You'd be surprised by how easy you get their unsold fuits and vegetables if you ask them. I know because my parents used to use those to help feed some dogs.
But anyway, bad analogy. Very bad. The store invested its money on the vegetables, you are just taking their money away, since they didn't lose it yet. When you copy something, you take nothing away from nobody.
If you pull two deuterion nuclei togheter, you should get helium 4, and no neutrons. Or you get helium 3 and a neutron, but this is may be very unlikely (well, I didn't make the calculations, they are hard), so you'd produce almost no neutrons.
Not to say that I belive that he does what he says. But if he did what he says, he could very well get the results he says he get.
With a 512 bytes sector, a 32 bits sector number can address 2TiB. It is not much nowadays, but increasing the sector size is the wrong way to deal with it. With a 4Ki sector, the capacity becomes 16TiB, what is a bit more, but will become little very soon.
The only solution is getting 64 bit sector numbers. Now, there will be a long time (if ever) until we need something bigger than 64 bits.
That is happening on all research areas. Research takes more of a computer than a normal Windows installation have to offer, and using Linux is much easier than installing all 3rd party apps that you need (installing software on Windows is hard).
Microsoft not using.Net at their programs was the most interesting one until yesterday. It is simply unbelivable that.Net producers are more productive at C/C++. And they hope to sell it to everybody... Their business plan was based on worldwide migration, ins't it?
But the reestruturation of the Windows division is even more interesting. Thigs are getting really funny.
I wonder if all this will make people questionate the long term possibilities of Microsoft. If people start to questionate, they'll see that there is no evidence out there to support that MS isn't doomed (except for a few weard contability results). But I can't really fell sorry for the shareholders.
Netscape wanted to create XUL, a set of proprietary extensions that would change the web (at least, it was better than active-x). They needed a rewrite for that, their mistake was not keeping the old browser during the rewrite.
Well, the rest is history. They lose the browser war, and we gained a free one. And XUL now is free, but didn't revolutionate the web, mostly because of Microsoft.
You should ponder it a bit more, because the problem is unsolvable. If you let the owner (the one who brought it) of the machine decide what he'd like to run on it, you can't enforce DRM on it. And if you don't let him decide, he'll not be able to run his software, thus FOSS will go nowhere. But we may still have Linux, distributed by the machine manufacturers, or even Microsoft (talking about irony).
Your point about protected mode is nosense. Despite the kernel that the owner chosed to use having protected mode, he can chose to use another one anytime, or write a module. So the owner of the machine is not controlled by the hardware, it is the other way around.
We can program exponentially (yes, exactly O(exp(x))) faster by real code reuse. Like what people say they do (looking for libraries and using them), not like what people really do (reusing only self coded fragments, looking for libraries and rewritting them).
Most of the problems with real code reuse are solved by free software, that is probably why there is now an emergent desire to do that on the community. Just look the number of/. comments stressing that you SHOULD build a library and a CLI envelopes for your code to see how strong this desire is becomming. And look for the number of dependecies of any distro to see how often code reuse has being done.
But don't expect things to change overnight. Being exponentialy faster doesn't means that t is incredibly faster today, it can even be slower.
Yes, you are right. It is not because you can read the source that you can bypass the DRM, you can bypass the DRM because it is DRM.
There is no secure DRM, unless you start enforcing it with hardware (TCPA). And that only moves the break point into the hardware arena, so that it is more expensive (very expensive) to break it, but still possible.
If they rewrite the comments into something different, there is no problem with copyrights. Remember that what is copywrited is the text, the ideas don't have owners (yet). And if they help FOSS's cause, better yet (remmember who owns/.).
And capitalize your 'I'. It is "What I said" not "What i said".
We don't need better IAs to moderate who we answer, we just need to do it (of course, beeter IA leads to beeter moderation). The problem is that it seems that people don't want moderation systems on their communication, so we don't get it.
Changing is hard. Even if everything stays the same. People don't change from IE because they are used to it, and they don't know what will happen when they get the new bronwser.
The fact that nothing important happens, that the new browser has all IE capabilities, and nothing will change (unless less spyware and virus) is irrelevant because people don't know it.
What is an one off internal system? I am not familiar with the term (probably because english is not my first language). If by that you mean changing the kernel and most other important programs, it is as easy (or hard) as any other piece of software. Depends on how well designed and maintained are both the original system and your changes. But there are two pieces of software that are very hard to change: GCC and GlibC. GCC is the most used C/C++ compiler, and GlibC implements the core libraries of the C/C++ languages. Managing uncompatible changes on both of them is very hard (do not try it at home).
It is quite easy to create your own distro. If you base it on Debian (probably also on gentoo), you can do alone a release on a week. Starting a company to get some money from it, otherwise, is as hard as getting money from the distros that are already out there, so you'll probably prefer to not create it.
The best way get into the techinical aspects of Linux is to try it yourself. You'll have problems, that you'll find the solution trough Google (the 'howto' keyword you a beginners friend) and foruns. You should chose a distro (if you aren't new here, you may know of a lot of them already, my favorite is Debian that is hard to install, but very easy to maintain), and use it for a while, then change a few times to see what is different. When you decide which distro is your favorite, go deep on it, reconfiguring everything and looking into the source of a few programs.
About the market aspects of it, well, what exactly do you intend to do? There are several different ways of applying free software. While most of them are user centered, what doesn't create a market, many are market centered. But there is nothing much different from proprietary software here, unless you are Microsoft.
I think that his attitude on the naming is at least anoying. He could gladly accept that he is one of the main contributors to all the most popular free software out there, and let people name it anyway they like. Otherwise, we'll need to use GNU/*BSD, and GNU/HURD (that is funny).
But I dislike naming any system running on top of Linux as "Linux" almost as much as I dislike naming it "GNU/Linux".
He probably have more touch on reallity than you. That is the reason you don't understand. Please, consider that RMS could forsee all this DRM stuff, and hardware enabled DRM. He could forsee that the biggest copyright holders would use their power to get the governments working for them, and would monopolise knowledge and access to knowledge (you can read his texts at the FSF site).
And reallity is confirmating that... We have DRM, and hardware enforced DRM didn't take up yet, but companies keep trying. The biggest coppyright owners are already using their power to corrupt governments, getting advantages that goes from infinite restrictions on knowledge (that you needs to ask them if you wants to get any information), aka DMCA, to private taxes, aka blank media tax.
Don't fool yourself. Copyrights are dangerous, and RMS isn't stupid nor delusional. Try check on history, RMS view is almost always confirmed to be true shortly after people start telling he's delusional.
We try to change the smallest possible number of applications, because changing lots of them would be a maintence's nightmare. Also, we normaly send our changes to the main developpers, so they can integrate it with the main code and we don't need to maintain the changes ourselves (of course, only when they want our changes).
If you are not used to Linux, you really have no idea. The system I use at home (Debian Etch), for example, have new actualizations every single day (well, I remember a Sunday that I couldn't find any). Every new code tends to use the new libraries and the new kernel functions, because, differently from the proprietary software, they are there, are free (beer), and if the user don't have them already, they can simply download it (what is automatic). And free software tends to use lots of 3rd party libraries.
What you get is a system that is always changing (of course, on a production system, you'll not follow it very close), and where old programs become useless very fast. If everything is working, you can keep using them, but if you need to change anything, you'll regret having a very old system. Well, if you rent accounts, you should expect your clients to make changes, so keeping an old system is not very welcome.
Also, try not using the term "zealot" if you are not sure about what you are talking. Freedom matters, you can be sure that it is only a matter of time until you understand why, and using that term put you at a bad light from all the people that already understand.
I don't live at the United States, so I may be completely wrong here. But I think you should add "every single stuff" that you own to that list. Also, I don't think those are really at the publick knowledge, several people complain about giving their SSN here on/., and the others should be know only by your employer (#2), the banks that you have debt (#3), and the government (all). Nobody else should know that.
Windows is a developer's nightmare. You point at the MS IDE, but it is not that good, and at the best possible light, it is still very small, lacking most of the tools that make a developer's life easier. Windows API is terrible and Windows lacks laguages. Despite the fact that you can always install some more compilers and interpreters, installing stuff at Windows is HARD, and well, you need to install them, on UNIXes they come by default. Windows also lacks shared libraries and toolkits.
And you'll always have the problem of using Windows user interface, with all those stupid confirmation dialogs, and extra keys presses, and only mouse programs, and the newer MS's commands moving through the monitor and vanishing when you don't use them.
Slashdot Mirror
You'd be surprised by how easy you get their unsold fuits and vegetables if you ask them. I know because my parents used to use those to help feed some dogs.
But anyway, bad analogy. Very bad. The store invested its money on the vegetables, you are just taking their money away, since they didn't lose it yet. When you copy something, you take nothing away from nobody.
Please, somebody, debug that!
If you pull two deuterion nuclei togheter, you should get helium 4, and no neutrons. Or you get helium 3 and a neutron, but this is may be very unlikely (well, I didn't make the calculations, they are hard), so you'd produce almost no neutrons.
Not to say that I belive that he does what he says. But if he did what he says, he could very well get the results he says he get.
There is a program out there called "tar". You should take a look into it.
With a 512 bytes sector, a 32 bits sector number can address 2TiB. It is not much nowadays, but increasing the sector size is the wrong way to deal with it. With a 4Ki sector, the capacity becomes 16TiB, what is a bit more, but will become little very soon.
The only solution is getting 64 bit sector numbers. Now, there will be a long time (if ever) until we need something bigger than 64 bits.
Emacs is good only for dealing with text. Well, to do anything with any kind of text, that is true, but it is still only for text.
That is happening on all research areas. Research takes more of a computer than a normal Windows installation have to offer, and using Linux is much easier than installing all 3rd party apps that you need (installing software on Windows is hard).
Microsoft not using .Net at their programs was the most interesting one until yesterday. It is simply unbelivable that .Net producers are more productive at C/C++. And they hope to sell it to everybody... Their business plan was based on worldwide migration, ins't it?
But the reestruturation of the Windows division is even more interesting. Thigs are getting really funny.
I wonder if all this will make people questionate the long term possibilities of Microsoft. If people start to questionate, they'll see that there is no evidence out there to support that MS isn't doomed (except for a few weard contability results). But I can't really fell sorry for the shareholders.
Netscape wanted to create XUL, a set of proprietary extensions that would change the web (at least, it was better than active-x). They needed a rewrite for that, their mistake was not keeping the old browser during the rewrite.
Well, the rest is history. They lose the browser war, and we gained a free one. And XUL now is free, but didn't revolutionate the web, mostly because of Microsoft.
You should ponder it a bit more, because the problem is unsolvable. If you let the owner (the one who brought it) of the machine decide what he'd like to run on it, you can't enforce DRM on it. And if you don't let him decide, he'll not be able to run his software, thus FOSS will go nowhere. But we may still have Linux, distributed by the machine manufacturers, or even Microsoft (talking about irony).
Your point about protected mode is nosense. Despite the kernel that the owner chosed to use having protected mode, he can chose to use another one anytime, or write a module. So the owner of the machine is not controlled by the hardware, it is the other way around.
We can program exponentially (yes, exactly O(exp(x))) faster by real code reuse. Like what people say they do (looking for libraries and using them), not like what people really do (reusing only self coded fragments, looking for libraries and rewritting them).
Most of the problems with real code reuse are solved by free software, that is probably why there is now an emergent desire to do that on the community. Just look the number of /. comments stressing that you SHOULD build a library and a CLI envelopes for your code to see how strong this desire is becomming. And look for the number of dependecies of any distro to see how often code reuse has being done.
But don't expect things to change overnight. Being exponentialy faster doesn't means that t is incredibly faster today, it can even be slower.
Yes, you are right. It is not because you can read the source that you can bypass the DRM, you can bypass the DRM because it is DRM.
There is no secure DRM, unless you start enforcing it with hardware (TCPA). And that only moves the break point into the hardware arena, so that it is more expensive (very expensive) to break it, but still possible.
If they rewrite the comments into something different, there is no problem with copyrights. Remember that what is copywrited is the text, the ideas don't have owners (yet). And if they help FOSS's cause, better yet (remmember who owns /.).
And capitalize your 'I'. It is "What I said" not "What i said".
We don't need better IAs to moderate who we answer, we just need to do it (of course, beeter IA leads to beeter moderation). The problem is that it seems that people don't want moderation systems on their communication, so we don't get it.
Changing is hard. Even if everything stays the same. People don't change from IE because they are used to it, and they don't know what will happen when they get the new bronwser.
The fact that nothing important happens, that the new browser has all IE capabilities, and nothing will change (unless less spyware and virus) is irrelevant because people don't know it.
What is an one off internal system? I am not familiar with the term (probably because english is not my first language). If by that you mean changing the kernel and most other important programs, it is as easy (or hard) as any other piece of software. Depends on how well designed and maintained are both the original system and your changes. But there are two pieces of software that are very hard to change: GCC and GlibC. GCC is the most used C/C++ compiler, and GlibC implements the core libraries of the C/C++ languages. Managing uncompatible changes on both of them is very hard (do not try it at home).
It is quite easy to create your own distro. If you base it on Debian (probably also on gentoo), you can do alone a release on a week. Starting a company to get some money from it, otherwise, is as hard as getting money from the distros that are already out there, so you'll probably prefer to not create it.
The best way get into the techinical aspects of Linux is to try it yourself. You'll have problems, that you'll find the solution trough Google (the 'howto' keyword you a beginners friend) and foruns. You should chose a distro (if you aren't new here, you may know of a lot of them already, my favorite is Debian that is hard to install, but very easy to maintain), and use it for a while, then change a few times to see what is different. When you decide which distro is your favorite, go deep on it, reconfiguring everything and looking into the source of a few programs.
About the market aspects of it, well, what exactly do you intend to do? There are several different ways of applying free software. While most of them are user centered, what doesn't create a market, many are market centered. But there is nothing much different from proprietary software here, unless you are Microsoft.
I think that his attitude on the naming is at least anoying. He could gladly accept that he is one of the main contributors to all the most popular free software out there, and let people name it anyway they like. Otherwise, we'll need to use GNU/*BSD, and GNU/HURD (that is funny).
But I dislike naming any system running on top of Linux as "Linux" almost as much as I dislike naming it "GNU/Linux".
He probably have more touch on reallity than you. That is the reason you don't understand. Please, consider that RMS could forsee all this DRM stuff, and hardware enabled DRM. He could forsee that the biggest copyright holders would use their power to get the governments working for them, and would monopolise knowledge and access to knowledge (you can read his texts at the FSF site).
And reallity is confirmating that... We have DRM, and hardware enforced DRM didn't take up yet, but companies keep trying. The biggest coppyright owners are already using their power to corrupt governments, getting advantages that goes from infinite restrictions on knowledge (that you needs to ask them if you wants to get any information), aka DMCA, to private taxes, aka blank media tax.
Don't fool yourself. Copyrights are dangerous, and RMS isn't stupid nor delusional. Try check on history, RMS view is almost always confirmed to be true shortly after people start telling he's delusional.
We try to change the smallest possible number of applications, because changing lots of them would be a maintence's nightmare. Also, we normaly send our changes to the main developpers, so they can integrate it with the main code and we don't need to maintain the changes ourselves (of course, only when they want our changes).
If you are not used to Linux, you really have no idea. The system I use at home (Debian Etch), for example, have new actualizations every single day (well, I remember a Sunday that I couldn't find any). Every new code tends to use the new libraries and the new kernel functions, because, differently from the proprietary software, they are there, are free (beer), and if the user don't have them already, they can simply download it (what is automatic). And free software tends to use lots of 3rd party libraries.
What you get is a system that is always changing (of course, on a production system, you'll not follow it very close), and where old programs become useless very fast. If everything is working, you can keep using them, but if you need to change anything, you'll regret having a very old system. Well, if you rent accounts, you should expect your clients to make changes, so keeping an old system is not very welcome.
Also, try not using the term "zealot" if you are not sure about what you are talking. Freedom matters, you can be sure that it is only a matter of time until you understand why, and using that term put you at a bad light from all the people that already understand.
Yep, proprietary MySQL is no better than any other proprietary software, but free MySQL is better.
If you are happy to depend on a piece of proprietary software with a strong lock-in, yes, it may have advantages.
But don't forget that the one selling you software will take advantage of the lock-in latter.
I don't live at the United States, so I may be completely wrong here. But I think you should add "every single stuff" that you own to that list. Also, I don't think those are really at the publick knowledge, several people complain about giving their SSN here on /., and the others should be know only by your employer (#2), the banks that you have debt (#3), and the government (all). Nobody else should know that.
Windows is a developer's nightmare. You point at the MS IDE, but it is not that good, and at the best possible light, it is still very small, lacking most of the tools that make a developer's life easier. Windows API is terrible and Windows lacks laguages. Despite the fact that you can always install some more compilers and interpreters, installing stuff at Windows is HARD, and well, you need to install them, on UNIXes they come by default. Windows also lacks shared libraries and toolkits.
And you'll always have the problem of using Windows user interface, with all those stupid confirmation dialogs, and extra keys presses, and only mouse programs, and the newer MS's commands moving through the monitor and vanishing when you don't use them.
Of a GENERIC problem. We can't do that either, we do only on a case basis.