But the kids these days -- anything they might want to know is sitting there in the computer room. They will never know a world of informationlessness. Everything from obscure programming langauges to Hatian Gods to currrent events, right in front of them.
On the flip side, however, this generation is useless when the power goes out. Most of them can't recall basic historical facts, spell properly, or do basic arithmetic without a machine to help them.
It's the "I don't need to know---I'll google it!" generation. Neither can most adults.
Also, in the future, nobody will know free speech or a life without being constantly surveiled.
Remember, the current generation of highschool and college kids largely believe "we have too much freedom of speech" and that we should give up some liberty for "security". And once that's gone, you don't get it back.
We're not talking about someone's grandmother who is completely baffled by an extensive EULA or TOS. We're talking about corporations and commercial enterprises who are largely looking to incorporate community open source materials into their own services or products without doing the work themselves.
While it is in the interest of OSS evangelism to simplify licenses anyway, I do not buy that these companies are so incredibly hindered by the legalese in these licenses. What they really want is to have their cake (free software development already done for them by the community) and to eat it, too (not have to share, remain closed source with OSS materials, etc).
Companies that are sincerely interested have already made the effort and don't seem to be having a problem understanding and complying. I won't paint everyone with the same broad stroke, but I'm absolutely positive that the majority whining about it are doing so for ulterior reasons.
I certainly wouldn't suggest that every open source license is extremely clear and simple, but you're going to be putting those lawyers to work either protecting your own developed content or to understanding your incorporated opensource items.
My point, which I feel may have been lost unfortunately, is that much of the whining and complaining isn't legitimate. There are a lot of companies which have no interest in adhering to OSS licenses in the first place and rather than bother complying, it serves them to just cry about how terribly tough it is. Kind of like throwing a tantrum.
The company I work for has managed to open source two of their flagship products (among many other things) and incorporates a lot of external opensource content itself. They don't seem to have a problem complying and understanding. Sure, they may have to pay particular attention to understanding the licenses as they apply to myriad of particular uses and applciations, but is that really a horrible price to pay for something that is essentially free?
It seems that a lot of companies are jumping on the "it's too *hard*!" bandwagon line a pissy little teenager. They want the content, but not the responsibility, so let's just piss and moan about how we can't just do anything we want with someone else's work from the community.
Besides, I don't have a legal team employed behind me and they expect me to read the unbelievably long EULAs.
And of course, none of this is to suggest that simplifying licenses where reasonable and possible isn't a good idea. But that should be done for its own sake and not because a chunk of commercial America is claiming it's too hard to keep up with the legalese.
Because corporations are so hesitant to jump down everyone else's throat trying to tear you apart at the slightest suggested infringement of their proprietary materials. So it's okay for other people to be confronted with thousand page EULAs and restrictions, but not for a corporation to. Meh.
What is more difficult and expensive? Reading, understanding and adhering to any of a number of open-source licenses and keeping track of what you're using and what practices you need to follow to use them for free -- or investing a lot of R&D and development and Q&A time for your own proprietary stuff?
I understand there is potential for occasional confusion, but that is also simply the product of selfish archaic businesses. People who aren't so much confused by open-source licenses or hurt by them as they are interested in exploiting and infringing on them. Claiming that the reason they are either failing to embrace open source or excusing their willful infringement on it as the fault of the licenses and throwing their hands up like Barbie confronted with a math problem.
JAVA is used to market a lot of Sun products, however. Not only is it a language and a ticker symbol, but Sun's LDAP, Mail, Calendar, Web, Proxy, Application and Identity Management servers are all known as the "Sun Java System (insert product) Server".
It does appear to occasionally confuse people. I have known people who have the mistaken believe that Sun Java System Messaging Server, for example, is written in Java.
I wonder how long until SunBlades are renamed JavaBlades and SunFire servers are renamed JavaFire.
Very few people correctly identify the meaning of the 'W' in SUNW. I'm not sure that there has ever been any association of SUNW with "a particular product line", in my experience. And it has the benefit of being memorable.
I'm nitpicking, but I hate when a ticker symbol has nothing to do with the company name. Perhaps the W could have simply been rolled over and change the ticker to SUNM. Oh well.
As I said "my understanding" is that HD-DVD doesn't do uncompressed audio. Or, at least, that the DVDs I had looked at purchasing recently have all indicated that the blu-ray version has uncompressed audio, while the HD-DVD did not. Perhaps that is not due to a format capability, but a choice in that individual release, but the end-result to me as a purchaser and viewer is the same -- it isn't there.
As for spending $20k on audio equipment but not doing 30 seconds of research... well, no, I haven't done much research on HD-DVD than what I've heard in passing. Why? Because, I own a blu-ray player already and I'm not interested in also owning an HD-DVD player (though I'm sure at some point in the future I will).
And second... what in the hell would I pay you for? Like I need someone to program my tuner and build my cables for me? (No, to the dumbass who suggested I'm some neophyte who buys into the monster cable crap -- the only pre-built cables I have are the HDMI ones).
But you know... continue to have contempt for people without actually listening to them. I'm sure it will build you a huge client base.
I currently pay $60/mo for 8mbps/768kbps with Comcast. This guy's service wouldn't be any more expensive and would presumably be bidirectional 7mbps.
On the negative side, if it's DSL -- that means it is only available to a limited group of people. If you can't spit on the drive-way of your local telco office from your house, you're probably not going to get great speed.
My understanding is that HD-DVD does not do uncompressed audio like Blu-Ray. That alone is enough to sell me on Blu-Ray. I spent $20,000 on the audio system for my home entertainment center and I want the best quality media. I don't care if I can buy a HD-DVD player for $100 cheaper than a Blu-Ray -- if the quality isn't there, it isn't of interest.
Yes, this is how it is in America. There are two or three cable companies, but each has a monopoly on a region, so if you want to switch to a different cable provider, you'll also have to pick up and move to a new city or state. Most offer about 6mbps/376kbps or 8mbps/768kbps for about $55 or more.
DSL is an option for a very small number of people, depending on how close they live to the telco office. If they're within spitting distance, they can get almost cable speeds of 7mbps. Otherwise you might get 144kbps or dialup speeds as you push out farther.
Otherwise, your only option is dial-up. In which case you're paying both an ISP and the telephone company (that you would be paying for the DSL service to begin with, if they offered that speed at your address).
So when people say "vote with your dollars", it's ridiculous. There are no options.
I don't see how this is new or a big deal. David Douglas High School in Portland was doing this when I was a student sixteen years ago. In fact, you had to declare your major (or "constellation") that you planned to follow in highs school, while you were still in junior high (about twelve years old).
Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous, but so is the fact that schools don't teach to educate, but they "teach to the test" to increase scoring and funding without regard for future utilization of that limited knowledge by students.
Real education still occurs outside of school for those who truly care about learning. Don't rely on others to teach you the most valuable lessons and topics in life and follow it up *yourself*.
I've been telecommuting my entire career and I would never sink low enough to waste my time and CPU cycles in a "virtual office" in Second Life. Seriously, how is that a personal touch?
Email. Jabber. Telephone.
To wrap oneself up with the whole idea that there is some real benefit in walking around a crappy 3D floor-show to interview with crappy 3D recruiters and attend crappy 3D training sessions or work in a crappy 3D office is to go along with the hype for the sake of going along with the hype.
Or, to put it in a more familiar way -- companies in Second Life should be taken about as seriously as companies who still preface their name with a lower case 'i' or hyphenated 'e', other than Apple.
I would have a hard time taking an employer seriously if they were pandering to the Second Life thing. Let me say this now -- if you want to interview me in a virtual 3D environment where girls like to play dress up like barbie and people build and furnish houses, I have no interest in working for you. Let's be grown ups an I'll send you my resume. You read my resume. Then we have a phone call, an interview and a meeting.
Here's a great policy for employees in Second Life: If you are stupid enough to waste your time playing Second Life, you are no longer employed by us.
Does it really matter? I don't need an auditable paper trail to prove that most voters are self-serving "what can you do for ME" idiots. People who can't tie their shoes, have no teeth, vote based on what the candidate says about baby jesus or what kind of free government services they'll get out of it, think men used to ride dinosaurs and pronounce cement like it was something that came out of the ocean get the same voting power as the student of politics, history, art, sociology, science, world history and has the capability for abstract thought beyond pondering if they are - indeed - smarter than a fifth grader.
When all is said and done, all we've done is enforced a paper-trail to prove retardedness.
Fox News doesn't care if an affiliate reports something like this. Hell, I'm surprised they don't escalate the report and use it nationally. This is EXACTLY the kind of content that the Newscorps' Missing White Girl Network *LOVES*.
Hell, they have the perfect game going. They own MySpace, where supposedly everyone is ripped-off, molested, raped, kidnapped and murdered... and then they also own the news stations that get to sensationalize reports on the rape, molestation, kidnap and murder of the people from their own site. GENIUS!
Seriously, do you think the same network that had its reporter treat that "the pledge should be removed from schools" guy like a piece of crap by asking "WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?!" in a very angry, deriding way of the guy is going to think that an affiliate suggesting that roving gangs are out to kill retarded myspace users who click on everything without any consideration for what they're doing (or infecting themselves with)? I'll be surprised if they don't issue a promotion.
80% of FNC staff are Democrat, so if you have a problem with FNC, you're probably too far off the deep end to be relevant. More than 80% of Bill Gates' employees aren't millionaires. So what? Does it really matter what the guy who fetches Sean Hannity's coffee or operates the cameras is? What matters is the Charlie Daniels rah rah rah crap that spews out of his mouth and you are being entirely disingenuous to suggest that because there may be a lot of non conservative employees at FNC, FNC is itself not almost entirely conservative.
I'm sure you'll counter with "But CNN is filled with a bunch of baby killing, god-hating liberals!", but you'd be wrong. I suspect you have heard of Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck at least, right?
There's nothing wrong with slanting your news for the conservative angle if you're up-front about it. I watch FNC and CNN and CNBC side-by-side all day long, but at least I am aware of the slant that I'm viewing as I do so. If you don't think that 95% of FNC programming is conservative and aimed at the conservative slant, you're too far brainwashed to be relevant.
What good is free speech if you can only exercise it online? We're in a world that increasingly views all forms of free assembly as potential conspiracy and has so many surveillance cameras running in public that they could easily identify people who assemble (even entirely peacefully) and anyone who wears a mask or otherwise "disguises" themselves to avoid the cameras in public is committing a crime...
I think the idea that we have truly free speech right now is incorrect. Or rather, that you can have free speech without risk of being targeted for your speech. After all, dissent is terrorism.
Am I really going to trade in my quad core gaming machine with a 30" apple cinema display monitor for a 17" shiny screen with a make-do video card, single hard drive and short-lived battery? Am I going to spend all day hunched over a desk squinting at a laptop with an unfriendly, uncomfortable keyboard writing code, answering emails and other work duties? Hardly. Laptops may rule the world someday, but it is still far off -- and even then, you'll have docking stations at your desk at home and the office so that you can have a less sucky monitor, keyboard, extra storage, sound system, etc.
And yes, the main article is completely idiotic. Saying you'll only communicate via MySpace is like saying "I'll only have conversations when I go to the mall".
Like I said years ago, the internet will no longer be the internet. MySpace will be the mains ite for everything and idiot kids will transform the internet into one giant single Myspace BBS.
I just got back from the store where I had to buy a new XBOX 360, because my 18 month old XBOX 360 (with less than 200 hours of play on it) stopped recognizing 34 out of 40 of my games. Instead, it would pop up and say "Please put this disc in an XBOX 360".
I guess their confidence comes from the fact that people would rather spend the money for another machine than let a few thousand dollars worth of *games* go to waste.
The only news I've ever heard about Facebook is when one idiot highschool or college kid or another has photos of themselves doing something retarded and gets in trouble for it with their school, parents or police. I already have that on myspace. Why would I want to shift from one popularity contest full of fucking morons to another? Also, I'm not 18 years old. Why do I want a site that is geared toward highschool and college twits? So I can read for countless hours about how they need to beg mommy and daddy for more money and find out their latest top ramen recipe?
I don't understand why people would use myspace or similar sites to let people know what's going on in their life. Isn't that what a telephone is for? Or.. you know.. hanging out or going out with your friends?
I don't read people's myspace pages or newsletters or anything else to keep up on their lives. If you have something going on in your life or some interesting news to report, then you can talk to me one-on-one. You're not so god damned important that you need to broadcast your life and thoughts to the masses. You can call me. Visit me. Even write me a letter or an email. Imagine that...
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On the flip side, however, this generation is useless when the power goes out. Most of them can't recall basic historical facts, spell properly, or do basic arithmetic without a machine to help them.
It's the "I don't need to know---I'll google it!" generation. Neither can most adults.
Also, in the future, nobody will know free speech or a life without being constantly surveiled.
Remember, the current generation of highschool and college kids largely believe "we have too much freedom of speech" and that we should give up some liberty for "security". And once that's gone, you don't get it back.
Yes, but the code itself is free.
We're not talking about someone's grandmother who is completely baffled by an extensive EULA or TOS. We're talking about corporations and commercial enterprises who are largely looking to incorporate community open source materials into their own services or products without doing the work themselves.
While it is in the interest of OSS evangelism to simplify licenses anyway, I do not buy that these companies are so incredibly hindered by the legalese in these licenses. What they really want is to have their cake (free software development already done for them by the community) and to eat it, too (not have to share, remain closed source with OSS materials, etc).
Companies that are sincerely interested have already made the effort and don't seem to be having a problem understanding and complying. I won't paint everyone with the same broad stroke, but I'm absolutely positive that the majority whining about it are doing so for ulterior reasons.
I certainly wouldn't suggest that every open source license is extremely clear and simple, but you're going to be putting those lawyers to work either protecting your own developed content or to understanding your incorporated opensource items.
My point, which I feel may have been lost unfortunately, is that much of the whining and complaining isn't legitimate. There are a lot of companies which have no interest in adhering to OSS licenses in the first place and rather than bother complying, it serves them to just cry about how terribly tough it is. Kind of like throwing a tantrum.
The company I work for has managed to open source two of their flagship products (among many other things) and incorporates a lot of external opensource content itself. They don't seem to have a problem complying and understanding. Sure, they may have to pay particular attention to understanding the licenses as they apply to myriad of particular uses and applciations, but is that really a horrible price to pay for something that is essentially free?
It seems that a lot of companies are jumping on the "it's too *hard*!" bandwagon line a pissy little teenager. They want the content, but not the responsibility, so let's just piss and moan about how we can't just do anything we want with someone else's work from the community.
Besides, I don't have a legal team employed behind me and they expect me to read the unbelievably long EULAs.
And of course, none of this is to suggest that simplifying licenses where reasonable and possible isn't a good idea. But that should be done for its own sake and not because a chunk of commercial America is claiming it's too hard to keep up with the legalese.
Because corporations are so hesitant to jump down everyone else's throat trying to tear you apart at the slightest suggested infringement of their proprietary materials. So it's okay for other people to be confronted with thousand page EULAs and restrictions, but not for a corporation to. Meh.
Oh, boo hoo! Free stuff is hard!
What is more difficult and expensive? Reading, understanding and adhering to any of a number of open-source licenses and keeping track of what you're using and what practices you need to follow to use them for free -- or investing a lot of R&D and development and Q&A time for your own proprietary stuff?
I understand there is potential for occasional confusion, but that is also simply the product of selfish archaic businesses. People who aren't so much confused by open-source licenses or hurt by them as they are interested in exploiting and infringing on them. Claiming that the reason they are either failing to embrace open source or excusing their willful infringement on it as the fault of the licenses and throwing their hands up like Barbie confronted with a math problem.
JAVA is used to market a lot of Sun products, however. Not only is it a language and a ticker symbol, but Sun's LDAP, Mail, Calendar, Web, Proxy, Application and Identity Management servers are all known as the "Sun Java System (insert product) Server".
It does appear to occasionally confuse people. I have known people who have the mistaken believe that Sun Java System Messaging Server, for example, is written in Java.
I wonder how long until SunBlades are renamed JavaBlades and SunFire servers are renamed JavaFire.
Very few people correctly identify the meaning of the 'W' in SUNW. I'm not sure that there has ever been any association of SUNW with "a particular product line", in my experience. And it has the benefit of being memorable.
I'm nitpicking, but I hate when a ticker symbol has nothing to do with the company name. Perhaps the W could have simply been rolled over and change the ticker to SUNM. Oh well.
As I said "my understanding" is that HD-DVD doesn't do uncompressed audio. Or, at least, that the DVDs I had looked at purchasing recently have all indicated that the blu-ray version has uncompressed audio, while the HD-DVD did not. Perhaps that is not due to a format capability, but a choice in that individual release, but the end-result to me as a purchaser and viewer is the same -- it isn't there.
As for spending $20k on audio equipment but not doing 30 seconds of research... well, no, I haven't done much research on HD-DVD than what I've heard in passing. Why? Because, I own a blu-ray player already and I'm not interested in also owning an HD-DVD player (though I'm sure at some point in the future I will).
And second... what in the hell would I pay you for? Like I need someone to program my tuner and build my cables for me? (No, to the dumbass who suggested I'm some neophyte who buys into the monster cable crap -- the only pre-built cables I have are the HDMI ones).
But you know... continue to have contempt for people without actually listening to them. I'm sure it will build you a huge client base.
Where in the hell is Comcast only $30?!
I currently pay $60/mo for 8mbps/768kbps with Comcast. This guy's service wouldn't be any more expensive and would presumably be bidirectional 7mbps.
On the negative side, if it's DSL -- that means it is only available to a limited group of people. If you can't spit on the drive-way of your local telco office from your house, you're probably not going to get great speed.
My understanding is that HD-DVD does not do uncompressed audio like Blu-Ray. That alone is enough to sell me on Blu-Ray. I spent $20,000 on the audio system for my home entertainment center and I want the best quality media. I don't care if I can buy a HD-DVD player for $100 cheaper than a Blu-Ray -- if the quality isn't there, it isn't of interest.
Yes, this is how it is in America. There are two or three cable companies, but each has a monopoly on a region, so if you want to switch to a different cable provider, you'll also have to pick up and move to a new city or state. Most offer about 6mbps/376kbps or 8mbps/768kbps for about $55 or more.
DSL is an option for a very small number of people, depending on how close they live to the telco office. If they're within spitting distance, they can get almost cable speeds of 7mbps. Otherwise you might get 144kbps or dialup speeds as you push out farther.
Otherwise, your only option is dial-up. In which case you're paying both an ISP and the telephone company (that you would be paying for the DSL service to begin with, if they offered that speed at your address).
So when people say "vote with your dollars", it's ridiculous. There are no options.
I don't see how this is new or a big deal. David Douglas High School in Portland was doing this when I was a student sixteen years ago. In fact, you had to declare your major (or "constellation") that you planned to follow in highs school, while you were still in junior high (about twelve years old).
Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous, but so is the fact that schools don't teach to educate, but they "teach to the test" to increase scoring and funding without regard for future utilization of that limited knowledge by students.
Real education still occurs outside of school for those who truly care about learning. Don't rely on others to teach you the most valuable lessons and topics in life and follow it up *yourself*.
Uh. Male. Wearing a Rush 2112 shirt. Stinking a little bit of caffeine and body gravy.
I've been telecommuting my entire career and I would never sink low enough to waste my time and CPU cycles in a "virtual office" in Second Life. Seriously, how is that a personal touch?
Email. Jabber. Telephone.
To wrap oneself up with the whole idea that there is some real benefit in walking around a crappy 3D floor-show to interview with crappy 3D recruiters and attend crappy 3D training sessions or work in a crappy 3D office is to go along with the hype for the sake of going along with the hype.
Or, to put it in a more familiar way -- companies in Second Life should be taken about as seriously as companies who still preface their name with a lower case 'i' or hyphenated 'e', other than Apple.
I would have a hard time taking an employer seriously if they were pandering to the Second Life thing. Let me say this now -- if you want to interview me in a virtual 3D environment where girls like to play dress up like barbie and people build and furnish houses, I have no interest in working for you. Let's be grown ups an I'll send you my resume. You read my resume. Then we have a phone call, an interview and a meeting.
Here's a great policy for employees in Second Life: If you are stupid enough to waste your time playing Second Life, you are no longer employed by us.
Does it really matter? I don't need an auditable paper trail to prove that most voters are self-serving "what can you do for ME" idiots. People who can't tie their shoes, have no teeth, vote based on what the candidate says about baby jesus or what kind of free government services they'll get out of it, think men used to ride dinosaurs and pronounce cement like it was something that came out of the ocean get the same voting power as the student of politics, history, art, sociology, science, world history and has the capability for abstract thought beyond pondering if they are - indeed - smarter than a fifth grader.
When all is said and done, all we've done is enforced a paper-trail to prove retardedness.
Fox News doesn't care if an affiliate reports something like this. Hell, I'm surprised they don't escalate the report and use it nationally. This is EXACTLY the kind of content that the Newscorps' Missing White Girl Network *LOVES*.
Hell, they have the perfect game going. They own MySpace, where supposedly everyone is ripped-off, molested, raped, kidnapped and murdered... and then they also own the news stations that get to sensationalize reports on the rape, molestation, kidnap and murder of the people from their own site. GENIUS!
Seriously, do you think the same network that had its reporter treat that "the pledge should be removed from schools" guy like a piece of crap by asking "WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?!" in a very angry, deriding way of the guy is going to think that an affiliate suggesting that roving gangs are out to kill retarded myspace users who click on everything without any consideration for what they're doing (or infecting themselves with)? I'll be surprised if they don't issue a promotion.
I'm sure you'll counter with "But CNN is filled with a bunch of baby killing, god-hating liberals!", but you'd be wrong. I suspect you have heard of Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck at least, right?
There's nothing wrong with slanting your news for the conservative angle if you're up-front about it. I watch FNC and CNN and CNBC side-by-side all day long, but at least I am aware of the slant that I'm viewing as I do so. If you don't think that 95% of FNC programming is conservative and aimed at the conservative slant, you're too far brainwashed to be relevant.
What good is free speech if you can only exercise it online? We're in a world that increasingly views all forms of free assembly as potential conspiracy and has so many surveillance cameras running in public that they could easily identify people who assemble (even entirely peacefully) and anyone who wears a mask or otherwise "disguises" themselves to avoid the cameras in public is committing a crime...
I think the idea that we have truly free speech right now is incorrect. Or rather, that you can have free speech without risk of being targeted for your speech. After all, dissent is terrorism.
Am I really going to trade in my quad core gaming machine with a 30" apple cinema display monitor for a 17" shiny screen with a make-do video card, single hard drive and short-lived battery? Am I going to spend all day hunched over a desk squinting at a laptop with an unfriendly, uncomfortable keyboard writing code, answering emails and other work duties? Hardly. Laptops may rule the world someday, but it is still far off -- and even then, you'll have docking stations at your desk at home and the office so that you can have a less sucky monitor, keyboard, extra storage, sound system, etc.
And yes, the main article is completely idiotic. Saying you'll only communicate via MySpace is like saying "I'll only have conversations when I go to the mall".
Like I said years ago, the internet will no longer be the internet. MySpace will be the mains ite for everything and idiot kids will transform the internet into one giant single Myspace BBS.
Your world only contains failure rates of 0% and 100%, huh?
Speaking of MS Company Confidence...
I just got back from the store where I had to buy a new XBOX 360, because my 18 month old XBOX 360 (with less than 200 hours of play on it) stopped recognizing 34 out of 40 of my games. Instead, it would pop up and say "Please put this disc in an XBOX 360".
I guess their confidence comes from the fact that people would rather spend the money for another machine than let a few thousand dollars worth of *games* go to waste.
Company confidence, indeed.
Hard to have individual freedom when one or two organizations control two thirds of the internet.
The only news I've ever heard about Facebook is when one idiot highschool or college kid or another has photos of themselves doing something retarded and gets in trouble for it with their school, parents or police. I already have that on myspace. Why would I want to shift from one popularity contest full of fucking morons to another? Also, I'm not 18 years old. Why do I want a site that is geared toward highschool and college twits? So I can read for countless hours about how they need to beg mommy and daddy for more money and find out their latest top ramen recipe?
I don't understand why people would use myspace or similar sites to let people know what's going on in their life. Isn't that what a telephone is for? Or.. you know.. hanging out or going out with your friends?
I don't read people's myspace pages or newsletters or anything else to keep up on their lives. If you have something going on in your life or some interesting news to report, then you can talk to me one-on-one. You're not so god damned important that you need to broadcast your life and thoughts to the masses. You can call me. Visit me. Even write me a letter or an email. Imagine that...