. This pertains to the first two, but it does NOT feel like finessed code in the least bit! (largely a criticism of 2.x, again).
If IBM can help 'fix' the first two problems, they'll be well on their way to an 'enterprise' application - and they'll likely fix #3 simply in the process.
In addition to the "trying to out boy the boys" problem, you'll sometimes have a female who isn't all that feminine and, as such, gets treated as a guy regardless of her overt intent. And that's an equal problem, because the female can still get away with claims of sexual harassment even if none ever occurred.
Here's an idea: why doesn't someone in the know create a 'game development' library base which could be dropped somewhere in /usr (or /opt or whatever's standard today) and be used as a stable-as-debian, cross-linux library base for games. Include all the standard things like SD, and optionally have them built to local base libraries - or whatever else is needed, I'm not really up on specific gaming libraries. But, at the least, it'd create a stable environment which game developers (and proprietary application developers, for that matter) could develop towards in the same fashion that they do for Windows.
Another idea, or possibility: while I'm not 100% sure it's possible or preferable, why not use a 'scheduler scheduler' to allow for active switching between scheduler profiles in a manner similar to how ACPI and APM work? I'm not going to want the same behavior while doing 'office' work as I would while watching a movie or gaming. It'd not make much sense on a server, I don't think, but on a workstation the ability to switch between task-oriented micro-schedulers seems like a pretty good idea, even if there's a several-percentage point processor performance hit. I imagine the loss would be made up in more task-appropriate performance if the user could be allowed to customize it: use x scheduler when x1 and x2 binaries are running, and y when y1 and y2 are running...
I realize that support is probably a marginal percentage of network infrastructure cost in a large organization, but wouldn't this tend to increase the overall cost of an organization's network operating cost due to the increased need for different skillsets (ok, specialized professionals, not skillsets) to maintain the different architectures, compatibility issues, and the time overall integration time?
I would think the money would be better spent with a software monoculture and then finding solutions for the specialty applications. Say: OS X and/or Linux with WINE/VMWare for Windows apps - even if special development is necessary, I'd think it'd be cheaper and easier to manage overall than what he proposes (because at least then the foundational communication and productivity apps could be identical), and you'd be able to get away from Windows.
My opinion is that there is something more going on than what we see on the surface. That much money doesn't just fly around unless Human Nature is involved. Someone, somewhere, is going to be making money off of this; companies don't just operate humanitarian efforts for fun, effectively wasting valuable resources which they could be better putting to use increasing their stock value (stock holders would have a fit if it wasn't otherwise). And I highly doubt they'll be "creating a new market" with these at this price. The overall shitty nature of Africa will remain the same, because they're not fixing any of the underlying social problems which have attributed to the poverty, lack of education, and warfare. (Same goes for the free food programs.)
Just wait: 6 months to a year after they make their way to Africa, there will be a huge scandal.
At the very least, we'll see a lot more "Nigerian scams" popping up. For school children my ass! (Like the adults wouldn't just take them...)
The sad thing? I actually had a professor do something very similar to that as an "introduction" to a Java course... and not as a "hey, this is how to not code" example, either.
Personally, I suspect that the increased brain cells, which assist 'learning' processes, are there not to make women 'smarter' but to make them more adaptable to the personality quirks of their mate. In an evolutionary sense, I can see how this would be advantageous: she's more able to cope with (and even thrive in) his bullshit (to a limit) and he doesn't get as irritated by her female silliness as a result. Maybe it's a female adaptation to try and make up for the male propensity to fuck-and-run, and to have multiple mates (vs. the primarily female biological drive to just have one)?
See the other comments that have been made about abused women sticking to their man. The same principle can be applied in a positive light, too.
I wonder if this might suggest that a woman's marriage is more likely to "work out" if she puts out more regularly? Considering the stereotype of women freezing over as soon as the 2nd band of metal is placed on their hands, and the average marriage only lasting a couple years...
This approach is useless for one simple reason: it would appear to be inapplicable as long as one side is unwilling to muster its full ability to project force.
If the model is looking at our current situation, it is not taking into account the fact that we have the ability to drastically improve our ability to win, if needbe - whereas the terrorists/insurgents/Islamists do not. We are not utilizing our Air Force or Navy in the least bit, and our Army and Marines are serving as (mostly) police. We have not used even the level of tactics we displayed during WWII in Europe, let alone the level of force (which is now substantially more potent than in 1943).
In short, we could win this hands down. Yes, there would be untold collateral damage. But the problem would be neutralized and the people subdued: fuck around with your trivial religious differences or attempt to enslave a people, and you'll have the hammer drop.
If the insurgents and separatists were afraid of us and that we'd likely decimate a neighborhood which opened fire on us, do you really think they'd be willing to attack us? For that matter, don't you think the Iraqis would put up with the insurgents operaitng out of their neighborhoods?
What's more, a field in it's first year of going to seed will produce more biomass energy than the same acreage of fertilized corn. I'm not sure on the specifics, but some Europeans did a study on it, basically debunking the use of plants as a supplicant for petroleum fuels. Not only did they find that just growing weeds - like are commonly found in wildlife preserves, game production areas, crop rotation programs, and what have you - was more energy efficient at fuel production time than the use of corn (ignoring the energy put into the field to produce the corn, even), but even if every arable acre of land on the face of the earth were used in such a fashion, we would still be unable to meet current energy usage. It's a completely, physically impossible proposition, seemingly put in place solely for financial monopoly by agribusiness.
The solution isn't a simple one, but the problem is industrialized farming - in every manner. Not only does industrialized farming require more finite resources in its production, but it is consumptive of the environment through poisoning of the soil with caustic fertilizers to produce the highest yield and pesticides which poison the soil and water, killing off plant life and destroying ecosystems, to make no mention of the petroleum which is consumed in the production of fuel, fertilizer, and pesticides for the operation.
Some of those things are largely unavoidable due to the urbanization of the world and increasing world populations, but our lifestyle here in the West isn't helping matters, either. McDonald's here, Burger King there; when we're not eating out, we're eating an already-prepared freezer food or something from a bag or can.
Personally, I think we need to return to more of an agrarian society. Not necessarily just as it was, where everyone fended for themselves, nor necessarily communist either. Independence on a community level, with interpersonal dependence. I'm not saying do out with industrial things, either; those would, of course, remain being necessary. But, at the very least, if people were to start producing more of their own food again - gardens in their back yard, chickens for eggs - heck, even something like the "victory gardens" of WWII - we could do a lot to fix what is wrong with America.
Well, that's just the thing. They haven't become more effective at fulfilling their civil duties - the jobs they've been charged with, whether it's as a bureaucrat or a law enforcement officer. While all these intrusive technologies have been spreading throughout the very fiber of the UK, the impact has not resulted in a [i]decrease[/i] in crime. It didn't necessarily result in an increase, either, but the crime rate - muggings, burglaries, assault, etc. - has gone up substantially.
Not even the near-total ban on firearms has resulted in a decrease in crimes perpetrated with firearms. Amazingly enough, even though the place is a bloody island (or series of), firearms are being used more often in crimes: the only people they've disarmed are those who might use them in self defence.
That has nothing to do with it.
What it comes down to, from my perspective, is that computers offer them no perceived benefit. I know quite a few people who feels this way, and I've come to see their point. Simply: computers complicate life. Many of these people don't watch TV, either. They prefer living their lives outside of the complications and convolutions of a "digital lifestyle", instead preferring to rely on a more traditional communication method: word of mouth and the printed word. While it may not be as 'efficient' or as immediate, and there is a trade-off in various other aspects, it is certainly beneficial to their world view of simplicity and reliance on conservative, community and family-based values.
It seems to work quite well for them. They have more family time and spend a great deal more time actually socializing with other like-minded people than most "connected" people seem to do. You can't replace human interaction without detrimental affects.
That, sir, is the most insightful comment I've read on here for quite a while. Thank you for posting it. It'll give me something to mull over.
He does have a point, however, Bruce.
You're a semi-celebrity. This may be due to your skill or your political/software opinions, or other reasons - I can't recall the basis of your celebrity at the moment. But that doesn't matter. The point is, I don't doubt that you get by, to some degree, on name alone. Not everyone can be an A-list; there simply isn't enough social room for that many people to do the same thing.
What does matter is that the software economy could not thrive solely on open source. If people had to produce code - small people who do back office work and what have you - and then rely on installation, support, and various other charges, they couldn't make enough to live. They'd have to leverage some combination of charging extravagant amounts for their services, producing a horrible product (which nobody would use, defeating the point of charging for support), or figuring out a way to lock people in through some other method. The reality is that people these days have no moral hang-ups about copying software if they can get away with it and don't need support, for the most part, and for small to medium sized businesses, chances are they can get by without your paid-for support.
As near as I can tell, it's not about destroying copyright in the least bit, at least not by the reasonable, non-communist interests involved. It's about reasonable use, plain and simple - but, as is the case whenever someone brings the word "reasonable" into the debate, the specifics are often unclear and not all that plain or simple.
I think that, in an abstract sense, what those who support open source yet attack copyright are really attacking is the perception of a lack of integrity in the determination of copyright, and not so much an attack on copyright itself, but on those who are attempting to enforce it with draconian levels of restriction. For instance, those who stand for open source often also attack or disagree with much of the more restrictive OEM licensing which encourages and fosters vendor lock-in and an economic shackling to the provider of that copyrighted material. This applies whether it's a book, a CD, an iTunes song, or a movie. What the "establishment" copyright holders would like is that you've got an exclusive right to listen to it for a limited time, and then you've got to pay again - while at the same time giving the impression of permanence. It's not an honest approach.
What it comes down to in the end is: what is the person purchasing when they pay for copyrighted material, and to what end can they use it? When it is stated, it's usually after the fact and in complex and lengthy legalese, and the more technologically advanced (that is, new) the copyrighted material is, the seemingly more misunderstanding is encountered, and the more restrictions are put in place. We have no misunderstanding as to what is legal in regard to printed material, such as books, libraries, and the like. Online textual information is becoming quite widely understood as well, both in terms of social contract and legal outline. The only place where there is significant conflict - and confusion - is where there are monolithic economic interests involved, namely large corporations (Microsoft) or industry interests (RIAA/MPAA) leveraging for an economic control to guarantee their revenue. These groups are able to accomplish this solely on the basis of a lack of market competition - competition which is further limited through their stratified consolidation of control.
Again, it's not about the destruction of copyright. It's about copyright in the hands of original producers, for reasonable periods of time, with restrictions on those copyrights which prevent the copyright holder from keeping the users of their works hostage - economically, culturally, or otherwise. Copyright and open source are not contradictive; they are indeed supplementary - but only when copyright doesn't come to mean vendor lock-in.
Actually, gamers will likely not be pushed to Vista. They'll be pushed to the Xbox - or whatever its descendants are. Piracy is a big issue with PC games, and developers seem to prefer developing for platforms due to it requiring less testing and having fewer compatibility issues. The fact that its more difficult to pirate on a console also is a benefit to the developers will mean MS will not face any stonewalling from them, either.
End result: more revenue for MS, more revenue for the developers (and that's not always a mutually exclusive relationship). Along the way, I think the traditional "PC" will be phased out almost entirely by Microsoft (by making increasingly unappealing desktop OSes) as they try and monopolize the home entertainment market and the office market (by making a 'desktop client OS' and a 'server OS'). Everyone at home will just get their software from MS (or other companies through a Steam-like Windows tool) as a service,
Of course, the hardcore computer people will either transition to OS X, BSD, or Linux, or simply pirate the 'business' software for home use. The gamers and casual computer users will just use the MS service software on their XBox # (which they bought for $399 at Walmart) on their hi-def televisions or LCDs/CRTs (which are now capable of being used in lieu of a traditional television with no major setbacks).
I'd bet that the majority would return to the females, if the study were to be adjusted against people who just go online to look up porn. I'd not be surprised in the least bit if 50% of males who 'go online' use the Internet exclusively for porn (and maybe a little online gaming).
Politicians only move so fast as the populace will allow them to. They're very sensitive to rebellion, and so much will only be permitted before the politican seriously considers changing his act - and, in a Republic, or even a democracy, that threshold is pretty low because they can also be voted out and replaced (albiet with another goon).
If you walk away from a pot of water you've put on the stove and come back to it, you're more likely to find it in a boil - needing attention - than if you sit there and wait for it through the whole simmering cycle (because you're likely to deal with it before it actually enters a boil). Then you'll have acted too soon, expending a great deal of energy watching instead of doing something else productive.
Obviously you've never tried to write anything in Java. There are just as many "nooks and crannies" of inconsistency and brokenness in Java.
Well, OK - not as many. But certainly a lot more than C++ or even Perl.
No, it would not be 'ironical'. It would be 'ironic'. Ironical is not a word.
What'd they say would be there? All the intangibles (or users), like backward compatibility, a completely rewritten operating system ('from the ground up', 'from scratch', etc.), new/different underpinnings for the security mechanisms (yeah, they changed them, but they weren't what was promised), and software that didn't interfere with applications when run as a normal user... and I seem to recall a couple others, but can't be bothered to look it up.
As for WinFS? That was a fucking huge feature; it wasn't just a single feature, but an entire platform of features in and of itself. The fact that it wasn't included would give more merit to saying that Vista has no software whatsoever than to say that Vista shipped with the majority of what they were promising.
Absolutely! Amazingly enough, this is probably the first piece of legislation in the history of the world which, while typically failing to do what they claimed it would do, had a positive affect: it increased the quality of life for those it impacted! I've personally been overjoyed to have an extra hour of daylight, allowing me to go out and do things in the evening which I'd not normally be able to do during the evening, instead having to wait for the weekend - ie, going to the park with my son, going for a bike ride, or going shooting. I'm not really using more energy (I'm outdoors most of the time), and I don't have to confine my leasure activity to the weekend!
Really, I couldn't be more pleased.
Well, now that the deed is done, let me be the first (or 12th, or whatever) to say: who cares? I'm personally quite pleased with the results of DLS: it's made the usable time in the day perceiveably longer, at least in the evening. This is really nice, since it's the time of the year when it's just starting to get nice outdoors again, and I can go do things!
Half again? Not hardly: 1 U.S. dollars = 0.507047967 British pounds
So the actual cost is closer to 4 times as much than twice, VAT excluded.
If I were referring to a situation I'd not experienced, that's quite possibly true. But I wasn't. I've had such threats made against me; indeed, I've had someone point a gun at me before. So I know what it feels like. Cowering in the corner and shrieking like a beaten monkey isn't going to make things better, short term or long term. Only standing up and facing your demons can possibly defeat them.