Could you please explain exactly what the problem was with GPL'ing code that used a few Sun Java libraries? I've seen GPL'd java programs out there, so this is very confusing.
On a slightly different note, let's say you have a proprietary library, but with an open API spec. Can you right a GPL'd front-end that uses that proprietary library? Could you distribute the whole thing, front end GPL'd, backend binary only?
I don't think the OS matters - the communality the poster was talking about is on a much higher level than the specifics you're talking about here. My old Amiga 500 would still suffice today, if I chose to use it.
But, I think there is something that does matter - the philosophical differences between OS and proprietary. It's not that they can't co-exist, it's that we desperately need both to exist. We need the freedom of Open Source in some areas, particularly in our home software. We need an OS that we know won't betray our privacy. We need a world-wide network that intrinsically can't be controlled by any one person/group. We also need proprietary to help stimulate innovation (through the forces of greed). I don't believe all innovation can come from open-source. We need both.
Talking about dynamic recompilation and program profiling, and specifically about Hotspot, I've always wondered why I have to put up with the fact that between program runs, the compiler "forgets" everything it learned during previous runs? Why can't the compiler generate a log for each program, and review the log when the program is run again, so the compiler can pick up learning where it left off?
I yield in the Latin department:-). Descartes was a smart guy - smart enough to gloss over the leap from proving that something exists to saying that that something is an "I".
As for metaphysics, it seems to me more difficult to show that a definitive "I" exists. You're linking rationality to the self, which is interesting. I'm not real familiar with that line of reasoning. But, I will naively suggest that logic exists independently of an "I". Rationality seems to need a better definition. Actually, I think that's what a lot of the modern vs. post-modern debate is about - what is rationality and does it really exist?
Are you familiar with Searle's arguments against the possibility of AI? It seems like he is arguing for the existence of a definitive "I" that we all have - that any computer could never possibly have, therefore meaning no computer could ever really be conscious. I think he's complete bunk. Dennet and Hofstadler can argue much better than I why. But they don't follow through to the metaphysical implication that, if a computer can be conscious, it suggests there is no "I". Because, where in the process of programming the computer did we say where the "I" was?
I think Dennet and co. would want to argue that the "I" forms naturally as an emergent phenomenon given enough computational activity, or whatever. I'm saying it makes sense to posit that there just isn't an "I" to begin with.
But, like I said before, this is mostly bull and I'm just out here having fun.
You *know* it's coming to ISPs. You *know* "personal slashdots" are coming...
Hmmm, with that many "slashdot's" around, wouldn't it be nice if they could all work together somehow? To create a meta-slashdot network? All user-logins are shared, moderation totals are shared. Popular slash sites can become slashboxes at other slash sites. Submissions can finally get moderated themselves, and moderation totals can go higher than 5 allowing for slash-search sites that return the most popular posts of the day, culled from all registered slash-sites...
...quantum mechanics as has been expressed in some dubios theories...
I suspect you're referring to Penrose and "The Emperor's New Mind". Didn't the recently find a structure in neural cells that functions on the quantum scale. Microtubules, or something? It's always interesting when someone postulates something, and then a discovery is made later that backs it up. I'm not saying it's true or anything, just that it's interesting.
You're right about the downloaded brain would experience some severe disorientation. I'm sure they would hook up sensory tech to it - probably vastly improved to our bodies senses (which could be a problem too), but, hell, if it failed, you could just erase and try again! The human being copied might have to go through some preparatory stages before downloading could go through (like wearing virtual sense machines to duplicate what the new brain will experience for a day or two).
And there's always the thought that some people just won't take, and others will. Hmmm, divergent evolution....hmmmmm.
If my thoughts, knowledge, experience, skills and memories achieve eternal life without me, what does that mean for me?
I would say it means this "me" is, was, and always will be, an illusion. It never really existed. Instead, what there is is just thoughts, knowledge, experience, skills, and memories.....
Descartes used logic to prove Cogito, ergo sum, which roughly means, "thinking, therefore being". NOT "I think, therefore I am". There is no "I" in the proof or the conclusion. Attributing the thoughts and memories to an "I" is a leap of logic.
If the ability to accurately download a person's brain capacity to a computer ever really happens, it seems to me proof that 1. There is no free-will (actually, it would more like be the final nail in the coffin for this question). 2. There is no "I". The concept of I goes along with the idea of free will. But this will show that the "I" is really just the combination of certain thoughts that get strongly associated together. Think about multiple personalities. Several "I"'s exist within one brain - probably because several "I" thought groupings have been disassociated from one another. Copying to a computer would represent a disassociation of some thought groupings, so a new illusional "I" would be created.
But thoughts just happen, totally independently. They are not caused by an "I". Our brains act as association machines, and serves to group together certain kinds of thoughts to form an "I" group. I suspect the notion of will and force of personality come down to the strength and exclusivity of the associations around a person's "I" thought-group.
Well anyway, that was fun. Mostly a lot of bull until we can set up some real experiments, eh? Won't that be fun.....
Regarding the Tacoma Narrows, it's nice (note the apostrope[sic] where it belongs) to have a ready made example, but it doesn't invalidate my point. A license on the bridge builder wouldn't have (didn't?) made a difference. And you point out there wasn't anyway to know beforehand it would fail.
The answer to that is, shit happens - you can't prevent all of it. What you want is recourse once it does happen, and licensing the software gives you that recourse. Licensing the programmer would be a less optimal solution.
I don't get your examples of the lawyers or the doctor. Are you suggesting that it's the certification that guarantees your doctor is competent? Poor people do have to use public attourneys, so I'm not at all sure what your saying there.
Your bridge example is more interesting, becuase it gets more to the core of the issue. It's a better comparison to software. Doctoring and lawyering are performance skills, and thus, the skill of the person involved is the only measure to use to predict the quality of the outcome.
A bridge, however - you can test it and see how well it works. You can go over it's design to understand it's theoretical limits. Who made the bridge is irrelevant at this point (except that the honesty of the person is involved in as far as the documented design might not have been followed).
This is even more true with software. It can be tested and studied, and there are no hidden elements. It is not important who wrote it, it is only important who signs off on a seal of approval for it.
Therefore, license software, not software developers. Companies can become certifiers and guarantors of software, as a business model. Kind of like Red Hat with Linux - they service it, and essentially lay themselves open for blame for it's failures, in exchange for money
Comparing OSS and a need for licensing (and there is a need) is a huge red herring. The OSS process is intended to produce maintainable, repairable, and reusable code; who writes the code, on the other hand, is of no concern to the process. It exists whether written by rank amateurs or seasoned professionals. Thus a move towards licensure is neither pro- nor anti-OSS.
It is anti-OSS the moment the government passes a regulation requiring certain types of software systems (such as medical) be from "licensed" programmers. The list of such regulations will inevitably grow as time goes on. So, I very much disagree with you here.
However, there are cases where who writes, or at least who signs off on the code is a concern.
No, who writes the software is of no concern - ever. Who takes responsibility for it is what you're referring to. That's why Red Hat can be a money-making business. They sell service for Linux. They place themselves in blames way in return for money. Linux doesn't work for you? Blame Red Hat, and make them fix it.
Licensing is chiefly a matter of lawyer-speak...
Yes, true. That's why I think it's the wrong tool for the job. Because Licensing, in practice, is interpretted as a quality issue, not a lawyer/legal issue. Licensing doesn't prevent people from dying from bad medical software - it gives an outlet for blame and compensation.
Let me suggest an alternative: license software instead of people. A company sells service regarding a peice of software. They have tested the software, studied it, and pronounced it "good". Good enough to make money on anyway and not get bankrupted by its failures. Now you've gotten to the core of the issue - is the software any good, and who is responsible for it. It could have been written by a hailstorm on my keyboard for all I care.
Licensing, for this purpose, has everything to do with the software, and nothing to do with the developer. License software, not people. It'll work better, and it won't be a barrier to people.
Of course a licensed programmer might write open source software. But that wouldn't make that software "licensed". Of course there's a place for both open-source and proprietary. My main point is that licensing doesn't guarantee anything about quality, but that's exactly what it will be advertised as. Software from a "licensed" developer will be automatically billed as better than from a non-licensed, and they'll charge more for it. The government will outlaw non-licensed code in certain areas. And that list of outlawed areas will inevitably grow. Amateur programmers will get slowly squeezed out.
I haven't read the book, but I want to respond to the idea that software needs licensing and certification to improve. It's bull. Getting a license or certificate proves nothing except that you could get a license and certificate.
It provides for the illusion of competence that lets a big faceless organization hire a consultant they know nothing about, but they'll have a certificate to point to to justify the decision.
It allows those with licenses to arbitrarily charge more for their services than those without, regardless of actual competence.
It requires money to enter the profession - licensing and certification always costs money. Lots of money in some cases.
This guy works for a software consulting firm, right? Big surprise there. He's sick of seeing incompetence compete successfully against him, and thinks he can simply "outlaw" it by requiring licensing. Licensing never guarantees competence. Are teachers who are certified better than those who aren't?
Licensing is an integral strategy of the closed-source, proprietary, non-free model. Only doctors who are accredited are accepted by insurance companies - thus no "open-source" doctors. Open lawyering is just plain illegal. Home teaching, interestingly enough is legal, but culturally frowned upon. Licensing programmers will result in "accredited" software. It's an way to shut out the OSS developers, and a justification for business to never use OSS software.
Sounds good, but often it's the evil we don't respect and don't watch over that ends up biting us in ass in the end.
What AOL has done is not trivial either. The fact that it was a scrappy startup just a few years ago should be a clue to it's power, not a clue to it's non-power.
So, now I'm thinking about it, and, the first problem that pops into my head was, how do you verify the data received from boycotters?
I have no doubt the boycotters will invent data, or at least exaggerate. What's to prevent me from going to the boycott site and ratcheting up some gaudy numbers?
So, no one on slashdot ever buys from amazon again. Fantastic, their profits drop off by 0.5 % because we all shop at fatbrain anyway (it's not like most of us were real big fans prior to the one-click suit). Jeff Bezos, I'm sure, is shaking in his boots.
I liked your post, but I just wanted to point out another possibility. Boycotting Amazon and shopping at Fatbrain may not break Amazon. Linux may not break MS. But, the other part of the picture is that Linux and Fatbrain _exist_. The numbers of slashdot may not break Amazon, but they might be enough to sustain Fatbrain.
I understand your pain. But that's what your post is - an outcry of pain. Nothing more.
It's the *ONLY* real way of harming these companies, and if other people chose not to follow you, then educate them to the issues...
Ok, so really, there are two real ways of harming these companies. I know you don't really think the best and only way to affect change is by what you do with your money - you say as much in your post. What you're raging about is essentially that the choir is being preached to and it doesn't need to hear it anymore. How does Slashdot get some REAL power to change the world beyond our own limited community? How do start educating people beyond ourselves? Being lectured to forever, even after you've agreed is _painful_.
But, that's exactly what Katz article was about, wasn't it? How do we go beyond our individual understanding and get the alarm sounded to others? Effectively.
Please! Trolling is easy - you just have to have a target for your troll.
Example:
Perl is so obscure - it's completely unmaintainable. Anyone who thinks Perl could be used in place of Java for large-scale problems is wrong. Perl sucks.
Now, sit back, and watch Mr. Christiansen come running....
But that's just one example. Red Pen would similarly be easy to troll for....
You just gotta know your audience.
I think I'll check that "No Score +1 Bonus" box (seems like I'm always doing that....)
Seems like it would behoove the open-source community to put together some funding for itself. There could be some sort of developers forum where the people who contributed money were enabled to determine which projects got funding. Kind of similar to Co-Source, except the idea isn't to match up customers to developers, but rather, get funding, and then decide where to put the money. Funding might be nothing more than donation (investment) from open-source community members.
Another idea is to form a company that offers end-user support and software development to customers, entirely through the open-source community who essentially become it's "employees". Employees are re-imbursed based on what exactly they do. A simplistic model might be a customer subscribes to the service for $X/month. This gives them X points/month to "spend". They spend the points on questions asked in forums, or toward software projects certain open-source developers are working on. The points get collected by those who answer the questions, or those who develop software to solve the customer's problem, and the company pays the developers $.70 per point, or some such thing.
The company's website might be a combination of sourceforge, co-source, deja-news/newsgroups, and slashdot. Put this all together and form a developer-end-user community.
I've often thought someone could make a lot of money, I'm throwing this out there for the would-be millionaires or billionaires, in quality assurance. What would save people a lot of time would be a little code. For $10 a year you get access to this code that will tell you this is worth reading
Sounds like he's suggesting a moderated on-line science journal with two types of users: those with accounts (graduate students of various fields who have the permissions to moderate within their field) and those without accounts who essentially read-only.
Rather similar to Slashdot's moderation. The modifications necessary are greater detail in the moderation permission structure (so that say, a physics grad can moderate physics publications, but not medical ones), and a way of verifying users and their qualifications at the time of joining.
The code is already there. Some on-line science publisher could easily set this up. Question is, would the science community really like being "moderated" in this way, even if it is by their own selves?
It'd kind of be like if every Hollywood movie that came out was immediately "moderated" by every actor/producer/director and given a score. I would think Hollywood wouldn't be too keen on that. Maybe scientists are different.
I wish Linux and Unix developers could see and admit the ways in which Linux and Unix are elitist. We'd all be so much better off if we'd just see this objectively and work on it.
Why do programs in Linux still have arbitrary, meaningless, abbreviated names? Why is the directory structure still obscure? Is there a fear of typing more than 3 letters? And we (as a group) act as though KDE was some amazing accomplishment toward giving the average user a good GUI, but it's not. It's horribly cluttered, and the names of programs are still meaningless abbreviations.
It's not an argument about which is better, GUI or command Line. It's just a question of why are we still using outdated, historical names for everything? It's like an old-time programmer who scoffs at C, Perl, and Java, saying assembly is more powerful, and only clueless newbies would want to program in a higher level language.
..and don't even get me started about program installation and permissions hell.
It may be a better operating system (actually, I have little doubt of that), but there is a lot of obscurity in there that Linux folks actually seem to embrace, for no reason.
Slashdot Mirror
So, what your saying is Open Source can make good UI's so long as they have something to copy from?
How about some examples of where Open Source is leading the field with it's GUI?
Could you please explain exactly what the problem was with GPL'ing code that used a few Sun Java libraries? I've seen GPL'd java programs out there, so this is very confusing.
On a slightly different note, let's say you have a proprietary library, but with an open API spec. Can you right a GPL'd front-end that uses that proprietary library? Could you distribute the whole thing, front end GPL'd, backend binary only?
I don't think the OS matters - the communality the poster was talking about is on a much higher level than the specifics you're talking about here. My old Amiga 500 would still suffice today, if I chose to use it.
But, I think there is something that does matter - the philosophical differences between OS and proprietary. It's not that they can't co-exist, it's that we desperately need both to exist. We need the freedom of Open Source in some areas, particularly in our home software. We need an OS that we know won't betray our privacy. We need a world-wide network that intrinsically can't be controlled by any one person/group. We also need proprietary to help stimulate innovation (through the forces of greed). I don't believe all innovation can come from open-source. We need both.
Talking about dynamic recompilation and program profiling, and specifically about Hotspot, I've always wondered why I have to put up with the fact that between program runs, the compiler "forgets" everything it learned during previous runs? Why can't the compiler generate a log for each program, and review the log when the program is run again, so the compiler can pick up learning where it left off?
I yield in the Latin department :-). Descartes was a smart guy - smart enough to gloss over the leap from proving that something exists to saying that that something is an "I".
As for metaphysics, it seems to me more difficult to show that a definitive "I" exists. You're linking rationality to the self, which is interesting. I'm not real familiar with that line of reasoning. But, I will naively suggest that logic exists independently of an "I". Rationality seems to need a better definition. Actually, I think that's what a lot of the modern vs. post-modern debate is about - what is rationality and does it really exist?
Are you familiar with Searle's arguments against the possibility of AI? It seems like he is arguing for the existence of a definitive "I" that we all have - that any computer could never possibly have, therefore meaning no computer could ever really be conscious. I think he's complete bunk. Dennet and Hofstadler can argue much better than I why. But they don't follow through to the metaphysical implication that, if a computer can be conscious, it suggests there is no "I". Because, where in the process of programming the computer did we say where the "I" was?
I think Dennet and co. would want to argue that the "I" forms naturally as an emergent phenomenon given enough computational activity, or whatever. I'm saying it makes sense to posit that there just isn't an "I" to begin with.
But, like I said before, this is mostly bull and I'm just out here having fun.
You *know* it's coming to ISPs. You *know* "personal slashdots" are coming...
:-)
Hmmm, with that many "slashdot's" around, wouldn't it be nice if they could all work together somehow? To create a meta-slashdot network? All user-logins are shared, moderation totals are shared. Popular slash sites can become slashboxes at other slash sites. Submissions can finally get moderated themselves, and moderation totals can go higher than 5 allowing for slash-search sites that return the most popular posts of the day, culled from all registered slash-sites...
I could go on....
Open source is great
...quantum mechanics as has been expressed in some dubios theories...
I suspect you're referring to Penrose and "The Emperor's New Mind". Didn't the recently find a structure in neural cells that functions on the quantum scale. Microtubules, or something? It's always interesting when someone postulates something, and then a discovery is made later that backs it up. I'm not saying it's true or anything, just that it's interesting.
You're right about the downloaded brain would experience some severe disorientation. I'm sure they would hook up sensory tech to it - probably vastly improved to our bodies senses (which could be a problem too), but, hell, if it failed, you could just erase and try again! The human being copied might have to go through some preparatory stages before downloading could go through (like wearing virtual sense machines to duplicate what the new brain will experience for a day or two).
And there's always the thought that some people just won't take, and others will. Hmmm, divergent evolution....hmmmmm.
If my thoughts, knowledge, experience, skills and memories achieve eternal life without me, what does that mean for me?
I would say it means this "me" is, was, and always will be, an illusion. It never really existed. Instead, what there is is just thoughts, knowledge, experience, skills, and memories.....
Descartes used logic to prove Cogito, ergo sum, which roughly means, "thinking, therefore being". NOT "I think, therefore I am". There is no "I" in the proof or the conclusion. Attributing the thoughts and memories to an "I" is a leap of logic.
If the ability to accurately download a person's brain capacity to a computer ever really happens, it seems to me proof that
1. There is no free-will (actually, it would more like be the final nail in the coffin for this question).
2. There is no "I". The concept of I goes along with the idea of free will. But this will show that the "I" is really just the combination of certain thoughts that get strongly associated together. Think about multiple personalities. Several "I"'s exist within one brain - probably because several "I" thought groupings have been disassociated from one another. Copying to a computer would represent a disassociation of some thought groupings, so a new illusional "I" would be created.
But thoughts just happen, totally independently. They are not caused by an "I". Our brains act as association machines, and serves to group together certain kinds of thoughts to form an "I" group. I suspect the notion of will and force of personality come down to the strength and exclusivity of the associations around a person's "I" thought-group.
Well anyway, that was fun. Mostly a lot of bull until we can set up some real experiments, eh? Won't that be fun.....
I have nothing add to this except a whole lot of admiration for Lowther's post. It was the most interesting post in recent memory.
Missing apostropes[sic]?
Regarding the Tacoma Narrows, it's nice (note the apostrope[sic] where it belongs) to have a ready made example, but it doesn't invalidate my point. A license on the bridge builder wouldn't have (didn't?) made a difference. And you point out there wasn't anyway to know beforehand it would fail.
The answer to that is, shit happens - you can't prevent all of it. What you want is recourse once it does happen, and licensing the software gives you that recourse. Licensing the programmer would be a less optimal solution.
I don't get your examples of the lawyers or the doctor. Are you suggesting that it's the certification that guarantees your doctor is competent? Poor people do have to use public attourneys, so I'm not at all sure what your saying there.
Your bridge example is more interesting, becuase it gets more to the core of the issue. It's a better comparison to software. Doctoring and lawyering are performance skills, and thus, the skill of the person involved is the only measure to use to predict the quality of the outcome.
A bridge, however - you can test it and see how well it works. You can go over it's design to understand it's theoretical limits. Who made the bridge is irrelevant at this point (except that the honesty of the person is involved in as far as the documented design might not have been followed).
This is even more true with software. It can be tested and studied, and there are no hidden elements. It is not important who wrote it, it is only important who signs off on a seal of approval for it.
Therefore, license software, not software developers. Companies can become certifiers and guarantors of software, as a business model. Kind of like Red Hat with Linux - they service it, and essentially lay themselves open for blame for it's failures, in exchange for money
Comparing OSS and a need for licensing (and there is a need) is a huge red herring. The OSS process is intended to produce maintainable, repairable, and reusable code; who writes the code, on the other hand, is of no concern to the process. It exists whether written by rank amateurs or seasoned professionals. Thus a move towards licensure is neither pro- nor anti-OSS.
It is anti-OSS the moment the government passes a regulation requiring certain types of software systems (such as medical) be from "licensed" programmers. The list of such regulations will inevitably grow as time goes on. So, I very much disagree with you here.
However, there are cases where who writes, or at least who signs off on the code is a concern.
No, who writes the software is of no concern - ever. Who takes responsibility for it is what you're referring to. That's why Red Hat can be a money-making business. They sell service for Linux. They place themselves in blames way in return for money. Linux doesn't work for you? Blame Red Hat, and make them fix it.
Licensing is chiefly a matter of lawyer-speak...
Yes, true. That's why I think it's the wrong tool for the job. Because Licensing, in practice, is interpretted as a quality issue, not a lawyer/legal issue. Licensing doesn't prevent people from dying from bad medical software - it gives an outlet for blame and compensation.
Let me suggest an alternative: license software instead of people. A company sells service regarding a peice of software. They have tested the software, studied it, and pronounced it "good". Good enough to make money on anyway and not get bankrupted by its failures. Now you've gotten to the core of the issue - is the software any good, and who is responsible for it. It could have been written by a hailstorm on my keyboard for all I care.
Licensing, for this purpose, has everything to do with the software, and nothing to do with the developer. License software, not people. It'll work better, and it won't be a barrier to people.
Of course a licensed programmer might write open source software. But that wouldn't make that software "licensed". Of course there's a place for both open-source and proprietary. My main point is that licensing doesn't guarantee anything about quality, but that's exactly what it will be advertised as. Software from a "licensed" developer will be automatically billed as better than from a non-licensed, and they'll charge more for it. The government will outlaw non-licensed code in certain areas. And that list of outlawed areas will inevitably grow. Amateur programmers will get slowly squeezed out.
I haven't read the book, but I want to respond to the idea that software needs licensing and certification to improve. It's bull. Getting a license or certificate proves nothing except that you could get a license and certificate.
It provides for the illusion of competence that lets a big faceless organization hire a consultant they know nothing about, but they'll have a certificate to point to to justify the decision.
It allows those with licenses to arbitrarily charge more for their services than those without, regardless of actual competence.
It requires money to enter the profession - licensing and certification always costs money. Lots of money in some cases.
This guy works for a software consulting firm, right? Big surprise there. He's sick of seeing incompetence compete successfully against him, and thinks he can simply "outlaw" it by requiring licensing. Licensing never guarantees competence. Are teachers who are certified better than those who aren't?
Licensing is an integral strategy of the closed-source, proprietary, non-free model. Only doctors who are accredited are accepted by insurance companies - thus no "open-source" doctors. Open lawyering is just plain illegal. Home teaching, interestingly enough is legal, but culturally frowned upon. Licensing programmers will result in "accredited" software. It's an way to shut out the OSS developers, and a justification for business to never use OSS software.
Yeah, that's a good idea. That seems a common thread in web applications - your implementation choices are never quite perfect....
Sounds good, but often it's the evil we don't respect and don't watch over that ends up biting us in ass in the end.
What AOL has done is not trivial either. The fact that it was a scrappy startup just a few years ago should be a clue to it's power, not a clue to it's non-power.
for(x=0;x100;x++)
print("This is BRILLIANT");
So, now I'm thinking about it, and, the first problem that pops into my head was, how do you verify the data received from boycotters?
I have no doubt the boycotters will invent data, or at least exaggerate. What's to prevent me from going to the boycott site and ratcheting up some gaudy numbers?
So, no one on slashdot ever buys from amazon again. Fantastic, their profits drop off by 0.5 % because we all shop at fatbrain anyway (it's not like most of us were real big fans prior to the one-click suit). Jeff Bezos, I'm sure, is shaking in his boots.
I liked your post, but I just wanted to point out another possibility. Boycotting Amazon and shopping at Fatbrain may not break Amazon. Linux may not break MS. But, the other part of the picture is that Linux and Fatbrain _exist_. The numbers of slashdot may not break Amazon, but they might be enough to sustain Fatbrain.
I understand your pain. But that's what your post is - an outcry of pain. Nothing more.
It's the *ONLY* real way of harming these companies, and if other people chose not to follow you, then educate them to the issues...
Ok, so really, there are two real ways of harming these companies. I know you don't really think the best and only way to affect change is by what you do with your money - you say as much in your post. What you're raging about is essentially that the choir is being preached to and it doesn't need to hear it anymore. How does Slashdot get some REAL power to change the world beyond our own limited community? How do start educating people beyond ourselves? Being lectured to forever, even after you've agreed is _painful_.
But, that's exactly what Katz article was about, wasn't it? How do we go beyond our individual understanding and get the alarm sounded to others? Effectively.
Example:
Now, sit back, and watch Mr. Christiansen come running....
But that's just one example. Red Pen would similarly be easy to troll for....
You just gotta know your audience.
I think I'll check that "No Score +1 Bonus" box (seems like I'm always doing that....)
Seems like it would behoove the open-source community to put together some funding for itself. There could be some sort of developers forum where the people who contributed money were enabled to determine which projects got funding. Kind of similar to Co-Source, except the idea isn't to match up customers to developers, but rather, get funding, and then decide where to put the money. Funding might be nothing more than donation (investment) from open-source community members.
Another idea is to form a company that offers end-user support and software development to customers, entirely through the open-source community who essentially become it's "employees". Employees are re-imbursed based on what exactly they do. A simplistic model might be a customer subscribes to the service for $X/month. This gives them X points/month to "spend". They spend the points on questions asked in forums, or toward software projects certain open-source developers are working on. The points get collected by those who answer the questions, or those who develop software to solve the customer's problem, and the company pays the developers $.70 per point, or some such thing.
The company's website might be a combination of sourceforge, co-source, deja-news/newsgroups, and slashdot. Put this all together and form a developer-end-user community.
I've often thought someone could make a lot of money, I'm throwing this out there for the would-be millionaires or billionaires, in quality assurance. What would save people a lot of time would be a little code. For $10 a year you get access to this code that will tell you this is worth reading
Sounds like he's suggesting a moderated on-line science journal with two types of users: those with accounts (graduate students of various fields who have the permissions to moderate within their field) and those without accounts who essentially read-only.
Rather similar to Slashdot's moderation. The modifications necessary are greater detail in the moderation permission structure (so that say, a physics grad can moderate physics publications, but not medical ones), and a way of verifying users and their qualifications at the time of joining.
The code is already there. Some on-line science publisher could easily set this up. Question is, would the science community really like being "moderated" in this way, even if it is by their own selves?
It'd kind of be like if every Hollywood movie that came out was immediately "moderated" by every actor/producer/director and given a score. I would think Hollywood wouldn't be too keen on that. Maybe scientists are different.
Thanks for the link. I'll keep that one bookmarked.
I wish Linux and Unix developers could see and admit the ways in which Linux and Unix are elitist. We'd all be so much better off if we'd just see this objectively and work on it.
Why do programs in Linux still have arbitrary, meaningless, abbreviated names? Why is the directory structure still obscure? Is there a fear of typing more than 3 letters? And we (as a group) act as though KDE was some amazing accomplishment toward giving the average user a good GUI, but it's not. It's horribly cluttered, and the names of programs are still meaningless abbreviations.
It's not an argument about which is better, GUI or command Line. It's just a question of why are we still using outdated, historical names for everything? It's like an old-time programmer who scoffs at C, Perl, and Java, saying assembly is more powerful, and only clueless newbies would want to program in a higher level language.
..and don't even get me started about program installation and permissions hell.
It may be a better operating system (actually, I have little doubt of that), but there is a lot of obscurity in there that Linux folks actually seem to embrace, for no reason.