What's a Sharecropper?
A farmer who works a farm owned by someone else. The owner provides the land, seed, and tools exchange for part of the crops and goods produced on the farm.
Ok then.
Are You a Sharecropper?
If you're developing software for the Windows platform, yes. Or for the Apple platform, or the Oracle platform, or the SAP platform, or, well, any platform that is owned and operated by a company.
They own the ground you're building on, and if they decide they don't like you, or they can do something better with the ground, you're toast. They can ship their own product and give it away till you go bust, then start charging for it; and use secret APIs you can't see; and they can break the published APIs you use. All of these things have historically been done by platform vendors.
We are all sharecroppers for our state or nation anyway, but yes - depending on a company whose aim is to use you for now and completely substitute you in the future makes things look worse.
How not to be a sharecropper? [...]
Too bad there seems to be no way to avoid being a sharecropper other than working for server apps. That leaves the market in... how much? 1/100th of the jobs?
Back to Sharecropping Scoble talks about how much he and Microsoft want to lure developers to build applications for Longhorn, and no surprise. To mangle three metaphors, if you drink that kool-aid, you're either locked in the trunk like Dave Winer says or if you like my metaphor-ware better, you're a sharecropper. Either way, it sucks.
Don't go there.
Well this is slashdot and everybody here knows Micro$oft is evil. Whatever I type on the subject would be redundant.;)
I guess the NASA won't care about the price difference, and will care a lot about performance/herz (you know, mission critical CPUs that would rather run at slower clocks due to radiation issues).
I don't know about you, but if a P4 at 2.66Ghz is cheaper and better (even marginally) than a G5 at 2Ghz, I won't give a rat's ass about the clock speed.
Better scalability? maybe. Just show me the whole computer's performance and price tag.
Talk about performance/price and stop the rhetoric.
I think it's because people starting fresh can see bugs where the original programmers think it's perfectly settled. Those are, precisely, the bugs escaping the first phase the article writer talks about.
Programmers are humans too and get bored. First passes of debugging are done more or less deeply, but unconsciously the following passes can't catch so much attention from the programmers, no matter how hard they try.
In closed source, bringing new programmers not involved from the beginning is outrageously expensive: they have to spend lots of hours just getting used to the code. In Open Source, most if not all of those extra debugging passes are done for free.
On May 28, Univention GmbH obtained a preliminary injunction from the Bremen, Germany, Regional Court. The order prohibits SCO-Caldera from circulating.
[...]
Further, the Bremen Court Order provides for a fine of up to 250,000 Euros (around $250,000 U.S.) or jail time for every violation of the Court Order.
Sontag is wrong if he thinks that US govt will help because Linux is used by terrorists, since Linux is also used by NASA, Pentagon etc. It would have been different matter if he had said that Linux is used by Al Gore....
A "fashion" guy like Gore must be a Mac guy hands down. I was a bit worried for a sec.
And I thought the blender.org era was a good thing...
Things like this support the corporate credibility in the IT ages. *sigh*
what sucks is globalization
on
DRAM Price Fixing
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
When a very limited number of companies control the whole world's market, things like this happen.
The user is helpless when they have so much control. Reached this point, competition is not enough and the market doesn't regulate itself at all. This is when free market means free for big corporations to abuse and screw the rest.
Slashdot Mirror
So basically the chinese are "liberating" the Tibet american style?
I don't bite. Tibet has the right to evolve to a democracy without being assimilated by China, losing all their roots and culture.
You must be making a lot from all this hot air, so thank Slashdot and stop trolling under anonymity.
Every other day I get MSN spam telling me I won something... so what's news?
You thought M$ and Fisher-Price had a joint venture? Hope you can change that theme.
Existing infrastructure, profit margins, lack of competition... people shelling top $$$ for the current shit...
I guess the NASA won't care about the price difference, and will care a lot about performance/herz (you know, mission critical CPUs that would rather run at slower clocks due to radiation issues).
I don't know about you, but if a P4 at 2.66Ghz is cheaper and better (even marginally) than a G5 at 2Ghz, I won't give a rat's ass about the clock speed.
Better scalability? maybe. Just show me the whole computer's performance and price tag.
Talk about performance/price and stop the rhetoric.
True. Powerful chip for the late 70's (not early 80's as the poster said). First game was released in 1979 AFAIK.
Emule let's you throttle your upstream and it's been doing so since I know it.
I think it's because people starting fresh can see bugs where the original programmers think it's perfectly settled.
Those are, precisely, the bugs escaping the first phase the article writer talks about.
Programmers are humans too and get bored. First passes of debugging are done more or less deeply, but unconsciously the following passes can't catch so much attention from the programmers, no matter how hard they try.
In closed source, bringing new programmers not involved from the beginning is outrageously expensive: they have to spend lots of hours just getting used to the code. In Open Source, most if not all of those extra debugging passes are done for free.
IBM vs SCO
Shanghai Cooperation Organization has the worst press they could get.
A "fashion" guy like Gore must be a Mac guy hands down. I was a bit worried for a sec.
I wonder how many others would sue IBM based on absurd claims if they settled a precedent like this.
I foresee results similar to those of Searchking.
Bezos with his stupid IP policy turned the scene into hell.
Typical Jobs. The design is the only thing he worries about - doesn't give a shit about performance.
This guy's a joke.
Yep this is truly appalling and makes me feel paranoid. This discrimination really makes you think.
Did Gore "invent" this stuff too? or was it Bill Gates?
It is people thinking and working their posts that make Slashdot worth reading.
If it all was "w00000t f1rst p0st" and " sucks|r0x0rz" I wouldn't be here right now.
Pre-emptive strike on Asia is in order.
Most importantly the guy has a link to "Misogyny Unlimited" (10th bookmark in the list).
Nothing bad can come out of a misogynyst, so I'll give it a try.
So we can finally have passive heatsinks with heat-powered neons while keeping CPUs cool??
Wait. This is slashdot. Wake me up when this is real life
Sony's Clie' page
Just to spare you a little searching.
And I thought the blender.org era was a good thing... Things like this support the corporate credibility in the IT ages. *sigh*
When a very limited number of companies control the whole world's market, things like this happen.
The user is helpless when they have so much control. Reached this point, competition is not enough and the market doesn't regulate itself at all. This is when free market means free for big corporations to abuse and screw the rest.
link to Google's cache here
http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:LYumJ-IViUcC: ohmslaw.com/robot.htm&hl=en&ie=UTF-8