$1 million sounds quite cheap. I'd estimate that as about 5 man-years; 10 people for half-a-year (including admin, marketing people - not highly paid) including associated infrastructure costs (ie housing those people some place). It's very little if you think about computing infrastructure, testing, promotion, distribution, credit costs, etc..
Where's that $1 million figure from?
Your overall analysis otherwise seems sound to me.
Unfunded hobbiest resources have absolutely no "responsibility" to stay in operation.
It would be nice if they made an effort for someone else to take over the project, but in the end, it's their pet project to do with (or kill off) as needed.
I disagree, I think common courtesy means that you need to inform your users that the project is EOL and if possible make the code available to be taken over to continue the project.
Compare with holding a door open for someone. You're not obliged to do it, but once you hold the door and see the person coming then slamming the door in their face would be pretty mean.
There is no legal obligation to be nice to your fellow humans, unfortunately, but I still think this is your responsibility.
DSay, where's your local repository of Ndiswrapper's database?
Web servers cost money, especially for popular sites.
This is correct. And by that logic, it may benefit you to send the sourceforge developers a simple message asking them if a modest donation of funds could ail this predicament?
Web servers do cost money but the only real cost of hosting at sourceforge for the project is the domain name (if they feel it's needed). SF.net hosting is free to projects though of course you can donate to OSTG Inc. (a for profit business) who provide the service. SF.net even provide a MySQL database ( http://alexandria.wiki.sourceforge.net/Service+Listing ) so I really can't see any reason why a project couldn't leave up their website and database (at no cost to the project) at "example.sf.net"??
If you can't raise the £9/$9 a year for the domain name (eg Amazon ads, Google ads, donations - ask for donations if none come!) then few want your project that much and you should drop the domain and just use Google Code, Freshmeat or SourceForge, IMHO.
If you're talking a site license that's 58% than another HELL YES. What they lose on a per-seat basis, they make up for in bulk.
Like duh. That was kinda assumed knowledge - all companies in the software field offering similar software will have similar scaling models for reducing per-seat cost for increased total, however. That was my point - knowing what MS offer for 12000 what-ever-me-things allows you to infer (as a competing business) the approximate price for 7600 (63%) and adjust your bid to be more "competitive" (which usually just means lowest in Governmental organisations where I am). And yes anyone with half-a-brain (such as myself) realises it matters how many sites those what-ever-me-things are across and the possibilities for upgrades, co-sales, etc..
Nobody said these contracts were STRICTLY for OS licenses. That was just YOUR assumption,
Nope. That was my example.
I'm not especially anti-microsoft (I use Vista occasionally, repair friends comps with MS without telling them zomg-you-must-get-teh-L1nu><-2b-leet and realise that most software has it's place). I'm anti government hiding what they do with our money.
I mean, I understand that you don't like Ms. Rowling, because you see her as a money-grubbing miser
I don't think that (I'm not the GP).
who is trying to milk as much out of her work as possible.
Her or her publisher; I kinda think that.
starting to sound as though you wish that there were be a legal mechanism to say, "OK, you've made enough money from this, now shut up and let us have at it."
Bingo! I do think that. We should have a shortened monopoly for any work which makes (say) {2 x average life expectancy x the national average wage} in profits available for the author. In other news I'd also tax 100% above this threshold for anyone earning money from a UK institution (not necessarily domiciled).
--- Top earnings then would be (pretax, UKP) 2 x 79 x 25k, about £ 4 Million per work per author.
How come you did not bother to do a minimum amount of research on the matter before making such patently wrong assertions? It is not like this information is that hard to find...
I was not aware that society's subjective judgement of whether someone has made "enough" money from one's intellectual property was a factor in copyright law. Either there's a copyright infringement or there isn't. Rowling's wealth and success are irrelevant.
If you think the application of law is to be completely dissociated from the purpose of the same law then you're right. If not, I contend, that you're wrong.
Her wealth has a lot to do with it - her wealth was provided by the state (that's the general public's combined force of will) protecting her work from being copied to ensure that she gain financial remuneration in return for the public's future free enjoyment of her creative works.
Many people appear to believe that once someone has gained more from their work than they could ever need in a lifetime of luxury (without working again) that they should be cut loose of the apron-strings of state protection and allowed to fend for themselves.
Protecting hugely wealthy peoples wealth from being impinged by the public's enjoyment is never a popular call.
Given the fact that Rowling has not sued other companion books like MuggleNet.com's and the Complete Idiot's Guide to Harry Potter, Rowling isn't against companion books per se. She was against this particular one.
You can't rush these things, give her/her publishers chance. Once they have a judgement here they'll be able to use that to beat smaller fry about the head until they are dead (and bankrupt) and not waste too much money in the process.
Slashdot is schizophrenic about copyright, if someone had taken big chunks of GPL code and used them in a closed source application everyone would be baying for blood, but for some reason Harry Potter is considered entertainment and therefore OK to copy, a bit like movies and music.
The same sort of business model as is used by those issuing code under the FOSS licenses (I know GPL !== FOSS) is available in all industries (though I'll admit it seems to fit well in only a few).
I wonder if "Harry Potter Inc." only had the first run of book sales (as subsequent runs would be under competition) ticket sales (for movies at Cinema) and merchandising monies how many millions JK Rowling would still have made?
Musicians that do shows/concerts can still make a living even if they provide the sheet-music for their songs/give away MP3's for free.
It's actually the literary equivalent of using GPL code in a commercial, closed source application.
Your logic is off. If Harry Potter is anything analagous to GPL code then so is the later work. So then it would be (continuing from your premise and applying standard logic) use of GPL code in a GPL work... damn, why aren't the "zealots" up in arms??
Yeah why do they need that particle accelerator, people have managed with cloud chambers for decades....
I agree, he should state the exact problem rather than assuming he knows the solution but can't implement it. But your argument is spurious. Perhaps he needs real-time graphing from sensors or some such?
My vote is for the "wiimote whiteboard" projected onto the work bench (with an onscreen keyboard) or simply a projection keyboard.
Wouldn't it be something like "Browser, Address, Spell, w, space, b, o, b, c, a, t, s, Enter". I wouldn't expect completely natural language parsing for quite a few years yet.
Incidentally. I tried the Vista speech recognition (got a computer in Jan 08 with it preinstalled) by running the tutorial. I was amazed, it was awesome, recognised every word I said. Then I said the wrong word... and it typed the right one. Hmmm. It was actually just detecting a sound and printing the expected word - fooled me for quite a while!
Turned off the tutorial and tried it. Couldn't even get a command to work, never mind it recognising random words. It just printed pure gobbledegook.
Officer of the year for a Metro Atlanta law enforcement agency during the Olympics
Did you get to be officer of the year by lying and cheating too? Seriously,exploiting the good nature of others for your personal gain is something you're proud of??
For a guy who had a scientific education, he always struck me as being squarely against technology and science.
I know it sells books, but why do the engineers/scientists always have to be portrayed as being arrogant and irresponsible?
Surely there is some good that can come out of genetic engineering, nanotechnology, outsourcing, etc...??
I think the point is that the scientific community generally don't say consider the negative aspects but instead over-emphasise the positive in an attempt to raise capital and keep their jobs.
Balanced consideration of the positives and negatives of emergent behaviour in swarming nano-bots doesn't make as good a holiday read as a approaching-believable-if-you're-willing-to-go-with-it disaster scenario.
The links are for recently reported research in which clones of mice, that have been dead and frozen for 16 years, have been made and brought to maturity.
Does that premise sound dumb now?
As for the Chaos thing that was an entertaining attempt to capture the Zeitgeist - James Gleick's "Chaos" came out a couple of years before Jurassic park was issued and "Chaos theory" was pretty hot back then.
If you read it as a political treatise then that may explain why you didn't find it entertaining. I think it was the first Crichton I read.
FWIW I think he did quite a good job at stimulating consideration of the ramifications of scientific advancements.
You appear to have lost perspective a bit when you start railing against the guy for including children as main characters in some of his books. Kids have a great affect on the world. As for Jurassic Park being epoc defining - no, I agree it's not going to be long lived but it was great entertainment IMO (the film less so, but I usually find I can enjoy film and book provided I read the book first so the film doesn't limit my imagination). Probably you'd enjoy Crichton less if your imagination is not in synchrony with the worlds he portrays.
Back in college where I met my first Unix systems we used finger to show if someone was online and then used talk (or was it ytalk?) to chat.. very useful for punctuating the intense concentration of some computer lab sessions.
Slashdot Mirror
$1 million sounds quite cheap. I'd estimate that as about 5 man-years; 10 people for half-a-year (including admin, marketing people - not highly paid) including associated infrastructure costs (ie housing those people some place). It's very little if you think about computing infrastructure, testing, promotion, distribution, credit costs, etc..
Where's that $1 million figure from?
Your overall analysis otherwise seems sound to me.
Because the sun may not rise tomorrow ...
We can't let them get away with that, we must force them to play each game to the end, maybe with some kind of technological method?
Perhaps the game could overwrite the MBR (keeping a copy) and install a custom bootstrap that goes back to the last point played in the game.
When you complete the game writes back your original MBR and you're free.
You'd need to hack some workarounds to boot-block protection.
Unfunded hobbiest resources have absolutely no "responsibility" to stay in operation.
It would be nice if they made an effort for someone else to take over the project, but in the end, it's their pet project to do with (or kill off) as needed.
I disagree, I think common courtesy means that you need to inform your users that the project is EOL and if possible make the code available to be taken over to continue the project.
Compare with holding a door open for someone. You're not obliged to do it, but once you hold the door and see the person coming then slamming the door in their face would be pretty mean.
There is no legal obligation to be nice to your fellow humans, unfortunately, but I still think this is your responsibility.
DSay, where's your local repository of Ndiswrapper's database?
Web servers cost money, especially for popular sites.
This is correct. And by that logic, it may benefit you to send the sourceforge developers a simple message asking them if a modest donation of funds could ail this predicament?
Web servers do cost money but the only real cost of hosting at sourceforge for the project is the domain name (if they feel it's needed). SF.net hosting is free to projects though of course you can donate to OSTG Inc. (a for profit business) who provide the service. SF.net even provide a MySQL database ( http://alexandria.wiki.sourceforge.net/Service+Listing ) so I really can't see any reason why a project couldn't leave up their website and database (at no cost to the project) at "example.sf.net"??
If you can't raise the £9/$9 a year for the domain name (eg Amazon ads, Google ads, donations - ask for donations if none come!) then few want your project that much and you should drop the domain and just use Google Code, Freshmeat or SourceForge, IMHO.
If you're talking a site license that's 58% than another HELL YES.
What they lose on a per-seat basis, they make up for in bulk.
Like duh. That was kinda assumed knowledge - all companies in the software field offering similar software will have similar scaling models for reducing per-seat cost for increased total, however. That was my point - knowing what MS offer for 12000 what-ever-me-things allows you to infer (as a competing business) the approximate price for 7600 (63%) and adjust your bid to be more "competitive" (which usually just means lowest in Governmental organisations where I am). And yes anyone with half-a-brain (such as myself) realises it matters how many sites those what-ever-me-things are across and the possibilities for upgrades, co-sales, etc..
Nobody said these contracts were STRICTLY for OS licenses. That was just YOUR assumption,
Nope. That was my example.
I'm not especially anti-microsoft (I use Vista occasionally, repair friends comps with MS without telling them zomg-you-must-get-teh-L1nu><-2b-leet and realise that most software has it's place). I'm anti government hiding what they do with our money.
Not to be overly metapedantic with my reply, but the definition of pedantic applies more to your post than the behavior you are posting about.
Bet he posted that from his Blackberry ...
I mean, I understand that you don't like Ms. Rowling, because you see her as a money-grubbing miser
I don't think that (I'm not the GP).
who is trying to milk as much out of her work as possible.
Her or her publisher; I kinda think that.
starting to sound as though you wish that there were be a legal mechanism to say, "OK, you've made enough money from this, now shut up and let us have at it."
Bingo! I do think that. We should have a shortened monopoly for any work which makes (say) {2 x average life expectancy x the national average wage} in profits available for the author. In other news I'd also tax 100% above this threshold for anyone earning money from a UK institution (not necessarily domiciled).
---
Top earnings then would be (pretax, UKP) 2 x 79 x 25k, about £ 4 Million per work per author.
How come you did not bother to do a minimum amount of research on the matter before making such patently wrong assertions? It is not like this information is that hard to find...
Hahahaha ...
What does her wealth have to do with it?
I was not aware that society's subjective judgement of whether someone has made "enough" money from one's intellectual property was a factor in copyright law. Either there's a copyright infringement or there isn't. Rowling's wealth and success are irrelevant.
If you think the application of law is to be completely dissociated from the purpose of the same law then you're right. If not, I contend, that you're wrong.
Her wealth has a lot to do with it - her wealth was provided by the state (that's the general public's combined force of will) protecting her work from being copied to ensure that she gain financial remuneration in return for the public's future free enjoyment of her creative works.
Many people appear to believe that once someone has gained more from their work than they could ever need in a lifetime of luxury (without working again) that they should be cut loose of the apron-strings of state protection and allowed to fend for themselves.
Protecting hugely wealthy peoples wealth from being impinged by the public's enjoyment is never a popular call.
Given the fact that Rowling has not sued other companion books like MuggleNet.com's and the Complete Idiot's Guide to Harry Potter, Rowling isn't against companion books per se. She was against this particular one.
You can't rush these things, give her/her publishers chance. Once they have a judgement here they'll be able to use that to beat smaller fry about the head until they are dead (and bankrupt) and not waste too much money in the process.
Sheesh.
Slashdot is schizophrenic about copyright, if someone had taken big chunks of GPL code and used them in a closed source application everyone would be baying for blood, but for some reason Harry Potter is considered entertainment and therefore OK to copy, a bit like movies and music.
The same sort of business model as is used by those issuing code under the FOSS licenses (I know GPL !== FOSS) is available in all industries (though I'll admit it seems to fit well in only a few).
I wonder if "Harry Potter Inc." only had the first run of book sales (as subsequent runs would be under competition) ticket sales (for movies at Cinema) and merchandising monies how many millions JK Rowling would still have made?
Musicians that do shows/concerts can still make a living even if they provide the sheet-music for their songs/give away MP3's for free.
It's actually the literary equivalent of using GPL code in a commercial, closed source application.
Your logic is off. If Harry Potter is anything analagous to GPL code then so is the later work. So then it would be (continuing from your premise and applying standard logic) use of GPL code in a GPL work ... damn, why aren't the "zealots" up in arms??
[...] next time you have to compete with Microsoft on a completely different project.
Because providing an operating system license for 12000 computers is so completely different to providing an operating system license for 7600 ...
whatever.
Yeah why do they need that particle accelerator, people have managed with cloud chambers for decades ....
I agree, he should state the exact problem rather than assuming he knows the solution but can't implement it. But your argument is spurious. Perhaps he needs real-time graphing from sensors or some such?
My vote is for the "wiimote whiteboard" projected onto the work bench (with an onscreen keyboard) or simply a projection keyboard.
Wouldn't it be something like "Browser, Address, Spell, w, space, b, o, b, c, a, t, s, Enter". I wouldn't expect completely natural language parsing for quite a few years yet.
Incidentally. I tried the Vista speech recognition (got a computer in Jan 08 with it preinstalled) by running the tutorial. I was amazed, it was awesome, recognised every word I said. Then I said the wrong word ... and it typed the right one. Hmmm. It was actually just detecting a sound and printing the expected word - fooled me for quite a while!
Turned off the tutorial and tried it. Couldn't even get a command to work, never mind it recognising random words. It just printed pure gobbledegook.
It's not a typo it's a phraso, he's saying the "build is clunky in speech recog. wares". Perhaps is native tongue is a germanic language?
No, not really.
Officer of the year for a Metro Atlanta law enforcement agency during the Olympics
Did you get to be officer of the year by lying and cheating too? Seriously ,exploiting the good nature of others for your personal gain is something you're proud of??
There's also
$ popcon-largest-unused
provided by the "popularity-contest" package it lists, as you may have guessed, the largest unused packages.
For a guy who had a scientific education, he always struck me as being squarely against technology and science.
I know it sells books, but why do the engineers/scientists always have to be portrayed as being arrogant and irresponsible?
Surely there is some good that can come out of genetic engineering, nanotechnology, outsourcing, etc...??
I think the point is that the scientific community generally don't say consider the negative aspects but instead over-emphasise the positive in an attempt to raise capital and keep their jobs.
Balanced consideration of the positives and negatives of emergent behaviour in swarming nano-bots doesn't make as good a holiday read as a approaching-believable-if-you're-willing-to-go-with-it disaster scenario.
The basic premise of Jurassic Park wasn't dumb.
You mean the idea that you could extract DNA from a long dead creature and use it to reanimate that line?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2008/nov/04/cloning-frozen-mice
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7707498.stm
The links are for recently reported research in which clones of mice, that have been dead and frozen for 16 years, have been made and brought to maturity.
Does that premise sound dumb now?
As for the Chaos thing that was an entertaining attempt to capture the Zeitgeist - James Gleick's "Chaos" came out a couple of years before Jurassic park was issued and "Chaos theory" was pretty hot back then.
Lost World was a great entertaining book IMO.
If you read it as a political treatise then that may explain why you didn't find it entertaining. I think it was the first Crichton I read.
FWIW I think he did quite a good job at stimulating consideration of the ramifications of scientific advancements.
You appear to have lost perspective a bit when you start railing against the guy for including children as main characters in some of his books. Kids have a great affect on the world. As for Jurassic Park being epoc defining - no, I agree it's not going to be long lived but it was great entertainment IMO (the film less so, but I usually find I can enjoy film and book provided I read the book first so the film doesn't limit my imagination). Probably you'd enjoy Crichton less if your imagination is not in synchrony with the worlds he portrays.
Any chance you could clue is in on what they all do ...?
Why does one need to unalias rm? Can't you just use \rm ?
Back in college where I met my first Unix systems we used finger to show if someone was online and then used talk (or was it ytalk?) to chat .. very useful for punctuating the intense concentration of some computer lab sessions.
[...] a gift from the dieties.
Are they the ultra-slim super humans I keep hearing about? Or am I confusing them with deadly cocktails??