Most people just do a "sudo apt-get install" now or click on "Install" in the update manager.
FOSS is mature in that it has a boring, straight-laced, conformist main-stream that caters to 99.9% of the public's needs with unsurprising conventional applications.
We have become institutionalised and the cutting edge has been blunted.
I think the powers the control the industry's developmental drive are either incompetent or willfully trying to keep the tech moving slowly. this bothers me.
Malice and stupidity. The philosophy is quite simple: "Whatever's cheapest in the short term."
But why doesn't it also work the other way? How come the multi-milion dollar paychecks and share payouts to the board of directors aren't the first thing to go when the company does badly? Its even strictly speaking their fault right? They set policy and direction that resulted in poorer performance, or failed to anticipate changing markets. They did poorly at their jobs.
Because a company is simply a vehicle for putting money (from whatever sources) into the hands of its shareholders. How many times have you heard, "We've broken even despite the downturn" or "We made a profit but good is the enemy of better" and "We must keep paying our investors?"
Everything else is incidental. Everything, especially the workers, who are nothing more than an inconvenient cost to be controlled, at best.
Customer focus? Customers are there to be kept sweet just as much as possible to part with the next wad of cash. Nothing more.
Absolutely everything is about getting as much money into the hands of the "investors" as possible. In a mature market with no space left to grow, the biggest return comes from cutting the cost base. The future (beyond the next quarter's results) is irrelevant, since the investors will cash out at the first sign of trouble and put their money somewhere else.
It never used to be like this. Something happened in the 1980s that started all this off and once-mighty, forward-looking corporations began to wither and die.
I would also point out that there are full open source implementations of the SPARC architecture, which never suffered from the patent problems of MIPS.
...but they do suffer from (a very poor implementation of) register windows.
In that case I'm going to paint "Jockanese Galactic" on my 10-year-old Vauxhal Vectra Diesel and sell rides up to the top of Shap Summit on the M6 for £200k.
A couple of dozen of those, and I'll be able to retire in style.
Because it isn't crap. It's high-quality technical music made by people who have put a lifetime's effort into learning how to do it well. Not like the rubbish they play on BBC Radio 1 and 2.
I do, but all the new Megadeth stuff, and Mastodon is particularly badly clipped:-(. I go to gigs when I can, but I'm a busy parent these days. I don't want to "steal music" off the internet,so I buy CDs. I want my full dynamic-range, uncompressed 44.1kHz stereo audio. I'm not an audiophile and I don't claim to have golden ears, but I can hear the difference. I want my 441.kHz PCM stereo audio so that I can transcode it (without artifacts) as I see fit. I transcode to FLAC and ogg/vorbis.
I haven't been able to listen to a CD all the way through since 2005. My ears give up on the second or third track, or I end up having to turn the volume way down. The sound quality is almost as bad as the analogue tapes we used to suffer in the 80s. Those watery cymbals...
Some people will pay good money to go up in a balloon for a few hours and drink champagne.
There is a new class of super-rich oligarchs who are concentrating vast amounts of the world's wealth in their own hands.
For our own economic survival, we need to take advantage of the "free" market and innovate ways of getting that wealth back into the economy, legitimately.
What could be better than fostering a high-tech, forward-looking industry of highly educated scientists and engineers to make the toys for these people? It's better than making new ways to kill our foreign brothers and sisters en masse (nuclear and chemical weapons, for example).
I'm thinking of the first orbital hotels in space-stations in Earth orbit for very rich space tourists. Presumably there will be a need for exciting, high-quality novel cuisine in this environment? And cooking facilities?
Then will come the tourist trips to the Moon and eventually Mars.
Slashdot Mirror
what part of this am I not getting?
It's a sign of the times.
Most people just do a "sudo apt-get install" now or click on "Install" in the update manager.
FOSS is mature in that it has a boring, straight-laced, conformist main-stream that caters to 99.9% of the public's needs with unsurprising conventional applications.
We have become institutionalised and the cutting edge has been blunted.
Now? I really won't bother building Windowmaker applets or LibSpinyEchidna.so from source. :-)
I would, if only I had the time these days.
In fact I have some teency tiny scripts for making WINGs into a shared library. I half-wrote a calculator application using it about 8 years ago.
Still using WindowMaker, on Slackware64, but I install the binary package, I don't build from source :-)
What about a pointed stick?
So not Communist, then?
Irony upon irony. We're getting this list from a Communist nation
A Communist country where people can own companies and trade stocks and shares?
Publishers aren't Amazon's suppliers: writers are. Publishers are just middle-men who get in the way.
Amazon is a middle-man. It just gets in the way between the creators and consumers.
I think the powers the control the industry's developmental drive are either incompetent or willfully trying to keep the tech moving slowly. this bothers me.
Malice and stupidity. The philosophy is quite simple: "Whatever's cheapest in the short term."
But why doesn't it also work the other way? How come the multi-milion dollar paychecks and share payouts to the board of directors aren't the first thing to go when the company does badly? Its even strictly speaking their fault right? They set policy and direction that resulted in poorer performance, or failed to anticipate changing markets. They did poorly at their jobs.
Because a company is simply a vehicle for putting money (from whatever sources) into the hands of its shareholders. How many times have you heard, "We've broken even despite the downturn" or "We made a profit but good is the enemy of better" and "We must keep paying our investors?"
Everything else is incidental. Everything, especially the workers, who are nothing more than an inconvenient cost to be controlled, at best.
Customer focus? Customers are there to be kept sweet just as much as possible to part with the next wad of cash. Nothing more.
Absolutely everything is about getting as much money into the hands of the "investors" as possible. In a mature market with no space left to grow, the biggest return comes from cutting the cost base. The future (beyond the next quarter's results) is irrelevant, since the investors will cash out at the first sign of trouble and put their money somewhere else.
It never used to be like this. Something happened in the 1980s that started all this off and once-mighty, forward-looking corporations began to wither and die.
Someone broke capitalism.
I call BS.
Do you now?
And they treat their staff exceptionally well.
Well let me clue you in. Sounds lovely, doesn't it?
We, as a society, shouldn't put up with this.
Don't give Amazon your money. They avoid paying tax and they treat their staff like dirt. Choose an alternative.
Good point. Alan Kay is indeed a very clever fellow!
The winner of this thread.
I would also point out that there are full open source implementations of the SPARC architecture, which never suffered from the patent problems of MIPS.
...but they do suffer from (a very poor implementation of) register windows.
Och aye, and a complimentary dram of Glenmorangie!
In that case I'm going to paint "Jockanese Galactic" on my 10-year-old Vauxhal Vectra Diesel and sell rides up to the top of Shap Summit on the M6 for £200k.
A couple of dozen of those, and I'll be able to retire in style.
Because it isn't crap. It's high-quality technical music made by people who have put a lifetime's effort into learning how to do it well. Not like the rubbish they play on BBC Radio 1 and 2.
I do, but all the new Megadeth stuff, and Mastodon is particularly badly clipped :-(. I go to gigs when I can, but I'm a busy parent these days. I don't want to "steal music" off the internet,so I buy CDs. I want my full dynamic-range, uncompressed 44.1kHz stereo audio. I'm not an audiophile and I don't claim to have golden ears, but I can hear the difference. I want my 441.kHz PCM stereo audio so that I can transcode it (without artifacts) as I see fit. I transcode to FLAC and ogg/vorbis.
.Is that too much to ask for?
I haven't been able to listen to a CD all the way through since 2005. My ears give up on the second or third track, or I end up having to turn the volume way down. The sound quality is almost as bad as the analogue tapes we used to suffer in the 80s. Those watery cymbals...
Sorry, I was short of karma, and this place is full of Microsoft shills nowadays.
We've all moved on to Windows 8.1. Linux was an interesting historical diversion. The Mac is just for hipsters.
Some people will pay good money to go up in a balloon for a few hours and drink champagne.
There is a new class of super-rich oligarchs who are concentrating vast amounts of the world's wealth in their own hands.
For our own economic survival, we need to take advantage of the "free" market and innovate ways of getting that wealth back into the economy, legitimately.
What could be better than fostering a high-tech, forward-looking industry of highly educated scientists and engineers to make the toys for these people? It's better than making new ways to kill our foreign brothers and sisters en masse (nuclear and chemical weapons, for example).
What are watchdog timers for? When the RAM fills up and the program gets corrupted...
What sort of Mickey-Mouse OS doesn't clean up after its dynamic libraries?
What will space food be like?
I'm thinking of the first orbital hotels in space-stations in Earth orbit for very rich space tourists. Presumably there will be a need for exciting, high-quality novel cuisine in this environment? And cooking facilities?
Then will come the tourist trips to the Moon and eventually Mars.
What ideas do you have?
I don't know anyone who worries about garbage collection in C++11.
Quite. The OS cleans it all up after the application exits, anyway.