Doesn't help much when you've made your own IR receiver but you've got no serial port.
I'm not suggesting that we were better off with serial ports. But USB is still a nightmare of a spec. A personal computer of all things really ought to be something that you can use to control devices you've made if you wish. But it isn't.
Something was lost in the move, and it hasn't been replaced.
Seems to me that USB was always an anti-competitive standard right out the gate. I always felt it was needlessly complex as a barrier to entry into the peripheral market. Older ports were straightforward enough that anyone with a little electronics experience could build a device that interfaced with their computer. USB, on the other hand... if you're not an industry professional, good luck.
Does this mean you need to spend half an hour telling the database how pretty it is and how much you love it no matter what it says before it will give you a straight answer?
No, the answer is always no. It might help you to think of it as analogous to kinetic energy. The amount of energy you can harvest from a weight falling one meter will never be more than the amount of energy required to lift an equal weight up one meter
Not a very good example. All you have to do is lift the weight at high tide and drop it at low tide.
The handsets don't require a huge investment. They're cheap pieces of plastic. The cell phone companies exist in the way they do because they purchased broadcast monopolies from governments, and that is the only reason they exist. Everything else is subterfuge.
The alternative is to design devices that don't use their infrastructure. The alternative is to deliver a product to consumers that allows them to flagrantly violate all the monopolistic regulations governing the airwaves, operate mesh networks for communications outside of centralized control, and send these bastards the way of the horse and buggy. These guys can be rendered redundant by simple pieces of hardware placed into a critical mass of hands. And, inevitably, eventually, thankfully... they will. Wonder of RMS will be demanding that they stick a GNU in the name.
That depends on what you're asking for out of life. If you're one of those misled folks who thinks the point is to get out alive, or get the highest score and the most toys, then yeah, it's rather futile. Personally, I'm looking forward to being an old man and getting to see what that's like. I'm even looking forward to dying.
I figure, I'm a 4 dimensional work in progress, but at the moment of my death, I will finally be able to reach back in my minds eye and truly see myself for what I am, and exist frozen as a completed work of my own self expression within space-time.
They refuse to accept contributions unless you assign copyright to them.
Lots of people on here going on about how you can still fork at the last minute, rather than forking immediately to prevent assigning your copyright.
Thing is, the ideological foundation upon which these licenses and social organizations are built is to empower people by giving them tools that they can work with. It's the antithesis to modern business, which revolves around removing the freedom to create and ensuring the need to consume, on others terms.
When you participate in schemes like this, you create a situation where you're empowering the business entity economically. After you do, they're going to immediately attempt to create stable revenue streams by creating lock-in and wielding their economic power to sabotage any efforts that you make to compete.
It's like releasing things so you can liberate people from their oppressors, while simultaneously making large contributions to the legal fund of the oppressors you're trying to marginalize.
It's a strategically poor choice for anyone who is actually interested in seeing freedom result from their efforts.
If you refuse to participate in these schemes and fork the code and actually do good things with it, the original source will still be greedy and attempt to use what you've created for their own profit, because that is what they are all about. They won't just pay millions of dollars to make their own, they'll compromise to earn a buck. But the consequence will be, you'll leave them in a position like Linus', where it's impossible to arbitrarily re-license the code because you can't track down all the copyright holders.
The smartest method would be to require contributers to register with their legal names, so they could be contacted and asked for permission to release under a new license, and their code replaced if they are minority blockers. If Linus had done that in the beginning, he wouldn't be trapped in GPLv2 only land.
A better question might be: How can one learn a sense of 'healthy' skepticism without going overboard and becoming outright cynical?
Refuse to become a sage and continue to be a fool. The fool is immersed in and learns from the world where the sage stands above it and professes. The longer you can be a fool, the longer you will avoid cynicism.
This is the lesson here. Don't contribute to projects that claim ownership of your code as a condition of contributing. Fork the project first.
Project Mayo used this model. Then they took the contributers code, closed it, and started DivX Networks.
MySQL used this model. The only reason they haven't closed the code and started selling it was because Sun bought them to prevent it, and it's only by the good graces of Sun that the situation persists.
QT used this model. Then they sold all the code they collected over the years to Nokia. And here we are.
The moral of the story is, don't make compromises with these assholes. Don't put them in a position where they can screw you, because they can't be trusted, or they wouldn't have made the arrangement that set you up to be screwed in the first place.
It works well, if you have super-fat arms on your chair and micro suede fabric. If you're using one of leather ones with the skinny arms, or a fabric with a lot of texture, then it's not so good.
I got a solid 20 foot range using standard Logitech gear. How far away is your chair?
When you release something as freeware, you can get people hooked on it, then cripple it and start charging for the non-crippled version. Pretty straightforward.
What he's talking about is, an address bar is a place to type urls. Now, its an address bar mingled with something resembling Google Desktop.
If it were a new feature that didn't damage the functionality of the address bar, it wouldn't be a big deal. But it does, and it is.
When I type "sla" in the address bar in FF2, or any other browser on the market except FF3, I get an autocomplete that looks like
When you type "sla" in the address bar in FF3, you get something that looks more like:
Wal-Mart Slashes Prices
www.wal-mart.com/who/is/your/daddy
Slashdot - News for Nerds
slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=123456&cid=123456
Recipie - Cole Slaw
recipies.com?id=a3d25f3
Except, the real output has embedded graphics, multiple colors of text, keywords on the same line as the page name but right aligned, etc.
The url, which is what you'd presume you were interested in being that you've gone to the address bar in the first place, it is hard to see because it's in a smaller font and a sickly green color.
A good micro-suede recliner with wide arm cushions suitable for use as mouse pads, a wireless keyboard and optical mouse, a TV tray to rest the keyboard on, and two monitors on swivel arms that can be brought in close to the face when reclining.
The awful bar in FF3 a perfect example of a feature that should be an extension, but isn't and is forced on everyone. I don't want my hand holding when it comes to using core features of a browser, and so I'm going to say no to FF3.
Totally agree. I have to say, for the longest time my pages always looked better in Firefox than in IE, because Firefox was the web developers browser of choice, so they were developed for Firefox, then tested for IE after they were functionally complete. That's going to stop now that the location bar has been transformed into some unholy thing you would expect AOL to conceive. Time to start looking for alternatives...
Not entirely, I'm as much a prisoner in this system as anyone else, and I would be arrested for trespassing should I try. I'm actively working towards it, being involved in sustainable local food production, assisting friends who are attempting to create new systems to make it practical for the uninitiated, making things from scratch and boycotting imported foods.
I don't want to be kept in this consumer-lifestyle-prison. I don't want to take things from society that I haven't been directly involved in creating. Not one single damned thing. I look around this office, and every object I see is covered in the invisible hand prints of thousands of people who don't give a shit, and I hate it so much that it makes me want to smash it all to bits.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm not a man. I'm a pet who is forcibly estranged from ever being permitted to develop into one, forced to keep doing tricks for my master so I can eat, just like the rest of you. If I didn't have a child to care for, I'd probably go live in the woods again and say the fuck with the rest of you. I'm perfectly capable of living that way for as long as I wish, because I cultivated the skills and actually went and did it.
You think I'm short sighted. Well, the gas stations have started running dry around here, and everyone who thinks like you is about to wake up and realize that their master is dead, and they have no clue how to keep themselves alive. We'll see how short sighted I am when people start dying in their homes.
Re:Phoronix will pay to fix X
on
The State of X.Org
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
What you are attempting to call bribery is what damn near everyone else in the world calls a job offer. He was attempting to hire someone, not to bribe them. If that was indeed bribery the job market would be a very scary place where employers could be convicted for making job offers for perfectly legitimate work.
Sounds good to me. Working for money is the antithesis of integrity, and the social systems that make it necessary are constructed for the purpose of overcoming the integrity of the individual so they can be put to use like some inert tool. Personally, I consider every job I accept to be a moral compromise.
Re:Phoronix will pay to fix X
on
The State of X.Org
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
If someone is going to pursue a task because the task is its own reward, and you entice them to pursue a different task that isn't its own reward by offering them money, that's bribery.
If someone is going to pursue a task because the task is its own reward, and you attempt to relieve them of outside pressures and distractions by offering them money so they can focus on the task they already intended to do, that's support.
If someone is comfortable, safe, secure and happy, you won't be able to control them with bribery, but you might be able to assist them with support.
The fact that you don't perceive anything wrong with living in a world that normalizes the first example is a testament to how far we have collectively fallen. In my opinion.
Re:Phoronix will pay to fix X
on
The State of X.Org
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Once I badly needed one particular bug (proper video init on laptop resume) fixed . Asked about probable fix timeframe/schedule of this bug on lkml , most responses were in form "it's free, we're doing it in our spare time, so don't ask when" . Then I tried to determine if any amount of money can help, asked developers if they can pricetag bugfix/patch and how to pay them - there was no definite answer at all. Children , playing in their sandpit and bearing no responsibility for their code at all, unmotivated and unmotivateable by anything but most basic urges .
Yeah, doesn't it suck when people are safe and happy enough that they can't be bribed, and they just sit around labouring to use their talents according to their own interests and desires and sharing the things they create?
I hate that. These people need to have some shit ripped away from them so they can be bought and sold like everyone else. How else am I going to solve my problems?
I did not make an argument. I did not make a statement. I asked a question. Therefore, regardless of the truth or falseness of what I believe the answer to be, there is no stated premise to be false.
If you're going to make strong assertions of logical fallacy, at least do it properly.
Slashdot Mirror
Doesn't help much when you've made your own IR receiver but you've got no serial port.
I'm not suggesting that we were better off with serial ports. But USB is still a nightmare of a spec. A personal computer of all things really ought to be something that you can use to control devices you've made if you wish. But it isn't.
Something was lost in the move, and it hasn't been replaced.
Seems to me that USB was always an anti-competitive standard right out the gate. I always felt it was needlessly complex as a barrier to entry into the peripheral market. Older ports were straightforward enough that anyone with a little electronics experience could build a device that interfaced with their computer. USB, on the other hand... if you're not an industry professional, good luck.
Does this mean you need to spend half an hour telling the database how pretty it is and how much you love it no matter what it says before it will give you a straight answer?
My car is 16 years old and still in pretty good shape. I guess it will last a few more years. So 20 years are not unrealistic for a car.
You can tell they don't use road salt where you live...
Dude, you're missing the point. You hang iPods off the end of them, then hang them on your rear view mirror, like fuzzy dice. It's geek bling.
No, the answer is always no. It might help you to think of it as analogous to kinetic energy. The amount of energy you can harvest from a weight falling one meter will never be more than the amount of energy required to lift an equal weight up one meter
Not a very good example. All you have to do is lift the weight at high tide and drop it at low tide.
The handsets don't require a huge investment. They're cheap pieces of plastic. The cell phone companies exist in the way they do because they purchased broadcast monopolies from governments, and that is the only reason they exist. Everything else is subterfuge.
They may not care what OS it runs, but they know the difference between contracts and free.
The alternative is to design devices that don't use their infrastructure. The alternative is to deliver a product to consumers that allows them to flagrantly violate all the monopolistic regulations governing the airwaves, operate mesh networks for communications outside of centralized control, and send these bastards the way of the horse and buggy. These guys can be rendered redundant by simple pieces of hardware placed into a critical mass of hands. And, inevitably, eventually, thankfully... they will. Wonder of RMS will be demanding that they stick a GNU in the name.
We live in the 4th dimension, you moron. It's called time. Go read flatland and open your brain a bit.
That depends on what you're asking for out of life. If you're one of those misled folks who thinks the point is to get out alive, or get the highest score and the most toys, then yeah, it's rather futile. Personally, I'm looking forward to being an old man and getting to see what that's like. I'm even looking forward to dying.
I figure, I'm a 4 dimensional work in progress, but at the moment of my death, I will finally be able to reach back in my minds eye and truly see myself for what I am, and exist frozen as a completed work of my own self expression within space-time.
That's enough.
They refuse to accept contributions unless you assign copyright to them.
Lots of people on here going on about how you can still fork at the last minute, rather than forking immediately to prevent assigning your copyright.
Thing is, the ideological foundation upon which these licenses and social organizations are built is to empower people by giving them tools that they can work with. It's the antithesis to modern business, which revolves around removing the freedom to create and ensuring the need to consume, on others terms.
When you participate in schemes like this, you create a situation where you're empowering the business entity economically. After you do, they're going to immediately attempt to create stable revenue streams by creating lock-in and wielding their economic power to sabotage any efforts that you make to compete.
It's like releasing things so you can liberate people from their oppressors, while simultaneously making large contributions to the legal fund of the oppressors you're trying to marginalize.
It's a strategically poor choice for anyone who is actually interested in seeing freedom result from their efforts.
If you refuse to participate in these schemes and fork the code and actually do good things with it, the original source will still be greedy and attempt to use what you've created for their own profit, because that is what they are all about. They won't just pay millions of dollars to make their own, they'll compromise to earn a buck. But the consequence will be, you'll leave them in a position like Linus', where it's impossible to arbitrarily re-license the code because you can't track down all the copyright holders.
The smartest method would be to require contributers to register with their legal names, so they could be contacted and asked for permission to release under a new license, and their code replaced if they are minority blockers. If Linus had done that in the beginning, he wouldn't be trapped in GPLv2 only land.
A better question might be: How can one learn a sense of 'healthy' skepticism without going overboard and becoming outright cynical?
Refuse to become a sage and continue to be a fool. The fool is immersed in and learns from the world where the sage stands above it and professes. The longer you can be a fool, the longer you will avoid cynicism.
This is the lesson here. Don't contribute to projects that claim ownership of your code as a condition of contributing. Fork the project first.
Project Mayo used this model. Then they took the contributers code, closed it, and started DivX Networks.
MySQL used this model. The only reason they haven't closed the code and started selling it was because Sun bought them to prevent it, and it's only by the good graces of Sun that the situation persists.
QT used this model. Then they sold all the code they collected over the years to Nokia. And here we are.
The moral of the story is, don't make compromises with these assholes. Don't put them in a position where they can screw you, because they can't be trusted, or they wouldn't have made the arrangement that set you up to be screwed in the first place.
It works well, if you have super-fat arms on your chair and micro suede fabric. If you're using one of leather ones with the skinny arms, or a fabric with a lot of texture, then it's not so good.
I got a solid 20 foot range using standard Logitech gear. How far away is your chair?
When you release something as freeware, you can get people hooked on it, then cripple it and start charging for the non-crippled version. Pretty straightforward.
slashdot.org
slashdot.org/~ShieldW0lf/
slashdot.org/comments.pl
slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=123456&cid=123456
etc
When you type "sla" in the address bar in FF3, you get something that looks more like:
Wal-Mart Slashes Prices
www.wal-mart.com/who/is/your/daddy
Slashdot - News for Nerdsslashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=123456&cid=123456
Recipie - Cole Slawrecipies.com?id=a3d25f3
Except, the real output has embedded graphics, multiple colors of text, keywords on the same line as the page name but right aligned, etc.
The url, which is what you'd presume you were interested in being that you've gone to the address bar in the first place, it is hard to see because it's in a smaller font and a sickly green color.
It's enough to give an epileptic a fit.
A good micro-suede recliner with wide arm cushions suitable for use as mouse pads, a wireless keyboard and optical mouse, a TV tray to rest the keyboard on, and two monitors on swivel arms that can be brought in close to the face when reclining.
The awful bar in FF3 a perfect example of a feature that should be an extension, but isn't and is forced on everyone. I don't want my hand holding when it comes to using core features of a browser, and so I'm going to say no to FF3.
Totally agree. I have to say, for the longest time my pages always looked better in Firefox than in IE, because Firefox was the web developers browser of choice, so they were developed for Firefox, then tested for IE after they were functionally complete. That's going to stop now that the location bar has been transformed into some unholy thing you would expect AOL to conceive. Time to start looking for alternatives...
Not entirely, I'm as much a prisoner in this system as anyone else, and I would be arrested for trespassing should I try. I'm actively working towards it, being involved in sustainable local food production, assisting friends who are attempting to create new systems to make it practical for the uninitiated, making things from scratch and boycotting imported foods.
I don't want to be kept in this consumer-lifestyle-prison. I don't want to take things from society that I haven't been directly involved in creating. Not one single damned thing. I look around this office, and every object I see is covered in the invisible hand prints of thousands of people who don't give a shit, and I hate it so much that it makes me want to smash it all to bits.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm not a man. I'm a pet who is forcibly estranged from ever being permitted to develop into one, forced to keep doing tricks for my master so I can eat, just like the rest of you. If I didn't have a child to care for, I'd probably go live in the woods again and say the fuck with the rest of you. I'm perfectly capable of living that way for as long as I wish, because I cultivated the skills and actually went and did it.
You think I'm short sighted. Well, the gas stations have started running dry around here, and everyone who thinks like you is about to wake up and realize that their master is dead, and they have no clue how to keep themselves alive. We'll see how short sighted I am when people start dying in their homes.
What you are attempting to call bribery is what damn near everyone else in the world calls a job offer. He was attempting to hire someone, not to bribe them. If that was indeed bribery the job market would be a very scary place where employers could be convicted for making job offers for perfectly legitimate work.
Sounds good to me. Working for money is the antithesis of integrity, and the social systems that make it necessary are constructed for the purpose of overcoming the integrity of the individual so they can be put to use like some inert tool. Personally, I consider every job I accept to be a moral compromise.
If someone is going to pursue a task because the task is its own reward, and you entice them to pursue a different task that isn't its own reward by offering them money, that's bribery.
If someone is going to pursue a task because the task is its own reward, and you attempt to relieve them of outside pressures and distractions by offering them money so they can focus on the task they already intended to do, that's support.
If someone is comfortable, safe, secure and happy, you won't be able to control them with bribery, but you might be able to assist them with support.
The fact that you don't perceive anything wrong with living in a world that normalizes the first example is a testament to how far we have collectively fallen. In my opinion.
Once I badly needed one particular bug (proper video init on laptop resume) fixed . Asked about probable fix timeframe/schedule of this bug on lkml , most responses were in form "it's free, we're doing it in our spare time, so don't ask when" . Then I tried to determine if any amount of money can help, asked developers if they can pricetag bugfix/patch and how to pay them - there was no definite answer at all. Children , playing in their sandpit and bearing no responsibility for their code at all, unmotivated and unmotivateable by anything but most basic urges .
Yeah, doesn't it suck when people are safe and happy enough that they can't be bribed, and they just sit around labouring to use their talents according to their own interests and desires and sharing the things they create?
I hate that. These people need to have some shit ripped away from them so they can be bought and sold like everyone else. How else am I going to solve my problems?
How would you act to corrupt such a system?
I did not make an argument. I did not make a statement. I asked a question. Therefore, regardless of the truth or falseness of what I believe the answer to be, there is no stated premise to be false.
If you're going to make strong assertions of logical fallacy, at least do it properly.