I was just watching that airline crash show, and one of the crash investigators was quoted as saying something like: until something goes wrong, it's hard to fix it so it doesn't happen again. Having some gerkwad CEO not be able to get his email for a few hours, seems like a small price to pay for google to learn their lesson.
Bug Squish, think by the same creators of Tux Paint. Popular with the 2-8 crowd. Also Enigma is a fun game, the puzzles are difficult, but it will keep a kid occupied for a few minutes.
Cause Red Hat bought in, they have money, fortunately Debian doesn't have any of that nasty stuff. How is Debian going to raise the money to buy into a politcal game, course there is the postive outcome and everything, but still it's politics and money talks. You could start a third party non-profit called, Friends of Debian to work with SPI to raise the money? Also there is Ubuntu, that's probably the question closer to reality. Why not Ubuntu? a distro that potentially has money and a mission unlike Red Hats to serve the community, not the enterprise.
The key to my vast productivity, (or unproductivity) is the workspace switcher. I'll typically have six or eight workspaces, in one I'll have my email client, another will have a shell/terminal open, another will be scrolling irc, another will have a browser. In Windows the task bar seems to get to cluttered.
I was waiting for a tool like delicious to come around, I float around to many computers at different locations, and I wanted my bookmarks online. I was trying a php bookmark app that was damned difficult to use hosted on my own server when I discovered delicious. It ingenious I think, but what good is it if it's not available? I often get the 403 service not available in the popup (using the firefox extension) and often can't access my bookmark page. I've been using Furl at times like this. What is a geek to do, I've subscribed to the del.icio.us mailing list, to figure out what's going on with the development, but I wonder if it will ever be stable. Whine whine, I know, but has anyone else thought about a distributed del.icio.us?
Lawrence Lessig,
in his book "Code, and Other Laws of Cyberspace"
talks about putting, patented, software code in escrow. Having someone like the patent office hold the source code, he suggests 10 years, and after that the source code is released to the public. This seems like a good idea, but, there would probably be problems, if the software was still profitable to the company who owned the rights it would be extended and whatnot.
The fact that you just can't turn a pretty penny on the production of Free Software, like you can with proprietary software, does not make it an economist's nightmare.
The way some people seem to perceive the threat of Free Software reminds me very much of a passage in Robert Heilbroner's book "The Worldly Philosophers" on Frédéric Bastiat. In Chapter 7, "The Victorian World and the Economic Underworld", Hielbroner reproduces Bastiat's satire of a manufacturers petition to make an ordinance against the unfair competition candle makers face. Not only could Bastiat work for the the Onion, the writers of the Simpsons episode "Who shot Mr. Burns", must have been inspired by this.
Gentlemen...We are suffering from the intolerable competition of a foreign rival, placed, it would seem, in a condition so far superior to our own for the production of light, that he absolutely inundates our national market with it at a price fabulously reduced. . . . This rival . . . is no other than the sun.
Almost immediately after reading the above quote this scene from the Simpsons plays in my mind:
Smithers: Well, Sir, you've certainly vanquished all your enemies: the
Elementary School, the local tavern, the old age home...you must be very proud.
Burns: [stuffing money into his wallet] No, not while my greatest nemesis still provides our customers with free light, heat and energy. I call this enemy...the sun.
[throws a switch; a control panel appears at his desk]
[another button slides the floor off a model of Springfield]
Since the beginning of time man has yearned to destroy the sun. I will do the next best thing...block it out!
[another button raises a shield over the model town]
I make the analogy: proprietary software is like a candle, Free Software aims to be the sun.
The important thing to think about is that once an effective Free Software aplication has been created their is value, in the terms of cost of production, labor, in the code. It is hard to figure ROI or TCO in something that has intrinsic value.
If everyone can get access to tools that make their lives easier and grants them access to information, it goes to say they may lead happier and more productive lives.
>and my job is getting donated computers to other >nonprofit agencies. I can tell you that not only do ALL of >agencies to which I give computers demanding the >latest MS software, they have not heard of, nor are the >LEAST bit interested in, any other software.
This is what I'm talking about they don't know. I volunteered for a NFP that couldn't even afford one copy of Windows 98, much less 6. Yet someone donated them hardware and copied Windows 98 onto all the hard drives. When I told them it was illegal they were not happy. They assumed the software was free.
It's competition that you can thank for driving prices down. So where's the thanks for Free Software? Unfortunately, most not-for-profits don't realize why they are about to receive this boon of software. Because M$ is afraid of loosing market share. M$ is also discounting software to European goverments. Hmm this doesn't have anything to do with the fact China developed their own version of GNU/Linux does it?
If anything it should illegal for govt's to use proprietary software.
Not only will microsoft not grant cash to build a technology center, they are influencing other corporations like SBC to do the same. The SBC excellerator grant, doesn't give you cash, computer tech's like men in black come in and install the lab with all new hardware and possibly train someone to maintain the lab. Usually what you can do with the lab is outlined rather stringently.
There is definately something wrong with what they are doing.
I am in the same position. I go into not-for-profit organizations and offer them a Free Software solution = blank stares or incredulous looks.
At first they think you are trying to con them, they equate Free as in Freedom as Cheap as in quality and price.
Then I go through the long process of blungeoning them with the facts, get accused of being a Linux Zealot and all that. I don't give up though and keep pounding away at them untill eventully they let me set up an LTSP or something.
What really makes them mad is when you tell them it is illegal to copy Microsoft as many times as they want. It's like they blame us for the license when we tell the they can't pirate software.
Those products suck. What you mean to say is that if they released the code to those aplications the open source community would improved them, giving them a better chance to compete with other OSS packages.
Of course they wouldn't be competing with the OSS community anymore if they opened the source.
The naysayers are right on this one. It is just the state of the cash starved Not-For-Profit world they are ready to accept any kind of philanthropy, it is not their fault they are accepting a worm on a hook.
Is it the fault of the "so called" Free Software movement that they have not done enough to increase awareness of the benefits of Free Software? A bunch of geeks who love to write code doing publicity? Some of these geeks work all day writing proprietary code, and for fun they come home and write open source code. They are not concerned about publicity like Gates is. We know that there is no marketing engine behind GNU/Linux. But look at how far it has come!
My suggestion. Let's help the Free Software increase awareness by creating a website dedicated to who else? Gnubies!
Free Software is elusive as Free Speech. I would like to publish some information targeted to people who have probably never even stopped to consider that yes software is information, and if it is not free that it is not software. Then what is it? Software that is not free is a PRODUCT.
Yes Microsoft is giving away free products with or with out the hope that the recipients will buy more. Who cares. I'm not buying it.
One more thing, for those of you who are concerned that this tactic might quell support for MS technology. Since when has a Microsoft marketing tactic not backfired? NFP's who get these grants are going to be blessed with some great hardware, and when the licensing runs out, what OS will run even better on that hardware?
I registered gnubie.org in January. My fault the site doesn't look better right now, just haven't had time if anyone wants to help with the content let me know.
Usually before your drives start "automagically" mounting in windows you've installed some proprietary software on a colorful little disk that was included in the package you bought from the store. Either that or the device is common enough it's included on your OS disk somewhere. Now imagine that you have a stack of IBM 330/350 which have 200MHz processors, and two, count em, 2 usb ports. You have a copy of Windows 98, and someone gives you a usb disk reader. Well guess what it doen't automagically load the disk to the desktop, you have to go and find drivers for it.
In the same amount of time it would take you to find free drivers, (if they exist) you can go look on a Linux message board or mailing list for the solution. Then you can say, "Wow, I just learned about scsi emulation and have a better understanding of my operating system." Instead of simply saying, "Wow, I just found the driver."
It's a different way of thinking, yes. Some people want problems solved for them, others want to do it for themeselves. You know what, the people who learn to solve their own problems are usually better off.
If M$ found the cure to cancer, they would make you pay on a subscription basis to stay healthy. And to prove how philanthropic they are, they would give low income cancer patients free health for three years until they could get jobs to pay the subscription fee.
Take a look at the freegeek.org site, look what they have done. They use Mandrake, but if you get the recepient of the computer actively involved in the refurbishing/recycling process, 1 they are going to learn something, 2 they may want to take better care of there box since they helped build it. I don't think a lock down is the answer and I don't think problems are avoidable. What you can do is use the problems encountered as teaching opportunities.
Tons o web browsers out there galeon, mozilla, konqueror I use regularly, we all know this. I make the fliers for my LUG w/ openoffice.org software.
And when the debt collectors call I say I'm not in but I will take a message.
My suggestion for the pman is that he make a healthy contribution to the GNUCASH project, this will both simplify his financial situation and encourage improvements to the source code.
So what your saying is that to get started out on the Road Ahead, Mr. Gates needed a jumpstart from a unix beater or a vax cadillac, and his driving manual was written in vi?
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I was just watching that airline crash show, and one of the crash investigators was quoted as saying something like: until something goes wrong, it's hard to fix it so it doesn't happen again. Having some gerkwad CEO not be able to get his email for a few hours, seems like a small price to pay for google to learn their lesson.
but where will I put the meter? J.P.M.
Bug Squish, think by the same creators of Tux Paint. Popular with the 2-8 crowd. Also Enigma is a fun game, the puzzles are difficult, but it will keep a kid occupied for a few minutes.
Jorge Luis Borges wrote a fine manual on this. (Read This For Monsters!)
Cause Red Hat bought in, they have money, fortunately Debian doesn't have any of that nasty stuff. How is Debian going to raise the money to buy into a politcal game, course there is the postive outcome and everything, but still it's politics and money talks. You could start a third party non-profit called, Friends of Debian to work with SPI to raise the money? Also there is Ubuntu, that's probably the question closer to reality. Why not Ubuntu? a distro that potentially has money and a mission unlike Red Hats to serve the community, not the enterprise.
The key to my vast productivity, (or unproductivity) is the workspace switcher. I'll typically have six or eight workspaces, in one I'll have my email client, another will have a shell/terminal open, another will be scrolling irc, another will have a browser. In Windows the task bar seems to get to cluttered.
I was waiting for a tool like delicious to come around, I float around to many computers at different locations, and I wanted my bookmarks online. I was trying a php bookmark app that was damned difficult to use hosted on my own server when I discovered delicious. It ingenious I think, but what good is it if it's not available? I often get the 403 service not available in the popup (using the firefox extension) and often can't access my bookmark page. I've been using Furl at times like this. What is a geek to do, I've subscribed to the del.icio.us mailing list, to figure out what's going on with the development, but I wonder if it will ever be stable. Whine whine, I know, but has anyone else thought about a distributed del.icio.us?
I though it was an interesting idea
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/
The fact that you just can't turn a pretty penny on the production of Free Software, like you can with proprietary software, does not make it an economist's nightmare.
The way some people seem to perceive the threat of Free Software reminds me very much of a passage in Robert Heilbroner's book "The Worldly Philosophers" on Frédéric Bastiat. In Chapter 7, "The Victorian World and the Economic Underworld", Hielbroner reproduces Bastiat's satire of a manufacturers petition to make an ordinance against the unfair competition candle makers face. Not only could Bastiat work for the the Onion, the writers of the Simpsons episode "Who shot Mr. Burns", must have been inspired by this.
Almost immediately after reading the above quote this scene from the Simpsons plays in my mind:I make the analogy: proprietary software is like a candle, Free Software aims to be the sun.
The important thing to think about is that once an effective Free Software aplication has been created their is value, in the terms of cost of production, labor, in the code. It is hard to figure ROI or TCO in something that has intrinsic value.
If everyone can get access to tools that make their lives easier and grants them access to information, it goes to say they may lead happier and more productive lives.
>and my job is getting donated computers to other >nonprofit agencies. I can tell you that not only do ALL of >agencies to which I give computers demanding the >latest MS software, they have not heard of, nor are the >LEAST bit interested in, any other software. This is what I'm talking about they don't know. I volunteered for a NFP that couldn't even afford one copy of Windows 98, much less 6. Yet someone donated them hardware and copied Windows 98 onto all the hard drives. When I told them it was illegal they were not happy. They assumed the software was free.
It's competition that you can thank for driving prices down. So where's the thanks for Free Software? Unfortunately, most not-for-profits don't realize why they are about to receive this boon of software. Because M$ is afraid of loosing market share. M$ is also discounting software to European goverments. Hmm this doesn't have anything to do with the fact China developed their own version of GNU/Linux does it? If anything it should illegal for govt's to use proprietary software.
Not only will microsoft not grant cash to build a technology center, they are influencing other corporations like SBC to do the same. The SBC excellerator grant, doesn't give you cash, computer tech's like men in black come in and install the lab with all new hardware and possibly train someone to maintain the lab. Usually what you can do with the lab is outlined rather stringently. There is definately something wrong with what they are doing.
I am in the same position. I go into not-for-profit organizations and offer them a Free Software solution = blank stares or incredulous looks. At first they think you are trying to con them, they equate Free as in Freedom as Cheap as in quality and price. Then I go through the long process of blungeoning them with the facts, get accused of being a Linux Zealot and all that. I don't give up though and keep pounding away at them untill eventully they let me set up an LTSP or something. What really makes them mad is when you tell them it is illegal to copy Microsoft as many times as they want. It's like they blame us for the license when we tell the they can't pirate software.
Those products suck. What you mean to say is that if they released the code to those aplications the open source community would improved them, giving them a better chance to compete with other OSS packages. Of course they wouldn't be competing with the OSS community anymore if they opened the source.
Oops I meant to say "quell support for Free Software" dOh!
The naysayers are right on this one. It is just the state of the cash starved Not-For-Profit world they are ready to accept any kind of philanthropy, it is not their fault they are accepting a worm on a hook. Is it the fault of the "so called" Free Software movement that they have not done enough to increase awareness of the benefits of Free Software? A bunch of geeks who love to write code doing publicity? Some of these geeks work all day writing proprietary code, and for fun they come home and write open source code. They are not concerned about publicity like Gates is. We know that there is no marketing engine behind GNU/Linux. But look at how far it has come! My suggestion. Let's help the Free Software increase awareness by creating a website dedicated to who else? Gnubies! Free Software is elusive as Free Speech. I would like to publish some information targeted to people who have probably never even stopped to consider that yes software is information, and if it is not free that it is not software. Then what is it? Software that is not free is a PRODUCT. Yes Microsoft is giving away free products with or with out the hope that the recipients will buy more. Who cares. I'm not buying it. One more thing, for those of you who are concerned that this tactic might quell support for MS technology. Since when has a Microsoft marketing tactic not backfired? NFP's who get these grants are going to be blessed with some great hardware, and when the licensing runs out, what OS will run even better on that hardware? I registered gnubie.org in January. My fault the site doesn't look better right now, just haven't had time if anyone wants to help with the content let me know.
Usually before your drives start "automagically" mounting in windows you've installed some proprietary software on a colorful little disk that was included in the package you bought from the store. Either that or the device is common enough it's included on your OS disk somewhere. Now imagine that you have a stack of IBM 330/350 which have 200MHz processors, and two, count em, 2 usb ports. You have a copy of Windows 98, and someone gives you a usb disk reader. Well guess what it doen't automagically load the disk to the desktop, you have to go and find drivers for it. In the same amount of time it would take you to find free drivers, (if they exist) you can go look on a Linux message board or mailing list for the solution. Then you can say, "Wow, I just learned about scsi emulation and have a better understanding of my operating system." Instead of simply saying, "Wow, I just found the driver." It's a different way of thinking, yes. Some people want problems solved for them, others want to do it for themeselves. You know what, the people who learn to solve their own problems are usually better off.
If M$ found the cure to cancer, they would make you pay on a subscription basis to stay healthy. And to prove how philanthropic they are, they would give low income cancer patients free health for three years until they could get jobs to pay the subscription fee.
Take a look at the freegeek.org site, look what they have done. They use Mandrake, but if you get the recepient of the computer actively involved in the refurbishing/recycling process, 1 they are going to learn something, 2 they may want to take better care of there box since they helped build it. I don't think a lock down is the answer and I don't think problems are avoidable. What you can do is use the problems encountered as teaching opportunities. Tons o web browsers out there galeon, mozilla, konqueror I use regularly, we all know this. I make the fliers for my LUG w/ openoffice.org software.
And when the debt collectors call I say I'm not in but I will take a message. My suggestion for the pman is that he make a healthy contribution to the GNUCASH project, this will both simplify his financial situation and encourage improvements to the source code.
So what your saying is that to get started out on the Road Ahead, Mr. Gates needed a jumpstart from a unix beater or a vax cadillac, and his driving manual was written in vi?