The FSF has come up with a unique and powerful mechanism for insuring that code and/or an application will *always* be freely distributable over its entire lifetime.
Oh, gimme a break. FSF does not distribute free software. Public domain is free. BSD is almost free. GPL is definitely not free. If I can't do whatever the hell I want with the supposedly "free" code, it's not free.
it protects the software itself, not necessarily the authors.
Uh-oh... I feel the weak, socialist "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" argument coming up... pray tell me, why should I write code that cannot be readily applied in a realistic commercial sense? And no, releasing the source code does not make economic sense! How does that benefit the society (=the needs of the many) when it doesn't move money around or create jobs?
As far as I can see, it will only benefit the needs of the few GNU freeloaders who have all the time in the world to tinker with their lunix box because they live in their mom's basement or work in the academia.
Many times RMS and the FSF have pointed out flaws in only slightly more compromising licenses, and many times their warnings have turned out to be farsighted.
That you wouldn't spend 4 hours learning something that would save you that in 2 weeks of usage?
No. Given the risk of investment of 4 hours wasted worktime without any guarantee of the 2 weeks time savings, I rather opt for the old system. My employee does not pay me to learn new things.
lambasting people because they like something different than you do or have different priorities than you do is silly.
I am not lambasting people. I am telling you how things stand. You don't want people to adapt Linux software? Fine. I couldn't care less - live with your "improved" GUI. You want to people like using Linux software? Then clone the user interface. Perhaps put in an option for an "enhanced" GUI in the Preferences menu, but the default GUI should be the de facto standard (Adobe, Microsoft, etc.).
Re:LOUD SUCKING SOUND EMANATING FROM BUFFALO, NY
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Linking Dangerously
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offshore American High-Tech [tata.com]!
Ever thought about that if you can offshore American "High-Tech", then maybe it's not such high tech afterall.
Maybe it's you who've fallen behind the times and should learn another occupation that's really high tech and cannot be (yet) moved abroad?
Emacs: (gazillion unintuitive ctrl+Y+alt+Xmeta+Q key combinations just to edit your "source code"; as an added bonus, get stuck in a one-line minibuffer just for the fun's sake until your random experimentation reveals that ctrl+G gets you out of that trap and you can actually save your text...)
LaTeX: latex foo.tex; xdvi foo.dvi; (repeat ad nauseam until the layout looks right); pdf2ps foo.dvi -o foo.ps; lpr -Pfooprint foo.ps
The layout looks like shit? I have to change the marginals, fonts and the look of those title headers. What? I have to edit some crappy style-files and learn a programming language while I'm at it?!
So the answer to your question is: Yes, I do prefer Word with all its problems with reproducible page layout and proper math editor.
1) They are used to it. Most people, once they actually learn GIMP's interface, like it better.
Thank you for making my point. And just why should they learn yet another interface? Because it is "better"?
Well, I'm sure the authors think it is better, but if at least one of them would take his head out of his ass for once, he'd realize that the professional people do not want "better" GUIs, they want GUIs they are familiar with - something they can get the work done right away and not after learning yet another goddamn arrangement of menus, buttons and dialogs.
This is what you open source people just don't seem to get. You people Ignore (with capital I) what the end users want. You are so caught up with being different, revolutionary and 3133t that you want to revise everything. Well, the Adobe GUI does not need revising. People already know how to use it. Revise whatever is under the hood instead. Make it work faster. Make it work more reliably. Make it do more. But whatever you do, don't change the interface.
You may have the time to tweak your kernel, compile your applications and learn a dozen new programming languages a week, but when it comes to the real world you need the results now - preferably already yesterday. Work under the hood and clone the de facto standard interfaces shamelessly.
And that makes his opinion irrelevant just how? I assume your comment implies that the post above should have been moderated down instead of up. Why? Because of his posting history?
"Stratjakt is a known Communist. Check out his other work."
You are suffering from the Dubyaitis: everything's black and white, good and evil, trolling and "serious" slashdot use. The world doesn't work like that, my friend. The world is not black and white. The world is shades of gray.
I suppose you emerged from your mother's womb knowing how to use Photoshop?
That's not the issue here. The issue here is that the Gimp GUI is so braindamaged that it is almost like the authors deliberately designed it to hinder whatever it is you want to do with the program.
Please, please, please tell me this. WHY THE FUCK does Gimp have all of its image processing functions in a goddamn right-mousebutton pop-up menu that hides the image you're trying to process in the first place? Jesus Christ! You couldn't make a worse design even if you tried.
And it has not been fixed just because of the attitude you show here. "Oh yeah? Our system is counterintuitive? Well, boy. There's only one thing I can tell you: just take your time learning our GUI because there is no way in hell that we would stoop as low as using the same GUI the people are familiar in the first place."
If I go to a club or a gig to shoot I can easily shoot 100+ pictures a night
Just out of interest, how do you get stable pictures with a digital camera? I've taken quite a lot of photos with film and I've never had had trouble with blurred photos. With digital cameras, however, I never seem to get a good photo as just pressing the trigger seems to shake the camera enough to blur the picture.
I know that the digital cameras I've played with have not been in the high-end range but they have not been economy models either.
Well, I'm sorry it pisses you off that the scientific community holds the validity of its foundations to such esteem that it is prepared to sacrifice the speed of progress and even to crush new ideas (which, if correct afterall, will resurface later on) to ensure that in the future more reliable science can be built upon the firm foundations.
The mistake that people often make is that they assume that the scientific community is a democracy. Well, it's not. If anything it is a meritocracy. If you come from a no-name group and/or have no established academic trackrecord you will find it hard to have your papers accepted. You will have to work ten times harder in order to convince the referees to accept your paper. It's tough, but fair.
Ah... so the human brain's "frequency" can be changed on the run like that of a P-IV? Excellent. Now, my second question is: how can I overclock my brain?
In science the burden of proof is on you. If you can't make your case so that you peers can readily understand the evidence your work will most likely be disqualified with comments like those he got from the referee.
You may be 100% right but if your paper is confusing, uses unorthodox terminology and contains crap figures you can bet that the referee is going to disqualify it. This guy should have co-authored the paper with a professional scientist who knows the proper language and the way to present new ideas.
And this attitude is not elitism. Science must be ultraconservative to keep the crackpots out. And unlike the crackpots would like to believe, given enough time and attempts to push a new revolutionary theory through (not by one person but by many) it will eventually be accepted as the proof for it accumulates.
Maybe, but just seeing the forest does not qualify you to tend it as you don't know what the different trees are, what they need and so on.
Science is mostly about seeing the trees not the forest as as a structure it is already overwhelmingly too large to be comprehended by single individuals.
I also recommend "Nobel lecture: A confrontation with infinity" by Gerard t'Hooft in the Reviews of Modern Physics (Rev. Mod Phys. 72 (2000) 333).
It addresses well how the notion of differentiation, where movement is divided into inifitesimally small space and time intervals of constant motion, was crucial to the development of modern physics and how it sometimes fails in multidimensional physics of elementary particles.
Foundations of Physics Letters...a 27 year old broadcasting school tutor from Wellington
Oookay... an amateur publishing in a low impact journal.
I must say I agree with the quoted referee but on the other hand I am not suprised that the article got published. Peer review system is breaking down because of the sheer volume of new articles and the low priority scientsts give to reviewing other people's papers.
But 3 million outsourced jobs? FUCK YOU IBM. You evict that many people form their jobs and that's kinda mass murder.
Bollocks. And where does it say that you have the right to a job - in particular to the same job you've held previously? The primary function of a corporation is to thrive financially and generate wealth for the society. If outsourcing is a realistic alternative, then that's what should be done. If it does not, there'll be soon no jobs for anyone. Better 3 million outsourced jobs so that at least some may stay.
There is no obligation for anyone to start a business. It's voluntary. Jobs are created as a positive side effect but corporations are under no obligation to provide SECURE jobs.
I am 32 and my job is on the line every 6 months and I'm not complaining. If my employer can't afford to pay me, there is no point in complaining. I don't have any expectations that I'll be working here in 24 months - but then again I rather like it that way.
Planning for the inevitable period of unemployment, stashing away money for a bad day and learning new skills outside the scope of my daily job keeps me sharp. I like being sharp, versatile and not getting too comfortable with my life.
I shudder when I think of people who think they have their life worked out at 25. They've got a degree, a secure job, a wife/husband, an idyllic house in suburbia, a car and 2.5 kids who are nice, clean and obedient and love you very, very much. All the goals they set themselves when they were 16. Nothing to look forward to? No unpredictability? No change. No growth. No improvement. Just living without being alive.
Just watch how the religious conservatism, mostly based on Catholic dogma, is raising its ugly head again. The same spirit that burnt Bruno, threatenened Galileo with torture and death and silently approved Hitler's Final Solution is gaining momentum again in Europe. Stem-cell research, perhaps the most promising route to the cure of the most serious diseases of our time, is getting banned by the EU countries thanks to the "life is sacred" (sickening isn't it?) line of the large Catholic EU countries.
Too bad Europeans do not have the separation of the church and the state.
Slashdot Mirror
Excellent sig. Highly recommended reading.
Oh, gimme a break. FSF does not distribute free software. Public domain is free. BSD is almost free. GPL is definitely not free. If I can't do whatever the hell I want with the supposedly "free" code, it's not free.
it protects the software itself, not necessarily the authors.
Uh-oh... I feel the weak, socialist "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" argument coming up... pray tell me, why should I write code that cannot be readily applied in a realistic commercial sense? And no, releasing the source code does not make economic sense! How does that benefit the society (=the needs of the many) when it doesn't move money around or create jobs?
As far as I can see, it will only benefit the needs of the few GNU freeloaders who have all the time in the world to tinker with their lunix box because they live in their mom's basement or work in the academia.
Many times RMS and the FSF have pointed out flaws in only slightly more compromising licenses, and many times their warnings have turned out to be farsighted.
Ah, yes. The cult-side of the FSF/GNU, of course.
Like any disciple, I'm sure you can tell us what these incredible, divinely inspired prophecies were?
No. Given the risk of investment of 4 hours wasted worktime without any guarantee of the 2 weeks time savings, I rather opt for the old system. My employee does not pay me to learn new things.
lambasting people because they like something different than you do or have different priorities than you do is silly.
I am not lambasting people. I am telling you how things stand. You don't want people to adapt Linux software? Fine. I couldn't care less - live with your "improved" GUI. You want to people like using Linux software? Then clone the user interface. Perhaps put in an option for an "enhanced" GUI in the Preferences menu, but the default GUI should be the de facto standard (Adobe, Microsoft, etc.).
Ever thought about that if you can offshore American "High-Tech", then maybe it's not such high tech afterall.
Maybe it's you who've fallen behind the times and should learn another occupation that's really high tech and cannot be (yet) moved abroad?
Black and white.
Emacs: (gazillion unintuitive ctrl+Y+alt+Xmeta+Q key combinations just to edit your "source code"; as an added bonus, get stuck in a one-line minibuffer just for the fun's sake until your random experimentation reveals that ctrl+G gets you out of that trap and you can actually save your text...)
LaTeX: latex foo.tex; xdvi foo.dvi; (repeat ad nauseam until the layout looks right); pdf2ps foo.dvi -o foo.ps; lpr -Pfooprint foo.ps
The layout looks like shit? I have to change the marginals, fonts and the look of those title headers. What? I have to edit some crappy style-files and learn a programming language while I'm at it?!
So the answer to your question is: Yes, I do prefer Word with all its problems with reproducible page layout and proper math editor.
Thank you for making my point. And just why should they learn yet another interface? Because it is "better"?
Well, I'm sure the authors think it is better, but if at least one of them would take his head out of his ass for once, he'd realize that the professional people do not want "better" GUIs, they want GUIs they are familiar with - something they can get the work done right away and not after learning yet another goddamn arrangement of menus, buttons and dialogs.
This is what you open source people just don't seem to get. You people Ignore (with capital I) what the end users want. You are so caught up with being different, revolutionary and 3133t that you want to revise everything. Well, the Adobe GUI does not need revising. People already know how to use it. Revise whatever is under the hood instead. Make it work faster. Make it work more reliably. Make it do more. But whatever you do, don't change the interface.
You may have the time to tweak your kernel, compile your applications and learn a dozen new programming languages a week, but when it comes to the real world you need the results now - preferably already yesterday. Work under the hood and clone the de facto standard interfaces shamelessly.
"Stratjakt is a known Communist. Check out his other work."
You are suffering from the Dubyaitis: everything's black and white, good and evil, trolling and "serious" slashdot use. The world doesn't work like that, my friend. The world is not black and white. The world is shades of gray.
That's not the issue here. The issue here is that the Gimp GUI is so braindamaged that it is almost like the authors deliberately designed it to hinder whatever it is you want to do with the program.
Please, please, please tell me this. WHY THE FUCK does Gimp have all of its image processing functions in a goddamn right-mousebutton pop-up menu that hides the image you're trying to process in the first place? Jesus Christ! You couldn't make a worse design even if you tried.
And it has not been fixed just because of the attitude you show here. "Oh yeah? Our system is counterintuitive? Well, boy. There's only one thing I can tell you: just take your time learning our GUI because there is no way in hell that we would stoop as low as using the same GUI the people are familiar in the first place."
Same here.
I am not the greatest fan of the open source movement, but SCO gives a bad name to legitimate closed source business so even I'm prepared to chip in.
Whoa! Talk about fully automatic...
Just out of interest, how do you get stable pictures with a digital camera? I've taken quite a lot of photos with film and I've never had had trouble with blurred photos. With digital cameras, however, I never seem to get a good photo as just pressing the trigger seems to shake the camera enough to blur the picture.
I know that the digital cameras I've played with have not been in the high-end range but they have not been economy models either.
Except, of course, that it is near impossible to find all the hundreds of parts of a single .MP3 file because the newsservers keep dropping posts.
The mistake that people often make is that they assume that the scientific community is a democracy. Well, it's not. If anything it is a meritocracy. If you come from a no-name group and/or have no established academic trackrecord you will find it hard to have your papers accepted. You will have to work ten times harder in order to convince the referees to accept your paper. It's tough, but fair.
Ah... so the human brain's "frequency" can be changed on the run like that of a P-IV? Excellent. Now, my second question is: how can I overclock my brain?
Given the recent decline in the quality of reviews, such a letter would not surprise me.
In science the burden of proof is on you. If you can't make your case so that you peers can readily understand the evidence your work will most likely be disqualified with comments like those he got from the referee.
You may be 100% right but if your paper is confusing, uses unorthodox terminology and contains crap figures you can bet that the referee is going to disqualify it. This guy should have co-authored the paper with a professional scientist who knows the proper language and the way to present new ideas. And this attitude is not elitism. Science must be ultraconservative to keep the crackpots out. And unlike the crackpots would like to believe, given enough time and attempts to push a new revolutionary theory through (not by one person but by many) it will eventually be accepted as the proof for it accumulates.
Science is mostly about seeing the trees not the forest as as a structure it is already overwhelmingly too large to be comprehended by single individuals.
It addresses well how the notion of differentiation, where movement is divided into inifitesimally small space and time intervals of constant motion, was crucial to the development of modern physics and how it sometimes fails in multidimensional physics of elementary particles.
Oookay... an amateur publishing in a low impact journal.
I must say I agree with the quoted referee but on the other hand I am not suprised that the article got published. Peer review system is breaking down because of the sheer volume of new articles and the low priority scientsts give to reviewing other people's papers.
Bollocks. And where does it say that you have the right to a job - in particular to the same job you've held previously? The primary function of a corporation is to thrive financially and generate wealth for the society. If outsourcing is a realistic alternative, then that's what should be done. If it does not, there'll be soon no jobs for anyone. Better 3 million outsourced jobs so that at least some may stay.
There is no obligation for anyone to start a business. It's voluntary. Jobs are created as a positive side effect but corporations are under no obligation to provide SECURE jobs.
I am 32 and my job is on the line every 6 months and I'm not complaining. If my employer can't afford to pay me, there is no point in complaining. I don't have any expectations that I'll be working here in 24 months - but then again I rather like it that way.
Planning for the inevitable period of unemployment, stashing away money for a bad day and learning new skills outside the scope of my daily job keeps me sharp. I like being sharp, versatile and not getting too comfortable with my life.
I shudder when I think of people who think they have their life worked out at 25. They've got a degree, a secure job, a wife/husband, an idyllic house in suburbia, a car and 2.5 kids who are nice, clean and obedient and love you very, very much. All the goals they set themselves when they were 16. Nothing to look forward to? No unpredictability? No change. No growth. No improvement. Just living without being alive.
Well, we'll look you up if we have time. We'll be scoring with hot chicks while you'll be doing the Ghyslain on the dance floor.
Too bad Europeans do not have the separation of the church and the state.
Well, let's just say that I (would) bash open source hypocricy for free but...
Yes, they have certainly helped to fuck up the Linux/free OS desktops. Two more competing widget sets. Way to go, OS!