Now throw GPLv3 in and you throw a monkey wrench in. You only see GPL software on techies machines because they know what the consequences are.
Most users are not even aware of GPL. To most people the only distinction is between software they pay for, and software they do not pay for (which includes Windows because it came on their PC).
Businesses might be slightly more sophisticated because they deal with things like site licenses, but all they will care abut the GPL is whether they have to pay for it.
I use KDE, because I like a number of KDE apps (file managers, especially) so it makes sense to use it. It is set up to look very like I had XFCE set up when I used it (two panels, one vertical on the side with icons of running apps, one small one over part of window title bar at the top with system tray and some applets).
My wife uses XFCE, and is quite happy with it, and does not care what she uses.
My older daughter uses XFCE because Gnome was heavy on her laptop.
My younger daughter uses KDE because she likes the desktop cube and other eye-candy.
I do not think any of us want to use the same "standard" desktop as the others.
If you are reading a paper book they can see that you are reading a paper book, and (if they can see enough of the cover) what book you are reading.
One of the advantages of books on shelves is that they tell you a lot about people's tastes and interests, and from that become a starting point for conversation etc.
It may not look like a big difference from the readers point of view, but from others point of view a paper book is very different.
More and more, academics are releasing their code under the BSD/ISC licences because they realise that because they are receiving public money to fund their code and research, by dint of this, they must release the results of that money to the public in a maximally free way,
That amounts to the public paying for all the bakeries ingredients, and then the bakery sells bread back to the public. Yes, that's a pretty ideal system for the baker; not such a good deal for the public though. Why are they funding the baker's ingredients exactly?
Exactly. I wonder how many of the academics choosing BSD like licences are later setting up businesses that use closed source derivatives of that code? That way, they can close the code, regardless of whether they personally hold the copyright or not, and including any outside contributions.
Exactly, I keep hearing the argument that "the constitution only prevents the government from infringing on free speech", which is what it says, but this is a question of what it ought to do, not what it does do.
An interesting definition of socialism certainly "a bit less right wing than the other right wing party". One of the strange things about American politics is that the US has not had a left wing part for a long time, if ever. The UK is like that now (Corbyn aside) and it seems the way things are going.
Neil Kinnock, the former leader of the British Labour party told a story in an interview about an American woman you looked at him in astonishment and said "You can't be socialists, you're too nice".
A lot of the world (most of Europe for a start) has had numerous socialist governments without any more murder than under right wing governments. Oh, you mean communists? Different from socialists, and no American government has been anywhere near being either.
Not true. Clojure is dynamically typed, Frege has the same type system as Haskell and is pure functional. Ioke is prototype based. Jython is source compatible with other python implementations Python. These are not just syntactic sugar.
The JVM is becoming less limited with each release
So, they were called hobbits because they look like small humans. They are NOT humans, but they still LOOK like humans, just like Tolkein's hobbits (the commonest association), so the name is appropriate.
Its much worse though surely. It is as hard to recruit teachers as for maths or science, AND the number of teachers required has suddenly increased. The govt think they can fix it by retraining ICT teachers, but as the GP points out they do not have any real coputer science or coding background. Retraining them to teach computing is like retraining PE teachers to teach maths.
The headline is misleading: its "high share price", not "too big". Its perfectly possible for a small company to have a high share price.
Share prices can be much higher, Berkshire Hathaway has a price of 103,000
The main reason the Dow is used by the media, is because ignorant financial journalists think its the best measure - it is in their terms, where "best" means most brand recognition.
The only legitimate reason for using it is for long term comparisons: it has existed a lot longer than the S & P 500, or any properly constructed index.
The device manufacturers will almost certainly provide OEM Window's pre-installs, signed with their own keys, which will be changed at intervals.
That way, you will not be able to upgrade to a new version of Windows, reducing product life cycle, increasing hardware sales. Very bad for the environment.
I am not quite sure how to compare the two meaningfully, but Wesnoth is quite complex and hard to learn. As evidence look at the number of newbies who appear on the Wesnoth forums to complain about how hard it is, accuse the AI of cheating, etc.
Are the same tax breaks not available to secular charities?
As far as tax breaks go, the basic principle should be that if it is an organisation that is supported by donations rather than commercial activity, or to which you can reasonably expect people to make donations, and it is structured to put all its profits/excess money into furthering its aims rather than making a profit for someone, then it should get tax breaks.
Where do secular non-profits not get tax breaks? IN every country I know of, there is some kind of registered charity system that gives all kinds of organisations with tax breaks.
It is equally unfair when you get situations (as in Britain) where the rules for religious non-profits to get tax breaks are tougher than for non-religious ones (but educational ones get the toughest because the "benefit the rich").
If content producers know that anything they produce is "up for grabs", what incentive do they have to keep producing?
Exactly the same incentives they had before copyright was introduced.
There is absolutely no evidence that the benefits of the extra incentive provided by copyright outweighs its costs.
It is also obvious that the reason for copyright is not to provide an incentive. There is a negligible difference in incentive between a thirty year fixed copyright term and life plus seventy - but the latter hugely shrinks the public domain and increases costs to consumers in order to benefit professional descendants like Christopher Tolkein.
Java and Ceylon are used as alternates in a line from a hymn:
"What though the spicy breezes Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle Where every prospect pleases And only man is vile"
Probably not a deliberate reference, unless someone only knows the first sentence of it. That said, a language that pleases will attract some vile developers so it may be inappropriate.
Ceylon has a bit of an old fashioned ring to it - at least as seen from here in Ceylon.
Quite a lot of what is happening at the moment reminds me of the Foundation series or the decline of the Roman Empire - slowing technological advances, loss of interest in science, weakening governance.....
Roman civilisation never disappeared entirely. The Eastern Roman lasted until after the Renaissance started.
Slashdot Mirror
Now throw GPLv3 in and you throw a monkey wrench in. You only see GPL software on techies machines because they know what the consequences are.
Most users are not even aware of GPL. To most people the only distinction is between software they pay for, and software they do not pay for (which includes Windows because it came on their PC).
Businesses might be slightly more sophisticated because they deal with things like site licenses, but all they will care abut the GPL is whether they have to pay for it.
I use KDE, because I like a number of KDE apps (file managers, especially) so it makes sense to use it. It is set up to look very like I had XFCE set up when I used it (two panels, one vertical on the side with icons of running apps, one small one over part of window title bar at the top with system tray and some applets).
My wife uses XFCE, and is quite happy with it, and does not care what she uses.
My older daughter uses XFCE because Gnome was heavy on her laptop.
My younger daughter uses KDE because she likes the desktop cube and other eye-candy.
I do not think any of us want to use the same "standard" desktop as the others.
If you are reading a paper book they can see that you are reading a paper book, and (if they can see enough of the cover) what book you are reading.
One of the advantages of books on shelves is that they tell you a lot about people's tastes and interests, and from that become a starting point for conversation etc.
It may not look like a big difference from the readers point of view, but from others point of view a paper book is very different.
More and more, academics are releasing their code under the BSD/ISC licences because they realise that because they are receiving public money to fund their code and research, by dint of this, they must release the results of that money to the public in a maximally free way,
That amounts to the public paying for all the bakeries ingredients, and then the bakery sells bread back to the public. Yes, that's a pretty ideal system for the baker; not such a good deal for the public though. Why are they funding the baker's ingredients exactly?
Exactly. I wonder how many of the academics choosing BSD like licences are later setting up businesses that use closed source derivatives of that code? That way, they can close the code, regardless of whether they personally hold the copyright or not, and including any outside contributions.
Exactly, I keep hearing the argument that "the constitution only prevents the government from infringing on free speech", which is what it says, but this is a question of what it ought to do, not what it does do.
An interesting definition of socialism certainly "a bit less right wing than the other right wing party". One of the strange things about American politics is that the US has not had a left wing part for a long time, if ever. The UK is like that now (Corbyn aside) and it seems the way things are going.
Neil Kinnock, the former leader of the British Labour party told a story in an interview about an American woman you looked at him in astonishment and said "You can't be socialists, you're too nice".
A lot of the world (most of Europe for a start) has had numerous socialist governments without any more murder than under right wing governments. Oh, you mean communists? Different from socialists, and no American government has been anywhere near being either.
Not true. Clojure is dynamically typed, Frege has the same type system as Haskell and is pure functional. Ioke is prototype based. Jython is source compatible with other python implementations Python. These are not just syntactic sugar.
The JVM is becoming less limited with each release
Jython is up to 2.7 http://www.jython.org/
So, they were called hobbits because they look like small humans. They are NOT humans, but they still LOOK like humans, just like Tolkein's hobbits (the commonest association), so the name is appropriate.
Its much worse though surely. It is as hard to recruit teachers as for maths or science, AND the number of teachers required has suddenly increased. The govt think they can fix it by retraining ICT teachers, but as the GP points out they do not have any real coputer science or coding background. Retraining them to teach computing is like retraining PE teachers to teach maths.
Wrong, its not anti-capitalist, it is anti-free markets.
It fits in perfectly with coporate welfare, crony capitalism or mercantilism.
The SSL core team all appear to be professionals.
I have not checked, but most of the contributors probably are too.
The same is true of most big open source projects (like the Linux Kernel).
The differences are:
1) There is better disclosure of bugs in open source
2) some bugs can be discovered by third party audit (as the GNUTLS bug was)
Most people have only read the intro-level stuff. What those in the field know needs wider circulation.
An index is not exactly doing a good job of selection if whether a company wants to be in can influence whether it is in.
The headline is misleading: its "high share price", not "too big". Its perfectly possible for a small company to have a high share price.
Share prices can be much higher, Berkshire Hathaway has a price of 103,000
The main reason the Dow is used by the media, is because ignorant financial journalists think its the best measure - it is in their terms, where "best" means most brand recognition.
The only legitimate reason for using it is for long term comparisons: it has existed a lot longer than the S & P 500, or any properly constructed index.
Full explanation here http://moneyterms.co.uk/dow-jones/
The device manufacturers will almost certainly provide OEM Window's pre-installs, signed with their own keys, which will be changed at intervals.
That way, you will not be able to upgrade to a new version of Windows, reducing product life cycle, increasing hardware sales. Very bad for the environment.
No they are antithetical to free market capitalism.
You could argue that they are a return to mercantilism.
Are other governments crazy to use proprietary software from American companies, given that the US would be crazy not to use it to spy on them?
I am not quite sure how to compare the two meaningfully, but Wesnoth is quite complex and hard to learn. As evidence look at the number of newbies who appear on the Wesnoth forums to complain about how hard it is, accuse the AI of cheating, etc.
What exemptions?
Are the same tax breaks not available to secular charities?
As far as tax breaks go, the basic principle should be that if it is an organisation that is supported by donations rather than commercial activity, or to which you can reasonably expect people to make donations, and it is structured to put all its profits/excess money into furthering its aims rather than making a profit for someone, then it should get tax breaks.
Where do secular non-profits not get tax breaks? IN every country I know of, there is some kind of registered charity system that gives all kinds of organisations with tax breaks.
It is equally unfair when you get situations (as in Britain) where the rules for religious non-profits to get tax breaks are tougher than for non-religious ones (but educational ones get the toughest because the "benefit the rich").
If content producers know that anything they produce is "up for grabs", what incentive do they have to keep producing?
Exactly the same incentives they had before copyright was introduced.
There is absolutely no evidence that the benefits of the extra incentive provided by copyright outweighs its costs.
It is also obvious that the reason for copyright is not to provide an incentive. There is a negligible difference in incentive between a thirty year fixed copyright term and life plus seventy - but the latter hugely shrinks the public domain and increases costs to consumers in order to benefit professional descendants like Christopher Tolkein.
Java and Ceylon are used as alternates in a line from a hymn:
"What though the spicy breezes Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle Where every prospect pleases And only man is vile"
Probably not a deliberate reference, unless someone only knows the first sentence of it. That said, a language that pleases will attract some vile developers so it may be inappropriate.
Ceylon has a bit of an old fashioned ring to it - at least as seen from here in Ceylon.
Quite a lot of what is happening at the moment reminds me of the Foundation series or the decline of the Roman Empire - slowing technological advances, loss of interest in science, weakening governance.....
Roman civilisation never disappeared entirely. The Eastern Roman lasted until after the Renaissance started.