Yes,another book on the subject is what the world needs. BTW, your definition fails according to Google which, as we know, the Font of All Knowledge. Check out http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Afree+marke t&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8 &oe=utf-8
No, your interpretation of my email is off. The drive is to exclude all others. That doesn't mean they actually attain that goal. In the same way that MS does not control every single desk top in the world - just enough to make it matter. It's at the point where the effect of competition is beginning to lost it's grips on microsoft. The busines-cycle, too, has checks and balances. My email did not include this effect - then again I wasn't intending to write a book on the topic.
Interesting that you should mention a FREE MARKET - which is obviously important to you - and I was wondering if you could define it further?
No. Capitalism is about making money. To make money you have something someone wants. You maximise making money by being the sole supplier of that "something". In it's raw state, *any* means of making that money is seen as legitimate.
The pop-Darwinian overlay you put on it is simplistic: competition itself leads to "monopolies", even if that of species. The drive to survive will include the drive to exclude *all others* from their food-sources. In other words, winners monopolise.
In fact, monopolies abound in capitalism - in the patent market, for example. Other include the monopolies granted by King James I. A more recent example would be the shipment of ice from Connecticut to the West Indies and India in the last century. The entrepreneur involved got himself into a monopoly and made a lot of money.
I agree that the RIAA et al should not be allowed to use legislation to consolidate their position, but this is a moral view which is probably unpopular with said legislators and with the organisations - the drive to monopolise being seen as a legitimate business strategy. IMV,the role of the legislator is to ensure that the winner-takes-all Darwinian situation *does not* arise, thus avoiding the catastrophe of an industry collapsing under it's age. But that requires foresight and common-sense, and looks almost like a Planned Political economy which is probably something you hate as well.
umm, he should make wine *instead* of movies...no matter the quality of the wine, it's bound to be far better than the skank he passes of as movies these days.
Written Perl always seems intelligible at first browse but, as you look closer at it, the less you understand.
I can live without synonyms as well - they just make maintenance that much hard. Maintenance isn't just about reading, although that's the step. IMO, the ultimate step is to understand the intentions of the programmer - Perl doesn't make this easy in the slightest and I maintain a number of large perl scripts.
Just as the writers of Perl 6 (where is that, BTW?) are trying to make Perl more like Python, it's all in the implementation: Perl's archaic ribbons and multiplicities of syntax charts it's baroque evolution under a methodology that's less disciplined than, "oh, lookat*that*". E.g back-ticks are worth killing, and the system command should have been overloaded.
One of it's other problems is that it's a combination of *several* languages: the strict perl, the regular expressions and the various */ operators. Just how hard do you want to make it for some poor grunt?
THe inevitable has happened and the poor bastards website has been slashdotted. When doing the articles, couldn't someone think to get the google cache link? At least we wouldn't be trampling over his bandwidth...6-figure lawyer not withstanding...
And good on them too. There's irony for you here - an award in the name of a non-existent entity, the "British Empire" which ceased to exist in 1948 for an invention which is as futuristic as you can get. It's all a bit Gormenghast, no? I think he should have refused. Recognition by such an archaic award is the embrace of the dead hand of the Establishment. It stinks, big time. Up the Republic!
The laws of chance have combined to bite me *yet again*...Haven't we had enough with the "fresh prince of bel-air", a pooch on wheels if ever there was one...
>The combination of literaly millions of factors that make the particular lump of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and other trace elements you refer to "Will Smith" is infinitely complex.
Because eventually, you create a maintenance nightmare, particularly in companies where the employee turnover is high. I'm sat here faced with several large applications which my group (with and without me) wrote from scratch. Completely. Including a complete cross-platform graphics framework. Without the external objectivity that frameworks offer, they just grew like topsy, with no control. It turns out that there's nobody left who really understands any of these things, and we're desperately trying to re-factor to java or bought-in apps.
However, it's up to you. If that's your core-business (you write frameworks, say) then, please do write from scratch. However, if it isn't your core-business, then I would suggest it wise to consider a framework.
It occurs that, in the round, both Python (with it's concept of services) and Perl (with CPAN) can be considered frameworks.
"where else do you expect to get something for free?"
This is way off topic but I've been thinking about this and trying to find other *very large* projects which were volunteer-run and "staffed". I came up with the OED - the big one - which depended for a large part on volunteers to collect and collate (but not publish) the information. Took them about 50 years starting in the mid-19th century but they did it. And such a quality project too.
H.
This sig is primed and ready. Approach with caution.
He's obviously never had to maintain large perl programs. Given the potential for pitfalls (synonyms are shite, scoping is just pure bollocks wrt $_, I've met precious few people who know what local means, even if it is written in the book - having two mechanisms for scope - just how does that work then?), I wouldn't use Perl for anything bigger than a 100 lines, even then it would have to be "throwaway".
$_ doesn't matter on a small level like that but $_ with a couple thousand functions and various programmers meddling at intervals, not at all entirely contiguous and it'a recipe for disaster. Been there, done that. Never again.
If someone were to say to you "I'll just write this little script, it won't take me long" I'd advise that you either (a) fire them or (b) run for the hills. They have no idea what they're doing. In the long run, all you get is grief.
Microsoft have their offices in Washington. I'd be more sympathetic to your statements if it contained some factual correctness - some nice pie charts would have helped as well.
I would add that letting companies collude to determine prices is Bad Practice as well. It's called a Cartel. I would agree that a Government which allows a monopoly (say, Microsoft - a cartel of one in this instance) to control prices is very bad indeed.
h.
Aaaah. I always have a nice,long sig after the event...
Puhleeeze. 800 lb gorilla meets the sentimental defence. You think this won't work? Yeah, right.
Not that the RIAA will be phased by any of this, having once tried to sue the Girl Guides of America for royalties from songs sung around the camp fire. They have no scruples, worse, no idea of bad publicity. They're the commercial equivalent of those guys who pursue and beat-up fake-t-shirt sellers outside concerts. The folks from the RIAA wear suits and all, but the knuckle-dragging is never far behind.
In the first instance, I couldn't care less about DM's comments. My comments were more general.
1. Guarantees - particularly *commercial* guarantees - are never absolute.
2. This is an attempt to pacify Linux customers, so that they are secure in the knowledge thay they won't get sued for using copyright-infringing code.
3. If the Linux dev process is that good, this is one way of showing it.
4. I agree, OSS is a different kettle of fish - you do not work in a commercial manner. But don't be surprised if the business-legal world won't bend to fit your way of working. I think Linux has to got that extra yard have to go the extra yard to fit into the commercial world, if that's where Linux wants to fit.
5. All the slashdot comments I've seen make sense outside a court of law or to a non-business type. IANAL, but even a layperson can see that once this case enters the lottery of the legal system, Daryl McBride might well win. It may seem topsy-turvy but then, so are software patents.
6. At least this offers Linux some sort of exit strategy, whichever way the SCO case goes. Inevitably, Linux will take some collateral damage; this is one way to ameliorate that damage. If IBM lose - and they might although I agree that their track record is good - this is insurance.
I think that maybe you should have been careful with your words in the first place. The SCO attack has a single prong and it's aimed at the heart of the Open Source Development process wrt Intellectual Property, and it's a war of propaganda. Giving the enemy some more ammunition is not a clever thing at this stage.
One way to deflect the attacks would be for an organisation or one of the maintainers, to actually *legally* guarantee that the code that is inserted into the source tree *does not* infringe any copyright. Of course, someone would have to supply the insurance cover. It would certainly muffle - if not stop - the propaganda attacks.
Slashdot Mirror
umm. That's sounds more like Walmart. Maybe Dell does sell bananas after all
h.
Yes,another book on the subject is what the world needs. BTW, your definition fails according to Google which, as we know, the Font of All Knowledge. Check out http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Afree+marke t&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8 &oe=utf-8
h
No, your interpretation of my email is off. The drive is to exclude all others. That doesn't mean they actually attain that goal. In the same way that MS does not control every single desk top in the world - just enough to make it matter. It's at the point where the effect of competition is beginning to lost it's grips on microsoft. The busines-cycle, too, has checks and balances. My email did not include this effect - then again I wasn't intending to write a book on the topic.
Interesting that you should mention a FREE MARKET - which is obviously important to you - and I was wondering if you could define it further?
h
No. Capitalism is about making money. To make money you have something someone wants. You maximise making money by being the sole supplier of that "something". In it's raw state, *any* means of making that money is seen as legitimate.
The pop-Darwinian overlay you put on it is simplistic: competition itself leads to "monopolies", even if that of species. The drive to survive will include the drive to exclude *all others* from their food-sources. In other words, winners monopolise.
In fact, monopolies abound in capitalism - in the patent market, for example. Other include the monopolies granted by King James I. A more recent example would be the shipment of ice from Connecticut to the West Indies and India in the last century. The entrepreneur involved got himself into a monopoly and made a lot of money.
I agree that the RIAA et al should not be allowed to use legislation to consolidate their position, but this is a moral view which is probably unpopular with said legislators and with the organisations - the drive to monopolise being seen as a legitimate business strategy. IMV,the role of the legislator is to ensure that the winner-takes-all Darwinian situation *does not* arise, thus avoiding the catastrophe of an industry collapsing under it's age. But that requires foresight and common-sense, and looks almost like a Planned Political economy which is probably something you hate as well.
h
Dell does ship servers and desktops with linux on them.
e n& c=us&l=en&cs=&k=linux
http://search.dell.com/results.aspx?cat=all&s=g
Mind you, that still doesn't make them the good guys as *Dell* continually screw with the tower formats to their own ends
umm, he should make wine *instead* of movies...no matter the quality of the wine, it's bound to be far better than the skank he passes of as movies these days.
h
bitter, moi?
SOAP: it's not Simple and it's not Object-oriented. It's just a crock a shit. And I have to use it. I feel sick.
h.
A sig before seven is worth two in the bush.
Oh yes it does. But only if it can own the standard:p it20040212.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pul
html
And it if can't own the standard, then it will make the standard as complex as possible as to deter enterance - I give you SOAP as a first exhibit.
h
Written Perl always seems intelligible at first browse but, as you look closer at it, the less you understand.
I can live without synonyms as well - they just make maintenance that much hard. Maintenance isn't just about reading, although that's the step. IMO, the ultimate step is to understand the intentions of the programmer - Perl doesn't make this easy in the slightest and I maintain a number of large perl scripts.
Just as the writers of Perl 6 (where is that, BTW?) are trying to make Perl more like Python, it's all in the implementation: Perl's archaic ribbons and multiplicities of syntax charts it's baroque evolution under a methodology that's less disciplined than, "oh, lookat*that*". E.g back-ticks are worth killing, and the system command should have been overloaded.
One of it's other problems is that it's a combination of *several* languages: the strict perl, the regular expressions and the various */ operators. Just how hard do you want to make it for some poor grunt?
h
THe inevitable has happened and the poor bastards website has been slashdotted. When doing the articles, couldn't someone think to get the google cache link? At least we wouldn't be trampling over his bandwidth...6-figure lawyer not withstanding...
h
And good on them too. There's irony for you here - an award in the name of a non-existent entity, the "British Empire" which ceased to exist in 1948 for an invention which is as futuristic as you can get. It's all a bit Gormenghast, no? I think he should have refused. Recognition by such an archaic award is the embrace of the dead hand of the Establishment. It stinks, big time. Up the Republic!
h
The laws of chance have combined to bite me *yet again*...Haven't we had enough with the "fresh prince of bel-air", a pooch on wheels if ever there was one...
>The combination of literaly millions of factors that make the particular lump of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and other trace elements you refer to "Will Smith" is infinitely complex.
why should I become what I fear and hate?
this is a . eyed sig in a . horse town
For ogg you've got a decent language like Python. http://freshmeat.net/projects/pyvorbis/
Tell me again, what is this thing you call Perl?
h
Ah-ah. Nothing like a good sig first thing in the morning.
Because eventually, you create a maintenance nightmare, particularly in companies where the employee turnover is high. I'm sat here faced with several large applications which my group (with and without me) wrote from scratch. Completely. Including a complete cross-platform graphics framework. Without the external objectivity that frameworks offer, they just grew like topsy, with no control. It turns out that there's nobody left who really understands any of these things, and we're desperately trying to re-factor to java or bought-in apps.
However, it's up to you. If that's your core-business (you write frameworks, say) then, please do write from scratch. However, if it isn't your core-business, then I would suggest it wise to consider a framework.
It occurs that, in the round, both Python (with it's concept of services) and Perl (with CPAN) can be considered frameworks.
h
"where else do you expect to get something for free?"
This is way off topic but I've been thinking about this and trying to find other *very large* projects which were volunteer-run and "staffed". I came up with the OED - the big one - which depended for a large part on volunteers to collect and collate (but not publish) the information. Took them about 50 years starting in the mid-19th century but they did it. And such a quality project too.
H.
This sig is primed and ready. Approach with caution.
He's obviously never had to maintain large perl programs. Given the potential for pitfalls (synonyms are shite, scoping is just pure bollocks wrt $_, I've met precious few people who know what local means, even if it is written in the book - having two mechanisms for scope - just how does that work then?), I wouldn't use Perl for anything bigger than a 100 lines, even then it would have to be "throwaway".
$_ doesn't matter on a small level like that but $_ with a couple thousand functions and various programmers meddling at intervals, not at all entirely contiguous and it'a recipe for disaster. Been there, done that. Never again.
If someone were to say to you "I'll just write this little script, it won't take me long" I'd advise that you either (a) fire them or (b) run for the hills. They have no idea what they're doing. In the long run, all you get is grief.
Oh yes, I've seen the cesspit that is CPAN.
h
Would you like a nice long sig with that, madam?
Microsoft have their offices in Washington. I'd be more sympathetic to your statements if it contained some factual correctness - some nice pie charts would have helped as well.
I would add that letting companies collude to determine prices is Bad Practice as well. It's called a Cartel. I would agree that a Government which allows a monopoly (say, Microsoft - a cartel of one in this instance) to control prices is very bad indeed.
h.
Aaaah. I always have a nice,long sig after the event...
Puhleeeze. 800 lb gorilla meets the sentimental defence. You think this won't work? Yeah, right.
Not that the RIAA will be phased by any of this, having once tried to sue the Girl Guides of America for royalties from songs sung around the camp fire. They have no scruples, worse, no idea of bad publicity. They're the commercial equivalent of those guys who pursue and beat-up fake-t-shirt sellers outside concerts. The folks from the RIAA wear suits and all, but the knuckle-dragging is never far behind.
h
In the first instance, I couldn't care less about DM's comments. My comments were more general.
1. Guarantees - particularly *commercial* guarantees - are never absolute.
2. This is an attempt to pacify Linux customers, so that they are secure in the knowledge thay they won't get sued for using copyright-infringing code.
3. If the Linux dev process is that good, this is one way of showing it.
4. I agree, OSS is a different kettle of fish - you do not work in a commercial manner. But don't be surprised if the business-legal world won't bend to fit your way of working. I think Linux has to got that extra yard have to go the extra yard to fit into the commercial world, if that's where Linux wants to fit.
5. All the slashdot comments I've seen make sense outside a court of law or to a non-business type. IANAL, but even a layperson can see that once this case enters the lottery of the legal system, Daryl McBride might well win. It may seem topsy-turvy but then, so are software patents.
6. At least this offers Linux some sort of exit strategy, whichever way the SCO case goes. Inevitably, Linux will take some collateral damage; this is one way to ameliorate that damage. If IBM lose - and they might although I agree that their track record is good - this is insurance.
h
if Joy goes, and SUN looks dodgier by the day - in fact, what if SUN does go into the twilight home for the terminaly ill, what happens to Java?
The sun shines brightly for MS today.
h.
I think that maybe you should have been careful with your words in the first place. The SCO attack has a single prong and it's aimed at the heart of the Open Source Development process wrt Intellectual Property, and it's a war of propaganda. Giving the enemy some more ammunition is not a clever thing at this stage.
One way to deflect the attacks would be for an organisation or one of the maintainers, to actually *legally* guarantee that the code that is inserted into the source tree *does not* infringe any copyright. Of course, someone would have to supply the insurance cover. It would certainly muffle - if not stop - the propaganda attacks.
h
If you hadn't noticed, Microsoft *is* a legal monopoly in the US.
Also, notice the collision of "software industry" and "Microsoft" - in MS's eyes, they *are* the software industry.
h.
you wait til one of these things get in the wash from a tanker or a ferry. It'll certainly be a sink-or-swim situation then.
h.
http://www.cameronballoons.co.uk/index.cfm
"The worlds' largest balloon maker"
based in Bristol in the westcountry where they have one of the worlds' largest balloon festivals every year.
h