Right, so you can interpret that as "Google's going to become America's ISP", or you can take it as "Google's going to try and poke/prod the industry to change by doing its little experiments in a select number of cities and demonstrating what's possible". Based on what they've said outside that quote it seems to me like the latter interpretation is correct.
Have you ever noticed how sometimes when people say something about someone else, it winds up revealing more about them than the person being talked about?
Here's what your post seems to reveal to me:
1) You think insulting (and not even cleverly at that) random people on the internet is a good use of your time 2) You think that there is no legitimate reason to support open source software, and therefore all support for it is "ass-kissing" 3) You think Slashdot posters are motivated to post what they write to try by "forum points", not their beliefs 4) You think that someone getting a flamebait vote is some kind of great kharmic vengence
I'd encourage you to challenge those assumptions; in my view none of them are true.
I'm not either, but that's hardly the point. Let's say something isn't documented properly and doesn't work the way I expect: just being able to read the source code can be extremely helpful.
But it goes even beyond that, because open source software naturally forms communities around it. Even if I were to never even look at a single line of the source, the fact that it's availble to others adds value for me. I can go download a patch someone else wrote that fixes a bug MS hasn't bothered to fix. I can ask someone who's read the code how it works on Stack Overflow. Or when someone uses that source as a basis for an entirely new and improved version, I can switch to that.
What praytell is preventing them from starting their own Amazons?
Sure, because it's *so* easy to create a successful online bookseller. Gee, why didn't anyone think of that before? Those Japanese people must be idiots. Baka yaroo.
And besides, once you have gcc and vi or emacs, what more does a developer need?
PyCharm (ie. IntelliJ), Chrome, a music program (Spotify, Pandora, etc.) a chat program (Pidgin, Hipchat, etc.), GIMP for image manipulation...
I have no beef with the emacs/vi folks, but some of us think that development technology (like every other kind of technology) has advanced since the 80's, and we want an OS that looks like it's from this decade to run it on.
Right, but you're missing the point: why would you want to hassle with virtual machines just to support two distros, when you can share one distro between both and avoid the extra work?
Here's one example: how do you track packages? If every developer in your company is using apt (well, or brew for those Mac people, but let's ignore them because the server is NOT going to be a Mac), then it makes sense to compile a list of apt packages right? So then when you go to deploy the sysadmin just has to sudo apt-get those packages.
But if you're server runs Red Hat, somebody has to translate that list of apt packages to yum packages. Not a huge deal, but why would you want headaches like that, even if they are minor, when nothing prevents you from having the same distro on all machines involved?
Another thing to consider is debugging. As a developer, you want to debug on a system that's as close as possible to the machine where the bug occurred. Obviously it's easier to be sure that your environment is the same as your server's (and that you're seeing the same problem the server saw) if the two run the same distro.
From the summary: "Ask her developers what they prefer, however, and it's Ubuntu" "Given that developers are the new kingmakers"
The whole point was that developers influence the choice of distro on the server, based on their preference for a development distro. I'm not quite sure how you missed that.
I think you're kind of missing the point. Developers don't think "hey, I know Ubuntu/Mint, and it works great for me, but yum just got a little bit friendlier? Forget everything I know, I'm installing Red Hat."
People change distributions with a purpose. For me personally the odyssey was:
Mandrake: because (I kid you not) it came on a CD in a Linux magazine Gentoo: because of the performance gains Mandrake: because (unlike Gentoo) you don't have to spend half your life compiling Ubuntu: they did all the annoying stuff (eg. making Flash work) for me Mint: Shuttleworth gave the middle finger to Ubuntu community vs. Mint 3s their community
The point is, no one is going back to Red Hat unless it offers something significant that their current distro doesn't (besides just yum). Making Red Hat one distro instead of two doesn't give me a reason to leave Mint. Making yum friendlier doesn't give me a reason either. At best changes like that might help stem the tide of departing Red Hat users ("why do I need Ubuntu, Red Hat finally got friendly") but if Red Hat ever wants to become a dominant distro again they have to offer a compelling reason to switch.
The problem is, Google Fiber isn't some product they're rolling out slowly, but eventually to the whole country. Instead, it's jut one of their little experiments. As much as we'd all love them to, Google has expressed no interest in becoming America's ISP (or at least not any time soon).
I want to lounge back in comfort, read the news, catch up on email, etc.
And we'll be able to, eventually. These are just the very first set of rules for the very first automated cars; you can't go from Simpsons to Jetsons overnight.
You're assuming that the only way to make money from movies is the current business model, which is a false assumption.
If copyright in it's current form went away, movie producers would just change their business model. Maybe they'd still show movies in theatres, but they'd charge a lot extra to see the movie on the opening weekend (since after that anyone could just watch them at home). Maybe they'd add interactive features to movies so that you had to use their server to watch the movie properly. Maybe they'd just give up on making money off the movie itself, and instead make money off all the toys and McDonald's promotion deals and other tie-ins. Or maybe they'd do something entirely different that I can't think of in the two minutes it's taking me to write this.
The point is, they'd still make money, just probably less than they do now. Would we see as many big budget films? Probably not, but who knows? After all, necessity is the mother of invention, and the safe profits of the current business model might be preventing the studios from realizing even greater profits from a future business model.
But would the end of copyright as we know it mean the death of movies? Absolutely not: as long as their's still ways to make money off movies, and their still would be, movies would still get made.
You seem a little ignorant of recent history. Have you heard of America's rendition program? Have you heard of all the EU countries which participated? Here's a map to help: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
I don't think anyone on the left (well, very few) would defend him if an arrangement could be made where he would just face the misogynistic charges. Sweden is a democratic country with a faire legal system, and I think most people would be happy to see Assange go through that system.
The problem is that the moment Assange steps on Swedish soil (or even outside the embassay) he's got a very good chance of being put on a one-way ticket to America to face much worse charges, in a court which is much less fair.
Yeah, it only runs the front end of EVERY WEBSITE IN EXISTENCE (which includes tons of "serious" SaS applications, and more and more "thick client" sites where the bulk of the code is in JS and the server is just used for database work). But yeah, other than that nothing mission critical at all.
To you, someone who obviously isn't a Javascript programmer, maybe. To someone who writes Javascript code every day, like myself, nothing at all is "broken" with the language (though obviously, like any language, it could use some improvements).
But I'm sure if I started writing COBOL I'd think plenty was wrong with it...
Freedom has a cost. And part of that cost is that some people will get hurt that otherwise might not have been hurt. But it's a cost worth paying, because otherwise millions more pay far more, even if it's only a little bit every day. Eventually that turns into a lot every day. That's not paranoia, that's history. Over and over and over again.
Easier to say when you're not the child getting molested. Which isn't to say you're wrong, but all too often the "FREEEEDOM!!!" crowd misses the very real costs that hurt very real (and very helpless) people. Its not as simple as all freedom all the time, we really do need a healthy balance.
Slashdot Mirror
Right, so you can interpret that as "Google's going to become America's ISP", or you can take it as "Google's going to try and poke/prod the industry to change by doing its little experiments in a select number of cities and demonstrating what's possible". Based on what they've said outside that quote it seems to me like the latter interpretation is correct.
Have you ever noticed how sometimes when people say something about someone else, it winds up revealing more about them than the person being talked about?
Here's what your post seems to reveal to me:
1) You think insulting (and not even cleverly at that) random people on the internet is a good use of your time
2) You think that there is no legitimate reason to support open source software, and therefore all support for it is "ass-kissing"
3) You think Slashdot posters are motivated to post what they write to try by "forum points", not their beliefs
4) You think that someone getting a flamebait vote is some kind of great kharmic vengence
I'd encourage you to challenge those assumptions; in my view none of them are true.
I'm not either, but that's hardly the point. Let's say something isn't documented properly and doesn't work the way I expect: just being able to read the source code can be extremely helpful.
But it goes even beyond that, because open source software naturally forms communities around it. Even if I were to never even look at a single line of the source, the fact that it's availble to others adds value for me. I can go download a patch someone else wrote that fixes a bug MS hasn't bothered to fix. I can ask someone who's read the code how it works on Stack Overflow. Or when someone uses that source as a basis for an entirely new and improved version, I can switch to that.
Ummmm ... it's closed source. I'm sure there are lots of other good reasons, but do you really need anything more than that?
What praytell is preventing them from starting their own Amazons?
Sure, because it's *so* easy to create a successful online bookseller. Gee, why didn't anyone think of that before? Those Japanese people must be idiots. Baka yaroo.
And besides, once you have gcc and vi or emacs, what more does a developer need?
PyCharm (ie. IntelliJ), Chrome, a music program (Spotify, Pandora, etc.) a chat program (Pidgin, Hipchat, etc.), GIMP for image manipulation ...
I have no beef with the emacs/vi folks, but some of us think that development technology (like every other kind of technology) has advanced since the 80's, and we want an OS that looks like it's from this decade to run it on.
Right, but you're missing the point: why would you want to hassle with virtual machines just to support two distros, when you can share one distro between both and avoid the extra work?
Well, it's a good thing we all live in the world exactly as you see it, and not, you know, in reality.
Here's one example: how do you track packages? If every developer in your company is using apt (well, or brew for those Mac people, but let's ignore them because the server is NOT going to be a Mac), then it makes sense to compile a list of apt packages right? So then when you go to deploy the sysadmin just has to sudo apt-get those packages.
But if you're server runs Red Hat, somebody has to translate that list of apt packages to yum packages. Not a huge deal, but why would you want headaches like that, even if they are minor, when nothing prevents you from having the same distro on all machines involved?
Another thing to consider is debugging. As a developer, you want to debug on a system that's as close as possible to the machine where the bug occurred. Obviously it's easier to be sure that your environment is the same as your server's (and that you're seeing the same problem the server saw) if the two run the same distro.
From the summary:
"Ask her developers what they prefer, however, and it's Ubuntu"
"Given that developers are the new kingmakers"
The whole point was that developers influence the choice of distro on the server, based on their preference for a development distro. I'm not quite sure how you missed that.
Grrr, /. swallowed my angle bracket. That's supposed to be "Mint *hearts* their community", not "Mint 3s their community".
I think you're kind of missing the point. Developers don't think "hey, I know Ubuntu/Mint, and it works great for me, but yum just got a little bit friendlier? Forget everything I know, I'm installing Red Hat."
People change distributions with a purpose. For me personally the odyssey was:
Mandrake: because (I kid you not) it came on a CD in a Linux magazine
Gentoo: because of the performance gains
Mandrake: because (unlike Gentoo) you don't have to spend half your life compiling
Ubuntu: they did all the annoying stuff (eg. making Flash work) for me
Mint: Shuttleworth gave the middle finger to Ubuntu community vs. Mint 3s their community
The point is, no one is going back to Red Hat unless it offers something significant that their current distro doesn't (besides just yum). Making Red Hat one distro instead of two doesn't give me a reason to leave Mint. Making yum friendlier doesn't give me a reason either. At best changes like that might help stem the tide of departing Red Hat users ("why do I need Ubuntu, Red Hat finally got friendly") but if Red Hat ever wants to become a dominant distro again they have to offer a compelling reason to switch.
But if *every single person* got pulled-over for speeding every day, we would probably change the law!
Amen!
The problem is, Google Fiber isn't some product they're rolling out slowly, but eventually to the whole country. Instead, it's jut one of their little experiments. As much as we'd all love them to, Google has expressed no interest in becoming America's ISP (or at least not any time soon).
I want to lounge back in comfort, read the news, catch up on email, etc.
And we'll be able to, eventually. These are just the very first set of rules for the very first automated cars; you can't go from Simpsons to Jetsons overnight.
You're assuming that the only way to make money from movies is the current business model, which is a false assumption.
If copyright in it's current form went away, movie producers would just change their business model. Maybe they'd still show movies in theatres, but they'd charge a lot extra to see the movie on the opening weekend (since after that anyone could just watch them at home). Maybe they'd add interactive features to movies so that you had to use their server to watch the movie properly. Maybe they'd just give up on making money off the movie itself, and instead make money off all the toys and McDonald's promotion deals and other tie-ins. Or maybe they'd do something entirely different that I can't think of in the two minutes it's taking me to write this.
The point is, they'd still make money, just probably less than they do now. Would we see as many big budget films? Probably not, but who knows? After all, necessity is the mother of invention, and the safe profits of the current business model might be preventing the studios from realizing even greater profits from a future business model.
But would the end of copyright as we know it mean the death of movies? Absolutely not: as long as their's still ways to make money off movies, and their still would be, movies would still get made.
You seem a little ignorant of recent history. Have you heard of America's rendition program? Have you heard of all the EU countries which participated? Here's a map to help:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
I don't think anyone on the left (well, very few) would defend him if an arrangement could be made where he would just face the misogynistic charges. Sweden is a democratic country with a faire legal system, and I think most people would be happy to see Assange go through that system.
The problem is that the moment Assange steps on Swedish soil (or even outside the embassay) he's got a very good chance of being put on a one-way ticket to America to face much worse charges, in a court which is much less fair.
The people involved in common sex scandals aren't enemies of the most powerful state on Earth.
Yeah, it only runs the front end of EVERY WEBSITE IN EXISTENCE (which includes tons of "serious" SaS applications, and more and more "thick client" sites where the bulk of the code is in JS and the server is just used for database work). But yeah, other than that nothing mission critical at all.
Other than the "this" misfunction, which is rememdied by the hack defining "that", what are the terrible misfeatures of JS?
It's not like C/Java/COBOL/FORTRAN/whatever other language someone is used to using.
To you, someone who obviously isn't a Javascript programmer, maybe. To someone who writes Javascript code every day, like myself, nothing at all is "broken" with the language (though obviously, like any language, it could use some improvements).
But I'm sure if I started writing COBOL I'd think plenty was wrong with it ...
One man's "stupidly broken" is another man's "feature".
Again, I nice simplistic response that's very easy to say when you're not the one paying the costs.
Freedom has a cost. And part of that cost is that some people will get hurt that otherwise might not have been hurt. But it's a cost worth paying, because otherwise millions more pay far more, even if it's only a little bit every day. Eventually that turns into a lot every day. That's not paranoia, that's history. Over and over and over again.
Easier to say when you're not the child getting molested. Which isn't to say you're wrong, but all too often the "FREEEEDOM!!!" crowd misses the very real costs that hurt very real (and very helpless) people. Its not as simple as all freedom all the time, we really do need a healthy balance.