[] in C [] in scheme [] in mono [] in asm [X] in a penguin suit [] whilst eating a banana [] upside down [] badly [] perfectly [] in an easy to use fashion [] as a placeholder for my terminal windows [] to look just like Windows
This example was written about Office, but it's relevant to this argument:
Say that Office was a seperate company to Windows.
Office the company would see that making their product available on every platform would make them more money. Thus it would be so. Windows the company would have no incentive to build in special APIs for Office. Office would compete on it's merits and so would Windows, and competition COULD and WOULD exist effectivly in the marketplace.
Now, say that Office and Windows are made by the same company.
Office would by and large see that by making their product only available for Windows they would make less money but it would be worth more because every copy sold would also sell a Windows license. Windows wants to make sure that everyone who buys Windows chooses office so they do what they can to make it seem to run faster, better etc. Consumers get screwed by lack of choice.
(Obviously Office is also available for Mac, but this is due to historic pre-monopoly reasons. The same decision might be made today, but only to dodge having the AntiTrust people looking at them too sharply. If Office had been split off from Windows it would likley be available on IRIX, HPUX, AIX, Linux, BSD etc today as well as Windows and OS X.)
People start recording their music as WMA. Companies sell in WMA (for the wide user base). Stations start broadcasting in WMA (ditto). People buy WMA devices. People are locked into WMA forever now their media is all in WMA form and they own WMA devices. WMA works best in Windows (and DRM WMA only works in Windows), and is a barrier to changing platforms.
Profit. Monopoly extended and locked in, and entrenched in a totally new area. Desktop monopoly (and all the other monopolies that perpetuate it and are perpetuated by it) made more secure.
THIS is why a bit of user convenience has to be sacrificed. Made media player (and all the other integrated stuff) come uninstalled on a second CD so that at least the user has to think if they want to use it.
Otherwise they will expand their monopoly one niche at a time - desktop, office, server, media, handhelds, music players, gaming consoles, televisions, cars, watches, the whole world... untill it is too late to back out.
I personally don't like Microsoft... but you have to ask yourself if Media Player is removed who is affected by this in a negative way?
Microsoft. Oh, you meant in the short term? Possibly users. In the long term however this stops Microsoft being able to leverage their desktop monopoly into a format monopoly (where was.wma 3 years ago?) into a media player monopoly (where were.wma players 3 years ago? you can now buy windows only wma only players) into a net-broadcast monopoly (that you can only view with media player on an approved platform).
In the long run it might be necessary to hurt consumers a little bit today to protect them tomorrow. Ideally the solution will involve forcing them to support a patent unencumbered license unencumbered format alongside (or instead of) wma to ensure they can't use their existing monopoly to destroy interoperability.
If I were to mail unchecked binary files to senior officers and ask them to run them without verifying the contents for trojans, worms or viruses the Department of Homeland Insecurity would likley have me shot in their Happy Fun Camp at Guantanamo.
And unlike a certain company *I* don't have a criminal conviction, a record of giving things that could hurt national security to the Chinese (Windows source code) or a past history of underhand payments to subvert the political process!
I can see why they need PPC 970 processors, and buying them in bulk from Apple is probably just as cheap as buying them in bulk from IBM when looking at complete systems and volume discount with desktop stuff, but why do they need to run OS X on the hosts instead if dispensing with one hell of a lot of OS licenses and running Darwin, BSD or Linux?
You must buy one (these drives are $10 more than normal) You must buy ink for one (at $970 a cart, lasts for 1 week) You have to use it often enough that the Ink doesn't dry out.
At the moment I label my CDs with a permanent ink pen, but this would save the rest of the world from my handwriting. I'm sure the Linux driver will also ship with a perl script to dump a directory listing onto the front of the CD as well.
So I would have no problem wearing an exoskeleton, if it was designed not to be able to break the human body inside, if it isn't... who the hell designed it?
The same people who brought you the mail client that could execute binary code without user intervention, naturally!
I'm very fond of it on my desktops, I have one running 2.6 and one running 2.4 (both gentoo sources) and both are very responsive. I have yet to see another vanilla system that can handle running at 100% load without missing a beat handling the desktop.
It's not as easy as Redhat Mandrake et al, but then doing more complex stuff (custom kernels, odd hardware support etc) is much easier, which is really part of the Linux spirit:)
On the other hand I think the people running Gentoo on Zauruses are nuts. Gentoo might be good, but man if there was ever a place for Debian that was it!
My contribution is worth nothing compared to the vast resource open source gives me.
Even for prolific contributers who have give millions of lines of code this probably holds true. Even for Linus Open Source code has returned the rest of an operating system, status, and one hell of a CV - arguably more than he has contributed.
Even if my contribution of a few simple lines were enough to contribute to the downfall of the software market, then I consider the fact that I have to work in something other than programming (which I do) to be not a price but an indication that things are working well - the overall (knowlage) wealth of mankind is increasing so not so much heavy labour in software is required and energy can be focused elsewhere. That's what progress is all about.
Courtney Love herself said that the average artist would do a lot better working for tips. That's what copylefting music does - it allows the artists to survive very well on tips, not on hoarding.
The added bonus of course is that the good artists get paid and the crap artists have to find something else to do. It's more efficient (in an economic sense) than the current system which can drive sales for groups with no musical talent.
Why do all these programmers want to be considered artists anyway?
An artist is someone who ignores function and concentrates on form where they think beauty lies. An engineer is someone who sees beauty in pure dedication to achieving a function in the most efficient fashion.
A perfectly calculated arching cantilever is beautiful, a painting of a waterfall is just an inferior copy.
-- An Engineer
Easier way to lower the electricity bill
on
DIY HVAC
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Put the real thermostat somewhere hidden and place a dummy one in the hall for the wife and kids.
Putting a circuit in to turn off the AC when someone opens a window helps too.
One of the research groups here has a RC helicopter that has mounted on the bottom a video camera, a still camera, location system and 4 FM 56kbps transmitters. It has an embedded xscale and embedded PPC processors.
It's supposed to be a testbed for data compression and transmission type stuff, but in fact they mostly use it on hot summer days to look in local gardens for sunbathing women:)
Slashdot Mirror
So I can send an application. Cell phone free work place, bliss.
I'd just reconfigure your alerts to be transmitted by email and kick back and let the good times roll.
[] in C
[] in scheme
[] in mono
[] in asm
[X] in a penguin suit
[] whilst eating a banana
[] upside down
[] badly
[] perfectly
[] in an easy to use fashion
[] as a placeholder for my terminal windows
[] to look just like Windows
This example was written about Office, but it's relevant to this argument:
Say that Office was a seperate company to Windows.
Office the company would see that making their product available on every platform would make them more money. Thus it would be so. Windows the company would have no incentive to build in special APIs for Office. Office would compete on it's merits and so would Windows, and competition COULD and WOULD exist effectivly in the marketplace.
Now, say that Office and Windows are made by the same company.
Office would by and large see that by making their product only available for Windows they would make less money but it would be worth more because every copy sold would also sell a Windows license. Windows wants to make sure that everyone who buys Windows chooses office so they do what they can to make it seem to run faster, better etc. Consumers get screwed by lack of choice.
(Obviously Office is also available for Mac, but this is due to historic pre-monopoly reasons. The same decision might be made today, but only to dodge having the AntiTrust people looking at them too sharply. If Office had been split off from Windows it would likley be available on IRIX, HPUX, AIX, Linux, BSD etc today as well as Windows and OS X.)
WMA becomes widely installed, and is the default.
People start recording their music as WMA.
Companies sell in WMA (for the wide user base).
Stations start broadcasting in WMA (ditto).
People buy WMA devices.
People are locked into WMA forever now their media is all in WMA form and they own WMA devices.
WMA works best in Windows (and DRM WMA only works in Windows), and is a barrier to changing platforms.
Profit. Monopoly extended and locked in, and entrenched in a totally new area. Desktop monopoly (and all the other monopolies that perpetuate it and are perpetuated by it) made more secure.
THIS is why a bit of user convenience has to be sacrificed. Made media player (and all the other integrated stuff) come uninstalled on a second CD so that at least the user has to think if they want to use it.
Otherwise they will expand their monopoly one niche at a time - desktop, office, server, media, handhelds, music players, gaming consoles, televisions, cars, watches, the whole world... untill it is too late to back out.
I personally don't like Microsoft... but you have to ask yourself if Media Player is removed who is affected by this in a negative way?
.wma 3 years ago?) into a media player monopoly (where were .wma players 3 years ago? you can now buy windows only wma only players) into a net-broadcast monopoly (that you can only view with media player on an approved platform).
Microsoft. Oh, you meant in the short term? Possibly users. In the long term however this stops Microsoft being able to leverage their desktop monopoly into a format monopoly (where was
In the long run it might be necessary to hurt consumers a little bit today to protect them tomorrow. Ideally the solution will involve forcing them to support a patent unencumbered license unencumbered format alongside (or instead of) wma to ensure they can't use their existing monopoly to destroy interoperability.
Um. $500 retail is crap.
Fair is fair, use the same value they do when calculating their "$90000000000 billion lost to software piracy!" figure.
If I were to mail unchecked binary files to senior officers and ask them to run them without verifying the contents for trojans, worms or viruses the Department of Homeland Insecurity would likley have me shot in their Happy Fun Camp at Guantanamo.
And unlike a certain company *I* don't have a criminal conviction, a record of giving things that could hurt national security to the Chinese (Windows source code) or a past history of underhand payments to subvert the political process!
Where is the justice in that?
I can see why they need PPC 970 processors, and buying them in bulk from Apple is probably just as cheap as buying them in bulk from IBM when looking at complete systems and volume discount with desktop stuff, but why do they need to run OS X on the hosts instead if dispensing with one hell of a lot of OS licenses and running Darwin, BSD or Linux?
like DON'T use ie on pron sites
Not a conversation I've had to have with my parents. Thank $deity. I do not want to go there.
Yeah, I'd be ashamed if I thought my parents were closet IE users too.
A Windows Enterprice Licensing Scheme Contract or a SCO Linux License Contract?
Anyone remember the CD bomb from the days when the Anarchists Cookbook circulated?
Take a CD, cover with gunpowder or phosphor scraped from match heads. Varnish. Insert into CD rom drive.
Now immagine how well that would work with a laser set to a power high enough to carve images into plastic.
Kaaaaaaboooom.
The problem with CD printers is that:
You must buy one (these drives are $10 more than normal)
You must buy ink for one (at $970 a cart, lasts for 1 week)
You have to use it often enough that the Ink doesn't dry out.
At the moment I label my CDs with a permanent ink pen, but this would save the rest of the world from my handwriting. I'm sure the Linux driver will also ship with a perl script to dump a directory listing onto the front of the CD as well.
"It's not a stock price drop, it's a temporary dip until we pick another huge company to sue."
...when the real thing is due to crash into my backyard in 10 years time due to maintainance budget cuts?
Shame the feature they remove is the Bluetooth and the serial connection, rather than the phone, sucky non-regular keypad or the colour screen.
I'm sticking with my 6310i until it dies, then I'll buy another one off eBay.
You bastard, how did you guess my password?
I'm going to have a busy weekend changing everything to a new one now.
*grumble*
Dude, you're getting a Dell.
So I would have no problem wearing an exoskeleton, if it was designed not to be able to break the human body inside, if it isn't ... who the hell designed it?
The same people who brought you the mail client that could execute binary code without user intervention, naturally!
They have so much money that no one noticed the cheque for $8.6m was actually for $86m due to a missing decimal place.
The person responsible has been promoted to strategy and vision director.
I'm very fond of it on my desktops, I have one running 2.6 and one running 2.4 (both gentoo sources) and both are very responsive. I have yet to see another vanilla system that can handle running at 100% load without missing a beat handling the desktop.
:)
It's not as easy as Redhat Mandrake et al, but then doing more complex stuff (custom kernels, odd hardware support etc) is much easier, which is really part of the Linux spirit
On the other hand I think the people running Gentoo on Zauruses are nuts. Gentoo might be good, but man if there was ever a place for Debian that was it!
My contribution is worth nothing compared to the vast resource open source gives me.
Even for prolific contributers who have give millions of lines of code this probably holds true. Even for Linus Open Source code has returned the rest of an operating system, status, and one hell of a CV - arguably more than he has contributed.
Even if my contribution of a few simple lines were enough to contribute to the downfall of the software market, then I consider the fact that I have to work in something other than programming (which I do) to be not a price but an indication that things are working well - the overall (knowlage) wealth of mankind is increasing so not so much heavy labour in software is required and energy can be focused elsewhere. That's what progress is all about.
Courtney Love herself said that the average artist would do a lot better working for tips. That's what copylefting music does - it allows the artists to survive very well on tips, not on hoarding.
The added bonus of course is that the good artists get paid and the crap artists have to find something else to do. It's more efficient (in an economic sense) than the current system which can drive sales for groups with no musical talent.
Why do all these programmers want to be considered artists anyway?
An artist is someone who ignores function and concentrates on form where they think beauty lies. An engineer is someone who sees beauty in pure dedication to achieving a function in the most efficient fashion.
A perfectly calculated arching cantilever is beautiful, a painting of a waterfall is just an inferior copy.
-- An Engineer
Put the real thermostat somewhere hidden and place a dummy one in the hall for the wife and kids.
Putting a circuit in to turn off the AC when someone opens a window helps too.
One of the research groups here has a RC helicopter that has mounted on the bottom a video camera, a still camera, location system and 4 FM 56kbps transmitters. It has an embedded xscale and embedded PPC processors.
:)
It's supposed to be a testbed for data compression and transmission type stuff, but in fact they mostly use it on hot summer days to look in local gardens for sunbathing women