Ted Stevens is the king of pork-laden bills and industry kickbacks.
I'm pretty sure that's why he keeps getting voted back into office.
Come on, kick us out of the union. Our Congress-critters are a bunch of bums, and Federal spending in Alaska is nearly twice what we pay in taxes. You know you want us out. Pleeeeeeeease!
Ted and Lisa and Don are part of our fiendish plot to get the U.S. so sick of us that they kick us out, so that we don't have to go to the bother of a revolution. Sort of a ``be revolting so we don't have to revolt'' strategy.
Unfortunately, my boss uses spreadsheets (for populatoin models) with way more than 65k rows. He's stuck with Corel's spreadsheet, because it will do 1M by 1M spreadsheets.
Obviously, we shouldn't be doing that sort of thing is a spreadsheet, but that's another story.
If they consistantly include the cost of the OS license then it would skew the figures towards more dollar sales for MS products which steeply ramp up the cost as blades/CPUs are added.
Yep, that's right. So, as I said, if they were consistantly including OS cost, Unix and Linux are doing far better than they look. Since they're looking pretty good already, that's doubly nifty.
>> the corresponding figure for Windows was $4.6 billion.
>I wonder if that figure includes software licenses, or if it is just for the server hardware.
Well, if they're consistant, does it really matter?
Maybe it would: if the Windows figure is license revenue, and the Unix figure is too, then the fact that Linux makes up 9% of the Unix number becomes even more impressive.
... companies have been buying the boxes on e-bay and other places. Now, they have to buy new. So, personally, I do not think that this shows an improved situation.
The folks who build and sell the new boxes probably would call it an improvement, and some of them still live in the U.S.
Didn't MS claim their server was up in the market as well?
If the whole market is growing, then Linux could be gaining market share and MS could be losing market share, but MS could still be shipping more than ever.
That (i.e., the whole market is growing) is what we see happening, though that doesn't mean that MS is actually losing market share: thay may simply be gaining more slowly than before.
It looks as if all server sales are up, not just Linux and Unix. From TFA:
When it comes to operating systems, Unix and Windows servers continued to grow. Unix server revenue was $5.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2004 while the corresponding figure for Windows was $4.6 billion.
Linux servers represented 9 percent of worldwide server revenue in 2004, which is 35.6 percent growth compared to the year before.
It sounds as if we're seeing some growth in IT spending, rather than just growth in Linux. Notice that Unix servers are still a bit ahead of Windows, in terms of dollar volume.
Growth in Linux is good, but overall growth in IT means more jobs, and that's even better.
The animals that place 2nd and 3rd behind man in terms of altering the environment are the dam-building beaver and the bush-stomping elephant.
Sorry, wrong in your implications, and maybe your facts.
The ``animals'' that have the most impact on the global climate may well be the phytoplankton. Scroll down toward the bottom to see how they may be responsible for ice ages.
I'd say that salmon have a huge effect on my local climate, too. Thousands of tons of salmon become thousands of tons of bear-crap, and that, together with more thousands of tons of rotting salmon, fertillizes the forests all across the arctic and sub-arctic. It's a source of energy and nutrients that has changed the ecosystem here enormously. Resettlement of Alaska after the ice age seems to have followed the salmon streams.
Beavers and bush-stomping elepants may be the biggest things you notice, but the things we don't notice can be a lot bigger.
I'm not sure where you get the idea that damming a river or strip mining or clear-cutting forest can't be defined as "negative" to our surroundings, but I'd like to know. Positive to man's economy, sure.
Our human economy is part of our human environment, but I bet that's not what you meant.
How about this: we humans are plains apes, and a clear cut forest becomes a plain, then becomes either farmland or a brushland. Brushland and farmland are both far more productive of things to eat than the forest was, and that's good for deer, rabbits, and bear, and the things (like us) that eat them.
As for strip mining, it doesn't have to be a bad thing. The Usibelli family has been restoring the damage their strip mining has done for many years now, and hunters find that the old strip mined areas are the best habitat in the area. Yes, that link is to a coal mining company, but the folks who live around there will tell you that the page understates their success.
If you can't, you don't know anything about climate dynamics...
So, an overview of oceanography is both necessary and sufficent to make one an expert on climate dynamics? I hope you'll excuse me if I don't take the ``sufficient'' part of that very seriously. The necessary part is slightly more plausible: the oceans play a large part in the global climate, but we don't yet understand that part!.
Are you seriously appealing to the authority of the United States Senate? Dude, if you polled the Senate, you'd find three Senators who think that desegregation was a bad thing, five who think nationalized health care is a grand idea, and a dozen more who think Elvis is still alive.
I think that you are waaaaay too optimistic about the integrity, decency and intelligence of our career politicians. No, that's not sarcasm, and no, I'm not singling out the Republicrats or the Democans.
I am pretty sure there are a few honest, decent, intelligent people in the senate and congress, but I can't imagine how they can breath with the clothespins on their noses.
Maybe it's that hypoxia that makes so many promising candidates with good character turn into lying good ol' boys after a couple of terms. Maybe it's the just the ineluctable, exhausting fact that the scumbag majority not only keep getting re-elected, but they keep getting richer.
I am fairly certain that most states have some kind of "Good Samaritan" law that requires you to help...
My understanding of U.S. Good Samaritan laws is that they protect those who, without obligation and any statutory protections that go with it, help strangers in need. Thus, a doctor who stops at a car crash and renders medical aid is protected from most liability by a Good Sam law. Again, this is needed because the doctor is not legally obligated to help, and might overlook his moral obligation in the absense of a Good Sam law.
I'm using a doctor as an example because many of the Good Sam laws target doctors, nurses, EMTs, et cetera, and may not apply to the general public. Minnesota's) Good Sam law does include those who aren't healthcare workers.
Some of the Good Sam laws (e.g., Minnesota's) create a legal obligation to render aid, in return for the partial immunity from liability. This further emphasizes that there isn't generally a legal obligation to render aid to strangers. There is a moral obligation to do what you can, and someone who beat you up for not rendering aid might be treated leniently by a jury.
The freedom to see, modify and share the code I use.
Why should you have a right to see code that somebody else wrote [and is a derivative of some third party's Libre code, and is being distributed to me] unless they want you to?
Why in the world should I not? The idea that you should be able to take and never have to give (as MS does with BSD code, for example) seems very odd. Notice my interjections to your quote. If the software is all yours, it's a different matter entirely. We're talking about derivative works, where you're adding something to someone else's code.
Your idea seems to be that it's ok for you to take something someone else made, and have a monopoly, not only on your additions to the other person's work (which the LGPL allows), but the portions of the original you incorporated with them. Yes, that doesn't give you a monopoly on the other person's original, but it still seems really rude.
Then there's the practical problem the BSD license opens up by allowing embrace-and-extend, but let's not chase that rabbit.
As I said, the extra freedom that the BSD license gives you comes at my expense. It's not more free, it's differently free. If it's more free for you, it's less free for me.
The BSD license does not restrict your freedom to see code which was already in the open. It simply makes it possible for people to make their OWN modifications private.
I'm pretty sure that's what I said:
``Unfortunately, the BSD license is better at preserving your freedom to take away my freedoms than it is at preserving my freedom to see, modify and share.''
As I said in another post:
The reason that RMS wrote the GPL the way he did is that your extra freedom to relicense your derivative work comes at the expense of my freedom to see, modify and share the derivative work.
It's a zero-sum difference, and that's why I don't see the BSD (and other non-copyleft) licenses as being more free: they redistribute the freedom, but don't increase it. They're not more free, they're differently free.
I don't think they'd do that -- the purpose behind the OSI-conformant requirement is to maintain an iron grip on the projects on SF.net. Allowing non-conforming projects to exist would invalidate the entire point of SF.net, which was to consolidate all OSS projects in one place where they can be controlled by the ideologues of the OSS movement.
The change would be pulling the rug out from under a bunch of projects with the Artistic license, the MPL, and so on. I don't know what SourceForge really wants, but I'd guess they aren't in a panic about an Artistic licensed project suddenly not being OSI-conformant.
As for ``OSS ideologues'', that almost sounds like an oxymoron. I thought that the whole point to the OSS movement was to distance themselves from ideology, and speak only of practical, non-ideological reasons to distribute source code.
I understand that you want to beat the rush, but it may be just a little too early to panic about this.
If the OSI told me that I couldn't use the "Really Free Software License", or they woudln't "certify" it, why should I give a flying [expletive] about it?
I think the problem is companies like Sun with their silly, free-till-we-get-our-hooks-in-you licenses. They need OSI certification for PR purposes, and OSI has been a bit too eager to give it to them.
I don't see why you should care, either. I do think it would be a bright idea to use either GPL or BSD, rather than one of the 56 others they certified, since they're most widely known and most likely to attract other developers, but it's your project and your choice.
... some of us... view the BSD lisences as MORE free: someone can create a derivitive work without having significant liscence restrictions on that...
The reason that RMS wrote the GPL the way he did is that your extra freedom to relicense your derivative work comes at the expense of my freedom to see, modify and share the derivative work.
It's a zero-sum difference, and that's why I don't see the BSD (and other non-copyleft) licenses as being more free: they redistribute the freedom, but don't increase it. They're not more free, they're differently free.
It's that OSI has been too eager to approve licenses, and its standards are a little too lax.
If they had required that new licenses bring some real benefit to the community of users and developers, rather than merely benefitting the company which proposes it, there wouldn't be 58 licenses.
I don't think that 58 licenses is necessarily too many, but 58 infitesimally different, bad licenses is definitely too many.
I think that OSI can't afford to dump on the people whose licenses they've certified, so this talk of reducing the number of licenses to 3 is silly. I think that they could afford to deprecate most of those 58 (e.g., ``That license is still certified, but only for software which was issued under that license before Nonuary 2006.''), and make sure that they are a little more selective about what they approve in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
I feel sorry for you europeans who only get four weeks a year. I'm sure something makes up for it. Maybe the low taxes?
God forbid that I should RTFA; after all, this is slashdot.
Well, as long as the postage stamp is running Quatro Pro and is hooked to a 21 inch monitor (the boss has bad eyes, needs big fonts...).
Yes, I'm in Alaska. No red clay, no kudzu, no seasons, no sun. Yes, I moved here on purpose: it's home.
Where are you? Are you looking for engineers|statisticians?
Senator Censorship comes from the only state which fronts on two oceans and one sea. I've lived on three coasts while staying in the same state.
I'm pretty sure that's why he keeps getting voted back into office.
Come on, kick us out of the union. Our Congress-critters are a bunch of bums, and Federal spending in Alaska is nearly twice what we pay in taxes. You know you want us out. Pleeeeeeeease!
Ted and Lisa and Don are part of our fiendish plot to get the U.S. so sick of us that they kick us out, so that we don't have to go to the bother of a revolution. Sort of a ``be revolting so we don't have to revolt'' strategy.
Unfortunately, my boss uses spreadsheets (for populatoin models) with way more than 65k rows. He's stuck with Corel's spreadsheet, because it will do 1M by 1M spreadsheets.
Obviously, we shouldn't be doing that sort of thing is a spreadsheet, but that's another story.
Yep, that's right. So, as I said, if they were consistantly including OS cost, Unix and Linux are doing far better than they look. Since they're looking pretty good already, that's doubly nifty.
>I wonder if that figure includes software licenses, or if it is just for the server hardware.
Well, if they're consistant, does it really matter?
Maybe it would: if the Windows figure is license revenue, and the Unix figure is too, then the fact that Linux makes up 9% of the Unix number becomes even more impressive.
The folks who build and sell the new boxes probably would call it an improvement, and some of them still live in the U.S.
If the whole market is growing, then Linux could be gaining market share and MS could be losing market share, but MS could still be shipping more than ever.
That (i.e., the whole market is growing) is what we see happening, though that doesn't mean that MS is actually losing market share: thay may simply be gaining more slowly than before.
Growth in Linux is good, but overall growth in IT means more jobs, and that's even better.
Sorry, wrong in your implications, and maybe your facts.
The ``animals'' that have the most impact on the global climate may well be the phytoplankton. Scroll down toward the bottom to see how they may be responsible for ice ages.
I'd say that salmon have a huge effect on my local climate, too. Thousands of tons of salmon become thousands of tons of bear-crap, and that, together with more thousands of tons of rotting salmon, fertillizes the forests all across the arctic and sub-arctic. It's a source of energy and nutrients that has changed the ecosystem here enormously. Resettlement of Alaska after the ice age seems to have followed the salmon streams.
Beavers and bush-stomping elepants may be the biggest things you notice, but the things we don't notice can be a lot bigger.
I'm not sure where you get the idea that damming a river or strip mining or clear-cutting forest can't be defined as "negative" to our surroundings, but I'd like to know. Positive to man's economy, sure.
Our human economy is part of our human environment, but I bet that's not what you meant.
How about this: we humans are plains apes, and a clear cut forest becomes a plain, then becomes either farmland or a brushland. Brushland and farmland are both far more productive of things to eat than the forest was, and that's good for deer, rabbits, and bear, and the things (like us) that eat them.
As for strip mining, it doesn't have to be a bad thing. The Usibelli family has been restoring the damage their strip mining has done for many years now, and hunters find that the old strip mined areas are the best habitat in the area. Yes, that link is to a coal mining company, but the folks who live around there will tell you that the page understates their success.
So, an overview of oceanography is both necessary and sufficent to make one an expert on climate dynamics? I hope you'll excuse me if I don't take the ``sufficient'' part of that very seriously. The necessary part is slightly more plausible: the oceans play a large part in the global climate, but we don't yet understand that part!.
Since you're into oceanography, you might find this interesting: "Give me half a tanker full of iron and I'll give you another ice age.", a modest proposal by John Martin.
So, is ``Q&A'' anything like T&A? Because if it is, you don't want to disclose it. Or, you should at least sell tickets first.
I think that you are waaaaay too optimistic about the integrity, decency and intelligence of our career politicians. No, that's not sarcasm, and no, I'm not singling out the Republicrats or the Democans.
I am pretty sure there are a few honest, decent, intelligent people in the senate and congress, but I can't imagine how they can breath with the clothespins on their noses.
Maybe it's that hypoxia that makes so many promising candidates with good character turn into lying good ol' boys after a couple of terms. Maybe it's the just the ineluctable, exhausting fact that the scumbag majority not only keep getting re-elected, but they keep getting richer.
My understanding of U.S. Good Samaritan laws is that they protect those who, without obligation and any statutory protections that go with it, help strangers in need. Thus, a doctor who stops at a car crash and renders medical aid is protected from most liability by a Good Sam law. Again, this is needed because the doctor is not legally obligated to help, and might overlook his moral obligation in the absense of a Good Sam law.
I'm using a doctor as an example because many of the Good Sam laws target doctors, nurses, EMTs, et cetera, and may not apply to the general public. Minnesota's) Good Sam law does include those who aren't healthcare workers.
Some of the Good Sam laws (e.g., Minnesota's) create a legal obligation to render aid, in return for the partial immunity from liability. This further emphasizes that there isn't generally a legal obligation to render aid to strangers. There is a moral obligation to do what you can, and someone who beat you up for not rendering aid might be treated leniently by a jury.
The freedom to see, modify and share the code I use.
Why should you have a right to see code that somebody else wrote [and is a derivative of some third party's Libre code, and is being distributed to me] unless they want you to?
Why in the world should I not? The idea that you should be able to take and never have to give (as MS does with BSD code, for example) seems very odd. Notice my interjections to your quote. If the software is all yours, it's a different matter entirely. We're talking about derivative works, where you're adding something to someone else's code.
Your idea seems to be that it's ok for you to take something someone else made, and have a monopoly, not only on your additions to the other person's work (which the LGPL allows), but the portions of the original you incorporated with them. Yes, that doesn't give you a monopoly on the other person's original, but it still seems really rude.
Then there's the practical problem the BSD license opens up by allowing embrace-and-extend, but let's not chase that rabbit.
As I said, the extra freedom that the BSD license gives you comes at my expense. It's not more free, it's differently free. If it's more free for you, it's less free for me.
I'm pretty sure that's what I said:
As I said in another post:
The change would be pulling the rug out from under a bunch of projects with the Artistic license, the MPL, and so on. I don't know what SourceForge really wants, but I'd guess they aren't in a panic about an Artistic licensed project suddenly not being OSI-conformant.
As for ``OSS ideologues'', that almost sounds like an oxymoron. I thought that the whole point to the OSS movement was to distance themselves from ideology, and speak only of practical, non-ideological reasons to distribute source code.
I understand that you want to beat the rush, but it may be just a little too early to panic about this.
I think the problem is companies like Sun with their silly, free-till-we-get-our-hooks-in-you licenses. They need OSI certification for PR purposes, and OSI has been a bit too eager to give it to them.
I don't see why you should care, either. I do think it would be a bright idea to use either GPL or BSD, rather than one of the 56 others they certified, since they're most widely known and most likely to attract other developers, but it's your project and your choice.
The reason that RMS wrote the GPL the way he did is that your extra freedom to relicense your derivative work comes at the expense of my freedom to see, modify and share the derivative work.
It's a zero-sum difference, and that's why I don't see the BSD (and other non-copyleft) licenses as being more free: they redistribute the freedom, but don't increase it. They're not more free, they're differently free.
If they had required that new licenses bring some real benefit to the community of users and developers, rather than merely benefitting the company which proposes it, there wouldn't be 58 licenses.
I don't think that 58 licenses is necessarily too many, but 58 infitesimally different, bad licenses is definitely too many.
I think that OSI can't afford to dump on the people whose licenses they've certified, so this talk of reducing the number of licenses to 3 is silly. I think that they could afford to deprecate most of those 58 (e.g., ``That license is still certified, but only for software which was issued under that license before Nonuary 2006.''), and make sure that they are a little more selective about what they approve in the future.
How about a license that was OSI-conformant when admitted to SourceForge? That interpretation (or perhaps rewording) would solve the problem.