If anything, buying apple makes me thing you are an idiot; it's the only reason you'd pay more for a product that locked you out of it and made you compromised so many of your rights, from a companythathasa welldocumentedhistoryof beingshady.
Why should it? It doesn't have an amazing app store (like the iPhone). It doesn't have sexy hardware (like the iPhone or many imitators). It doesn't have an amazingly cheap price. There is nothing to stand out about it other than running "google OS". And since Android doesn't have a reputation yet, that doesn't sell phones.
Great apps would help, but people won't build those until the thing is more popular. Better hardware would help a little so it doesn't look so blocky (the G2 should help here).....
Of course, I wouldn't want to fight against a $99 iPhone....
Err, have you checked the android app store lately? Does you iphone have turn-by-turn directions? Can you i-phone be used as a metal-detector? Did you iphone come with copy-and-paste enabled? Can your iphone use google voice? How much do your iphone apps add to the total cost of your phone? I've yet to have to pay for an andriod app, but did dump some money toward andnav2. Is there anything even close to Enkin for iPhone?
There is nothing wrong with the hardware; pictures / advertisements of the Android don't do it any justice. The functionality that the keyboard and trackball on the G1 provides crush any hardware extras the iPhone may have.
At $97 the Android is more than competitively priced. How much did all your iPhone apps end up costing you? Every app I've downloaded for android has been free (most in both senses). Most of all, why would i want to buy a phone that requires me to void my warranty if I ever wanted to develop my own personal apps for it?
Your statement presumes stagnate wages.... If price inflation is a result of wage inflation, then the real income of the most poor remains the same. It's the middle class that actually gets screwed in this senario as it's hard to aggregate enough money to invest in capitol before the money looses value.
Also, another by product of such a market would be a less liquid economy as almost everyone would try and tie their money up in capitol in order to protect themselves against inflation.
However, once an equilibrium is hit between cost of capitol and potential returns from other investments, the continuing inflation would actually cause economic stimulus as one would have to worry about the price of a desired good going up over time.
Just because as an academic, I could copy a commercial work and make a few changes to it with out fear of the copyright police coming after me, doesn't mean that a commercial entity could now take that work and use it as if there wasn't any copyright of the original. It just means my contribution is free. This is like including snippets of BSD code in GPL code, and wouldn't harm any projects created by outside communities.
As far as fights breaking out over where work was produced, this would be no different than current patent rights issues in academia. If you aren't being productive, or there is a clear conflict of interest your institution is likely to fire you.
Finally, if copyright is abolished in academia, this wouldn't stop you from selling a commercial textbook with protection against other commercial, it just means that students in academia won't have to pay to get a copy of it. Most likely this means books written specifically for students would have to be funded though some other means, such as a grant or charter. I can't see how this would be a bad thing as some of the experiences I've had with the current system tells me it's severly broken. For instance the professor who taught chemistry at WPI mandated his book be used for the class. No one else used the book because it was so poorly written, making the on-line used market virtually non-existent and thereby forcing all sales to go though the school bookstore for twice the cost of any other chemistry text. Not to mention the correction manual that came with the book was almost half as large as the book it self, making fluid reading nearly impossible. Furthermore, NIH already hosts many text books they've bought the rights too or that have been donated. Similarly, there's a whole slew of textbooks already being published on the internet for free and being modified like an open source software projects.
Man, I took a few programing courses and that analogy is confusing. Yes, music copyright as-is is complete BS, but lets prove this by reducing the problem to it's base case:
One can copyright a single 4-beat measure, and octave and instrument is ignored.
- Chromatically (including sharps/flats) an octave has 13 unique notes
- Within a measure, there are an infinite number of notes that can be theoretically be played, but in practice that number can be reduced to 32 for a 4/4 measure.
- because the amount of time per note can be varied, we must account for each note lengh or 32*16*8*4*2*1 or 32,768
This means that the total number of unique sequences that can be played with-in an octave is 13 * 32,768 = 425,984 which is finite and could be generated by a single person. Moreover, most singers and instruments have around a 3 octave range, but this doesn't change the numbers much. Chromatically there are 37 in 3 octaves, and therefore the total possible number of unique signatures in a single measure is 37 * 32,768 = 1,212,416. Once again, while not something that could be produced quickly, it is finite and certainly could be attained methodically ceding control of all music to a single person.
I'm not sure if you are trolling or just bad at sensing truth. But next time you doubt my statement, touch your power brick after it's been detached from it's device for a while. Is it warm? If it's really consuming a non-trivial amount of power, how is the energy being dissipated?
Did this 'CPUC guy' tell you how many of these wall warts were ALSO plugged into devices that are on stand-by when he came up with this statistic?
I probably should have gave more context rather than a commercial link. Nonetheless, the raceways I was talking about are covered and made to run up / down walls right up next to your outlet. They are more aesthetically pleasing for visible areas (and offer better protection against house rabbit curiosity).
Split loom sucks, especially for ethernet wires, you still need to tie it down to make things look nice and it doesn't deal with extra wire very well. I only use it to protect against rodent chewing (I have pet rabbits) when I have a single wire running to the wall.
Instead, consider cable raceways. I find it's the easiest to add or subtract cable to, many come with an adhesive side, and they run in nice straight lines unlike loom.
Stick to single sided power strips where adapters run perpendicular to the stip and things will stay neat. With respect to adapters, don't worry about their power draw, it's quite negligible. The only things that you should worry about draw, are devices that have a "sleep mode" like TVs, DVD players, and receivers, but they probably should have their own surge protected strip anyway.
A quick google will show 400 ppl backing Majik Sheff. I don't know much about fees, but I spent more than 15 hrs on hold trying to fix a problem on THEIR END.
They're a bunch of crooks and they should have every one of their practices exposed.
I couldn't agree more!!! A couple years back I decided to sell my car so I could buy a condo but needed my title to make the transaction easier. I called them to ask what my pay out and was sent an official letter of the total amount I owed. I borrowed from my friends and family to pay them off. I payed them the pay-out amount and a week later received a bill as if nothing had happened. I called customer support (1/2 + hold times), and they claimed their department/branch wasn't in-charge of my account, then would transfer me to another department that supposedly should have it as it was some mysterious branch of the bank occasionally disconnecting me and each time forcing me to wait on hold for 1/2 plus. I finally paid the bill to be safe, but also continued to try and contact costumer support. When I did finally get through the operator on the other end claimed I actually OWED another payment. I told her, you must have it all wrong, you owe ME a payment. Finally after about an hour of back and fourth she finally realized that there was no possible way I could owe anything, and she would take care of it and to call back in a week. I called back a week later, waited on hold for an 45 min only to find out that they were changing computer systems and could not access my account. I waited another week and called, this time waiting 1.5 hrs on hold to fond out that there is no record of my account, bounced me around on hold (surprisingly they kept the bouncing around under 10 min), but now but claimed the only way to fix things was to let my account default which would take 60 days! I tell them I'm trying to sell my car and need my title as I have a buyer. They claim they are sorry but that there is no other way. I convince the buyer to wait 2 months as it's over x-mas and they'd be away for most of it anyway. 30 days later, I start getting calls from collections agencies. Not only did they not send me a letter of default, but they sent me directly to creditors and ruined my credit. I called to complain, but they refused to talk to me because the collections agency now owned my account. I'd call the agency, and they'd tell me that they had no record of my prior conversations and that I owed 2 payments!!!!
I finally contacted a lawyer! Started documenting my phone-calls and getting the # of people I had talked to, but to no avail. Unfortunately, during this time my car buyer left and I missed an opportunity to buy a property I actually wanted. With my credit shot, i started looking at less expensive places and came across some pre-fab homes that who else, but wells fargo was trying to be the exclusive financier for. The finance guy asked if I wanted a pre-approval from him, to which I replied yea, and I'd like your company to stop fucking me. And mumbled something to the effect that he's lucky there aren't any other customers here because I would ensure he couldn't make a loan. Shocked, he acted concerned and promised to help. Doubtful, I gave him my #. I did get one call about a pre-approval from him, but had to remind him about my situation. He finally convinced me to give him some more info and that he would look into it. After a few days, I started calling him back. After hounding him for a week he apologized and had found that my story was indeed true!!!!! He put me in contact with a semi-competent rep who slowly worked to resolved the issue. It took another 3 months to get the lean on my car. The buyer for my car, and the place I wanted, long gone. I'll never do business, or let a friend do business with them again!
I actually tried Funambol (albeit half a year ago), and it sucked. Duplicate appointments, missing data in contacts, Appointments that were deleted in Outlook never got deleted in Google Calendar...
As for the elegance... meh:P
odd... I had a strikingly similar experience using Google apps.
Your recommendation is simple, but not elegant; using Google as your server leaves you with no way to sync your "to-do" list. Just use syncML / Funambol for everything and be done with it.
For the purpose of this list a "scientist" is an individual who has published at least one peer-reviewed article during their lifetime in the broadly-construed area of natural sciences, though not necessarily in recent years nor in a field relevant to climate.
If you look at the wikipedia article closer, most of these scientists are not climatologists, to use there "opinions" as a way to refute the conclusion 99.99% of climatologists is like asking having chemist to preform your open-heart surgery just because he is a scientist and you like his opinion.
Further, many that do study climatology and are on the list happen to work for industries that pay them to have that opinion; Vincent R. Gray is a COAL chemist. If this were a legal case, they would be obligated to keep their mouth shut because of their likely hood of bias.
Similarly, the majority reputable scientists left over are not disagreeing with the argument that "climate change is man-made". Just because many disagree with the rate at which it happens or methodology doesn't mean we are not at fault and should not attempt to fix it.
Well considering NH has the highest number of vanity plates per capita, I'd say, quite a few. I personally like the Linux and BSD license plates better, though those from NH would probably agree IH8RT3 is also in the top tier.
I think if you look at the history, you'll find that things like MS Word (for DOS) were around at the same sort of time you could get StarWriter on the PC.
In any case, that's pretty academic, because neither modern office suite looks anything like those ancient predecessors. And if you look at how they've evolved, it's pretty clear who is the leader and who is copying the ideas.
Agreed, but the follow-the-leader approach is more of an artifact of the MS file-format monopoly than an inability for opensource to innovate. After years of vendor lock-in, many users are unwilling switch just because it requires learning a different set of tools and a different interface (your choice of GIMP is a great example of that). Openoffice must constantly play "catch-up" because in order to satisfy would be converts their interface must closely match MS Office, most of the same features need to be in place, and they need file-format compatibility, which they must laboriously reverse engineer because users such as you and I didn't have the foresight to worry about vendor-lock-in. Even if open-office developed independently and created a better designed, more feature rich, and easier to use, file-format lock-in and the learning curve for a new interface wouldn't allow them to eventually tip the balance; just like at Apple vs Microsoft.
You seem to be confusing copyright and patents.
No, just circles with rectangles, but that was merely for illustration.
OK, maybe that's good enough for you. I'm a professional, my time is valuable, my clients' time is valuable, and I want the best tools for the job. In -- as you might put it -- 98% of cases, that means paying some real money for a properly designed, easy to use, decently tested and actually finished and working commercial product. Or are you one of those amusing people who thinks the GIMP is OK as an alternative to Photoshop, despite the fact that approximately 100% of professional graphic artists disagree?
Your statement is confusing. Yes, GIMP is not easy to use, that is because it is designed for "professionals"; I hope you see the irony in this. Further, how can you tell if something is properly designed if you don't have the source code? If you really are "professional" you'd also be worried about how your company spends it's money, not just what's the latest and greatest. Moreover, just because the softwear comes in a box, doesn't mean it's any more finished than any other softwear, just look at gmail
I know several graphic designers; some who free-lance have made the switch, most of the rest that have not say they use photo-shop because that's what they were taught in school and they already own a copy, but that GIMP would be a perfectly acceptable alternate. Have you really polled a statically relevant sample size of graphic artists whom have tried both products recently? or are you one of those amusing people that believe that commercial software is always behind the curve?
I'm a scientific professional, and in nearly every instance an open source tool rises up to meet or defeat any proprietary solution, especially when it comes to whole systems integration. Maybe in your particular field it's different; I'm curious what are these "best tools" you cannot live without? Have you tested the open source alternatives?
A lot of the most popular and high-profile free software out there is heavily based on successful commercial products, from Linux (UNIX), OpenOffice (MS Office) and Firefox (Netscape/IE) on down.
Actually, OpenOffice came from Star Office, which originally was StarWritter. StarWriter was released WAY before MS Office ever was. Firefox indeed comes from Netscape, which in turn comes from Mozaic, which was popular due to it free for academic open source licensing. Further, Firefox, is more directly a decedent of the Mozilla suite, which was came from the open sourced parts of Netscape that Netscape released DURING it's hayday. So no, you fail, Firefox really wasn't developed to compete with closed source apps.
My economic problem with the anti-copyright arguments is that they basically assume that fixed costs for developing works are zero and reduce everything to considering the marginal cost of redistribution...
No, your economic problem is that you don't see the flaw in your model of distribution; everyone has to re-invent and market their own wheels despite several different patents on things that anyone would have thought of such as circles, cylinders, and doughnut shaped objects. Truly useful tools sell them selves and only require word of mouth advertising. If I come across something that I think could be solved by software I just search sourceforge and 98% of the time there already is a useful app there, the other 2% there's a project in development, and most of the core developers on this software ARE getting paid.
Just because you want to charge my co-workers $2.50 to install an app to cut-and-paste on their defective-by-design i-phones doesn't make my anti-copyright arguments wrong.
What do you expect, they are all just artifacts of the biggest ponzi scheme in history; fiat currency and the fedaral reserve.
The story behind our current depression is truely sad. I completely understand how Wilson was suckered into the fiat system as I also believe the government can do a better creating social programs than the public; it would have suckered me too.
Actually, there was a time when funds were well tracked. But that was a time when our currency was based on scarcity (gold). Scarcity creates scrutiny, and it's the reason our founding fathers wrote the gold standard into the constitution. What you are talking about is a direct byproduct of a fiat currency; the government just prints money when it needs it and don't have to make the public aware by raising taxes.
Today's 2000-era generation thinks it's perfectly okay to tap into their neighbor's wireless internet, even though it's costing their neighbor extra money.
If my neighbor isn't using 100% of their bandwidth, and they aren't forced into buy a higher priced service because of my usage, how could you possibly claim that I'm costing them more $ by using their open AP?
MOD PARENT UP. This will only hurt the sites you like and visit. It will have a meager damaging effect on Google and annoy their advertisers before the costs get cut from the ad hosts aka the sites you like.
Do you work for google? because your post is pure FUD.
This will only help the sites you visit by returning ad-words revenue to them and hurt google as advertisers would move to other platforms. If google were to start banning every website that uses adwords because users (and not the owners themselves) were clicking on links, there would be no profitable pages left. Further what's to stop Adbusters from only implementing this on pages from within the google.com domain?
Further as stated before me, Adbusters is not against all ads, they are only against "evil" ones and encroaching on user privacy certainly seems to be the opposite of Google's manifesto to "do no evil".
Doesn't the NIH already do this with Entrez ? Plus there are plenty of data generating institutions that actually chave such infastructure such as Connectivity Map, Chembank and the personal genome project to name a few. From the article I'm having trouble seeing how "Sage" will offer anything unique.
Slashdot Mirror
If anything, buying apple makes me thing you are an idiot; it's the only reason you'd pay more for a product that locked you out of it and made you compromised so many of your rights, from a company that has a well documented history of being shady.
Why should it? It doesn't have an amazing app store (like the iPhone). It doesn't have sexy hardware (like the iPhone or many imitators). It doesn't have an amazingly cheap price. There is nothing to stand out about it other than running "google OS". And since Android doesn't have a reputation yet, that doesn't sell phones.
Great apps would help, but people won't build those until the thing is more popular. Better hardware would help a little so it doesn't look so blocky (the G2 should help here).....
Of course, I wouldn't want to fight against a $99 iPhone....
Err, have you checked the android app store lately? Does you iphone have turn-by-turn directions? Can you i-phone be used as a metal-detector? Did you iphone come with copy-and-paste enabled? Can your iphone use google voice? How much do your iphone apps add to the total cost of your phone? I've yet to have to pay for an andriod app, but did dump some money toward andnav2. Is there anything even close to Enkin for iPhone?
There is nothing wrong with the hardware; pictures / advertisements of the Android don't do it any justice. The functionality that the keyboard and trackball on the G1 provides crush any hardware extras the iPhone may have.
At $97 the Android is more than competitively priced. How much did all your iPhone apps end up costing you? Every app I've downloaded for android has been free (most in both senses). Most of all, why would i want to buy a phone that requires me to void my warranty if I ever wanted to develop my own personal apps for it?
Your statement presumes stagnate wages.... If price inflation is a result of wage inflation, then the real income of the most poor remains the same. It's the middle class that actually gets screwed in this senario as it's hard to aggregate enough money to invest in capitol before the money looses value.
Also, another by product of such a market would be a less liquid economy as almost everyone would try and tie their money up in capitol in order to protect themselves against inflation.
However, once an equilibrium is hit between cost of capitol and potential returns from other investments, the continuing inflation would actually cause economic stimulus as one would have to worry about the price of a desired good going up over time.
and AT&T can only use the phrase "That's what she said"!
Shouldn't that be "Your world... wiretapped."?
BS!
Just because as an academic, I could copy a commercial work and make a few changes to it with out fear of the copyright police coming after me, doesn't mean that a commercial entity could now take that work and use it as if there wasn't any copyright of the original. It just means my contribution is free. This is like including snippets of BSD code in GPL code, and wouldn't harm any projects created by outside communities.
As far as fights breaking out over where work was produced, this would be no different than current patent rights issues in academia. If you aren't being productive, or there is a clear conflict of interest your institution is likely to fire you.
Finally, if copyright is abolished in academia, this wouldn't stop you from selling a commercial textbook with protection against other commercial, it just means that students in academia won't have to pay to get a copy of it. Most likely this means books written specifically for students would have to be funded though some other means, such as a grant or charter. I can't see how this would be a bad thing as some of the experiences I've had with the current system tells me it's severly broken. For instance the professor who taught chemistry at WPI mandated his book be used for the class. No one else used the book because it was so poorly written, making the on-line used market virtually non-existent and thereby forcing all sales to go though the school bookstore for twice the cost of any other chemistry text. Not to mention the correction manual that came with the book was almost half as large as the book it self, making fluid reading nearly impossible. Furthermore, NIH already hosts many text books they've bought the rights too or that have been donated. Similarly, there's a whole slew of textbooks already being published on the internet for free and being modified like an open source software projects.
Man, I took a few programing courses and that analogy is confusing. Yes, music copyright as-is is complete BS, but lets prove this by reducing the problem to it's base case:
One can copyright a single 4-beat measure, and octave and instrument is ignored.
- Chromatically (including sharps/flats) an octave has 13 unique notes
- Within a measure, there are an infinite number of notes that can be theoretically be played, but in practice that number can be reduced to 32 for a 4/4 measure.
- because the amount of time per note can be varied, we must account for each note lengh or 32*16*8*4*2*1 or 32,768
This means that the total number of unique sequences that can be played with-in an octave is 13 * 32,768 = 425,984 which is finite and could be generated by a single person. Moreover, most singers and instruments have around a 3 octave range, but this doesn't change the numbers much. Chromatically there are 37 in 3 octaves, and therefore the total possible number of unique signatures in a single measure is 37 * 32,768 = 1,212,416. Once again, while not something that could be produced quickly, it is finite and certainly could be attained methodically ceding control of all music to a single person.
I'm not sure if you are trolling or just bad at sensing truth. But next time you doubt my statement, touch your power brick after it's been detached from it's device for a while. Is it warm? If it's really consuming a non-trivial amount of power, how is the energy being dissipated?
Did this 'CPUC guy' tell you how many of these wall warts were ALSO plugged into devices that are on stand-by when he came up with this statistic?
As for my homework, I did it previously when doing a cost analysis on power strips vs adapter inefficiency.
Wow, that's a great idea for out of sight places!
I probably should have gave more context rather than a commercial link. Nonetheless, the raceways I was talking about are covered and made to run up / down walls right up next to your outlet. They are more aesthetically pleasing for visible areas (and offer better protection against house rabbit curiosity).
Split loom sucks, especially for ethernet wires, you still need to tie it down to make things look nice and it doesn't deal with extra wire very well. I only use it to protect against rodent chewing (I have pet rabbits) when I have a single wire running to the wall.
Instead, consider cable raceways. I find it's the easiest to add or subtract cable to, many come with an adhesive side, and they run in nice straight lines unlike loom.
Stick to single sided power strips where adapters run perpendicular to the stip and things will stay neat. With respect to adapters, don't worry about their power draw, it's quite negligible. The only things that you should worry about draw, are devices that have a "sleep mode" like TVs, DVD players, and receivers, but they probably should have their own surge protected strip anyway.
A quick google will show 400 ppl backing Majik Sheff. I don't know much about fees, but I spent more than 15 hrs on hold trying to fix a problem on THEIR END.
They're a bunch of crooks and they should have every one of their practices exposed.
I couldn't agree more!!! A couple years back I decided to sell my car so I could buy a condo but needed my title to make the transaction easier. I called them to ask what my pay out and was sent an official letter of the total amount I owed. I borrowed from my friends and family to pay them off. I payed them the pay-out amount and a week later received a bill as if nothing had happened. I called customer support (1/2 + hold times), and they claimed their department/branch wasn't in-charge of my account, then would transfer me to another department that supposedly should have it as it was some mysterious branch of the bank occasionally disconnecting me and each time forcing me to wait on hold for 1/2 plus. I finally paid the bill to be safe, but also continued to try and contact costumer support. When I did finally get through the operator on the other end claimed I actually OWED another payment. I told her, you must have it all wrong, you owe ME a payment. Finally after about an hour of back and fourth she finally realized that there was no possible way I could owe anything, and she would take care of it and to call back in a week. I called back a week later, waited on hold for an 45 min only to find out that they were changing computer systems and could not access my account. I waited another week and called, this time waiting 1.5 hrs on hold to fond out that there is no record of my account, bounced me around on hold (surprisingly they kept the bouncing around under 10 min), but now but claimed the only way to fix things was to let my account default which would take 60 days! I tell them I'm trying to sell my car and need my title as I have a buyer. They claim they are sorry but that there is no other way. I convince the buyer to wait 2 months as it's over x-mas and they'd be away for most of it anyway. 30 days later, I start getting calls from collections agencies. Not only did they not send me a letter of default, but they sent me directly to creditors and ruined my credit. I called to complain, but they refused to talk to me because the collections agency now owned my account. I'd call the agency, and they'd tell me that they had no record of my prior conversations and that I owed 2 payments!!!!
I finally contacted a lawyer! Started documenting my phone-calls and getting the # of people I had talked to, but to no avail. Unfortunately, during this time my car buyer left and I missed an opportunity to buy a property I actually wanted. With my credit shot, i started looking at less expensive places and came across some pre-fab homes that who else, but wells fargo was trying to be the exclusive financier for. The finance guy asked if I wanted a pre-approval from him, to which I replied yea, and I'd like your company to stop fucking me. And mumbled something to the effect that he's lucky there aren't any other customers here because I would ensure he couldn't make a loan. Shocked, he acted concerned and promised to help. Doubtful, I gave him my #. I did get one call about a pre-approval from him, but had to remind him about my situation. He finally convinced me to give him some more info and that he would look into it. After a few days, I started calling him back. After hounding him for a week he apologized and had found that my story was indeed true!!!!! He put me in contact with a semi-competent rep who slowly worked to resolved the issue. It took another 3 months to get the lean on my car. The buyer for my car, and the place I wanted, long gone. I'll never do business, or let a friend do business with them again!
I actually tried Funambol (albeit half a year ago), and it sucked. Duplicate appointments, missing data in contacts, Appointments that were deleted in Outlook never got deleted in Google Calendar...
As for the elegance... meh :P
odd... I had a strikingly similar experience using Google apps.
Your recommendation is simple, but not elegant; using Google as your server leaves you with no way to sync your "to-do" list. Just use syncML / Funambol for everything and be done with it.
For the purpose of this list a "scientist" is an individual who has published at least one peer-reviewed article during their lifetime in the broadly-construed area of natural sciences, though not necessarily in recent years nor in a field relevant to climate.
If you look at the wikipedia article closer, most of these scientists are not climatologists, to use there "opinions" as a way to refute the conclusion 99.99% of climatologists is like asking having chemist to preform your open-heart surgery just because he is a scientist and you like his opinion.
Further, many that do study climatology and are on the list happen to work for industries that pay them to have that opinion; Vincent R. Gray is a COAL chemist. If this were a legal case, they would be obligated to keep their mouth shut because of their likely hood of bias.
Similarly, the majority reputable scientists left over are not disagreeing with the argument that "climate change is man-made". Just because many disagree with the rate at which it happens or methodology doesn't mean we are not at fault and should not attempt to fix it.
Have her use remote desktop (rdc / rdp ) to gain a second session on your box.
Well considering NH has the highest number of vanity plates per capita, I'd say, quite a few. I personally like the Linux and BSD license plates better, though those from NH would probably agree IH8RT3 is also in the top tier.
For those that are too lazy to look it up: Article 10
Actually, you forgot to subtract $300 for the $ you don't spend on a gym membership....
I think if you look at the history, you'll find that things like MS Word (for DOS) were around at the same sort of time you could get StarWriter on the PC. In any case, that's pretty academic, because neither modern office suite looks anything like those ancient predecessors. And if you look at how they've evolved, it's pretty clear who is the leader and who is copying the ideas.
Agreed, but the follow-the-leader approach is more of an artifact of the MS file-format monopoly than an inability for opensource to innovate. After years of vendor lock-in, many users are unwilling switch just because it requires learning a different set of tools and a different interface (your choice of GIMP is a great example of that). Openoffice must constantly play "catch-up" because in order to satisfy would be converts their interface must closely match MS Office, most of the same features need to be in place, and they need file-format compatibility, which they must laboriously reverse engineer because users such as you and I didn't have the foresight to worry about vendor-lock-in. Even if open-office developed independently and created a better designed, more feature rich, and easier to use, file-format lock-in and the learning curve for a new interface wouldn't allow them to eventually tip the balance; just like at Apple vs Microsoft.
You seem to be confusing copyright and patents.
No, just circles with rectangles, but that was merely for illustration.
OK, maybe that's good enough for you. I'm a professional, my time is valuable, my clients' time is valuable, and I want the best tools for the job. In -- as you might put it -- 98% of cases, that means paying some real money for a properly designed, easy to use, decently tested and actually finished and working commercial product. Or are you one of those amusing people who thinks the GIMP is OK as an alternative to Photoshop, despite the fact that approximately 100% of professional graphic artists disagree?
Your statement is confusing. Yes, GIMP is not easy to use, that is because it is designed for "professionals"; I hope you see the irony in this. Further, how can you tell if something is properly designed if you don't have the source code? If you really are "professional" you'd also be worried about how your company spends it's money, not just what's the latest and greatest. Moreover, just because the softwear comes in a box, doesn't mean it's any more finished than any other softwear, just look at gmail
I know several graphic designers; some who free-lance have made the switch, most of the rest that have not say they use photo-shop because that's what they were taught in school and they already own a copy, but that GIMP would be a perfectly acceptable alternate. Have you really polled a statically relevant sample size of graphic artists whom have tried both products recently? or are you one of those amusing people that believe that commercial software is always behind the curve?
I'm a scientific professional, and in nearly every instance an open source tool rises up to meet or defeat any proprietary solution, especially when it comes to whole systems integration. Maybe in your particular field it's different; I'm curious what are these "best tools" you cannot live without? Have you tested the open source alternatives?
A lot of the most popular and high-profile free software out there is heavily based on successful commercial products, from Linux (UNIX), OpenOffice (MS Office) and Firefox (Netscape/IE) on down.
Actually, OpenOffice came from Star Office, which originally was StarWritter. StarWriter was released WAY before MS Office ever was. Firefox indeed comes from Netscape, which in turn comes from Mozaic, which was popular due to it free for academic open source licensing. Further, Firefox, is more directly a decedent of the Mozilla suite, which was came from the open sourced parts of Netscape that Netscape released DURING it's hayday. So no, you fail, Firefox really wasn't developed to compete with closed source apps.
My economic problem with the anti-copyright arguments is that they basically assume that fixed costs for developing works are zero and reduce everything to considering the marginal cost of redistribution...
No, your economic problem is that you don't see the flaw in your model of distribution; everyone has to re-invent and market their own wheels despite several different patents on things that anyone would have thought of such as circles, cylinders, and doughnut shaped objects. Truly useful tools sell them selves and only require word of mouth advertising. If I come across something that I think could be solved by software I just search sourceforge and 98% of the time there already is a useful app there, the other 2% there's a project in development, and most of the core developers on this software ARE getting paid.
Just because you want to charge my co-workers $2.50 to install an app to cut-and-paste on their defective-by-design i-phones doesn't make my anti-copyright arguments wrong.
What do you expect, they are all just artifacts of the biggest ponzi scheme in history; fiat currency and the fedaral reserve.
The story behind our current depression is truely sad. I completely understand how Wilson was suckered into the fiat system as I also believe the government can do a better creating social programs than the public; it would have suckered me too.
Actually, there was a time when funds were well tracked. But that was a time when our currency was based on scarcity (gold). Scarcity creates scrutiny, and it's the reason our founding fathers wrote the gold standard into the constitution. What you are talking about is a direct byproduct of a fiat currency; the government just prints money when it needs it and don't have to make the public aware by raising taxes.
Today's 2000-era generation thinks it's perfectly okay to tap into their neighbor's wireless internet, even though it's costing their neighbor extra money.
If my neighbor isn't using 100% of their bandwidth, and they aren't forced into buy a higher priced service because of my usage, how could you possibly claim that I'm costing them more $ by using their open AP?
MOD PARENT UP. This will only hurt the sites you like and visit. It will have a meager damaging effect on Google and annoy their advertisers before the costs get cut from the ad hosts aka the sites you like.
Do you work for google? because your post is pure FUD.
This will only help the sites you visit by returning ad-words revenue to them and hurt google as advertisers would move to other platforms. If google were to start banning every website that uses adwords because users (and not the owners themselves) were clicking on links, there would be no profitable pages left. Further what's to stop Adbusters from only implementing this on pages from within the google.com domain?
Further as stated before me, Adbusters is not against all ads, they are only against "evil" ones and encroaching on user privacy certainly seems to be the opposite of Google's manifesto to "do no evil".
Doesn't the NIH already do this with Entrez ? Plus there are plenty of data generating institutions that actually chave such infastructure such as Connectivity Map, Chembank and the personal genome project to name a few. From the article I'm having trouble seeing how "Sage" will offer anything unique.