That's probably true of society in general. But I've worked in the PC repair field. What you get is what you pay for. . . and warranties are one of the best investments you can make with computer hardware. Whether it's a whole system or just a critical component like a hard drive, spending an extra 2-5% on a three-year warranty plan makes sense.
I just wish the customers would exercise a little intelligence and backup their data before their drive goes south.
I got lucky: I bought a CD-RW drive last Saturday; my five-year-old Quantum Bigfoot hard drive died last Sunday (as far as I can tell, the drive mechanism is still good; but the controller is shot). The first thing I did with my CD-RW drive was back up the stuff that I've had on my computer since I've owned a PC - stuff that, while not critical in any business sense, I've had for as long as ten years. CD-RW drives now sell cheaper than $100 and come stock with most PC's--there's just no reason, no excuse, not to backup important data anymore.
Funding from big contributors would be a godsend for the SETI@Home program, I'm sure. Maybe it could come from Uncle Sugar somehow? Research grants seem to be handed out like candy, in the better economic years at least. Then again, maybe that's why we're seeing SETI@Home having such a hard time now.
Funding from users is a definite possibility. This would be even better if they could get $60 / $120 contributions, in the form of monthly payments. I signed up through the Combined Federal Campaign to donate about $72 / year to the California Astronomical Society - I'm not going to miss the $6 / month, after all; and maybe they can put that money to good use.
I'd accept advertising if it were a relatively unobtrusive banner ad. Popups and spyware are right out.
Don't even think to try and "sell off" some of my "spare" processor cycles, or you won't get any of them! If you want my continued participation, the integrity of the SETI@Home project must remain pure.
Perhaps, but only on the condition that we can see some unfortunate redshirt (old-style Star Trek uniform and all) eaten by the OS vendor's mascot. The money you could make from selling clips of Clippy or the Mozilla Dinosaur gibbing some poor schmoe on-stage would probably enough to give SETI@Home at least another year or two of financial independence!
I suspect IT costs are a major portion of SETI@Home's budget, espeially this far into the project. Maintenance of the software itself is minimal - basically you'd need one guy there to fix bugs, and one guy there to answer phones. And maybe one guy to sacrifice to Clippy.
Someone doesn't have to be "psychologically repressed" just to disagree with you about what represents normal human behaviour and what represents perversion, you know. As long as they're not trying to tell you how to live your life, it's kinda impolite to call them names.
On a side note, I've met a fair number of "zealots" who aren't Christian, too. Zealots come in all shapes and sizes: Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Pagan, etc.
I'm pretty sure that what's going on here is that Microsoft found a freelance writer to write glowingly about XP in exchange for free hardwaree and OS.
I have to admit, I'd probably write a nice glowing article for them, too, if they offered me a copy of Windows XP Professional to write it. I'm too cheap to spend $200 for a copy of the software, but a couple hundred words? Okay!
If you agreed to one licensing agreement, and BitKeeper changed it after you agreed and insisted you must now adhere to the new licensing agreement, that's unethical. If, however, you simply agreed to the licensing agreement without reading it, you have no room to bitch. Read the fine print next time.
No, the users are. In a way it's much more insidious than slavery, it's distributed mind control.
I take it you have firsthand experience of just exactly what constitutes slavery, that you can make a statement like this?
How ludicrous. Slavery does still exist today--sex slavery is commonplace in Korea and in Eastern Europe. I daresay the women caught in that hideous lifestyle would love having nothing more to worry about than "checking with 'authorities' before distributing an idea"--as it is, most probably don't even get to choose whether their Johns wear condoms.
Not so- he is demanding that people who use his software not work on other software.
He has that right - he wrote the software, therefore, it's his property. He can dictate the terms of its use as he pleases. . . and we, likewise, have the choice of either using his software, or finding something with a more agreeable license, or creating an application ourselves and dicating terms for its use as we see fit.
We're not dealing with a single corporation, we're dealing with a borg-like collective of corporations being fed government-approved monopolies over ideas, and taking any one down is not going to win the day.
Huh?? I'm sorry, this makes absolutely no sense. I think the "borg-like collective" and "government-approved monopoly" rhetoric is some slap at Microsoft, but I fail to see the connection to BitKeeper.
I understand why it's a slap in the face, too; but comparing software licensing to slavery is a bit overboard. Software is not sentient by any stretch of the imagination. Further, no one is restricting your rights toward software development - only your rights toward the use of their system.
A far better analogy is to compare a software licensing agreement to a lease--some landlords are perfectly respectable, while others are more than a little shifty. In any event, as long as you live on their property, you abide by the terms of the lease.
Unfortunately, software manufacturers don't require notice before changing the terms of their licensing agreements. I think they should - and I think that people who purchased software licenses have a right not to have the license changed on them arbitrarily. That sort of fly-by-night treatment is my principal objection to BitKeeper's practices: it's unethical. And unethical behavior is not limited in practice to companies which distribute proprietary software.
Their treatment of their own customers deserves a response - and the best response is to cease doing business with them. That couldn't work with slavery, which was far too widespread. . . but when you're dealing with a single corporation, a little bit of financial pressure goes a long way.
I suggested exactly this sort of architecture before a group of high-level civilians who were in charge of modernizing the Air Force Combat Ammunition System--mostly because it would ensure the connectivity of most, if not all, of the system at a given time; and because it would decentralize the network, making it much harder for an enemy to take down the entire system by targeting a single server.
I doubt they went with it, though: for one, there was some question as to whether it could be made secure enough to transmit sensitive (though unclassified) data. Second, I was an E3 at the time; and of course the junior enlisted ranks are meant to be seen, not heard.
Free software is important in human rights today. Would you like to get back on topic and argue with that statement?
That makes as much sense as asking me to argue with the statement that there are purple cows on the dark side of the moon. The statement itself is so outlandish, it defies all comprehension. And further, you offer no proof that Free software--or any software, for that matter--is of any significance in what is at heart an idealogical and political battle.
Anti-Nitpick: Magna Charta - in its proper, British spelling.
In any event, I just can't see what difference it makes whether you use open-source software for human rights work. There're more serious problems in China than the Great Firewall, for example: when and if those root problems are finally addressed, a technical workaround for the Great Firewall will be moot.
That's rather optimistic. Somehow, I'd expect they'd only find a way to pack the same number of people into an even-smaller space. "Here at American Airlines, we believe you should get to know the people sitting around you. . . intimately."
Why, whatever did the framers of the Magna Charta, the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution ever do before the concept of Free Software?
What a bunch of tripe. Human rights requires vigilance and dedication. Software systems are a non-sequitur--they can express freedom, but they cannot create it.
Sounds like something my ex-wife was fond of saying. Of course, since I was married to her at the time, I was already in the:hell branch of my life's program. If not for a fortunate Guru Meditation Error, I might still be stuck in that endless:hell.
The moral of the story is, women are like spaghetti.
Having worked with SQL for too damned long, I'd have to say, no - SQL isn't a programming language. It's a query language: a language which provides for databases what programming languages provide for normal systems. More specifically, it's a Structured Query Language. . . as if an unstructured query language would do anyone a whole lot of good.
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That's probably true of society in general. But I've worked in the PC repair field. What you get is what you pay for. . . and warranties are one of the best investments you can make with computer hardware. Whether it's a whole system or just a critical component like a hard drive, spending an extra 2-5% on a three-year warranty plan makes sense.
I just wish the customers would exercise a little intelligence and backup their data before their drive goes south.
I got lucky: I bought a CD-RW drive last Saturday; my five-year-old Quantum Bigfoot hard drive died last Sunday (as far as I can tell, the drive mechanism is still good; but the controller is shot). The first thing I did with my CD-RW drive was back up the stuff that I've had on my computer since I've owned a PC - stuff that, while not critical in any business sense, I've had for as long as ten years. CD-RW drives now sell cheaper than $100 and come stock with most PC's--there's just no reason, no excuse, not to backup important data anymore.
I'd bet that People Eating Tasty Animals members would love mink coats.
Someone doesn't have to be "psychologically repressed" just to disagree with you about what represents normal human behaviour and what represents perversion, you know. As long as they're not trying to tell you how to live your life, it's kinda impolite to call them names.
On a side note, I've met a fair number of "zealots" who aren't Christian, too. Zealots come in all shapes and sizes: Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Pagan, etc.
I'm pretty sure that what's going on here is that Microsoft found a freelance writer to write glowingly about XP in exchange for free hardwaree and OS.
I have to admit, I'd probably write a nice glowing article for them, too, if they offered me a copy of Windows XP Professional to write it. I'm too cheap to spend $200 for a copy of the software, but a couple hundred words? Okay!
He did a lot more than that in Jay and Silent Bob Stike Back. Silent Bob is a Jedi, methinks, in a way a few thousand Aussies will never be. :)
It's not ok to pirate Linux, 'cause they're good.
Pirate Linux? Wha. . ?? It's already free!
Right, but if he wants glowing reviews after the last Star Wars movie, he's going to have to make robotic film reviewers, too.
The relevance is this:
If you agreed to one licensing agreement, and BitKeeper changed it after you agreed and insisted you must now adhere to the new licensing agreement, that's unethical. If, however, you simply agreed to the licensing agreement without reading it, you have no room to bitch. Read the fine print next time.
No, the users are. In a way it's much more insidious than slavery, it's distributed mind control.
I take it you have firsthand experience of just exactly what constitutes slavery, that you can make a statement like this?
How ludicrous. Slavery does still exist today--sex slavery is commonplace in Korea and in Eastern Europe. I daresay the women caught in that hideous lifestyle would love having nothing more to worry about than "checking with 'authorities' before distributing an idea"--as it is, most probably don't even get to choose whether their Johns wear condoms.
Not so- he is demanding that people who use his software not work on other software.
He has that right - he wrote the software, therefore, it's his property. He can dictate the terms of its use as he pleases. . . and we, likewise, have the choice of either using his software, or finding something with a more agreeable license, or creating an application ourselves and dicating terms for its use as we see fit.
We're not dealing with a single corporation, we're dealing with a borg-like collective of corporations being fed government-approved monopolies over ideas, and taking any one down is not going to win the day.
Huh?? I'm sorry, this makes absolutely no sense. I think the "borg-like collective" and "government-approved monopoly" rhetoric is some slap at Microsoft, but I fail to see the connection to BitKeeper.
Fiction, fiction, fiction, fiction, fiction, fiction, fiction, fiction, semi-random response generator, big chess database, bigger chess database.
Seriously: self-awareness is a critical measure of sentience, and none of the three non-fictional systems you listed have it.
I understand why it's a slap in the face, too; but comparing software licensing to slavery is a bit overboard. Software is not sentient by any stretch of the imagination. Further, no one is restricting your rights toward software development - only your rights toward the use of their system.
A far better analogy is to compare a software licensing agreement to a lease--some landlords are perfectly respectable, while others are more than a little shifty. In any event, as long as you live on their property, you abide by the terms of the lease.
Unfortunately, software manufacturers don't require notice before changing the terms of their licensing agreements. I think they should - and I think that people who purchased software licenses have a right not to have the license changed on them arbitrarily. That sort of fly-by-night treatment is my principal objection to BitKeeper's practices: it's unethical. And unethical behavior is not limited in practice to companies which distribute proprietary software.
Their treatment of their own customers deserves a response - and the best response is to cease doing business with them. That couldn't work with slavery, which was far too widespread. . . but when you're dealing with a single corporation, a little bit of financial pressure goes a long way.
Let's just hope it does its math a little better. The last thing we need is a robot that thinks it has 7.9999999328 legs. . .
I suggested exactly this sort of architecture before a group of high-level civilians who were in charge of modernizing the Air Force Combat Ammunition System--mostly because it would ensure the connectivity of most, if not all, of the system at a given time; and because it would decentralize the network, making it much harder for an enemy to take down the entire system by targeting a single server.
I doubt they went with it, though: for one, there was some question as to whether it could be made secure enough to transmit sensitive (though unclassified) data. Second, I was an E3 at the time; and of course the junior enlisted ranks are meant to be seen, not heard.
Free software is important in human rights today. Would you like to get back on topic and argue with that statement?
That makes as much sense as asking me to argue with the statement that there are purple cows on the dark side of the moon. The statement itself is so outlandish, it defies all comprehension. And further, you offer no proof that Free software--or any software, for that matter--is of any significance in what is at heart an idealogical and political battle.
Anti-Nitpick: Magna Charta - in its proper, British spelling.
In any event, I just can't see what difference it makes whether you use open-source software for human rights work. There're more serious problems in China than the Great Firewall, for example: when and if those root problems are finally addressed, a technical workaround for the Great Firewall will be moot.
"You've got bribes!"
That's rather optimistic. Somehow, I'd expect they'd only find a way to pack the same number of people into an even-smaller space. "Here at American Airlines, we believe you should get to know the people sitting around you. . . intimately."
Don't give Microsoft any ideas! Have you ever seen a urinal BSoD? Do you want to?
Why, whatever did the framers of the Magna Charta, the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution ever do before the concept of Free Software?
What a bunch of tripe. Human rights requires vigilance and dedication. Software systems are a non-sequitur--they can express freedom, but they cannot create it.
Actually, if you use PL/SQL, you use Ada more than you may think.
Sounds like something my ex-wife was fond of saying. Of course, since I was married to her at the time, I was already in the :hell branch of my life's program. If not for a fortunate Guru Meditation Error, I might still be stuck in that endless :hell.
The moral of the story is, women are like spaghetti.
. . .wait, that's not right. . .
Having worked with SQL for too damned long, I'd have to say, no - SQL isn't a programming language. It's a query language: a language which provides for databases what programming languages provide for normal systems. More specifically, it's a Structured Query Language. . . as if an unstructured query language would do anyone a whole lot of good.
Actually, machine language probably wouldn't even make it through the lameness filter. Then again, assembly might not, either.