If you release code A to the world, and then I go and write code AB and release it binary only. What have I removed from the world? Code A is still availible because it is physically impossible for me to remove code A. In all, I could easily argue that if you consider closed code harmful, then allowing me to close your code into my program is the least of the harmful actions.
Consider in this situation, the only harm done to the world is that B is closed.
But what if I had to write A again becuase I didn't want to open up AB? Then I would have program CB and now not only is B closed but so is C and to make matters worse, both A and C do the same thing in general, which means future development is now forked.
Now ask yourself what happens if C becomes the standard way of doing what A did? Say by for example, me succesfully marketing my program so that a large enough number of people use it to make it a defacto standard. Now you've failed completely because while you have A still, no one really cares about or uses A so A might as well not exist.
By contrast, had I used A for my program, and A became the defacto standard, then any further development, whether by me or others is based on A which is open for all to use.
If you think this was all a bunch of bull, ask yourself what the world would look like today if microsoft didn't use BSD's TCP/IP
The GPL is designed so that when you stupidly (from one perspective) give up your code, you get to freely benefit of others taking advantage of your stupidity.
Just because you were dumb enough to release your work doesn't mean you have any right to benefit from my labor.
"But," you say, "You are already benefiting from my labor."
to which the answer is of course, that was your choice.
The only justification to use the GPL is because I want to be able to use what other people do with MY code. IOW, I want something for nothing. ME ME ME ME ME.
Where BSD serves the selfish desires of the down stream developers, GPL serves the selfish desires of the up stream developers.
1) In order to have a tradgedy of the commons situation you must have a limited and excludeable resource. Code is excludeable, but it is not a limited resource.
2) Consider for a moment what the world would be like if Microsoft had not used the BDS TCP/IP. Do you really want a world where the internet is defined by a microsoft standard?
How do the corporations take code and works out of the commons? The original code is still open is it not? Thus any person can still access the code. Perhaps what you are refering to is the derivative work as being taken out of the commons. But said work was never in the commons to begin with.
But is it a step worth taking? You yourself admit it's a stop gap at best. So we need to alter the entire infrastructure of the nation to entrench ourselves in a stop gap until we find something better? Why not spend that money looking for something better in the first place?
This is so true. What is the major complaint about Apple? It costs too much! When was the last time you heard that about a Windows PC with the blame put on Microsoft? How about never.
In order to achive, self actualization, all of the other needs in the maslow hierarchy must be met. One of the best ways to meet those lower needs it to be sucessful in relation to a ledger line.
Fossil fuel is a closed cycle too. The concern is a matter of scale, and I can almost guarantee that the energy demands of the world today would outpace the renewal rate of biofuel.
We are heavily reliant on fossil fuels because WE as consumers choose to take the easy solution.
Because the easy solution meets our needs, all of the other solutions are both harder and insufficient for our needs.
Big oil companies make it difficult for consumers to use alternative energy sources. What, you think they don't go talk (see: bribe) to the big motor companies and entice them to build bigger, more powerful gas guzzlers?
Are you kidding? Fuel efficient vehicles are great for the oil companies, it means that people drive more and it means they don't have to sell their oil it will sell itself. SUVs while great for upping the demand are worthless for making good money becuase the demand is so great that prices go up and reducing driving overall. Oil companies like a mixture, and you're deluding yourself if you think they don't.
Furthermore, don't kid yourself into thinkking that oil companies are going to do everything in their power to keep oil on top. They'll do that only as long as it's economically feasible for them to do so, but you better believe the moment an alt fuel becomes efficient enough to meet consumer needs and popular enough among consumers to have a demand, they'll jump right on board. They're in the business of supplying energy, the fact that it's oil right now is secondary to the fact that eitherway it's a high deamdn business for energy.
For Solar power, why do we need to have an entire field of them? I have seen energy self-sufficient houses equipped with solar panels on their roofs! How is the plant life dying there? Yes it is a problem when the sun goes down and I agree that batteries are not good for the environment, but they are cleaner and they last longer. As soon as fossil fuels burn up, they instantly pollute the environment. Batteries can be recycled and reused. If you don't want to use batteries, use another cleaner source of energy... deversify.
Thats great for a house. My firends looked into that a few years back. 70k in startup costs just for the solar power not counting any of the matenence and associated costs. Furthermore, for their usage, houses have a rather large roof area to cover for power. And yet depite all that, anyone living off the grid will tell you they still have to monitor the power they use at any given time. Now let's talk businesses. Do you think solar panles on the roof will satisfy the power needs of an office building?
How about the people in the northern climates? You really think ma and pa are going to climb up on their roof every morning to brush the snow off the solar panels? There's a reason why you really only see heavy solar use in the southern climates.
As far as wind power, it talked about supplying even 1/10 of the worlds power needs and that's just for global change, but don't you dare think that you can't fuck up some local weather with a good sized windfarm.
I didn't say we couldn't use them in moderation, the initial proposal which started all this was that we should just stop using fossil fuels, at which point someone asked what do you propose for the alternative? Because in case most people haven't noticed, we are using a lot of these already, but we're still entrenched in fossil fuels because it's still the cheapest, most reliable and most efficient.
For example, in the case of biofuels, the sources (plants) are renewed by the growth of new plants using solar energy (as in the sun's light). An interesting property of this cycle is that the Carbon released when burning biofuel was actually captured from the air when the plants were growing (and in a time close to the present time, not in the Jurassic).
Question: Do you really think that biofuel is sufficiently renewable to avoid the same problems humanity continualy faces when taking energy from nature? That we consume faster than we put back?
Sure plants capture the CO2 but as yourself why then we're worried about CO2? Because the plants can only capture so much. Now ask yourself what will happen when you not only release the CO2 that was captured by routinely and systematically reduce the number of plants capable of recovering that CO2.
No, I'm not on crack, but i did read the report. Perhaps you missed it, it was linked here on slashdot a while back. I'll see if I can find it, but while I'm doing that, here's an exercise for you. When you have a system, and apply a force (friction) to that system, what happens?
As for solar power, perhaps you completely didn't pay any attention to what I said before, or have you come up with a solution for what to do when the sun goes down that doesn't involve batteries?
Furthermore, use of solar power means obstructions to prevent the sun from hitting the ground, which means less plant life and natural direct sunlight for the world. Ever seen the floor of a dense forrest? Now what do you think will happen when we cover all the open fields with solar panels?
As for using them together, perhaps you missed it, we already use them both, plus nuclear and hydro electric. And yet we're still heavily reliant on fossil fuels, and it isn't because of big oil.
Hydro electric: We've been using it for years. There's a rather large facility in NY perhaps you've heard of it, Niagara Falls? Yeah, all in all 4.4 GW of power from it. ~1.6 million homes possible coverage. That's not even close to the population of the state, and doesn't count the fact that about half of that power goes to canada. You got a plan for finding enough hydro power that can be efficiently delivered to the US population let alone the world? Keep in mind pumps require power.
Tide-generation is great except that there's only 2 (or 4 depending on where you are) tides per day. And lets not even begin to discuss the disasterous results of fucking with a costal ecosystem. You think dumping sewage is bad? Wait till you start fucking with tide flow on a regular basis.
Biofuels are great, but they still need to be refined and processed, which means you need energy. Nevermind that we still have an entire planet to power and so far biofuels are relatively inefficient. Also bear in mind that Biofuel is still burning a fuel which is still going to generate pollution.
Fusion. Great, call us when you have a working solution.
You do realize that very very little of the total CO2 output is SUVs right?
You can dismiss all of my points as rants, but the reason we're entrenched in a non renewable polluting fuel with consequences unseen is because years ago, people dismissed similar objections to fossil fuels as rants as well.
I agree that the possible solutions all pose significant issues that require further study. Yet I disagree that we should wait to study them to the end before applying them. Much study has already been done and besides, we didn't wait for studies on fossil fuels before adopting them as we have.
And yet you criticize for the irresponsible use of fosil fuels. Do you not see the inherrent contradiction?
One of the biggest reasons fosil fuels are so entrenched has nothing to do with big business, nothing to do with politicians and nothing to do with apathetic public and everything to do with the infrastructure. The entire world is set up to run on fossil fuels. Do you know why you can drive from one end of this country to the other without taking fuel reserves with you? Because we have gas stations every 5 miles. There is so much of a world wide infrastructure that was built arround fossil fuels and the production, refinement and moving of fossil fuels that a complete change would have HUGE and drastic effects on the economy.
Jumping head long into a new power source would not only hurt us in the short run, but could very well put us right back where we are today, entrenched with an aging or dangerous technology.
Personally I see solar and nuclear as most promising, though I include the latter only as an intermediate expedient because it obviously creates worrisome problems of its own. I would argue, though, that nearly any option is better than maintaining the status quo. I should state that I'm not maintaining that we should just outright ban fossil fuel usage -- but we need to switch off as soon as possible.
No one is arguing maintaining status quo. Not even the big oil people. I know it's hard to believe but better fuel use is not something big oil particularly fears. Better fuel use means less negative karma, means more general fuel use and means the reserves they have last longer which means they stay in business longer. Consumers, as apathetic as they may be, hate paying more than they have to, once alternatives are reasonable they will come.
BTW, be careful with solar power. While it sounds great in the short run, ask yourself about the implications of covering the planet with solar panels. And if you don't think that will happen, ask yourself if 100 years ago they thought we would run out of oil.
Personaly, I would kill to have my truck back. When it broke down, I figured i was done moving and wouldn't need to haul much so I got myself a small fuel efficient car. Since then, I've had to do a lot of hauling that I didn't plan on, or that I didn't calculate when I estimated the use I got out of my truck. In all, I've probably wasted more gas on multiple trips than my truck ever did.
Extra cash and you're talking about getting it delivered? Even if one spends an extra $60/month in gas on an SUV it's still cheaper to own an SUV than to have it delivered or rent.
Hell I moved a couch just the other day, it cost me $20/hour to rent the truck PLUS gas, and I did all the labor myself. All told about ~$50 in cost. Now, you're suggesting having it deivered which means paying someone else to do labor, use one of their trucks and haul it for me. Aint no way I'm getting that for $50 bucks.
If this guy has to do 2 hauls per month, he's making out like a bandit as an owner of an SUV.
Sorry, I won't do your homework for you. There are plenty of reasonable alternatives, just look at the literature;
Like what?
Solar Power? Solar is not efficient enough to surve the needs of the world, nor does it solve the problem of what to do when the sun goes down. Sure you can use batteries and charge them but then you need both more power overall and to do something with the batteries, and last I checked, batteries weren't high on the list of environmmentaly friendly products, especialy those rechargeable ones. We're not talking just short term headaches, we're talking long term.
Wind power? Not counting the enormus amounts of window power you would need to actively power the world, there was also that study a few months back which estimated that wind power enough to cover the continent of australia could produce global climate changes on the same order of the worst case senarios from global warming. We're talking massive global temperature shifts from fucking with global wind patterns, never mind a complete change in the earths currents leading to a complete change in the ecosystem.
Nuclear power? That seems like one of our best options but Nuclear is a political bomb, socialy the worls has a NIMBY attitude (you think it's hard gettign a cell tower in your town, try getting a nuke plant) doesn't solve the problem that we're still using a limited resource and merely shifts the waste and byproducts from the air to some bunker under a mountain, not exactly a good solution.
So what is the good solution? No one is asking to do our homework for us, we're asking you to do your own homework.
Should we focus on and use alt energy where we can and where it's efficient? Of course. But that doesn't mean we should go full stop either.
But 99% of the people that buy their car customize it once from the factory and never touch it again. Generally speaking people don't like to do constant customization and adding uber features just to so that if you get trapped on a desert island with only coconuts to power your MP3 player and access only to a Gentoo linux box with ogg kogg begogg files on it you could sync your player with it often times just makes for a bulgy, ugly product that most people don't want. (case in point that car that could be a truck)
Odly enough, they just might. There's a web comic out there called Underpower. I'm not going to link because he has a hard enough time paying for his site as is. He has no ads. Not one. His monthly hosting expenses are about $200 a month. He has a pay pal donation link, and an adress to send checks to. That's it. His user base is not particularly large, the forums indicated about 86 users, so maybe twice that. And yet, every month, his readers manage to provide him with enough or almost enough money to cover his hosting charges.
Now, if he can manage this for a web comic that barely updates twice a week, don't you think slashdot can manage with x thousand users? And if not, then is slashdot really worth it to keep arround?
Slashdot Mirror
Except your analogy is entirely flawed.
If you release code A to the world, and then I go and write code AB and release it binary only. What have I removed from the world? Code A is still availible because it is physically impossible for me to remove code A. In all, I could easily argue that if you consider closed code harmful, then allowing me to close your code into my program is the least of the harmful actions.
Consider in this situation, the only harm done to the world is that B is closed.
But what if I had to write A again becuase I didn't want to open up AB? Then I would have program CB and now not only is B closed but so is C and to make matters worse, both A and C do the same thing in general, which means future development is now forked.
Now ask yourself what happens if C becomes the standard way of doing what A did? Say by for example, me succesfully marketing my program so that a large enough number of people use it to make it a defacto standard. Now you've failed completely because while you have A still, no one really cares about or uses A so A might as well not exist.
By contrast, had I used A for my program, and A became the defacto standard, then any further development, whether by me or others is based on A which is open for all to use.
If you think this was all a bunch of bull, ask yourself what the world would look like today if microsoft didn't use BSD's TCP/IP
The GPL is equally me me me me me.
The GPL is designed so that when you stupidly (from one perspective) give up your code, you get to freely benefit of others taking advantage of your stupidity.
Just because you were dumb enough to release your work doesn't mean you have any right to benefit from my labor.
"But," you say, "You are already benefiting from my labor."
to which the answer is of course, that was your choice.
The only justification to use the GPL is because I want to be able to use what other people do with MY code. IOW, I want something for nothing. ME ME ME ME ME.
Where BSD serves the selfish desires of the down stream developers, GPL serves the selfish desires of the up stream developers.
Why should you get those 10 lines back? If it's so trivial, do it yourself you god damn freeloader.
Now ask yourself what the world would look like today if microsoft avoided the BSD TCP/IP for their own implimentation because of GPL concerns?
1) In order to have a tradgedy of the commons situation you must have a limited and excludeable resource. Code is excludeable, but it is not a limited resource.
2) Consider for a moment what the world would be like if Microsoft had not used the BDS TCP/IP. Do you really want a world where the internet is defined by a microsoft standard?
How do the corporations take code and works out of the commons? The original code is still open is it not? Thus any person can still access the code. Perhaps what you are refering to is the derivative work as being taken out of the commons. But said work was never in the commons to begin with.
But is it a step worth taking? You yourself admit it's a stop gap at best. So we need to alter the entire infrastructure of the nation to entrench ourselves in a stop gap until we find something better? Why not spend that money looking for something better in the first place?
This is so true. What is the major complaint about Apple? It costs too much! When was the last time you heard that about a Windows PC with the blame put on Microsoft? How about never.
Two words:
Microsoft Tax
In order to achive, self actualization, all of the other needs in the maslow hierarchy must be met. One of the best ways to meet those lower needs it to be sucessful in relation to a ledger line.
And yet, here we are 20 years later, and where are Commodore and Atari?
Fossil fuel is a closed cycle too. The concern is a matter of scale, and I can almost guarantee that the energy demands of the world today would outpace the renewal rate of biofuel.
We are heavily reliant on fossil fuels because WE as consumers choose to take the easy solution.
Because the easy solution meets our needs, all of the other solutions are both harder and insufficient for our needs.
Big oil companies make it difficult for consumers to use alternative energy sources. What, you think they don't go talk (see: bribe) to the big motor companies and entice them to build bigger, more powerful gas guzzlers?
Are you kidding? Fuel efficient vehicles are great for the oil companies, it means that people drive more and it means they don't have to sell their oil it will sell itself. SUVs while great for upping the demand are worthless for making good money becuase the demand is so great that prices go up and reducing driving overall. Oil companies like a mixture, and you're deluding yourself if you think they don't.
Furthermore, don't kid yourself into thinkking that oil companies are going to do everything in their power to keep oil on top. They'll do that only as long as it's economically feasible for them to do so, but you better believe the moment an alt fuel becomes efficient enough to meet consumer needs and popular enough among consumers to have a demand, they'll jump right on board. They're in the business of supplying energy, the fact that it's oil right now is secondary to the fact that eitherway it's a high deamdn business for energy.
For Solar power, why do we need to have an entire field of them? I have seen energy self-sufficient houses equipped with solar panels on their roofs! How is the plant life dying there? Yes it is a problem when the sun goes down and I agree that batteries are not good for the environment, but they are cleaner and they last longer. As soon as fossil fuels burn up, they instantly pollute the environment. Batteries can be recycled and reused. If you don't want to use batteries, use another cleaner source of energy... deversify.
Thats great for a house. My firends looked into that a few years back. 70k in startup costs just for the solar power not counting any of the matenence and associated costs. Furthermore, for their usage, houses have a rather large roof area to cover for power. And yet depite all that, anyone living off the grid will tell you they still have to monitor the power they use at any given time. Now let's talk businesses. Do you think solar panles on the roof will satisfy the power needs of an office building?
How about the people in the northern climates? You really think ma and pa are going to climb up on their roof every morning to brush the snow off the solar panels? There's a reason why you really only see heavy solar use in the southern climates.
As far as wind power, it talked about supplying even 1/10 of the worlds power needs and that's just for global change, but don't you dare think that you can't fuck up some local weather with a good sized windfarm.
I didn't say we couldn't use them in moderation, the initial proposal which started all this was that we should just stop using fossil fuels, at which point someone asked what do you propose for the alternative? Because in case most people haven't noticed, we are using a lot of these already, but we're still entrenched in fossil fuels because it's still the cheapest, most reliable and most efficient.
For example, in the case of biofuels, the sources (plants) are renewed by the growth of new plants using solar energy (as in the sun's light). An interesting property of this cycle is that the Carbon released when burning biofuel was actually captured from the air when the plants were growing (and in a time close to the present time, not in the Jurassic).
Question: Do you really think that biofuel is sufficiently renewable to avoid the same problems humanity continualy faces when taking energy from nature? That we consume faster than we put back?
Sure plants capture the CO2 but as yourself why then we're worried about CO2? Because the plants can only capture so much. Now ask yourself what will happen when you not only release the CO2 that was captured by routinely and systematically reduce the number of plants capable of recovering that CO2.
No, I'm not on crack, but i did read the report. Perhaps you missed it, it was linked here on slashdot a while back. I'll see if I can find it, but while I'm doing that, here's an exercise for you. When you have a system, and apply a force (friction) to that system, what happens?
1 1/0056217&tid=126&tid=14
y Id=4161624
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?stor
Enjoy.
As for solar power, perhaps you completely didn't pay any attention to what I said before, or have you come up with a solution for what to do when the sun goes down that doesn't involve batteries?
Furthermore, use of solar power means obstructions to prevent the sun from hitting the ground, which means less plant life and natural direct sunlight for the world. Ever seen the floor of a dense forrest? Now what do you think will happen when we cover all the open fields with solar panels?
As for using them together, perhaps you missed it, we already use them both, plus nuclear and hydro electric. And yet we're still heavily reliant on fossil fuels, and it isn't because of big oil.
Hydro electric: We've been using it for years. There's a rather large facility in NY perhaps you've heard of it, Niagara Falls? Yeah, all in all 4.4 GW of power from it. ~1.6 million homes possible coverage. That's not even close to the population of the state, and doesn't count the fact that about half of that power goes to canada. You got a plan for finding enough hydro power that can be efficiently delivered to the US population let alone the world? Keep in mind pumps require power.
Tide-generation is great except that there's only 2 (or 4 depending on where you are) tides per day. And lets not even begin to discuss the disasterous results of fucking with a costal ecosystem. You think dumping sewage is bad? Wait till you start fucking with tide flow on a regular basis.
Biofuels are great, but they still need to be refined and processed, which means you need energy. Nevermind that we still have an entire planet to power and so far biofuels are relatively inefficient. Also bear in mind that Biofuel is still burning a fuel which is still going to generate pollution.
Fusion. Great, call us when you have a working solution.
You do realize that very very little of the total CO2 output is SUVs right?
You can dismiss all of my points as rants, but the reason we're entrenched in a non renewable polluting fuel with consequences unseen is because years ago, people dismissed similar objections to fossil fuels as rants as well.
I agree that the possible solutions all pose significant issues that require further study. Yet I disagree that we should wait to study them to the end before applying them. Much study has already been done and besides, we didn't wait for studies on fossil fuels before adopting them as we have.
And yet you criticize for the irresponsible use of fosil fuels. Do you not see the inherrent contradiction?
One of the biggest reasons fosil fuels are so entrenched has nothing to do with big business, nothing to do with politicians and nothing to do with apathetic public and everything to do with the infrastructure. The entire world is set up to run on fossil fuels. Do you know why you can drive from one end of this country to the other without taking fuel reserves with you? Because we have gas stations every 5 miles. There is so much of a world wide infrastructure that was built arround fossil fuels and the production, refinement and moving of fossil fuels that a complete change would have HUGE and drastic effects on the economy.
Jumping head long into a new power source would not only hurt us in the short run, but could very well put us right back where we are today, entrenched with an aging or dangerous technology.
Personally I see solar and nuclear as most promising, though I include the latter only as an intermediate expedient because it obviously creates worrisome problems of its own. I would argue, though, that nearly any option is better than maintaining the status quo. I should state that I'm not maintaining that we should just outright ban fossil fuel usage -- but we need to switch off as soon as possible.
No one is arguing maintaining status quo. Not even the big oil people. I know it's hard to believe but better fuel use is not something big oil particularly fears. Better fuel use means less negative karma, means more general fuel use and means the reserves they have last longer which means they stay in business longer. Consumers, as apathetic as they may be, hate paying more than they have to, once alternatives are reasonable they will come.
BTW, be careful with solar power. While it sounds great in the short run, ask yourself about the implications of covering the planet with solar panels. And if you don't think that will happen, ask yourself if 100 years ago they thought we would run out of oil.
Personaly, I would kill to have my truck back. When it broke down, I figured i was done moving and wouldn't need to haul much so I got myself a small fuel efficient car. Since then, I've had to do a lot of hauling that I didn't plan on, or that I didn't calculate when I estimated the use I got out of my truck. In all, I've probably wasted more gas on multiple trips than my truck ever did.
Extra cash and you're talking about getting it delivered? Even if one spends an extra $60/month in gas on an SUV it's still cheaper to own an SUV than to have it delivered or rent.
Hell I moved a couch just the other day, it cost me $20/hour to rent the truck PLUS gas, and I did all the labor myself. All told about ~$50 in cost. Now, you're suggesting having it deivered which means paying someone else to do labor, use one of their trucks and haul it for me. Aint no way I'm getting that for $50 bucks.
If this guy has to do 2 hauls per month, he's making out like a bandit as an owner of an SUV.
Sorry, I won't do your homework for you. There are plenty of reasonable alternatives, just look at the literature;
Like what?
Solar Power? Solar is not efficient enough to surve the needs of the world, nor does it solve the problem of what to do when the sun goes down. Sure you can use batteries and charge them but then you need both more power overall and to do something with the batteries, and last I checked, batteries weren't high on the list of environmmentaly friendly products, especialy those rechargeable ones. We're not talking just short term headaches, we're talking long term.
Wind power? Not counting the enormus amounts of window power you would need to actively power the world, there was also that study a few months back which estimated that wind power enough to cover the continent of australia could produce global climate changes on the same order of the worst case senarios from global warming. We're talking massive global temperature shifts from fucking with global wind patterns, never mind a complete change in the earths currents leading to a complete change in the ecosystem.
Nuclear power? That seems like one of our best options but Nuclear is a political bomb, socialy the worls has a NIMBY attitude (you think it's hard gettign a cell tower in your town, try getting a nuke plant) doesn't solve the problem that we're still using a limited resource and merely shifts the waste and byproducts from the air to some bunker under a mountain, not exactly a good solution.
So what is the good solution? No one is asking to do our homework for us, we're asking you to do your own homework.
Should we focus on and use alt energy where we can and where it's efficient? Of course. But that doesn't mean we should go full stop either.
Sucks to be a species that can't adapt. Thankfully we have AC.
But 99% of the people that buy their car customize it once from the factory and never touch it again. Generally speaking people don't like to do constant customization and adding uber features just to so that if you get trapped on a desert island with only coconuts to power your MP3 player and access only to a Gentoo linux box with ogg kogg begogg files on it you could sync your player with it often times just makes for a bulgy, ugly product that most people don't want. (case in point that car that could be a truck)
Not at all. The purpose of prison is punishment. It's getting the criminal out of society and forcing them to pay their debt to society.
and annoying and obnoxious gets you unseen and unwatched because you're blocked.
Odly enough, they just might. There's a web comic out there called Underpower. I'm not going to link because he has a hard enough time paying for his site as is. He has no ads. Not one. His monthly hosting expenses are about $200 a month. He has a pay pal donation link, and an adress to send checks to. That's it. His user base is not particularly large, the forums indicated about 86 users, so maybe twice that. And yet, every month, his readers manage to provide him with enough or almost enough money to cover his hosting charges.
Now, if he can manage this for a web comic that barely updates twice a week, don't you think slashdot can manage with x thousand users? And if not, then is slashdot really worth it to keep arround?
Developers who settle for good enough won't sell their software to mac users.