Actually, no. I work in some kind of wonderful dream -- all marketing, accounting, and purely management-types are five states away.
This office, in the middle of Iowa, is a group of five programmers. Of those five, one is the CTO and my boss, but he does spend a good chunk of his time programming -- that means I can just talk to him, and he gets to do the work of actually making the CEO and marketing guy understand it. Another likes to do design, so he does more of the visually-oriented, real web-facing parts. I know at least four of us (myself included) know enough Gimp/Photoshop to skin the UI in a pinch, or we can outsource it. I'm a Linux geek, so I occasionally play with our servers.
Then again, this town is full of a lot of friggin' hippies anyway, so maybe it's infectuous... I really have no idea where the soy milk came from, or if it's still good, or what the motivation was -- sometimes it's not any Vegan tendencies, but simple lactose intolerance. But it doesn't really take up much space, vs all the caffeine!
No matter how the OS war goes, MS Windows will be a significant OS for a very long time.
Why?
When you answer that question, you'll begin to see just how disruptive a technology the OLPC is, and why it scares the shit out of Microsoft.
Teaching kids the ins and outs of it could benefit them.
Except you can't, not to the extent you can with the OLPC.
Specifically: There's a hotkey to get the source of any running program. If you screw it up, you can restore the original. Can you imagine a better platform to learn to program on?
"But", you cry, "They won't get to learn MS Visual Buzzword! They won't learn the wonders of Word and Excel!" This is true, and were they in, say, a US high school, only a few years away from joining the US Corporate Workforce, you might be right -- although there are still plenty of places they could go.
But consider: Word is for printing, and where will they get a printer? Excel is most often used for managing money, and what do they have to manage? And by the time they have that much, chances are, one of their friends will have written a spreadsheet -- a small, light spreadsheet that'll run like greased lightning on any OLPC. Or they'll be connected to the Internet, and to better, Web-based tools.
The people and businesses they will be dealing with will be local, and they will be whatever wins the give-computers-to-3rd-world-kids war. If that's OLPC, it'll be Linux, with the OLPC software (which kicks ass).
The version of windows should be provided to OLPC for free.
That's a given. In fact, MS already has us beat there -- they are giving away Classmate PCs wholesale. (Someone still has to pay for the OLPC.)
The additional cost needed to upgrade the hardware to support WinXP should be covered by MS.
I assume the reason they are asking is because they don't want to do it themselves.
If MS decides that the contribution is not in their interests in the future, they must continue to support those countries that bought the XP version.
Ok, here's a question: Who buys the copy of Windows when the kids grow up and get their first real computer? The first hit's free...
MS would jump on these conditions because it creates a future market for them, and only benefits OLPC because there are more options for their clients.
More like, they'd demand more in the hope that OLPC will take any cash it can get...
And this hurts OLPC more than just about anything, short of not giving away the computers at all. If some of them run Windows, and some run Linux, will they talk to each other? Will a kid be able to, for instance, share a document with his friend as easily and transparently? Or just see his friend's computer by where it is? Will the Mesh network work?
Does OLPC really need even more fucking roadblocks as they try to solve these issues -- that wouldn't be an issue if Microsoft would do the right thing?
Specifically: The OLPC is not in any way going to look like any "real" computer, and if it does, it won't be able to do its job nearly as well as what's done now. Microsoft attempting to butt in at the last second is not motivated by generosity -- I really seriously doubt there's anything Windows would teach them that this Linux wouldn't that is of any real use to them. No, this is motivated by greed and fear -- the fear that these kids will grow up without Microsoft, or any proprietary software, and Windows will suddenly no longer be a majority; and greed, knowing that if these kids grow up on Windows, it's more money for them in the long run.
Because if Microsoft really just wanted to help, Bill Gates would pull some money out of his Foundation -- or out of his ass -- and just give it to the OLPC project. If they wanted to influence the direction of it, rather than trying to butt in at the last second, they'd have contributed money and development over the years leading up to this.
Mods, there is actually a -1 Disagree. It's called "Overrated".
Specifically, what was the point in saying "Microsoft is a business"?
I am an American. That doesn't make me fat, lazy, and stupid, and it doesn't mean I support Bush.
There are businesses which are not corrupt, and which would not insist on keeping control of a "standard" once it became a standard. And that's the way it should be, and when did so many people become so fucking complacent about corporate corruption?
It makes perfect sense though; why fill my head with Trade secrets and methods just to have me open up shop across the street.
The problem with your attitude here is, you're thinking about what's good for the company, not what's good for you. While you won't be able to take any trade secrets if they've had that covered properly (NDA, worst case), why not insist that you retain that ability?
In other words, yes, it would suck for that company if you just open up shop across the street. But if you're anything like most of us, it's a lot harder and riskier to start your own business than to work for a boss -- particularly if you're working in a business that tends towards companies big enough to have a boss in the first place.
So, it's a way to make your employer at least try to keep you happy, if they know you can always do that. But they don't even have to try that hard, because it is so hard to "just open up shop".
Competition is the core of good Capitalism but nothing says you have to help your enemies.
And that is the core of what's wrong with your employer, if that's their attitude.
You are an employer, not an enemy.
From what I remember of my own contracts, the worst was the NDA. That is, I can't disclose their trade secrets, ever, whether I leave or not. But the only thing I remember about not competing was that I can't compete with them while working for them -- if I leave, I can do whatever I want.
But rather than enforcing a lot of paperwork -- each contract I signed was less than two pages -- they instead make me want to stay. Because if I don't leave, any kind of noncompete extending past the term of employment is completely irrelevant.
Ok, h.264 is apparently encumbered as well. I'm curious why it's so well supported by F/OSS, then -- moreso than VC1, apparently. And I'm curious about who owns those patents...
Regardless, it seems Microsoft is in it to make money, not only on the patent licensing, but also on their own hardware and software licensing. However, I'm not sure how much of that I'm supposed to know about, so I'll be deliberately vague and let you figure it out. Shouldn't be too hard.
That's why I said "I wonder why more people don't use..."
Mostly, I'm just curious about the economics of this -- is tech like MRAM ultimately going to be any cheaper than battery+RAM+backup? If so, when, and for what applications?
Neither OpenOffice nor Mozilla are built on the Qt framework, so you're running two separate GUI libraries.
That, and both OpenOffice and Mozilla are just about the most bloated choices you could make there. I don't know what it was like in 2002, but Konqueror and KOffice are damned good now, and Konq in particular is MUCH lighter than Firefox where it works.
You say you wish Apple was faster publishing the source to Darwin, but why? Very few people seem to be adopting the technologies Apple introduces in Darwin so it is not like they are waiting for the new version to start harvesting for Linux.
Maybe people aren't so eager to contribute to Darwin, or even glance at the source, precisely because they don't like waiting for the release? Or because they don't particularly like Apple's policies -- at one point, there was a policy of not being able to be a part of Apple's open source projects unless you were at least 18.
Obviously Apple would prefer BSD because of their culture, because they are trying to make a profit (what kernel is on the iPhone?), and because it simplifies their legal obligations.
And why couldn't Linux go on the iPhone? It's not GPLv3.
I understand what you mean -- it is more flexible for a business, if you feel you're going to need to keep the code proprietary. But if "the code" means just the kernel, which, as you say, may not be very exciting, why the secrecy?
Why did Apple choose more permissive licenses for their ZeroConf implementation and for LaunchD and why have they been keeping that code up to date regularly? Is a Windows API re-implementation more like these projects or more like their kernel?
It really seems like neither, and I'm actually entirely missing the point here.
What are you trying to say?
Like how they handled Webkit, Apple would probably keep such a project hush hush until it released, but then the coders at Apple would probably be happy to talk to other coders on the project and help re-integrate their work as well as keeping the code they release up to date with the version they have in the shipping version of OS X or the product that includes it.
So, you're arguing this is more like ZeroConf or LaunchD? But earlier, you argued that the reason ZeroConf and LaunchD are open is that they want both to become widely adopted. So I'm confused -- why would it benefit Apple to support Linux through Wine, other than the possibility of getting more code back from the WineHQ project? Why wouldn't it be much more to their benefit to support Windows applications better than anything except Windows?
so they don't have anyone really asking for it to be kept up to date, except the occasionally conspiracy theorist posting on Slashdot... who is unlikely to ever really look at the code anyway.
I'm certainly unlikely to look at the code (or not soon), but I fail to see how I'm a "conspiracy theorist". I don't think Apple is particularly malicious here, just not as cooperative as I'd like. That their marketing model is intrinsically tied to secrecy doesn't change this at all.
Yes, how deliciously evil for Microsoft to be buying support for an open and public standard (HD-DVD)
I'm sorry, but at least, say, OOXML pretends to be open. Google for "OOXML Specification dowload" and the very first result has PDFs, linked to directly, not even so much as a free registration required.
I develop HD-DVD applications for a living. On my desk are four volumes of "DVD Specifications for High Definition VIDEO (HD DVD-Video)", totaling almost three inches thick. (I'd tell you how many pages, but the pages are not numbered.) There's probably another three and a half inches worth of updates, which someone else here has read and memorized, that I don't really look at.
We do not have these in electronic form. As far as I know, you cannot get them in electronic form, and they do not come with an index, which makes them a bitch to search until you start to memorize enough of it to have a vague idea of where to start randomly flipping through to find what you need.
This is because on every single page, at the bottom of the page, is the following notice:
While that is pretty damning, that they no longer have to carry a human rights card -- nor is there (at least in the diff) any mention of those particular human rights standing orders...
I am a bit surprised and pleased with this bit:
JTF-GTMO personnel directly working with detainees will avoid handling or touching the detainees Koran whenever possible....
The intent is to deduce if anything may be in the binding without forcing the detainee to expose the binding, which may be construed as culturally insensitive or offensive given the significance of the Koran....
Two hands will be used at all times when handling the Koran in manner signaling respect and reverence. Care should be used so that the right hand is the primary one used to manipulate any part of the Koran due to the cultural association with the left hand. Handle the Koran as if it were a fragile piece of delicate art.
In fact, if I understand it -- and it is a bit difficult to follow -- it looks as though one major change is, rather than forcing them to all have state-issued Korans, specific to each cell, they are allowed to keep their own (if they have one on arrival), and no matter where it comes from, they get to keep a Koran when they're moved to another cell.
I'll assume you've read the other comments and now understand that it was a DMCA takedown notice, not "social engineering"...
The real joke for you to get here is that the MPAA has, themselves, issued similar takedown notices in the past. In fact, the RIAA/MPAA are pretty much the whole reason the DMCA exists -- and the takedown notices with it.
I'd gladly give up the takedown notices in order to repeal the rest of the DMCA -- in particular, the anti-circumvention bits, so that libdvdcss becomes legal.
2+2 is always 4. You may disagree with everything I stand for; you may think I represent evil incarnate, or that I'm just lazy hippie scum; but if I say "2+2=4", you kind of have to agree with me.
So, unless you're actually going to dispute the fact that:
There are 662 separate PDFs
The comments and the resolutions to the comments are on completely separate pages
The whole thing is password-protected
Unless there's something factually wrong with that, pretty much anyone can independently figure out that the process sucks giant donkey balls.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, no. I work in some kind of wonderful dream -- all marketing, accounting, and purely management-types are five states away.
This office, in the middle of Iowa, is a group of five programmers. Of those five, one is the CTO and my boss, but he does spend a good chunk of his time programming -- that means I can just talk to him, and he gets to do the work of actually making the CEO and marketing guy understand it. Another likes to do design, so he does more of the visually-oriented, real web-facing parts. I know at least four of us (myself included) know enough Gimp/Photoshop to skin the UI in a pinch, or we can outsource it. I'm a Linux geek, so I occasionally play with our servers.
Then again, this town is full of a lot of friggin' hippies anyway, so maybe it's infectuous... I really have no idea where the soy milk came from, or if it's still good, or what the motivation was -- sometimes it's not any Vegan tendencies, but simple lactose intolerance. But it doesn't really take up much space, vs all the caffeine!
Why?
When you answer that question, you'll begin to see just how disruptive a technology the OLPC is, and why it scares the shit out of Microsoft.
Except you can't, not to the extent you can with the OLPC.
Specifically: There's a hotkey to get the source of any running program. If you screw it up, you can restore the original. Can you imagine a better platform to learn to program on?
"But", you cry, "They won't get to learn MS Visual Buzzword! They won't learn the wonders of Word and Excel!" This is true, and were they in, say, a US high school, only a few years away from joining the US Corporate Workforce, you might be right -- although there are still plenty of places they could go.
But consider: Word is for printing, and where will they get a printer? Excel is most often used for managing money, and what do they have to manage? And by the time they have that much, chances are, one of their friends will have written a spreadsheet -- a small, light spreadsheet that'll run like greased lightning on any OLPC. Or they'll be connected to the Internet, and to better, Web-based tools.
The people and businesses they will be dealing with will be local, and they will be whatever wins the give-computers-to-3rd-world-kids war. If that's OLPC, it'll be Linux, with the OLPC software (which kicks ass).
That's a given. In fact, MS already has us beat there -- they are giving away Classmate PCs wholesale. (Someone still has to pay for the OLPC.)
I assume the reason they are asking is because they don't want to do it themselves.
Ok, here's a question: Who buys the copy of Windows when the kids grow up and get their first real computer? The first hit's free...
More like, they'd demand more in the hope that OLPC will take any cash it can get...
And this hurts OLPC more than just about anything, short of not giving away the computers at all. If some of them run Windows, and some run Linux, will they talk to each other? Will a kid be able to, for instance, share a document with his friend as easily and transparently? Or just see his friend's computer by where it is? Will the Mesh network work?
Does OLPC really need even more fucking roadblocks as they try to solve these issues -- that wouldn't be an issue if Microsoft would do the right thing?
Specifically: The OLPC is not in any way going to look like any "real" computer, and if it does, it won't be able to do its job nearly as well as what's done now. Microsoft attempting to butt in at the last second is not motivated by generosity -- I really seriously doubt there's anything Windows would teach them that this Linux wouldn't that is of any real use to them. No, this is motivated by greed and fear -- the fear that these kids will grow up without Microsoft, or any proprietary software, and Windows will suddenly no longer be a majority; and greed, knowing that if these kids grow up on Windows, it's more money for them in the long run.
Because if Microsoft really just wanted to help, Bill Gates would pull some money out of his Foundation -- or out of his ass -- and just give it to the OLPC project. If they wanted to influence the direction of it, rather than trying to butt in at the last second, they'd have contributed money and development over the years leading up to this.
Mods, there is actually a -1 Disagree. It's called "Overrated".
EcmaScript, for one.
Rubber stamp? Maybe. Microsoft? Hardly, although they do tend to be the only ones who call it EcmaScript, instead of, say, JavaScript.
Specifically, what was the point in saying "Microsoft is a business"?
I am an American. That doesn't make me fat, lazy, and stupid, and it doesn't mean I support Bush.
There are businesses which are not corrupt, and which would not insist on keeping control of a "standard" once it became a standard. And that's the way it should be, and when did so many people become so fucking complacent about corporate corruption?
Ecma, not ECMA. So yes, it's called EcmaScript.
The problem with your attitude here is, you're thinking about what's good for the company, not what's good for you. While you won't be able to take any trade secrets if they've had that covered properly (NDA, worst case), why not insist that you retain that ability?
In other words, yes, it would suck for that company if you just open up shop across the street. But if you're anything like most of us, it's a lot harder and riskier to start your own business than to work for a boss -- particularly if you're working in a business that tends towards companies big enough to have a boss in the first place.
So, it's a way to make your employer at least try to keep you happy, if they know you can always do that. But they don't even have to try that hard, because it is so hard to "just open up shop".
And that is the core of what's wrong with your employer, if that's their attitude.
You are an employer, not an enemy.
From what I remember of my own contracts, the worst was the NDA. That is, I can't disclose their trade secrets, ever, whether I leave or not. But the only thing I remember about not competing was that I can't compete with them while working for them -- if I leave, I can do whatever I want.
But rather than enforcing a lot of paperwork -- each contract I signed was less than two pages -- they instead make me want to stay. Because if I don't leave, any kind of noncompete extending past the term of employment is completely irrelevant.
Which means they also all have h.264, which...
no, wait...
Ok, h.264 is apparently encumbered as well. I'm curious why it's so well supported by F/OSS, then -- moreso than VC1, apparently. And I'm curious about who owns those patents...
Regardless, it seems Microsoft is in it to make money, not only on the patent licensing, but also on their own hardware and software licensing. However, I'm not sure how much of that I'm supposed to know about, so I'll be deliberately vague and let you figure it out. Shouldn't be too hard.
That's why I said "I wonder why more people don't use..."
Mostly, I'm just curious about the economics of this -- is tech like MRAM ultimately going to be any cheaper than battery+RAM+backup? If so, when, and for what applications?
I'll concede that, because I'm too lazy to look up how to denote base in mathematics :P
Neither OpenOffice nor Mozilla are built on the Qt framework, so you're running two separate GUI libraries.
That, and both OpenOffice and Mozilla are just about the most bloated choices you could make there. I don't know what it was like in 2002, but Konqueror and KOffice are damned good now, and Konq in particular is MUCH lighter than Firefox where it works.
Yes, that is what I meant.
I'm basing that on this sibling post, which states "Its cheaper, about $.20 per track with good quality"
Regardless, Magnatune is typically a minimum of $5/album, and I'm sure there are other options.
Maybe people aren't so eager to contribute to Darwin, or even glance at the source, precisely because they don't like waiting for the release? Or because they don't particularly like Apple's policies -- at one point, there was a policy of not being able to be a part of Apple's open source projects unless you were at least 18.
And why couldn't Linux go on the iPhone? It's not GPLv3.
I understand what you mean -- it is more flexible for a business, if you feel you're going to need to keep the code proprietary. But if "the code" means just the kernel, which, as you say, may not be very exciting, why the secrecy?
It really seems like neither, and I'm actually entirely missing the point here.
What are you trying to say?
So, you're arguing this is more like ZeroConf or LaunchD? But earlier, you argued that the reason ZeroConf and LaunchD are open is that they want both to become widely adopted. So I'm confused -- why would it benefit Apple to support Linux through Wine, other than the possibility of getting more code back from the WineHQ project? Why wouldn't it be much more to their benefit to support Windows applications better than anything except Windows?
I'm certainly unlikely to look at the code (or not soon), but I fail to see how I'm a "conspiracy theorist". I don't think Apple is particularly malicious here, just not as cooperative as I'd like. That their marketing model is intrinsically tied to secrecy doesn't change this at all.
I always wondered why more people didn't use battery-backed RAM with some slower, more persistent storage to dump it to when you lose power.
So really, the question is, which is cheaper: a gig of MRAM, or a gig of battery-backed RAM with a gig of flash or hard disk to dump to?
I'm sorry, but at least, say, OOXML pretends to be open. Google for "OOXML Specification dowload" and the very first result has PDFs, linked to directly, not even so much as a free registration required.
I develop HD-DVD applications for a living. On my desk are four volumes of "DVD Specifications for High Definition VIDEO (HD DVD-Video)", totaling almost three inches thick. (I'd tell you how many pages, but the pages are not numbered.) There's probably another three and a half inches worth of updates, which someone else here has read and memorized, that I don't really look at.
We do not have these in electronic form. As far as I know, you cannot get them in electronic form, and they do not come with an index, which makes them a bitch to search until you start to memorize enough of it to have a vague idea of where to start randomly flipping through to find what you need.
This is because on every single page, at the bottom of the page, is the following notice:
"Open" and "public" my ass.
sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree flashplayer-nonfree
Assuming it doesn't actually prompt you, on first boot, whether you'd like to install it.
I'll also wager that most of those 80% don't really need to install software, as long as they can get to YouTube and MySpace.
Parent is a troll, but I still couldn't resist tagging this article "nagware".
"You still haven't registered WinRAR..."
It's actually hard for me to tell if you actually believe that bullshit, or if it's somehow satire.
And if you do believe it, maybe you should watch the Colbert Report anyway. I bet you wouldn't realize it's a joke.
While that is pretty damning, that they no longer have to carry a human rights card -- nor is there (at least in the diff) any mention of those particular human rights standing orders...
I am a bit surprised and pleased with this bit:
In fact, if I understand it -- and it is a bit difficult to follow -- it looks as though one major change is, rather than forcing them to all have state-issued Korans, specific to each cell, they are allowed to keep their own (if they have one on arrival), and no matter where it comes from, they get to keep a Koran when they're moved to another cell.
I'll gladly done to a legal offense fund, if someone wants to throw together a class action. (I have no code in Xubuntu, but now I wish I did.)
Now, who wants to throw together the creative estimate of number of actual downloads?
Can't it be both?
I'll assume you've read the other comments and now understand that it was a DMCA takedown notice, not "social engineering"...
The real joke for you to get here is that the MPAA has, themselves, issued similar takedown notices in the past. In fact, the RIAA/MPAA are pretty much the whole reason the DMCA exists -- and the takedown notices with it.
I'd gladly give up the takedown notices in order to repeal the rest of the DMCA -- in particular, the anti-circumvention bits, so that libdvdcss becomes legal.
Sometimes, you don't have to consider the source.
2+2 is always 4. You may disagree with everything I stand for; you may think I represent evil incarnate, or that I'm just lazy hippie scum; but if I say "2+2=4", you kind of have to agree with me.
So, unless you're actually going to dispute the fact that:
Unless there's something factually wrong with that, pretty much anyone can independently figure out that the process sucks giant donkey balls.
Well, CDs.
So... iTunes isn't decent?