The second misuse of probability here is the assumption that there's no causal relation between the two events. They are simply treated as random occurrences, which fact is not in evidence. For all we know the two meteors could have been parts of the same original object on the same orbital path.
That's a fair argument, but it only applies to the 300k year separation.
If I read correctly, in addition to the timing of two events, the two events also supposedly happened in the same place. Given a spinning Earth, even if the events were separated by only days (negligable in geological time scales) it is extremely unlikely (but not impossible) for it to occur at the same position.
That is reason enough for me to stick to the old theory for now.
I think "designing secret protocols and file formats, and patenting algorithms and software features" can easily be categorised as all software should be proprietary because doing so is at the exclusion of open source software - something which Mr Gates knows and for which he makes no apologies.
Likewise, I could be paid to evangelise the virtues of open source without actually believing it.
You don't have to come out and say what you believe in to be a fanatic. In Gate's case, doing so would be political suicide, so it makes sense that he doesn't say it outright.
He not only doesn't profit from his software, he enables others to profit from it.
Don't forget that this kid is more than likely taking advantage of software that others wrote for free. It doesn't totally balance out, but it is hardly a one way street.
In any case, I prefer to see software development as a marketable skill than a software product being a marketable item. If you've written software, no one knows your software better than you and the best person to pay for support and customisation will also tend to be you.
Just because others profit from your software, it doesn't mean you can't! To prove that writing open source software is not profitable, you have to do more than show that the software product itself derives no monetary value. You need to show that the act or writing said software does not confer benefits that eventually translates to monetary gain.
The real issue though, is not whether Aiden can earn money purely from open source software development. It is whether throwing all your energy into open source software development before having derived any monetary gain is a smart move.
If my advice is worth anything, I would say: Know where you want to go and take it slowly.
Does anyone else see a problem with the outcome decided by only 20 votes? I mean, those 20 votes are hardly representative of the electorate and we do supposedly live in a 'representative democracy'.
Practical issues aside, if the vote is that close, isn't the most 'representative' option to elect half a candidate each for first and second place?
Re:Open cool, but still keep distribution rights.
on
Beyond An Open Source Java
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I think open sourcing it is ok, but they should do all the work on it internally and not let any 3rd party distribute their own Java.
I'd like to know how "not let any 3rd party distribute their own Java" qualifies as open sourcing Java. See Open Source Definition
What's more likely is that any 3rd party can distribute their own "Java", but they can't call it "Java". without Sun's permission because Sun owns the trademark.
Most restaurants sell alcohol; it would have quite a substantial effect on that industry, they'd either have to stop selling alcohol, and lose customers that way, or stop letting their customers park there, and lose almost all of their customers outside of built-up cities.
Merits of the policy aside, you speak as if customers will suddenly eat out less if all restaurants no longer sell alcohol. More likely, restaurants traditionally not selling alcohol will get more customers because alcohol is no longer a deciding factor when choosing restaurants.
Global communication is killing language specialization.
Mathematics is a rich class of specialised languages and no amount of global communication will kill that off. Geography may play an ever decreasing role in language specialisation, but functional and clique specialisation - geek speak, legal speek, SMS - there is much life in those types of specialisations yet.
I'm just pointing out that open source software can be used for this sort of thing just as easily, in part because of its principles of openness and freedom.
That goes without saying.
But compare that to the world having no open source software at all: The government can build there own software from the ground up (as if lack of tools will stop a government bent on controlling its people) or paying some corporation to taylor software for its needs. With only backdoored software with product activation and DRM, and no alternative, where will the oppressed look to then?
At least in a world with open source software, people could still smuggle open source software from a free-er place and use that.
There is a counter argument against this. What if a driver who depended on ABS, assisted parallel parking, collision avoidance, power steering, cruise control, were to suddenly find themselves in a situation where they aren't available?
It could easily make them more dangerous.
If cars have better brakes, people will adapt to it by braking more dangerously. If cars have better handling, people will handle it more dangerously. If cars were too comfortable, drivers are more likely to fall asleep at the wheel.
This doesn't make the safety features bad. But there is a difference between safety features that don't affect a driver's behaviour and safety features that do.
Essentially, safety features that influence driving patterns can have its effectiveness diminish over time and you end up maybe a little bit better, but at a cost.
Maybe if they didn't spend R&D time and money on useless features, their products would be more affordable.
Many people have the misconception that the price of something is usually related to how much it costs to produce it. While the price charged is usually greater than the cost to produce (well, post-dotcom-boom, anyway), that is where the association ends.
As a share holder,* I'm pissed of that Adobe spent so much R&D time and money on useless features, when it could otherwise be used to boost profit!
The "loss of community" cost of running non-free software is analogous to the pollution cost of running a coal power station. Non-free software have a tendency to take away people's access to freedom as much as coal power stations have a tendency take away people's access to clean air. It affects more than the immediate users involved.
I would not say community is the purpose of software any more than clean air is the purpose of a power station.
However, I would say using non-free software bears the cost of freedom/community.
It is important that these issues are raised because a lot of people would choose something for its purpose and not realise there is a hidden cost involved until they are in the thick of the smog.
If most people's expectation of software was to create "cooperation and community", RMS might be onto something here. But the truth is that most people and businesses want software that fulfills a particular need (or set of needs).
I don't think RMS is saying that he expects software to create cooperation and community. He only said non-free software... prohibits cooperation and community.
He was thus identifying the non-monetary price that is paid for by using certain types of software, not the purpose of software in general.
Additionally, the leaders of the two projects may rather kill the project entirely than adopt features from each other. It also may not be clear which is the "Main Version," diluting third-party support, and if it's a roughly equal split, the future direction of either fork may not resemble the previous project that much.
It is precisely when leaders of a project refuse to adopt features wanted by many developers and users that a fork is most urgently needed. In this case, forking is more than ever, a response to market forces.
It also may dilute the talent pool, since the manpower is split.
Doesn't reinventing the wheel in many closed source products signify a far worse case of talent dilution?
If I had a time machine and could travel to the future, I would not be the least bit surprised if 500 years from now the Big Bang theory and Evolution were considered myths from the past.
While that's certainly a possibility, its much more likely that they will be considered incomplete.
For instance, we are now beginning to accept that an organism inherits more than its genotype (ie. genetic makeup). In the same way humans inherit knowledge and property created by their parents, organisms too can inherit changes their ancestors made to their environment or behaviour - changes that are capable of modifying the selective pressures that determine which traits perish or survive.
It presupposes that life was tuned to support life and that life can only exist if the universe was tuned exactly so, and misses the point that even if there is the slimest chance of life with any given parameters and the universe is big enough, then life will evolve.
I would suggest it is the other way round: life via natural section tuned itself to exist in whatever few tiny pockets of the universe it can.
That we can observe life on our own planet is no coincidence. Only a planet that is capable of supporting life is capable of evolving intelligent beings that can observe and appreciate life. Likewise, only a universe that is capable of supporting life is capable of evolving intelligent beings that can observe and appreciate life.
For all we know, there could be many universes with different parameters that are capable of supporting life among many many more that couldn't.
What "Intellegent Design" proponents see as coincidence may not actually be.
DNS is supposed to be a way for humans to communicate with computers about internet hosts. The intent is not for some human to be able to read it, but for all humans.
If that's a goal for DNS, it's already failed.
But if 16-bit charsets are allowed in DNS, we could get hostnames composed of 3 Chinese characters and two Arabic ones, and which a Russian or Briton will be incapable of processing without tremendous pain.
Using Chinese characters in DNS name meant for Russians is just plain stupid. If the site really was meant for you to view, it will have a corresponding DNS name in english. If not, you probably won't be able to read the contents of that site anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it true that companies now have more rights than citizens?
I learnt that it is a fact that XYZ co's database contains the record [ "toby", 12345678 ]
I also learnt that it is a fact that XYZ co's database contains the record [ "todd", 23456789 ]
Since whether or not a database contains a particular fact or not is an entirely different fact to the fact that "todd", has the number 23456789
Therefore I can create a database like so:
[ "XYZ", "toby", 23456789 ] [ "XYZ", "todd", 23456789 ]
Hey, what a cool idea for a patent! I'll just have to make sure I don't click that bu....
I'll go hide in my shell now.
That's a fair argument, but it only applies to the 300k year separation.
If I read correctly, in addition to the timing of two events, the two events also supposedly happened in the same place. Given a spinning Earth, even if the events were separated by only days (negligable in geological time scales) it is extremely unlikely (but not impossible) for it to occur at the same position.
That is reason enough for me to stick to the old theory for now.
Likewise, I could be paid to evangelise the virtues of open source without actually believing it.
You don't have to come out and say what you believe in to be a fanatic. In Gate's case, doing so would be political suicide, so it makes sense that he doesn't say it outright.
Don't forget that this kid is more than likely taking advantage of software that others wrote for free. It doesn't totally balance out, but it is hardly a one way street.
In any case, I prefer to see software development as a marketable skill than a software product being a marketable item. If you've written software, no one knows your software better than you and the best person to pay for support and customisation will also tend to be you.
Just because others profit from your software, it doesn't mean you can't! To prove that writing open source software is not profitable, you have to do more than show that the software product itself derives no monetary value. You need to show that the act or writing said software does not confer benefits that eventually translates to monetary gain.
The real issue though, is not whether Aiden can earn money purely from open source software development. It is whether throwing all your energy into open source software development before having derived any monetary gain is a smart move.
If my advice is worth anything, I would say: Know where you want to go and take it slowly.
What are you trying to imply here mister?
Dude! Have you seen my room? With a shiny mirror, my room will look twice as messy.
Practical issues aside, if the vote is that close, isn't the most 'representative' option to elect half a candidate each for first and second place?
I'd like to know how "not let any 3rd party distribute their own Java" qualifies as open sourcing Java. See Open Source Definition
What's more likely is that any 3rd party can distribute their own "Java", but they can't call it "Java". without Sun's permission because Sun owns the trademark.
SUN would still hold the Java trademark and can withhold its use from any implementation that fails to pass a comprehensive compatibility suite.
Merits of the policy aside, you speak as if customers will suddenly eat out less if all restaurants no longer sell alcohol. More likely, restaurants traditionally not selling alcohol will get more customers because alcohol is no longer a deciding factor when choosing restaurants.
Mathematics is a rich class of specialised languages and no amount of global communication will kill that off. Geography may play an ever decreasing role in language specialisation, but functional and clique specialisation - geek speak, legal speek, SMS - there is much life in those types of specialisations yet.
What stops people from clicking "revert" on a valid change?
You mean like "di-untium octide"?
That goes without saying.
But compare that to the world having no open source software at all: The government can build there own software from the ground up (as if lack of tools will stop a government bent on controlling its people) or paying some corporation to taylor software for its needs. With only backdoored software with product activation and DRM, and no alternative, where will the oppressed look to then?
At least in a world with open source software, people could still smuggle open source software from a free-er place and use that.
It could easily make them more dangerous.
If cars have better brakes, people will adapt to it by braking more dangerously. If cars have better handling, people will handle it more dangerously. If cars were too comfortable, drivers are more likely to fall asleep at the wheel.
This doesn't make the safety features bad. But there is a difference between safety features that don't affect a driver's behaviour and safety features that do.
Essentially, safety features that influence driving patterns can have its effectiveness diminish over time and you end up maybe a little bit better, but at a cost.
As a share holder,* I'm pissed of that Adobe spent so much R&D time and money on useless features, when it could otherwise be used to boost profit!
*Not really a shareholder.
This is such a hack.
The proper solution is to attach gigantic ion drives to Mars to increase its rotation to the same as that of Earth's.
The "loss of community" cost of running non-free software is analogous to the pollution cost of running a coal power station. Non-free software have a tendency to take away people's access to freedom as much as coal power stations have a tendency take away people's access to clean air. It affects more than the immediate users involved.
I would not say community is the purpose of software any more than clean air is the purpose of a power station.
However, I would say using non-free software bears the cost of freedom/community.
It is important that these issues are raised because a lot of people would choose something for its purpose and not realise there is a hidden cost involved until they are in the thick of the smog.
I don't think RMS is saying that he expects software to create cooperation and community. He only said non-free software ... prohibits cooperation and community.
He was thus identifying the non-monetary price that is paid for by using certain types of software, not the purpose of software in general.
There is no purpose being denied.
It is precisely when leaders of a project refuse to adopt features wanted by many developers and users that a fork is most urgently needed. In this case, forking is more than ever, a response to market forces.
It also may dilute the talent pool, since the manpower is split.
Doesn't reinventing the wheel in many closed source products signify a far worse case of talent dilution?
For instance, we are now beginning to accept that an organism inherits more than its genotype (ie. genetic makeup). In the same way humans inherit knowledge and property created by their parents, organisms too can inherit changes their ancestors made to their environment or behaviour - changes that are capable of modifying the selective pressures that determine which traits perish or survive.
See The extended phenotype and Aspects of behavioural inheritance
It presupposes that life was tuned to support life and that life can only exist if the universe was tuned exactly so, and misses the point that even if there is the slimest chance of life with any given parameters and the universe is big enough, then life will evolve.
I would suggest it is the other way round: life via natural section tuned itself to exist in whatever few tiny pockets of the universe it can.
That we can observe life on our own planet is no coincidence. Only a planet that is capable of supporting life is capable of evolving intelligent beings that can observe and appreciate life. Likewise, only a universe that is capable of supporting life is capable of evolving intelligent beings that can observe and appreciate life.
For all we know, there could be many universes with different parameters that are capable of supporting life among many many more that couldn't. What "Intellegent Design" proponents see as coincidence may not actually be.
If that's a goal for DNS, it's already failed.
But if 16-bit charsets are allowed in DNS, we could get hostnames composed of 3 Chinese characters and two Arabic ones, and which a Russian or Briton will be incapable of processing without tremendous pain.
Using Chinese characters in DNS name meant for Russians is just plain stupid. If the site really was meant for you to view, it will have a corresponding DNS name in english. If not, you probably won't be able to read the contents of that site anyway.