I think the move is totally fair - its about time this cyber-squatter got ejected.
If he had legitimate reasons for putting up his site, why did he make it the EXACT same shade of yellow as the other site?
And the/. community feel moved to complain about this perfectly reasonable move? I don't know, it makes me want to stop reading.
And now I come to think about it, why does Slashdot make it website an exact copy of Microsoft's? Can't they stand on their own two feet without feeling that they have to copy every last pixel?
I live in North America. My brother lives in the UK.
NA: When I go to buy a cell phone I have to pick a cell phone company then choose from a selection of, what, 20 phones max.
UK: My brother chooses from hundreds of cell phones, then picks a carrier and has the phone programmed to match, or uses an existing smartcard to transfer in his phone number and address book.
NA: My cell phone is expensive - I dont want to sign-up for any 5 year term.
UK: My brother's cell phone is cheap. A couple of years ago I described my new $400 phone with a colour display. "oh", says he, "you mean model XYZ? I have dozens of those in my drawyer at work". He's a high-school teacher, and it turns out that my model is in vogue. The kids buy them for $15.
NA: I pay a monthly fee and get a huge number of minutes.
UK: My brother pays through the nose, by the minute (or is that 'buy' the minute?).
NA: Internet access and phone calls have been cheap in North America for ages, so the method here is to place calls and send emails.
UK: For my brother, Internet access and phone calls have always been 'buy' the minute and expensive. But "texting" (SMS) is real cheap. To keep in contact with close friends and colleauges he finds that texting is the way to go.
At my brother's school, the kids can't afford to go 'buy' the minute so they opt for texting. A whole sub-culture emerges of ascii-art, asci-jokes, terminolgy, lingo, abbreviations. The works. Their phone and texting technique becomes a question of style and identity. It becomes important to have custom backgrounds and ring tones - it's fun and gives that teenager a cool identity.
In North America we have very little choice in electrical consumer goods, but what is offered is very economic. It must be that we prefer it this way. Right?
You work in a research hospital. The other 96% of hospitals and imaging centers don't have the time to investigate shareware imaging applications, nor are they willing to risk using unvalidated, non-FDA approved software. They rely on commercial software with proven reliability and service.
The closest thing to 'free' MRI review and reporting software is eFilm, which has over 50,000 users. However, eFilm is supported by a major corporation - and it isn't Open Source.
Why do you think that defense software is "sensative", but medical software is not? I'm sure that the FDA would disagree with you, and most users. Well OK, I know what you mean. I'm just making the point that medical software requires a certain level of reliability and accuracy, and that certain failures cannot be tolerated (mixing up patient IDs, getting right and left confused etc).
Maybe I just haven't seen the light, but it still seems to me that Open Source remains the antithesis of the software development industry, at least the part that deals with the generation of wealth from the creation and sale of software. The economics of Open Source are that the act of authoring and creating software is not directly remunerated, but that there are secondary industries based on ancilliary services such as distribution, support, customization and consultancy. Perhaps it is true to say, therefore, that the Open Source system operates outside the rules of a free market economy, and is more akin to a Communist system of central planning, equal contribution from selfless, willing participants, and free consumption for all. What do you think?
There seem to be two main providers (authors) of Open Source software: volunteers, who contribute for kudos within their "on-line" community and possibly for altruistic purposes; and government-funded workers in universities, research centres, hospitals etc. I am not aware that mainstream commercial organizations, companies, or other "for profit" organizations represent a large proportion of the Open Source supply-side. This is perhaps because the contribution of time, effort or intellectual property to Open Source does not normally make economic sense as there is not a direct, associated pay-back.
The closest model to this is the type of company that consumes Open Source materials and submits contributions back to the community. I suspect that these contributions are those that were done as part of the course of business, and are not the result of any out-of-the-way development or sense of generosity. And perhaps the code 'feedback' is ultimately self-serving.
An interesting element in the economics of Open Source is that with the exception of government-paid workers the remaining authors are largely professional software developers who write software for a living as their main employment. Of course there will be many exceptions to this, but my suspicion is that Open Source can only exist on the back of Closed Source.
Clearly there must be a limit, or balance, to the scope and scale of Open Source or, like a snake eating its own tail, the movement will eliminate its own sustaining workforce and falter. Rather, there will be an equilibrium point. A related observation may be that contributors employed by for-profit companies will have limitations on the scope of their involvement, since most employment agreements lay claims on related intellectual property whether written at the office or at home. This, combined with a software developer's love of writing generic "super-tools", has meant that the most successful Open Source projects are software engineering tools, utilities and building blocks: Linux, Java, IDEs, configuration management tools, bug tracking tools, MySQL, PHP, PHPBB, Apache, gcc, etc. When I looked at this a year ago the four largest categories (55%, or 47,000 projects) at SourceForge.com are of this type. Indeed, these represent the majority of the 80,000 projects logged at that time.
I don't believe that the Open Source community would be moved to contribute on specific applications, such as the pacemaker example here. The available pool of kudos would be too small, as well as the available talent. No doubt the/. crowd will proove me wrong!
Clearly the notion of free software is attractive to anyone with a software need. Personally, I am grateful to the authors of the software that I have downloaded for free, and will check-out SourceForge's 'Games/Entertainment' category forthwith; I am pleased to see Microsoft's strangle-hold on the desktop being seriously challenged by Linux. However, this is of course not good news for Microsoft. Although in danger of some sort of hypocracy, I would recommend that any software company watch the font of freeware available through GNU and SourceForge, and drink freely - so long as the 'copyleft' licensing terms can be accepted and managed.
Come nothing is so black and white. Imagine you are in charge. You want to save lives but, hey, you need to make money too. Now, what are you going to do?
Esperanto has formally given up the ghost. Come on, it's a dead language. In fact, was it ever really alive?
I would dispute your argument that "fully developed" and "totally consistent" leads to being "more expressive". How does this follow?
And Esperanto has its problems. Why do adjectives need to follow the form of a noun? A latin throw-back I suggest. While it makes sense on paper to overload with prefixes and suffixes, this actually leads to a paucity of lexical forms and the dreariness of repetition.
Anyway, why take my word for it. Potential users have voted with their feet, and Esperanto is dead.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah,yeah, yeah. You can buy these at Home Depot.
I think the move is totally fair - its about time this cyber-squatter got ejected.
/. community feel moved to complain about this perfectly reasonable move? I don't know, it makes me want to stop reading.
If he had legitimate reasons for putting up his site, why did he make it the EXACT same shade of yellow as the other site?
And the
And now I come to think about it, why does Slashdot make it website an exact copy of Microsoft's? Can't they stand on their own two feet without feeling that they have to copy every last pixel?
I live in North America. My brother lives in the UK.
NA: When I go to buy a cell phone I have to pick a cell phone company then choose from a selection of, what, 20 phones max.
UK: My brother chooses from hundreds of cell phones, then picks a carrier and has the phone programmed to match, or uses an existing smartcard to transfer in his phone number and address book.
NA: My cell phone is expensive - I dont want to sign-up for any 5 year term.
UK: My brother's cell phone is cheap. A couple of years ago I described my new $400 phone with a colour display. "oh", says he, "you mean model XYZ? I have dozens of those in my drawyer at work". He's a high-school teacher, and it turns out that my model is in vogue. The kids buy them for $15.
NA: I pay a monthly fee and get a huge number of minutes.
UK: My brother pays through the nose, by the minute (or is that 'buy' the minute?).
NA: Internet access and phone calls have been cheap in North America for ages, so the method here is to place calls and send emails.
UK: For my brother, Internet access and phone calls have always been 'buy' the minute and expensive. But "texting" (SMS) is real cheap. To keep in contact with close friends and colleauges he finds that texting is the way to go.
At my brother's school, the kids can't afford to go 'buy' the minute so they opt for texting. A whole sub-culture emerges of ascii-art, asci-jokes, terminolgy, lingo, abbreviations. The works. Their phone and texting technique becomes a question of style and identity. It becomes important to have custom backgrounds and ring tones - it's fun and gives that teenager a cool identity.
In North America we have very little choice in electrical consumer goods, but what is offered is very economic. It must be that we prefer it this way. Right?
You work in a research hospital. The other 96% of hospitals and imaging centers don't have the time to investigate shareware imaging applications, nor are they willing to risk using unvalidated, non-FDA approved software. They rely on commercial software with proven reliability and service.
The closest thing to 'free' MRI review and reporting software is eFilm, which has over 50,000 users. However, eFilm is supported by a major corporation - and it isn't Open Source.
Why do you think that defense software is "sensative", but medical software is not? I'm sure that the FDA would disagree with you, and most users. Well OK, I know what you mean. I'm just making the point that medical software requires a certain level of reliability and accuracy, and that certain failures cannot be tolerated (mixing up patient IDs, getting right and left confused etc).
Maybe I just haven't seen the light, but it still seems to me that Open Source remains the antithesis of the software development industry, at least the part that deals with the generation of wealth from the creation and sale of software. The economics of Open Source are that the act of authoring and creating software is not directly remunerated, but that there are secondary industries based on ancilliary services such as distribution, support, customization and consultancy. Perhaps it is true to say, therefore, that the Open Source system operates outside the rules of a free market economy, and is more akin to a Communist system of central planning, equal contribution from selfless, willing participants, and free consumption for all. What do you think?
/. crowd will proove me wrong!
There seem to be two main providers (authors) of Open Source software: volunteers, who contribute for kudos within their "on-line" community and possibly for altruistic purposes; and government-funded workers in universities, research centres, hospitals etc. I am not aware that mainstream commercial organizations, companies, or other "for profit" organizations represent a large proportion of the Open Source supply-side. This is perhaps because the contribution of time, effort or intellectual property to Open Source does not normally make economic sense as there is not a direct, associated pay-back.
The closest model to this is the type of company that consumes Open Source materials and submits contributions back to the community. I suspect that these contributions are those that were done as part of the course of business, and are not the result of any out-of-the-way development or sense of generosity. And perhaps the code 'feedback' is ultimately self-serving.
An interesting element in the economics of Open Source is that with the exception of government-paid workers the remaining authors are largely professional software developers who write software for a living as their main employment. Of course there will be many exceptions to this, but my suspicion is that Open Source can only exist on the back of Closed Source.
Clearly there must be a limit, or balance, to the scope and scale of Open Source or, like a snake eating its own tail, the movement will eliminate its own sustaining workforce and falter. Rather, there will be an equilibrium point. A related observation may be that contributors employed by for-profit companies will have limitations on the scope of their involvement, since most employment agreements lay claims on related intellectual property whether written at the office or at home. This, combined with a software developer's love of writing generic "super-tools", has meant that the most successful Open Source projects are software engineering tools, utilities and building blocks: Linux, Java, IDEs, configuration management tools, bug tracking tools, MySQL, PHP, PHPBB, Apache, gcc, etc. When I looked at this a year ago the four largest categories (55%, or 47,000 projects) at SourceForge.com are of this type. Indeed, these represent the majority of the 80,000 projects logged at that time.
I don't believe that the Open Source community would be moved to contribute on specific applications, such as the pacemaker example here. The available pool of kudos would be too small, as well as the available talent. No doubt the
Clearly the notion of free software is attractive to anyone with a software need. Personally, I am grateful to the authors of the software that I have downloaded for free, and will check-out SourceForge's 'Games/Entertainment' category forthwith; I am pleased to see Microsoft's strangle-hold on the desktop being seriously challenged by Linux. However, this is of course not good news for Microsoft. Although in danger of some sort of hypocracy, I would recommend that any software company watch the font of freeware available through GNU and SourceForge, and drink freely - so long as the 'copyleft' licensing terms can be accepted and managed.
Reg
Come nothing is so black and white. Imagine you are in charge. You want to save lives but, hey, you need to make money too. Now, what are you going to do?
Esperanto has formally given up the ghost. Come on, it's a dead language. In fact, was it ever really alive? I would dispute your argument that "fully developed" and "totally consistent" leads to being "more expressive". How does this follow? And Esperanto has its problems. Why do adjectives need to follow the form of a noun? A latin throw-back I suggest. While it makes sense on paper to overload with prefixes and suffixes, this actually leads to a paucity of lexical forms and the dreariness of repetition. Anyway, why take my word for it. Potential users have voted with their feet, and Esperanto is dead.
Bloody hell. What crappy reporting indeed. Camcorder ? Bah humbug.