Unlike the reponses so far - I'd like to weigh in on your side, with reservations. While I agree that companies that break the law must be punished, I also feel in this case we must reserve judgement (at least until the full story comes out) since the lawfully elected government of this land may have ordered, coerced, or just "strongly suggested" that they do it.
As I understand this story so far, the suggestion is that this precedent may open the door to a flood of civil litigation against these companies. This would be the absolute wrong thing to do. Imagine our own people, in a greed-induced frenzy, falling on our own infrastructure providers like a pack of hungry wolves. I can't imagine Al-Queda (sp?) could ask for anything better if they'd palnned it themselves (hmmmn... or did they?).
If a wrong was done, it would be better to handle it in a measured way that ensures the continued viability of companies that provide our infrastructure services, while sending the right signal to other companies in the marketplace.
BTW - man, your web site is the best thing I've seen on the net in a long time - sheer genious!
I thought this too. And both are on the low side in terms of number of cpus total. Is there anywhere one can find cost info on these? I would love to look at the dollars per GFlop ratio.
Dude, seriously, do they not teach history in schools anymore?
Adminttedly, the AC was completely off-topic, but a simple Google would've revealed the importance of those names. Quick version, there was an anti-war protest. The governor called the national guard, the guard opened-fire on the students, killing four.
I don't blame you for not knowing this - I blame our society, which is basically giving new meaning to the old adage "those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it".
You comment as though there were no middle ground. Or are you saying that innocent children who are murdered or abused while "unleashing all tethers" is acceptable collateral damage? The Norman-Rockwell-esque innocence that punctuated past generations is gone. As a parent, my primary goal is to keep them alive, my secondary goal is teaching independence and self-sufficiency. Both important goals, but independence is irrelevant if you're dead.
I don't have the answer, but when coupled with a pre-existing good relationship between child and parent, this device is nothing alarming. It may even work for some households, and if it does, that's great. I'll probably sign up when my kids get their first phones.
WOW! Thanks for a very neat, concise post that sums up everything that's wrong with 'Free Software' today. Doesn't have a feature you need? Write it yourself. Don't understand how to use it? RTFM.
As someone who loves OSS as much as the next slashbot, but who makes 100% of his living off closed source projects, I find it reassuring that these attitudes still prevail, and are even modded up here. I look forward to a long and propserous career actually *serving* my customers.
Thank you for the eloquent and well thought out comment. I think you're right, inevitably, what today constitutes the main user-base of linux may be marginalized/criminalized by the way things seem to be going. But I ask a broader question here, and I don't mean to single you out by any means.
Why this facination with media anyway? Think of the trouble we go through to assemble media centers, integrating all sorts of devices, dealing with DRM, dealing with vendors who choose not to support or platforms for various mainly financial reasons. Dealing with IP laws and big-government.
How about we go outside? There was a time when people actually lived life, instead of watching others live it on a screen. I'm not trying to flame, I'm as guilt of sitting on my ass in front of a computer or TV as anyone, probably moreso. My point is that we as a culture are feeding the events currently occuring in the media industry and government with our insatiable appetite for content. Like it or not the bulk of us are so hungry for this content that we will endure almost any intrusion to have it, like junkies, we can't walk away.
But walking away is the only thing that will stop it. We stop buying, they either go out of business or they find a way of packaging the content in ways that we *will* buy. I doubt this will happen, but ultimately, if it does not, you may kiss any semblance of control over such media goodbye. Free and fair use *will* be doomed becuase the rights-holders of the content hold all the cards and we are unable or unwilling to use the one means they would take notice of.
I doubt Apple will *ever* want anyone as an OS X customer - they want people as hardware customers. Also, your pricetag of $3000 is a bit off, $1999 gets you everything except a second battery:
15.4-inch TFT display with 1440x900 resolution 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo with 2MB shared L2 Cache (1) 667MHz frontside bus 512MB (single SO-DIMM) 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM 80GB 5400rpm Serial ATA hard drive Slot-load SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW) ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 with 128MB GDDR3 memory
I challenge anyone to come up with a high-end, name-brand latop with similar specs that is more than a couple hundred less in price.
I couldn't agree more that collapse is inevitable. I think that you may be a little too optimistic in assuming that the country can survive the simultaneous collapse of the the automobile industry and the real-estate market.
These two drivers in conjunction with a downward adjustment in real income will force a huge swath of the current middle class into poverty, as banks forclose on homes and vehicles they can't make payments on. The fact that goods like milk and eggs, stereos and refrigerators may also decline is irrelevant, the financial structure of most middle class families is such that savings in those areas could not counterbalance the other debt. And with homes unable to sell for what the family paid for them, the banks will forcelose, now the banking indutry is saddled with real property they can't sell for what they're owed, so there is danger of a banking collpase as well.
IMHO the country WILL NOT SURVIVE a simultaneous collapse of the auto industry, the real estate markets, and the banking industry.
You are correct, ignoring for now the source of the trigger, our current path makes this correction inevitable. It is *precisely* this correction which our politicians on *both* sides of the aisle are not dealing with. As a concrete example, even a gradual correction (and I personally think the correction will not be gradual) will force a huge chunk of the US middle class into poverty.
The reason is the simple fact of the American drean: Home ownership. If earning ability adjusts downward by even 25%, a huge swath of the middle class looses their homes. The wealthy in this country could see 25% and sometimes even 50% net downward adjustment and still remain in the black from a debt perspective. How many middle class home-owners can say the same.
I'm not advocating protectionism to stave off the inevitable, what I'm advocating is that our so-called leaders, republican and democrat, libertarian and green - articulate a PLAN for the inevitable, accept the inevitable, and dialog honestly with their constituents about the inevitable.
On the surface, this seems logical, and is often the first argument made by proponents of this emerging 'global economy'. Bush's own reference to tapping the growing indian 'middle class' play on this very argument.
However, do a little googling on 'indian middle class' and you'll find that the US equivilent wage to lead a nice middle class life in India is placed somwhere (depending on the year and on the study) between $6,000 and $15,000 per year.
I'm no isolationist, but there is a serious catch here that noone on either side of the issue is directly addressing - I live in a place where it takes at least $40,000 to 50,000 to lead a nice middle class life. What can I possibly produce that would generate that income from a market in India? As other posters here have already alluded to, the indian middle class will get a much better deal from Indian (or Chinese, etc) produced goods.
In the end, U.S. workers can't compete until the cost of living differences, as well as the differences in currency valuation flatten out. Globalization will innevitably lead to this flattening, but the upheaval in the US, with its relatively high costs and current currency valuations, will be severe, I expect the ranks of the working poor to swell massively, with consequences that, so far, I have yet to hear any politician (or economist) deal with honestly.
Um... I really don't mean to be rude...
But it is possible to use a computer and not use IE. At work I use a fine Linux distro known as Fedora Core, and at home I use a mac with OS X.
C'est Voila!
No IE!
Heat is the first thing I'd check if I knew the RAM is good. Awhile back I started experiencing freeezes and crashes on a dual proc G4 Powermac.
Seems my brain hiccuped and I forgot to check for dust build up for months. When I looked, the intakes and fans were totally clogged, inside the case, things were worse.
I vacuumed it all up and started cleaning every couple months -- the machine has been completely trouble free since.
Every once in a while, a comment is so outrageous, that I just have to get off my ass and respond.
"Exploit", "Take", "Locked them up" ???
That's complete crap! The BSD license legally allows any use of software released under the license. To say that anyone, commercial enterprise or otherwise, who uses BSD licensed components in their offering is like saying I "exploit" democracy here in the U.S. by casting my vote.
The authors of BSD licensed software made a choice to release their code under that license. You may have some quasi-moral outrage over the various uses of the software so released, but suck it up and join the rest of us in the real world, such use is completely legal and moral under the license.
I believe that it is against human nature for scientists to NOT put their own spin into their research. They may not even recognize the slant in their own writings.
Of course, science strives to avoid this, and emphasis on publication and peer review keeps it in check (we hope). But, many things are not black and white in science either. At one point, science would have had us believe the earth was flat.
My point is, everything's a theory until proven with fact, and much of what we know about our universe remains theory. Theories change, and facts are reinterpretted.
I don't find fault with journalism's overly 'balanced' take on science. Journalists should NOT be expected to do our thinking for us. In fact, with respect to the theoretical, journalism's responsibility should end at informing us that issues and debates exist. It should be up to the reader to take the search for 'truth' further on their own.
A sibling post mentioned 'critical thinking'. This is a skill that is sorely lacking in our country. It should be the subject of study at all levels of education, right up there with the three Rs -- yet somehow it's not...
I couldn't agree more - in fact every time this quote is trotted out (happens a lot here on/.) I feel compelled to remind the user that what Ben Franklin felt were essential liberties was probably quite a bit different than what the poster thinks they are, or should be.
Frequently the example of airline travel restrictions comes up in the same general vicinity, as if Ben Franklin could ever have concieved of a 300-passenger jet-liner being used as a weapon by death-seeking psychotics.
Perhaps I'm alone, but to me, the fact that I'm free to travel about the country, and that the existence of air travel allows me to be anywhere within 5 or so hours, is my essential liberty. The extra hassle at the airport is not of concern to me and if it was, there are multitudes of more anonymous modes of travel.
If you don't like the scene at airports, don't fly, you're welcome to take the very anonymous horse-drawn carriage to get where you want to be - thats how ol' Ben would've had to do it!
Re:All of this could easily have been avoided.
on
Mambo Users Threatened
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· Score: 0, Troll
Whoever moderated this as flamebait is some kind of idiot. Of course, I shouldn't be surprised, after all this is slashdot. Gentle reminder people, the 'freedom' that RMS and his ilk so venerate is based on freedom of speech, the idea that software itself is a protected form of speech under the constitution.
Whatever happened to "I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."
The reason that there is a small but growing backlash against the FSF and its poster-child, the GPL, is the quasi-religion that caused this moderater to mod-down this perfectly honest opinion.
I find it hilarious that people posting on slashdot decry the 'Micrososft Monoculture' and yet rush headlong towards creating their own little monoculture where dissenting opinion is quashed mercilessly. Being a GPL zealot doesn't make you some 'better' kind of zealot, sane people still pile you in with all the other idiots and crazies.
Sure, I wrote my first program on a Commodore -- that makes us old by slashdot standards - and noone here of any age is going to disagree with your comment because, well, its kind of our job and our passion to be curious about computers...
But...
I feel compelled to remind you that to most people, the computer is a tool to get some other job done. A writer wants to write, an artist wants to draw, an architect wants to design buildings, etc. These people are just as curious as you and I, it is just that their curiosity is aimed in a different direction.
Consider the hammer and nail. If you need to connect two pieces of wood, do you really need a manual? Must you be a carpenter to do this thing? No, the nail is flat on one end and sharp on the other. The hammer fits easily into your hand, there is a heavy, flat surface at one end that seems destined to impact the flat end of the nail.
Anyone who designs and builds tools for a living (or as a passion) should want their tools to work as naturally and effortlessly as this.
No OS that I know of has reached this point, though some are closer than others (cough, Mac OS X, cough). Why shouldn't we have high expectations for Linux (on the desktop)?
You are right, this IS the solution. The days of actually 'sharing' our 'shared libraries' should be over. They came about due to the constrained and expensive nature of disk storage. This is simply untrue today, I can obtain storage for under a dollar a gig. I can only assume that developers stubborn need to adhere to some 'elegance' ethic, or mad desire to conserve resources allows this to continue.
OS X (let the flaming begin) is another OS that solves the problem in the way you describe. Consider the typical OS X app:
The OS provides a stable set of frameworks - they can be consumed by developers, but not touched or altered.
If a developer needs functionality not in the frameworks, he is welcome to acquire and link to third party libs.
The develper develops his own libs and executables as usual.
At distribution time, the developer packages ALL libs, executables, docs, graphics, etc. into a directory structure.
He now designates the root of this structure as a application bundle, gives it an icon, etc.
The user obtains the application simply by copying the bundle (which appears as if a single file to him) to his local disk. He runs it by double-clicking it.
Yes, it uses more disk, but again, I ask: "Who Cares?"
Why, Oh why can't Linux (or friggin' Windows for that matter) adopt something like this!
"but I agree, a clear violation of your right to privacy."
This is not meant as a troll or flame, but as an honest question. I am not well versed in constitutional law, so I'm hoping for some meaningful answers (yeah, I know I'm on Slashdot!).
My question is this - do we have an explicit, constitutional guarantee of privacy regardless of where we are? It seems to me I recall guarantees only regarding my private residences or lands, more recently, my private vehicle, and the private residences and lands, etc. of the individuals who are my family, friends and associates.
Are we really, explicitly guaranteed privacy in public buildings, on public roads, public parks, public transit, and public monuments?
It would seem fair, in this day and age, that the identities of persons entering various public facilities should be verified, if needed. After all, you have freedom to choose not to enter the the facility if this bothers you.
I know for a fact that my license plate is photographed whenever I pass thru the various toll bridges in the area. I have to show ID to enter the office building I work in, I undergo significant checks before boarding a plane, etc. Am I alone in not being terribly threatened by these practices, at least as they are implemented today?
Someday, hopefully they'll be able to pack enough power into these things to do speech synthesis. After all, you've already got earphones in your ears, so how hard could it be for a nice voice to read the menus, albums, artists, and songs to you as you slowly scroll over each? Sure it would be slower than visual, as you'd have to pause to 'hear' each item, but it would be livable.
You seem to have been exposed to some relatively clueless, or at least inexperienced J2EE coders.
No java guy worth his or her salt thinks that all that EJB code is there to 'work around' database bottlenecks. Anyone with any experience knows that if you want pure perfromance, you let the database do its thing with nice optimized stored procedures in the dbs sql dialect du jour. Of the many reasons for choosing EJB, one is to abstract the database away enough that your application will run against any database, with no re-coding.
You see, the opposite end of the extreme example you proposed is all those monolithic DB apps I've seem where the data-access AND business logic are tied up in multitudes of stored procedures, creating a porting and upgrading nightmares, should you ever want to change platforms.
Sure, if you're creating proprietary solutions for internal corporate problem-solving, and you're pretty sure you'll be running on Oracle forever, then go for it.
If you need multiplatform, databse-agnostic apps, then I've been happy with Java for a while now....And as for that Kings Ransom? Might I suggest JBoss or Orion.
Whenever I see someone require a college degree for an IT position, I think, hey, there's someone who doesn't really know how to assess someone's skills much.
I have known, throughout my relatively long career, many talented people in software development with either no degree at all, or an 'unrelated' one (art, music, etc).
I myself have no degree, and I have never been unemployed. I've chosen my career moves as wisely as I can, and avoided the urge to 'job-hop'. I've developed good relationships with not only my fellow programmers, but with the business-folks I've met.
As a direct result, I've been earning over six-figures since around 1999 and am about to close on a 35 foot sailing yacht as a reward for my hard work. And yes, I am bragging, but it's to make a point.
Success in this business requires being good at what you do, but that only gets you part way, the rest is all about people. The relationships you've made, the bridges you've burned, all of it.
Thanks for the laugh, but in fairness, I need to correct you. You seem to think that somehow iTunes songs get 'authorized' every time they play - thats not true, the computer is 'authorized' once, then all the purchased music can be played as often as you want. Only three computers may be 'authorized' at any one time. So... here's your revised car analogy:
You could buy your car only from an authorized dealer, and only online... but it would be delivered to you in 23 seconds and placed in your garage.
The car can be driven by at most three authorized drivers. The drivers must hold a license, issued in perpetuity by the Dealer. At any time, the purchaser of the car may be de-license a driver license a different one without cause or reason.
The car will only operate for drivers licensed as above.
Slashdot Mirror
Yo dog, we took your boring laptop and added a 7" monitor!
Unlike the reponses so far - I'd like to weigh in on your side, with reservations. While I agree that companies that break the law must be punished, I also feel in this case we must reserve judgement (at least until the full story comes out) since the lawfully elected government of this land may have ordered, coerced, or just "strongly suggested" that they do it.
As I understand this story so far, the suggestion is that this precedent may open the door to a flood of civil litigation against these companies. This would be the absolute wrong thing to do. Imagine our own people, in a greed-induced frenzy, falling on our own infrastructure providers like a pack of hungry wolves. I can't imagine Al-Queda (sp?) could ask for anything better if they'd palnned it themselves (hmmmn... or did they?).
If a wrong was done, it would be better to handle it in a measured way that ensures the continued viability of companies that provide our infrastructure services, while sending the right signal to other companies in the marketplace.
BTW - man, your web site is the best thing I've seen on the net in a long time - sheer genious!
I thought this too. And both are on the low side in terms of number of cpus total. Is there anywhere one can find cost info on these? I would love to look at the dollars per GFlop ratio.
Dude, seriously, do they not teach history in schools anymore?
Adminttedly, the AC was completely off-topic, but a simple Google would've revealed the importance of those names. Quick version, there was an anti-war protest. The governor called the national guard, the guard opened-fire on the students, killing four.
I don't blame you for not knowing this - I blame our society, which is basically giving new meaning to the old adage "those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it".
You comment as though there were no middle ground. Or are you saying that innocent children who are murdered or abused while "unleashing all tethers" is acceptable collateral damage? The Norman-Rockwell-esque innocence that punctuated past generations is gone. As a parent, my primary goal is to keep them alive, my secondary goal is teaching independence and self-sufficiency. Both important goals, but independence is irrelevant if you're dead.
I don't have the answer, but when coupled with a pre-existing good relationship between child and parent, this device is nothing alarming. It may even work for some households, and if it does, that's great. I'll probably sign up when my kids get their first phones.
WOW! Thanks for a very neat, concise post that sums up everything that's wrong with 'Free Software' today. Doesn't have a feature you need? Write it yourself. Don't understand how to use it? RTFM.
As someone who loves OSS as much as the next slashbot, but who makes 100% of his living off closed source projects, I find it reassuring that these attitudes still prevail, and are even modded up here. I look forward to a long and propserous career actually *serving* my customers.
While I agree with you about the benfits of Linux on low cost PCs - your coment about mac hosting only proves you havent looked very hard.
Thank you for the eloquent and well thought out comment. I think you're right, inevitably, what today constitutes the main user-base of linux may be marginalized/criminalized by the way things seem to be going. But I ask a broader question here, and I don't mean to single you out by any means.
Why this facination with media anyway? Think of the trouble we go through to assemble media centers, integrating all sorts of devices, dealing with DRM, dealing with vendors who choose not to support or platforms for various mainly financial reasons. Dealing with IP laws and big-government.
How about we go outside? There was a time when people actually lived life, instead of watching others live it on a screen. I'm not trying to flame, I'm as guilt of sitting on my ass in front of a computer or TV as anyone, probably moreso. My point is that we as a culture are feeding the events currently occuring in the media industry and government with our insatiable appetite for content. Like it or not the bulk of us are so hungry for this content that we will endure almost any intrusion to have it, like junkies, we can't walk away.
But walking away is the only thing that will stop it. We stop buying, they either go out of business or they find a way of packaging the content in ways that we *will* buy. I doubt this will happen, but ultimately, if it does not, you may kiss any semblance of control over such media goodbye. Free and fair use *will* be doomed becuase the rights-holders of the content hold all the cards and we are unable or unwilling to use the one means they would take notice of.
I doubt Apple will *ever* want anyone as an OS X customer - they want people as hardware customers. Also, your pricetag of $3000 is a bit off, $1999 gets you everything except a second battery:
15.4-inch TFT display with 1440x900 resolution
1.83GHz Intel Core Duo with 2MB shared L2 Cache (1)
667MHz frontside bus
512MB (single SO-DIMM) 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
80GB 5400rpm Serial ATA hard drive
Slot-load SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW)
ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 with 128MB GDDR3 memory
I challenge anyone to come up with a high-end, name-brand latop with similar specs that is more than a couple hundred less in price.
I couldn't agree more that collapse is inevitable. I think that you may be a little too optimistic in assuming that the country can survive the simultaneous collapse of the the automobile industry and the real-estate market.
These two drivers in conjunction with a downward adjustment in real income will force a huge swath of the current middle class into poverty, as banks forclose on homes and vehicles they can't make payments on. The fact that goods like milk and eggs, stereos and refrigerators may also decline is irrelevant, the financial structure of most middle class families is such that savings in those areas could not counterbalance the other debt. And with homes unable to sell for what the family paid for them, the banks will forcelose, now the banking indutry is saddled with real property they can't sell for what they're owed, so there is danger of a banking collpase as well.
IMHO the country WILL NOT SURVIVE a simultaneous collapse of the auto industry, the real estate markets, and the banking industry.
'Nuff said.
You are correct, ignoring for now the source of the trigger, our current path makes this correction inevitable. It is *precisely* this correction which our politicians on *both* sides of the aisle are not dealing with. As a concrete example, even a gradual correction (and I personally think the correction will not be gradual) will force a huge chunk of the US middle class into poverty.
The reason is the simple fact of the American drean: Home ownership. If earning ability adjusts downward by even 25%, a huge swath of the middle class looses their homes. The wealthy in this country could see 25% and sometimes even 50% net downward adjustment and still remain in the black from a debt perspective. How many middle class home-owners can say the same.
I'm not advocating protectionism to stave off the inevitable, what I'm advocating is that our so-called leaders, republican and democrat, libertarian and green - articulate a PLAN for the inevitable, accept the inevitable, and dialog honestly with their constituents about the inevitable.
On the surface, this seems logical, and is often the first argument made by proponents of this emerging 'global economy'. Bush's own reference to tapping the growing indian 'middle class' play on this very argument.
However, do a little googling on 'indian middle class' and you'll find that the US equivilent wage to lead a nice middle class life in India is placed somwhere (depending on the year and on the study) between $6,000 and $15,000 per year.
I'm no isolationist, but there is a serious catch here that noone on either side of the issue is directly addressing - I live in a place where it takes at least $40,000 to 50,000 to lead a nice middle class life. What can I possibly produce that would generate that income from a market in India? As other posters here have already alluded to, the indian middle class will get a much better deal from Indian (or Chinese, etc) produced goods.
In the end, U.S. workers can't compete until the cost of living differences, as well as the differences in currency valuation flatten out. Globalization will innevitably lead to this flattening, but the upheaval in the US, with its relatively high costs and current currency valuations, will be severe, I expect the ranks of the working poor to swell massively, with consequences that, so far, I have yet to hear any politician (or economist) deal with honestly.
Um... I really don't mean to be rude... But it is possible to use a computer and not use IE. At work I use a fine Linux distro known as Fedora Core, and at home I use a mac with OS X. C'est Voila! No IE!
Heat is the first thing I'd check if I knew the RAM is good. Awhile back I started experiencing freeezes and crashes on a dual proc G4 Powermac.
Seems my brain hiccuped and I forgot to check for dust build up for months. When I looked, the intakes and fans were totally clogged, inside the case, things were worse.
I vacuumed it all up and started cleaning every couple months -- the machine has been completely trouble free since.
Every once in a while, a comment is so outrageous, that I just have to get off my ass and respond.
"Exploit", "Take", "Locked them up" ???
That's complete crap! The BSD license legally allows any use of software released under the license. To say that anyone, commercial enterprise or otherwise, who uses BSD licensed components in their offering is like saying I "exploit" democracy here in the U.S. by casting my vote.
The authors of BSD licensed software made a choice to release their code under that license. You may have some quasi-moral outrage over the various uses of the software so released, but suck it up and join the rest of us in the real world, such use is completely legal and moral under the license.
One could just as easily say:
I believe that it is against human nature for scientists to NOT put their own spin into their research. They may not even recognize the slant in their own writings.
Of course, science strives to avoid this, and emphasis on publication and peer review keeps it in check (we hope). But, many things are not black and white in science either. At one point, science would have had us believe the earth was flat.
My point is, everything's a theory until proven with fact, and much of what we know about our universe remains theory. Theories change, and facts are reinterpretted.
I don't find fault with journalism's overly 'balanced' take on science. Journalists should NOT be expected to do our thinking for us. In fact, with respect to the theoretical, journalism's responsibility should end at informing us that issues and debates exist. It should be up to the reader to take the search for 'truth' further on their own.
A sibling post mentioned 'critical thinking'. This is a skill that is sorely lacking in our country. It should be the subject of study at all levels of education, right up there with the three Rs -- yet somehow it's not...
I couldn't agree more - in fact every time this quote is trotted out (happens a lot here on /.) I feel compelled to remind the user that what Ben Franklin felt were essential liberties was probably quite a bit different than what the poster thinks they are, or should be.
Frequently the example of airline travel restrictions comes up in the same general vicinity, as if Ben Franklin could ever have concieved of a 300-passenger jet-liner being used as a weapon by death-seeking psychotics.
Perhaps I'm alone, but to me, the fact that I'm free to travel about the country, and that the existence of air travel allows me to be anywhere within 5 or so hours, is my essential liberty. The extra hassle at the airport is not of concern to me and if it was, there are multitudes of more anonymous modes of travel.
If you don't like the scene at airports, don't fly, you're welcome to take the very anonymous horse-drawn carriage to get where you want to be - thats how ol' Ben would've had to do it!
Whoever moderated this as flamebait is some kind of idiot. Of course, I shouldn't be surprised, after all this is slashdot. Gentle reminder people, the 'freedom' that RMS and his ilk so venerate is based on freedom of speech, the idea that software itself is a protected form of speech under the constitution.
Whatever happened to "I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."
The reason that there is a small but growing backlash against the FSF and its poster-child, the GPL, is the quasi-religion that caused this moderater to mod-down this perfectly honest opinion.
I find it hilarious that people posting on slashdot decry the 'Micrososft Monoculture' and yet rush headlong towards creating their own little monoculture where dissenting opinion is quashed mercilessly. Being a GPL zealot doesn't make you some 'better' kind of zealot, sane people still pile you in with all the other idiots and crazies.
Sure, I wrote my first program on a Commodore -- that makes us old by slashdot standards - and noone here of any age is going to disagree with your comment because, well, its kind of our job and our passion to be curious about computers...
But...
I feel compelled to remind you that to most people, the computer is a tool to get some other job done. A writer wants to write, an artist wants to draw, an architect wants to design buildings, etc. These people are just as curious as you and I, it is just that their curiosity is aimed in a different direction.
Consider the hammer and nail. If you need to connect two pieces of wood, do you really need a manual? Must you be a carpenter to do this thing? No, the nail is flat on one end and sharp on the other. The hammer fits easily into your hand, there is a heavy, flat surface at one end that seems destined to impact the flat end of the nail.
Anyone who designs and builds tools for a living (or as a passion) should want their tools to work as naturally and effortlessly as this.
No OS that I know of has reached this point, though some are closer than others (cough, Mac OS X, cough). Why shouldn't we have high expectations for Linux (on the desktop)?
You are right, this IS the solution. The days of actually 'sharing' our 'shared libraries' should be over. They came about due to the constrained and expensive nature of disk storage. This is simply untrue today, I can obtain storage for under a dollar a gig. I can only assume that developers stubborn need to adhere to some 'elegance' ethic, or mad desire to conserve resources allows this to continue.
OS X (let the flaming begin) is another OS that solves the problem in the way you describe. Consider the typical OS X app:
Yes, it uses more disk, but again, I ask: "Who Cares?"
Why, Oh why can't Linux (or friggin' Windows for that matter) adopt something like this!
"but I agree, a clear violation of your right to privacy."
This is not meant as a troll or flame, but as an honest question. I am not well versed in constitutional law, so I'm hoping for some meaningful answers (yeah, I know I'm on Slashdot!).
My question is this - do we have an explicit, constitutional guarantee of privacy regardless of where we are? It seems to me I recall guarantees only regarding my private residences or lands, more recently, my private vehicle, and the private residences and lands, etc. of the individuals who are my family, friends and associates.
Are we really, explicitly guaranteed privacy in public buildings, on public roads, public parks, public transit, and public monuments?
It would seem fair, in this day and age, that the identities of persons entering various public facilities should be verified, if needed. After all, you have freedom to choose not to enter the the facility if this bothers you.
I know for a fact that my license plate is photographed whenever I pass thru the various toll bridges in the area. I have to show ID to enter the office building I work in, I undergo significant checks before boarding a plane, etc. Am I alone in not being terribly threatened by these practices, at least as they are implemented today?
Someday, hopefully they'll be able to pack enough power into these things to do speech synthesis. After all, you've already got earphones in your ears, so how hard could it be for a nice voice to read the menus, albums, artists, and songs to you as you slowly scroll over each? Sure it would be slower than visual, as you'd have to pause to 'hear' each item, but it would be livable.
I'm not blind, but I'd still like that feature.
You seem to have been exposed to some relatively clueless, or at least inexperienced J2EE coders.
...And as for that Kings Ransom? Might I suggest JBoss or Orion.
No java guy worth his or her salt thinks that all that EJB code is there to 'work around' database bottlenecks. Anyone with any experience knows that if you want pure perfromance, you let the database do its thing with nice optimized stored procedures in the dbs sql dialect du jour. Of the many reasons for choosing EJB, one is to abstract the database away enough that your application will run against any database, with no re-coding.
You see, the opposite end of the extreme example you proposed is all those monolithic DB apps I've seem where the data-access AND business logic are tied up in multitudes of stored procedures, creating a porting and upgrading nightmares, should you ever want to change platforms.
Sure, if you're creating proprietary solutions for internal corporate problem-solving, and you're pretty sure you'll be running on Oracle forever, then go for it.
If you need multiplatform, databse-agnostic apps, then I've been happy with Java for a while now.
Hey, how about I lend my credibility to yours.
Whenever I see someone require a college degree for an IT position, I think, hey, there's someone who doesn't really know how to assess someone's skills much.
I have known, throughout my relatively long career, many talented people in software development with either no degree at all, or an 'unrelated' one (art, music, etc).
I myself have no degree, and I have never been unemployed. I've chosen my career moves as wisely as I can, and avoided the urge to 'job-hop'. I've developed good relationships with not only my fellow programmers, but with the business-folks I've met.
As a direct result, I've been earning over six-figures since around 1999 and am about to close on a 35 foot sailing yacht as a reward for my hard work. And yes, I am bragging, but it's to make a point.
Success in this business requires being good at what you do, but that only gets you part way, the rest is all about people. The relationships you've made, the bridges you've burned, all of it.
Thanks for the laugh, but in fairness, I need to correct you. You seem to think that somehow iTunes songs get 'authorized' every time they play - thats not true, the computer is 'authorized' once, then all the purchased music can be played as often as you want. Only three computers may be 'authorized' at any one time. So... here's your revised car analogy:
You could buy your car only from an authorized dealer, and only online... but it would be delivered to you in 23 seconds and placed in your garage.
The car can be driven by at most three authorized drivers. The drivers must hold a license, issued in perpetuity by the Dealer. At any time, the purchaser of the car may be de-license a driver license a different one without cause or reason.
The car will only operate for drivers licensed as above.