For example, French & Indian War Umm, that was when the British Army saved our asses, and then wanted us to pay for part of the expense, resukting in the Tea Tax of lore...
Spanish Philippines War We 'helped' the Philippine forces (who had already defeated the Spanish army, and laid siege to Manila) by occupying the country, and fighting a brutal war of occupation for over twenty years. The same sort of behavior carried over to the other country occupied during that war, namely Cuba.
I'm not implying that US foreign policy lacks an altruistic streak, but we do traditionally tend to look after our own perceived interests, despite ethical or moral concerns.
This SF tax looks like a good idea, but it does not fundamentally change the fact that one has not guidance or control on how their taxes are directed.
Considering the tax system, it seems to me the most optimal would be for you to select the general categories you want your taxes to go too. This would in proactice, this would not only eliminate pork to some extent, it would also allow the budget to follow the outline of general public desires.
So, for instance, the slashdot crowd may desire their taxes to fund NASA and the NSF research grants, the progressives could have their money directly applied to the aid for the poor, Republicans could spend their money on security, etc...
I agree that Gates is not the programmer of the public perception. Anyone whose project of reknown was the heavy modification of the DEC BASIC interpreter can hardly be considered a hacker par excellance.
But, contrary to what you have said, some of the Gates/Allen Altair code is open for a look. Not the most significant achievement of the time, but generally not a bad assembly hack at all...
Of course, this begs the question... is freely redistributable, shoddy content better than no content at all?
Or to frame it another way, would anything fundamental be lost if Katz's writing never appears on the web?
But of course, the difference between Eckel and Katz is staggering. Eckel has *content*, and that is more important to his success than his admirable distribution methods. Katz, on the other hand...
Though not about this specific colony, there is a beautiful E.O. Wilson book entitled The Ants. Though a bit pricey, it straddles the levels both the academia and the general the public. Definitive and readable...
Sun doesn't care what OS you run on your machine. All they care about is that you pay ludicrous amounts for the hardware. Solaris is, and always will be, a negligible commodity for a hardware company.
But what they definitely don't want is linux (or BSD, or win2k for that matter) *shipping* on their boxen. That would imply logical equivalence between Sun and PC hardware-- which is any custom vendor's worst nightmare.
The reason that Sun sells the blade for something near a competitive price is that it is composed of mostly (shoddy) standardized PC components. If you want a machine just to run Solaris, one would be better off with a used SPARCstation 5 or 20--superior quality, cheaper ~100, and better supported by Linux and *BSD for when Solaris runs out of usefulness for ya...
Shouldn't the community be afraid of the possible extreme commercialization and wholesale fragmentation of Linux? This could lead to some pretty precarious situations, which certain companies could take advantage of. Imagine this situation--
Press Release--for immediate distribution
Somewhere in Silicon Valley--Bluebonnet Linux, a rock solid new derivative of the award-winning Debian distribution, was released today. The software is engineered for ease of use, and includes the patented and copyrighted new technology, SmartInstall.
SmartInstall allows for the running of Linux from within Windows 2.11. Such groundbreaking progress promises for great appeal not only to techno savvy consumers, but those who still run legacy versions of Windows.
Bluebonnet Linux, in a package of 13 CDs, includes thousands of software titles, including a demo version of Internet Explorer for Linux, a groundbreaking product that is estimated to be 30% more stable than Netscape 4.51.
Bluebonnet Corp. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft, a leading software developer and content creator.
A problem? A possiblity? Or simply an exagerrated fear, born of a night of Perl hacking? You be the judge.
Yes, forcing Raymond to surrender his property against his will for policies he does not support is by nature evil. It shows a complete lack of interest in the inherent rights of man. Seizure of property by the state stems from the same convoluted logic as murdering innocents. Denial of the right of the individual is the worst crime possible, and comes in many forms.
Actually, Socialism has killed vastly more than 10.5 million. The entire ideology of socialism leads to both a loss of basic moral tenets and the loss of the sanctity of life. Millions ceased to exist because of the insane logic of idealistic revolutionaries.
There are many varieties of socialism, but all share a view that lacks humanity. Regardless of the limit of socialism in particular situations, it is inherently evil.
Socialism can be found as a benign bureaucracy; but it still is a tumor.
I would recommend reading Hayek's Road to Serfdom.
Let's face it, whether Corel is forced legally to follow the GPL on its beta is not the real issue here. The importance of this is that it symbolizes the conflict that arises when a traditional developer attempts to embrace OSS.
Corel is simply trying to jump on the Linux bandwagon after the action has already begun to happen. They have been up to this time strongly proprietary. I don't know whether this is to enhance their mediocre stock price or to appear cutting edge. In any case, some sort of half-hearted copy of Debian with some "ease of use" features are not a significant contribution to the community. Even WordPerfect is buggy and obtuse when compared to Koffice, for example. Linux has already reached critical mass, and I know of no one that installed Linux in order to run WP 8. Corel is welcome but hardly neccesary.
No offense, but I consider Corel to be in the same category as Sun and Oracle. Companies, which have a myriad of plans to make use of the technology fad du jour (remember Java and the NC?) Their bizarre products are aimed at Microsoft, since all three have an obsession on taking Microsoft's place as the dominant tech company. Linux is yet another avenue for their schemes.
One might add that many of the Graphing Calculators run on the z80. Most high-school and college students are running a z80 based system without even knowing it.
BTW, one of those Graphing Calculators quite a nice little machine for assembly programming.
Is this a signal of a major shift in Microsoft's Unix strategy or just another example of the company's "buy everybody" strategem?
On might argue that Microsoft has always been involved in Unix, to varying degrees. Microsoft has already created a second-rate Unix port in the old days of the 8086.
Perhaps Microsoft is beginning a shift into the Unix market with various products, to counter Linux/BSD on the server side, but I doubt it at this time. There has been no major move by Microsoft, and I doubt this recent purchase will be much of an impact at all.
Microsoft could be preparing for some sort of Unix virtual machine to run within the NT kernel, supporting Unix apps, but performance-wise, I don't know how this could be a threat to Linux. In any case, Microsoft already has utilities that directly compete with the sort of Unix programs companies would want to run. Microsoft must still want to protect its significant investments-IIS, Exchange Server, etc.
And among the OSS community, there would be widespread derision over their apps being used on the NT platform. After all, who wants to see Sendmail, KDE, and gcc on a NT box? No word can describe the distaste one has to feel about such a setup.
One must remember that Apple is one of the most propriety hardware/software developers in the industry in the past. They will gain political points for various, albeit minor, open-source projects. However, the culture of Apple restricts their open-source development efforts in this area to consumer applications and minor parts of their OS. Quicktime can be released because it was never seen as a direct avenue of profit for the company.
The key to Apple's success could be in creating a viable "ease-of-use" Unix or pseudo-Unix alternative to Windows. However, internal politics will block any release of the core code of OS X. Insiders see the OS as the crown jewels. Apple also wants to retain its fat profit margin, undreamed of by PC makers.
This is also the reason that Apple will not port its OS to Intel machines. Although it would not be a impossible task with OS X, Apple would be too afraid of losing server customers to a cheaper OS X/Intel systems. Though this will not be the case, this same sort of fear stopped a joint Apple/Intel project years ago to port the OS to 386 machines.
Slashdot Mirror
For example, French & Indian War
Umm, that was when the British Army saved our asses, and then wanted us to pay for part of the expense, resukting in the Tea Tax of lore...
Spanish Philippines War
We 'helped' the Philippine forces (who had already defeated the Spanish army, and laid siege to Manila) by occupying the country, and fighting a brutal war of occupation for over twenty years. The same sort of behavior carried over to the other country occupied during that war, namely Cuba.
I'm not implying that US foreign policy lacks an altruistic streak, but we do traditionally tend to look after our own perceived interests, despite ethical or moral concerns.
This SF tax looks like a good idea, but it does not fundamentally change the fact that one has not guidance or control on how their taxes are directed.
Considering the tax system, it seems to me the most optimal would be for you to select the general categories you want your taxes to go too. This would in proactice, this would not only eliminate pork to some extent, it would also allow the budget to follow the outline of general public desires.
So, for instance, the slashdot crowd may desire their taxes to fund NASA and the NSF research grants, the progressives could have their money directly applied to the aid for the poor, Republicans could spend their money on security, etc...
I agree that Gates is not the programmer of the public perception. Anyone whose project of reknown was the heavy modification of the DEC BASIC interpreter can hardly be considered a hacker par excellance.
But, contrary to what you have said, some of the Gates/Allen Altair code is open for a look. Not the most significant achievement of the time, but generally not a bad assembly hack at all...
Of course, 0 sales * 1730% == 0 sales, and we can't rule that out...
Of course, this begs the question... is freely redistributable, shoddy content better than no content at all?
Or to frame it another way, would anything fundamental be lost if Katz's writing never appears on the web?
But of course, the difference between Eckel and Katz is staggering. Eckel has *content*, and that is more important to his success than his admirable distribution methods. Katz, on the other hand...
Though not about this specific colony, there is a beautiful E.O. Wilson book entitled The Ants. Though a bit pricey, it straddles the levels both the academia and the general the public. Definitive and readable...
Sun doesn't care what OS you run on your machine. All they care about is that you pay ludicrous amounts for the hardware. Solaris is, and always will be, a negligible commodity for a hardware company.
But what they definitely don't want is linux (or BSD, or win2k for that matter) *shipping* on their boxen. That would imply logical equivalence between Sun and PC hardware-- which is any custom vendor's worst nightmare.
The reason that Sun sells the blade for something near a competitive price is that it is composed of mostly (shoddy) standardized PC components. If you want a machine just to run Solaris, one would be better off with a used SPARCstation 5 or 20--superior quality, cheaper ~100, and better supported by Linux and *BSD for when Solaris runs out of usefulness for ya...
is here
Shouldn't the community be afraid of the possible extreme commercialization and wholesale fragmentation of Linux? This could lead to some pretty precarious situations, which certain companies could take advantage of. Imagine this situation--
Press Release--for immediate distribution
Somewhere in Silicon Valley--Bluebonnet Linux, a rock solid new derivative of the award-winning Debian distribution, was released today. The software is engineered for ease of
use, and includes the patented and copyrighted new technology, SmartInstall.
SmartInstall allows for the running of Linux from within Windows 2.11. Such groundbreaking progress promises for great appeal not only to techno savvy consumers, but those who still run legacy versions of Windows.
Bluebonnet Linux, in a package of 13 CDs, includes thousands of software titles, including a demo version of Internet Explorer for Linux, a groundbreaking product that is estimated to be 30% more stable than Netscape 4.51.
Bluebonnet Corp. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft, a leading software developer and content creator.
A problem? A possiblity? Or simply an exagerrated fear, born of a night of Perl hacking? You be the judge.
Yes, forcing Raymond to surrender his property against his will for policies he does not support is by nature evil. It shows a complete lack of interest in the inherent rights of man. Seizure of property by the state stems from the same convoluted logic as murdering innocents. Denial of the right of the individual is the worst crime possible, and comes in many forms.
Actually, Socialism has killed vastly more than 10.5 million. The entire ideology of socialism leads to both a loss of basic moral tenets and the loss of the sanctity of life. Millions ceased to exist because of the insane logic of idealistic revolutionaries.
There are many varieties of socialism, but all share a view that lacks humanity. Regardless of the limit of socialism in particular situations, it is inherently evil.
Socialism can be found as a benign bureaucracy; but it still is a tumor.
I would recommend reading Hayek's Road to Serfdom.
Let's face it, whether Corel is forced legally to follow the GPL on its beta is not the real issue here. The importance of this is that it symbolizes the conflict that arises when a traditional developer attempts to embrace OSS.
Corel is simply trying to jump on the Linux bandwagon after the action has already begun to happen. They have been up to this time strongly proprietary. I don't know whether this is to enhance their mediocre stock price or to appear cutting edge. In any case, some sort of half-hearted copy of Debian with some "ease of use" features are not a significant contribution to the community. Even WordPerfect is buggy and obtuse when compared to Koffice, for example. Linux has already reached critical mass, and I know of no one that installed Linux in order to run WP 8. Corel is welcome but hardly neccesary.
No offense, but I consider Corel to be in the same category as Sun and Oracle. Companies, which have a myriad of plans to make use of the technology fad du jour (remember Java and the NC?) Their bizarre products are aimed at Microsoft, since all three have an obsession on taking Microsoft's place as the dominant tech company. Linux is yet another avenue for their schemes.
One might add that many of the Graphing Calculators run on the z80. Most high-school and college students are running a z80 based system without even knowing it.
BTW, one of those Graphing Calculators quite a nice little machine for assembly programming.
Is this a signal of a major shift in Microsoft's Unix strategy or just another example of the company's "buy everybody" strategem?
On might argue that Microsoft has always been involved in Unix, to varying degrees. Microsoft has already created a second-rate Unix port in the old days of the 8086.
Perhaps Microsoft is beginning a shift into the Unix market with various products, to counter Linux/BSD on the server side, but I doubt it at this time. There has been no major move by Microsoft, and I doubt this recent purchase will be much of an impact at all.
Microsoft could be preparing for some sort of Unix virtual machine to run within the NT kernel, supporting Unix apps, but performance-wise, I don't know how this could be a threat to Linux. In any case, Microsoft already has utilities that directly compete with the sort of Unix programs companies would want to run. Microsoft must still want to protect its significant investments-IIS, Exchange Server, etc.
And among the OSS community, there would be widespread derision over their apps being used on the NT platform. After all, who wants to see Sendmail, KDE, and gcc on a NT box? No word can describe the distaste one has to feel about such a setup.
One must remember that Apple is one of the most propriety hardware/software developers in the industry in the past. They will gain political points for various, albeit minor, open-source projects. However, the culture of Apple restricts their open-source development efforts in this area to consumer applications and minor parts of their OS. Quicktime can be released because it was never seen as a direct avenue of profit for the company.
The key to Apple's success could be in creating a viable "ease-of-use" Unix or pseudo-Unix alternative to Windows. However, internal politics will block any release of the core code of OS X. Insiders see the OS as the crown jewels. Apple also wants to retain its fat profit margin, undreamed of by PC makers.
This is also the reason that Apple will not port its OS to Intel machines. Although it would not be a impossible task with OS X, Apple would be too afraid of losing server customers to a cheaper OS X/Intel systems. Though this will not be the case, this same sort of fear stopped a joint Apple/Intel project years ago to port the OS to 386 machines.