Except that you're in competition with the people who have those extra features, and the game kicks out non-subscribers after a certain round. So without paying for the game you get the challenge of being the Best of the Losers. But ultimately no-one plays like that. They either pay for the priviledge or they get others to pay for them. This is exactly like Amway, in that you can either pay your monthly dues (to get the priviledge of selling crap to friends, family and neighbours) or you can recruit others to pay your monthly dues for you.
Unfortunately I don't think I'm always very clear on what I mean by "support". When I say that people should "support Free Software" I mean they should pay for it. Be that by donations or by hiring a developer to do maintenance or customizations. It's like a football team. You can paint your face with the team colours and declare them the best but unless you go to the games (and pay the entry fee) you're not really "supporting" them are you? Reporting bugs and doing advocacy is helpful but you can only consider that "supporting" Free Software in the "go team go" sense.
When I say people should "support Free Software" I mean that in the same sense as when someone says they need to "support their family".
The Blog of RMS is a rare opportunity to see him sum up his views. In this entry he's actually managed to fit his "copyright is no longer a good deal" concept into a single paragraph (whereas usually it takes him 15 pages). For those who don't know it (and couldn't be bothered clicking on a link) RMS basically says that way-back when we gave up the right to republish to encourage people to make works we weren't giving up much cause no-one republished back then, but now, with the internet, we all republish so we need to rethink that deal.
It's a good argument, and it applies to software, that is, if you're a coder. People who don't code might want to republish software verbatim but most the time they don't. In fact, us coders generally tell them that isn't a good idea because of viruses and trojans. i.e., it's a lot safer to download FireFox from the official web site than it is to grab it off a friend or some shareware website. With that struck off the list, what exactly is the non-coder fighting for Free Software for?
There's lot of reasons why users of Free Software should support it, but they don't at the moment. We, the coders, need to make sure they know these reasons. The most obvious reason to me is that it is only Free Software that can be fixed by someone other than the original developer. Proprietary software is inferior because if you want it fixed you have to go back to the original developer. It used to be a given that you wouldn't take your car back to the original manufacturer to get it serviced. Now-a-days you get a warrentee with your car that gives you an incentive to go back to the original manufacturer, but you're still free to seek maintainence from a third party.
Warrentees strike a good balance, they force the original manufacturer to do a good job in the first place to reduce the number of people who claim service under warrentee, and they up front specify a specific date after which the customer is responsible for paying for all future service.
Maybe if coders were to start offering Free Software with a warrentee (something the GPL specifically advocates) users would come not only to expect high quality software, but to be free to have it maintained by a third party.
I know "4 times as much!" sounds like a lot but what we're talking about here is nothing compared to the amount of selenium you can get directly from rocks.
In fact, inserting these genes into wheat (not that it's even plausable to do so, but hey) would result in a nice high-selenium flour variation. Seeing as the dietry requirements for selenium are not met by what most people eat, that would be cool!
The problem is that there is simply not enough GMO in the food supply. We're never going to progress as a species if we continue to grow food in fields like ancient Egyptians.
For 1, Selenium isn't a metal. For 2, it's a necessary part of the diet of all known forms of life (it's a micronutrient). Seeing as you're not an expert on the subject, how about you STFU?
One of the guys reminds us that people who send those "increase your penis size" emails and other spam don't just do it because they think it is fun to piss off the world, they do it because they make lots and lots of money from it.
That's what anti-spam laws should be targeting, the morons who use the services offered by spammers.
It's amazing that labelling someone a communist is still considered an effective strategy. Patents are scary not just because developers can be sued for writing software, but because distributors can be sued and so can end users. If software patent enforcement becomes common place the few developers who try to continue developing software will be forced underground. That is, they'll put their software in the public domain and disavow all responsibility for it. But that won't be enough because distributors will have to be underground too, else they can be sued, and end users will have to keep their illicit software quiet also. The end result will be so horrifying that perhaps even normal people will notice it. By then the software industry will be long dead though.
Preferably your language has persistence built in. Obviously if it doesn't, *cough* C++ *cough*, you can't do that. In such situations I believe the Memo GoF pattern would be appropriate.
Novell/Evolution now actually. The community needs to fork these projects immediately. I don't know about you, but when I write proprietary software, I expect to get paid.
What kind of open source project requires people to assign their copyright on contributions to a company for the specific purpose of releasing proprietary software based on those contributions?
Uhh.. I thought it was obvious that the way these systems would work is to actually fetch from the user whatever files they are offering and then process them. The only solution I can think of for this is to put one of those public turing test systems into the P2P client which forces the downloader to prove they are human before you allow them to download your files. Of course, I'm sure the MPAA's system could get around that by passing the test off to someone else who wants to download files, which would also give them the benefit of being able to inject junk files into the network.
Well their mechanism for transforming genotype to phenotype isn't exactly complex. That results in a limited search space. Their means for simulating competition is pretty weak too (they simply race the organisms, there's no competition for resources).
I have Mod points but I think a reply is more in order. Just because you can see the source code does not mean that something is Free Software. I know we were talking about Open Source but that group of people have defined Open Source to be the same as Free Software but without putting the concept of freedom at the forefront of discussion. I think your post here demonstrates the effect of this strategy. People focus more on whether or not the source code is available than the freedoms that people have to use the software. Having the source code available isn't much good if you're still prohibited from sharing it with your neighbour. That's why Microsoft's Shared Source initiative is not Open Source because, although you have the source code, you're not free to distribute the software with or without modifications.
Slashdot Mirror
Except that you're in competition with the people who have those extra features, and the game kicks out non-subscribers after a certain round. So without paying for the game you get the challenge of being the Best of the Losers. But ultimately no-one plays like that. They either pay for the priviledge or they get others to pay for them. This is exactly like Amway, in that you can either pay your monthly dues (to get the priviledge of selling crap to friends, family and neighbours) or you can recruit others to pay your monthly dues for you.
When I say people should "support Free Software" I mean that in the same sense as when someone says they need to "support their family".
Ferion: "It's free to play"
Amway: "Make $10,000 a week!"
Ferion: "well actually, it's only free to play if you sucker other people into paying for you."
Amway: "well actually, you can only make $10,000 a week if you sucker other people into selling for you."
ahh the irony of your post combined with your sig (Ferion being amway for geeks and all).
It's a good argument, and it applies to software, that is, if you're a coder. People who don't code might want to republish software verbatim but most the time they don't. In fact, us coders generally tell them that isn't a good idea because of viruses and trojans. i.e., it's a lot safer to download FireFox from the official web site than it is to grab it off a friend or some shareware website. With that struck off the list, what exactly is the non-coder fighting for Free Software for?
There's lot of reasons why users of Free Software should support it, but they don't at the moment. We, the coders, need to make sure they know these reasons. The most obvious reason to me is that it is only Free Software that can be fixed by someone other than the original developer. Proprietary software is inferior because if you want it fixed you have to go back to the original developer. It used to be a given that you wouldn't take your car back to the original manufacturer to get it serviced. Now-a-days you get a warrentee with your car that gives you an incentive to go back to the original manufacturer, but you're still free to seek maintainence from a third party.
Warrentees strike a good balance, they force the original manufacturer to do a good job in the first place to reduce the number of people who claim service under warrentee, and they up front specify a specific date after which the customer is responsible for paying for all future service.
Maybe if coders were to start offering Free Software with a warrentee (something the GPL specifically advocates) users would come not only to expect high quality software, but to be free to have it maintained by a third party.
obviously I disagree. If you're willing to fund people who piss off millions, just so your penis can be larger, you should spend some time in jail.
I know "4 times as much!" sounds like a lot but what we're talking about here is nothing compared to the amount of selenium you can get directly from rocks.
In fact, inserting these genes into wheat (not that it's even plausable to do so, but hey) would result in a nice high-selenium flour variation. Seeing as the dietry requirements for selenium are not met by what most people eat, that would be cool!
The problem is that there is simply not enough GMO in the food supply. We're never going to progress as a species if we continue to grow food in fields like ancient Egyptians.
For 1, Selenium isn't a metal. For 2, it's a necessary part of the diet of all known forms of life (it's a micronutrient). Seeing as you're not an expert on the subject, how about you STFU?
That's what anti-spam laws should be targeting, the morons who use the services offered by spammers.
It's amazing that labelling someone a communist is still considered an effective strategy. Patents are scary not just because developers can be sued for writing software, but because distributors can be sued and so can end users. If software patent enforcement becomes common place the few developers who try to continue developing software will be forced underground. That is, they'll put their software in the public domain and disavow all responsibility for it. But that won't be enough because distributors will have to be underground too, else they can be sued, and end users will have to keep their illicit software quiet also. The end result will be so horrifying that perhaps even normal people will notice it. By then the software industry will be long dead though.
Preferably your language has persistence built in. Obviously if it doesn't, *cough* C++ *cough*, you can't do that. In such situations I believe the Memo GoF pattern would be appropriate.
Mepis Linux runs the installer from a X running off a livecd, so you can USE THE WEB during the install process.
Ank. Read the Mozilla patch lifecycle. As for FireFox, they don't accept ANY patches.
Novell/Evolution now actually. The community needs to fork these projects immediately. I don't know about you, but when I write proprietary software, I expect to get paid.
What kind of open source project requires people to assign their copyright on contributions to a company for the specific purpose of releasing proprietary software based on those contributions?
Uhh.. I thought it was obvious that the way these systems would work is to actually fetch from the user whatever files they are offering and then process them. The only solution I can think of for this is to put one of those public turing test systems into the P2P client which forces the downloader to prove they are human before you allow them to download your files. Of course, I'm sure the MPAA's system could get around that by passing the test off to someone else who wants to download files, which would also give them the benefit of being able to inject junk files into the network.
Well their mechanism for transforming genotype to phenotype isn't exactly complex. That results in a limited search space. Their means for simulating competition is pretty weak too (they simply race the organisms, there's no competition for resources).
http://demo.cs.brandeis.edu/golem/
Oh come on man, they made Starbucks a chick!
Why Physicists Can't Fight
This is a very complicated issue. Maybe you should go and read about it a bit before joining the conversation.
I have Mod points but I think a reply is more in order. Just because you can see the source code does not mean that something is Free Software. I know we were talking about Open Source but that group of people have defined Open Source to be the same as Free Software but without putting the concept of freedom at the forefront of discussion. I think your post here demonstrates the effect of this strategy. People focus more on whether or not the source code is available than the freedoms that people have to use the software. Having the source code available isn't much good if you're still prohibited from sharing it with your neighbour. That's why Microsoft's Shared Source initiative is not Open Source because, although you have the source code, you're not free to distribute the software with or without modifications.
Well yes, but you can dual license you code under GPL/BSD if you really want to.