Porting FOSS applications to windows causes as much harm as WINE does. They both accomplish the same thing, allowing closed source software and FOSS to run together.
This can be good or bad depending what your goal is. For the people (like RMS) who think that ALL software should be FOSS this is a bad thing. They want to create an "us" and "them" that can't be mixed and then once the "us" is so much better then "them" everybody will switch and closed source is a thing of the past.
For people that think that closed source is just fine and dandy and that the goal is just the best possible software, this is a good thing. It allows people to pick the parts that suits them the best independently of if they are closed source or FOSS.
There is defenetly a good argument that all software should be FOSS. Closed source is like a car that you can't fix if it breaks down. The only way to fix it is to send it to a licensed shop, of which there is currently only one, and it's not interested in fixing your car. Would you buy such a car?
Personally tend to belong to the latter group. While I think that that car is crappy, I don't think it should be forbidden. But people should be educated about what it is they buy. And about that there is choise.
To me WINE and win-ports of FOSS sounds like a good idea. It allows people and companies to make a gradual transition into FOSS. Which I think will allow for a much quicker transition for the masses into FOSS. Also, it keeps competition at maximum which will make for better both FOSS and closed source software.
Wow, has parents really become that bad that they don't even trust their kids to drive. In that case they deserve to get what's comming to them when their kids turn off the phone and speed anyway.
Not that this really affects me. I'm too grown up by now (and I don't have crappy parents), and I certainly don't plan on using this on my kids.
That's not always true. When it comes to movies there's often just a single movie per torrent.
However music is often distributed by album and tv shows by season. I've even seen torrents containing 'all queen albums' or '15 first madonna records'. There was even a 30GB torrent with the 15 first simpsons seasons floating around. That should add up to a nice lawsuit.
What I'm curious about is if they can sue you for sharing half a movie. I mean, the random parts that you're usually sharing are useless on their own. Most people don't seed very long. Most likly not long enough for MPAA to download the entire thing from a single person.
And unless they are willing to get a really slow download speed (enhancing the above problem) they have to share the file while downloading. Seems like that would open a can of worms too.
The interesting part is that it would be much harder to make a real grandfather clock (like the one at my ancestral home) - because Lego in comparison is easier to build.
Maybe so, but where's the coolness factor in that?
If RMS hears crazytalk like that he's gonna smack you so hard;-)
(disclaimer: I have a lot of respect for RMS and thank him for playing part in creating a foundation on which a lot of OSS is built on. That doesn't mean he's not a bit crazy around the edges though.)
Yup, and the end result is that many people don't know about these events. Making something too horrible to talk about is the best way to make sure that it happens again.
I'm not saying that making games where gasing jews gives bonuspoints or bombing Dresden earns extralives is a good idea, you need to have a sense of respect for horrible events. But censoring all the 'not glorious' events will give people a very scewed view of war.
I'm not living in the US you insensitive clod! My Automobile will be able to do those things!
Re:Just because we can?
on
Flying By Brain
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
To a certain extent I do agree with you. Taking a conscious brain out of a rat and hooking it up to wires would be a horrible thing to do. If we want to play around with a brain we should build our own.
But isn't that more or less what they did here? It sounds like they're just taking a few cells out of a rat and then growing them on a dish. We've done this for ages, growing cells and bacteria on dishes and used for all kinds of research and other things.
When you say start from scratch, to what level of complexity should we go. Creating our own cells? Creating our own polymer? Creating our own molecules? We certainly couldn't create our own atoms. In this experiment they went to a level so low that there were no consciousness, isn't that what's important?
Also, isn't it just as important how high level of complexity you build out of those blocks, I.e. if you build something as intelligent as a cell, or as a fly, or as an animal. I would argue that this is much more important. If we build something that can have feelings and emotions, does it really matter if that thing is built out of chemical cells or electric transistors?
Yes, there are certainly boundries that must not be crossed in this type of research, but I don't think there was enough information in either article to say that that boundry was crossed.
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So I can either buy stuff from the area before it vanishes forever, or I can stay in the area really really cheap. I could see someone wanting to do the first, but the second, not so sure about that.
1. While thier contract is for billions of dollars, the profit, which is what counts, is only going to be 1-2% at best. This is a very very low margin for their normal operations (10-40%) and they are thinking about getting out because it is not worth it. Any idea that they are makes billions is bull-shit. Profit is a measure of the money you have left after the contract, not the size of the contract.
There's not just immideate profit that you look for. Getting a foot in the door to iraq could mean big money in the future once the country has stabalized and the money start flowing (which could be a lot of money in a country like Iraq). Also, if top managers can increase their salaries or bonuses due to the increased number of contracts that won't show up as profit.
But above all, why weren't the contracts given to Iraqi firms? This way they can quicker get back on their feet by keeping the money in their country as well as getting jobs for the citizens. It's a well known fact that the best way to keep wars from happening is by building a working economy. This was how EU started out, as a union after WWII between France and Germany to give them an economic incentive to keep them from going to war again.
2. Over 48 Halliburtion employees have died in Iraq. 124+ have been wounded.
This is very raw, but how many of them were top managers that had signed up for the contract in the first place?
I'm sure I don't have all the facts and that my oppinions can be wrong, but I just don't see this Halliburton thing being the RightThing.
Who says that that's not something that they want? Europe and the US has a history of never using each other standards. Just look at PAL/NTSC, NMT/APMS, GSM/DAMPS, Metric/Imperial, 110V60Hz/230V50Hz.
And these are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. There's defenetly plenty more (I think pulsediling were different before we got tonediling). Then there's 802.11 and bluetooth, both has had difficulty getting over the pond (in different directions), though it seems like finally they are.
Both parties have been equally bad. It's just as often Europe reinventing some existing american weel we the other way around.
As depressing as it sounds, this is probably a Good Thing.
No, this is not a good thing in any way.
If we take as fact that militaries exist to kill, then it follows logically that they will develop tools to kill as effectively as possible
Where'd you get the idea that the military exists to kill? In all "civilized" countries the the military has two primary purposes:
1. To overpower the enemy and for him into submission.
2. To prevent the enemy from doing the same thing to you.
The war in Iraq was (supposedly) to overpower the Iraqies and make them hand over any weapons of mass destruction (though theories about other reasons exist, *cough*oil,halliburton contracts,reelections,etc*cough*). It was never to kill them. In fact, a major goal is to kill as few people as possible.
Weapons like this will only cause the other guy to arm even heavier, which will make number 2 above harder. Also, should one of these weapons ever be used we might not live to see tomorrow. Any of us. (hey, at least the Vogons will be happy).
When a groups primary purpose is to kill, and they're successfull at it, then we call that genocide, not war.
I wonder how many of the people buying those mashines are saying 'hey this linux thing is pretty cool, I think I'll stick to it rather then get windows'. Especially once these countries start cracking down harder on piracy.
Imagine that, MS anti-piracy strategies backfiring on them, who would've thought...
So would this mean that every parking will have a security guard directing you through a metal detector and x-raying your luggage?
And more importantly, will I be allowed to bring nailclippers in my car?
It's a good thing the Telecoms aren't run by RIAA or MPAA. If they were cellphones would probably be outlawed by now since it's clearly destroying the business model of other companies.
Unfortunatly I'm sure this happens all the time. The basic problem is of course that the punishment is smaller then what is gain when commiting the crime. It's the exact same thing when Microsoft breaks antitrust regulations all over the globe, it's simply a business decision.
The cure of course is to increase the punishment of these crimes. When it comes to adverticement, it would be very efficient if the company had to run ads saying "sorry, our last ad was found to not be true. Linux isn't 10 times as expensive after all becuase we didn't run a fair test".
With punishments like that I'm sure companies would think twice before lying in ads.
Another pretty interesting approach was taken recently in sweden by an anti-smoking group. They ran ads saying things like "smoking will reduce the size of your penis" and "smoking makes girls dumb". The purpose of the campain was to show how tobaco companies lied in their ads. The ads did have a small text pointing to the campains homepage where it all was explained.
Wouldn't you just love ads by red-hat saying "Microsoft purposly put security holes in windows so they could sell support time when your systems crash" or "Microsoft Word was written in sweatshops in tanzania":-)
Google is already big, so the only instant millionares to come of this will be the people who work there.
And isn't that great! Why should you or me make a million on google when we havn't put in a minute of effort into making it what it is. Why should a company award it's investors rather then it's emplyees, when it's obvious that it's the employees who made it the success it is.
Awarding people for great work... interesting idea that maybe more companies should consider.
Google should buy into craigslist! It would be the perfect way marrige. Both have the same philosophy of minimalist but useable interfaces. And googles search technologies and scaling knowledge should set a perfect course for craigslist.
Slashdot Mirror
You're using Socket.pm, and it's huge, that's cheating!
Read the fucking code.
How the hell am I supposed to be able read that code?
Porting FOSS applications to windows causes as much harm as WINE does. They both accomplish the same thing, allowing closed source software and FOSS to run together.
This can be good or bad depending what your goal is. For the people (like RMS) who think that ALL software should be FOSS this is a bad thing. They want to create an "us" and "them" that can't be mixed and then once the "us" is so much better then "them" everybody will switch and closed source is a thing of the past.
For people that think that closed source is just fine and dandy and that the goal is just the best possible software, this is a good thing. It allows people to pick the parts that suits them the best independently of if they are closed source or FOSS.
There is defenetly a good argument that all software should be FOSS. Closed source is like a car that you can't fix if it breaks down. The only way to fix it is to send it to a licensed shop, of which there is currently only one, and it's not interested in fixing your car. Would you buy such a car?
Personally tend to belong to the latter group. While I think that that car is crappy, I don't think it should be forbidden. But people should be educated about what it is they buy. And about that there is choise.
To me WINE and win-ports of FOSS sounds like a good idea. It allows people and companies to make a gradual transition into FOSS. Which I think will allow for a much quicker transition for the masses into FOSS. Also, it keeps competition at maximum which will make for better both FOSS and closed source software.
Wow, has parents really become that bad that they don't even trust their kids to drive. In that case they deserve to get what's comming to them when their kids turn off the phone and speed anyway.
Not that this really affects me. I'm too grown up by now (and I don't have crappy parents), and I certainly don't plan on using this on my kids.
That's not always true. When it comes to movies there's often just a single movie per torrent.
However music is often distributed by album and tv shows by season. I've even seen torrents containing 'all queen albums' or '15 first madonna records'. There was even a 30GB torrent with the 15 first simpsons seasons floating around. That should add up to a nice lawsuit.
What I'm curious about is if they can sue you for sharing half a movie. I mean, the random parts that you're usually sharing are useless on their own. Most people don't seed very long. Most likly not long enough for MPAA to download the entire thing from a single person.
And unless they are willing to get a really slow download speed (enhancing the above problem) they have to share the file while downloading. Seems like that would open a can of worms too.
What I want to know is how he made two hands spin different speeds around the same axis?
The interesting part is that it would be much harder to make a real grandfather clock (like the one at my ancestral home) - because Lego in comparison is easier to build.
Maybe so, but where's the coolness factor in that?
If RMS hears crazytalk like that he's gonna smack you so hard ;-)
(disclaimer: I have a lot of respect for RMS and thank him for playing part in creating a foundation on which a lot of OSS is built on. That doesn't mean he's not a bit crazy around the edges though.)
I could pop up a bash shell and run vi on my files. And all with glistening eye-candy.
Bash and vi with eye-candy? I didn't know hell had frozen over!
Yup, and the end result is that many people don't know about these events. Making something too horrible to talk about is the best way to make sure that it happens again.
I'm not saying that making games where gasing jews gives bonuspoints or bombing Dresden earns extralives is a good idea, you need to have a sense of respect for horrible events. But censoring all the 'not glorious' events will give people a very scewed view of war.
I'm not living in the US you insensitive clod! My Automobile will be able to do those things!
To a certain extent I do agree with you. Taking a conscious brain out of a rat and hooking it up to wires would be a horrible thing to do. If we want to play around with a brain we should build our own.
But isn't that more or less what they did here? It sounds like they're just taking a few cells out of a rat and then growing them on a dish. We've done this for ages, growing cells and bacteria on dishes and used for all kinds of research and other things.
When you say start from scratch, to what level of complexity should we go. Creating our own cells? Creating our own polymer? Creating our own molecules? We certainly couldn't create our own atoms. In this experiment they went to a level so low that there were no consciousness, isn't that what's important?
Also, isn't it just as important how high level of complexity you build out of those blocks, I.e. if you build something as intelligent as a cell, or as a fly, or as an animal. I would argue that this is much more important. If we build something that can have feelings and emotions, does it really matter if that thing is built out of chemical cells or electric transistors?
Yes, there are certainly boundries that must not be crossed in this type of research, but I don't think there was enough information in either article to say that that boundry was crossed.
I got some pretty funny ads reading that article:
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Find St. Helens items at low prices. With over 5 million items for sale every...
www.ebay.com
St Helens - Cheap Hotel Rates
Before booking a hotel, compare hotel room rates at Nextag.
www.nextag.com
So I can either buy stuff from the area before it vanishes forever, or I can stay in the area really really cheap. I could see someone wanting to do the first, but the second, not so sure about that.
Doh! :)
Well, UK is at least switching to metric.
1. While thier contract is for billions of dollars, the profit, which is what counts, is only going to be 1-2% at best. This is a very very low margin for their normal operations (10-40%) and they are thinking about getting out because it is not worth it. Any idea that they are makes billions is bull-shit. Profit is a measure of the money you have left after the contract, not the size of the contract.
There's not just immideate profit that you look for. Getting a foot in the door to iraq could mean big money in the future once the country has stabalized and the money start flowing (which could be a lot of money in a country like Iraq). Also, if top managers can increase their salaries or bonuses due to the increased number of contracts that won't show up as profit.
But above all, why weren't the contracts given to Iraqi firms? This way they can quicker get back on their feet by keeping the money in their country as well as getting jobs for the citizens. It's a well known fact that the best way to keep wars from happening is by building a working economy. This was how EU started out, as a union after WWII between France and Germany to give them an economic incentive to keep them from going to war again.
2. Over 48 Halliburtion employees have died in Iraq. 124+ have been wounded.
This is very raw, but how many of them were top managers that had signed up for the contract in the first place?
I'm sure I don't have all the facts and that my oppinions can be wrong, but I just don't see this Halliburton thing being the RightThing.
Who says that that's not something that they want? Europe and the US has a history of never using each other standards. Just look at PAL/NTSC, NMT/APMS, GSM/DAMPS, Metric/Imperial, 110V60Hz/230V50Hz.
And these are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. There's defenetly plenty more (I think pulsediling were different before we got tonediling). Then there's 802.11 and bluetooth, both has had difficulty getting over the pond (in different directions), though it seems like finally they are.
Both parties have been equally bad. It's just as often Europe reinventing some existing american weel we the other way around.
The loosers, as always, are the customers.
As depressing as it sounds, this is probably a Good Thing.
No, this is not a good thing in any way.
If we take as fact that militaries exist to kill, then it follows logically that they will develop tools to kill as effectively as possible
Where'd you get the idea that the military exists to kill? In all "civilized" countries the the military has two primary purposes:
1. To overpower the enemy and for him into submission.
2. To prevent the enemy from doing the same thing to you.
The war in Iraq was (supposedly) to overpower the Iraqies and make them hand over any weapons of mass destruction (though theories about other reasons exist, *cough*oil,halliburton contracts,reelections,etc*cough*). It was never to kill them. In fact, a major goal is to kill as few people as possible.
Weapons like this will only cause the other guy to arm even heavier, which will make number 2 above harder. Also, should one of these weapons ever be used we might not live to see tomorrow. Any of us. (hey, at least the Vogons will be happy).
When a groups primary purpose is to kill, and they're successfull at it, then we call that genocide, not war.
Maybe in 3 - 5 years, when most of the millionaires have left, but I would certainly NOT join Google right now
So the fact that there's a lot of millionaires there is the main reason you're not working there?
Yeah, right ;-)
I wonder how many of the people buying those mashines are saying 'hey this linux thing is pretty cool, I think I'll stick to it rather then get windows'. Especially once these countries start cracking down harder on piracy.
Imagine that, MS anti-piracy strategies backfiring on them, who would've thought...
/ Sicking
The site seems to be slowing down under the /. pressure. Could anyone set up a mirror?
At this rate, we'll see gindow.com registered by google.com in no time.
Until they're sued by microsoft and forced to rename to Ginspire.com
So would this mean that every parking will have a security guard directing you through a metal detector and x-raying your luggage? And more importantly, will I be allowed to bring nailclippers in my car?
It's a good thing the Telecoms aren't run by RIAA or MPAA. If they were cellphones would probably be outlawed by now since it's clearly destroying the business model of other companies.
Unfortunatly I'm sure this happens all the time. The basic problem is of course that the punishment is smaller then what is gain when commiting the crime. It's the exact same thing when Microsoft breaks antitrust regulations all over the globe, it's simply a business decision.
:-)
The cure of course is to increase the punishment of these crimes. When it comes to adverticement, it would be very efficient if the company had to run ads saying "sorry, our last ad was found to not be true. Linux isn't 10 times as expensive after all becuase we didn't run a fair test".
With punishments like that I'm sure companies would think twice before lying in ads.
Another pretty interesting approach was taken recently in sweden by an anti-smoking group. They ran ads saying things like "smoking will reduce the size of your penis" and "smoking makes girls dumb". The purpose of the campain was to show how tobaco companies lied in their ads. The ads did have a small text pointing to the campains homepage where it all was explained.
Wouldn't you just love ads by red-hat saying "Microsoft purposly put security holes in windows so they could sell support time when your systems crash" or "Microsoft Word was written in sweatshops in tanzania"
Google is already big, so the only instant millionares to come of this will be the people who work there.
And isn't that great! Why should you or me make a million on google when we havn't put in a minute of effort into making it what it is. Why should a company award it's investors rather then it's emplyees, when it's obvious that it's the employees who made it the success it is.
Awarding people for great work... interesting idea that maybe more companies should consider.
Google should buy into craigslist! It would be the perfect way marrige. Both have the same philosophy of minimalist but useable interfaces. And googles search technologies and scaling knowledge should set a perfect course for craigslist.