Want to get sued for trademark infringement so that you can get posted on Slashdot? It's easy... just one step required.
When designing a new name, first: take your competitors name and then change it a little bit.
(Alternatively, if you don't want to get sued for trademark infringment, try this: don't use your competitors name at all when thinking of your own name.)
There is a point at which ignorance becomes so willful and so great that I believe it becomes racism regardless of the motivation of the ignoramus responsible.
The point of restitution for slavery is exactly the same as that of restitution for the internment of the Japanese or Holocaust victims. The compensator IS NOT "whites". Let me repeat that: the compensator is not "whites". The compensator would be the US government. As confusing as it may be to you, whatever money that is used to pay restitution would not be taken from the pockets of good old boys, but instead taken from the general US fund which is paid into by blacks and whites and everybody else. Exactly as the money paid to victims of internment was paid for by tax money that in (very small) part, came out of their own pockets.
The argument for restitution would be that the US government committed a wrong by aiding slavery and that it should make right to the descendents of those it committed the wrong against.
I'm not even going to get into the real argument except to point out that this anonymous coward's mistaken logic is altogether too common. It's disgraceful.
If you think that that "ultimately" people will host stuff off of their home machines then you're wrong. Servers can be backed-up, replicated, power protected, etc, etc in ways that home machines are almost never.
What we need are
1) A focus on reliability. I got cable internet and I cut them a bit of slack. (Just compare the growth rate of cable internet with say, phones. They're trying.) But the reliability is no where near good enough.
2) Really good caching! High end stuff. Eventually I'd like to buy a computer, plug it in and have my disks up. (If I'm a narco trafficer or a privacy phreak, I'll use strong encryption.) My disks will come off of a reliable backed up network machine. When I'm done with a computer, I just run "wipe" and donate it to a local under-funded school. The soln is for network app types to give up their dogmatism (the Java camp has this problem) and use local hard drives to their absolute fullest.
Cash doesn't have any guarantees; it's awful hard to recall. It may not be possible to make a digital payment scheme that is both as easy to use as cash and as safe as a credit card.
Unfortunately the network throws a wrench in the works because everything is inherently less safe.
Buying stuff from unknown web sites using digital cash is like giving cash to a guy on the street who wants to sell you "his" bicycle or stereo.
Do you expect people to guarantee that you'll provide the same service to you for eternity? That's unreasonable.
OTOH, n should be large. Like a lease. For consumer stuff, it's one thing, but for business you want at least a few months of the service you were offered before it changes. (And of course they should be required to notify you.)
The guy who invented tetris was a genius. The thousands of people who coded up clones know how to program C.
Why not produce something original?
Sony et al made a game that lots of people enjoy and lots of people feel is worth the money.
The right way to step up to the plate (whether a free software developer or a commercial developer) is to have a creative, novel idea of your own and implement it.
It's so much easier to just copy someone else idea (I realize the work required to implement, but still) that I don't see this as the ideal that open source advocates should be striving for.
This sort of "the same but free" bullshit is all too common.
How about if free software doesn't go down the same path that the commercial world went down with Microsoft? That means: not everyone wants to use the same software, not everyone wants to use the same word processor.
I can't believe you can be so incredibly blase about that. Does questioning anything now make you an idealist?
I don't buy many toys. I don't send e-cards. I buy books. If stores can't make money selling books I don't see the long-term prognosis for the book market being good.
I'm not anti-capitalist per se. In fact, what I'd like to do is go to a store that wants to sell me want I want to buy and give them some cash. Sounds like capitalism to me. There are different forms of capitalism and markets. Look at TV vs. movies. Selling the same product, at the root, but different "business models" equals different results. Which is better? I think the one you pay for is better.
Buy books at bookstores, not wal-mart. Vote with your dollars, vote with your vote.
Slashdot Mirror
Want to get sued for trademark infringement so that you can get posted on Slashdot? It's easy... just one step required. When designing a new name, first: take your competitors name and then change it a little bit. (Alternatively, if you don't want to get sued for trademark infringment, try this: don't use your competitors name at all when thinking of your own name.)
There is a point at which ignorance becomes so willful and so great that I believe it becomes racism regardless of the motivation of the ignoramus responsible.
The point of restitution for slavery is exactly the same as that of restitution for the internment of the Japanese or Holocaust victims. The compensator IS NOT "whites". Let me repeat that: the compensator is not "whites". The compensator would be the US government. As confusing as it may be to you, whatever money that is used to pay restitution would not be taken from the pockets of good old boys, but instead taken from the general US fund which is paid into by blacks and whites and everybody else. Exactly as the money paid to victims of internment was paid for by tax money that in (very small) part, came out of their own pockets.
The argument for restitution would be that the US government committed a wrong by aiding slavery and that it should make right to the descendents of those it committed the wrong against.
I'm not even going to get into the real argument except to point out that this anonymous coward's mistaken logic is altogether too common. It's disgraceful.
If you think that that "ultimately" people will host stuff off of their home machines then you're wrong. Servers can be backed-up, replicated, power protected, etc, etc in ways that home machines are almost never.
What we need are
1) A focus on reliability. I got cable internet and I cut them a bit of slack. (Just compare the growth rate of cable internet with say, phones. They're trying.) But the reliability is no where near good enough.
2) Really good caching! High end stuff. Eventually I'd like to buy a computer, plug it in and have my disks up. (If I'm a narco trafficer or a privacy phreak, I'll use strong encryption.) My disks will come off of a reliable backed up network machine. When I'm done with a computer, I just run "wipe" and donate it to a local under-funded school. The soln is for network app types to give up their dogmatism (the Java camp has this problem) and use local hard drives to their absolute fullest.
"Actual money"? Like cash?
Cash doesn't have any guarantees; it's awful hard to recall. It may not be possible to make a digital payment scheme that is both as easy to use as cash and as safe as a credit card.
Unfortunately the network throws a wrench in the works because everything is inherently less safe.
Buying stuff from unknown web sites using digital cash is like giving cash to a guy on the street who wants to sell you "his" bicycle or stereo.
Do you expect people to guarantee that you'll provide the same service to you for eternity? That's unreasonable.
OTOH, n should be large. Like a lease. For consumer stuff, it's one thing, but for business you want at least a few months of the service you were offered before it changes. (And of course they should be required to notify you.)
The guy who invented tetris was a genius. The thousands of people who coded up clones know how to program C.
Why not produce something original?
Sony et al made a game that lots of people enjoy and lots of people feel is worth the money.
The right way to step up to the plate (whether a free software developer or a commercial developer) is to have a creative, novel idea of your own and implement it.
It's so much easier to just copy someone else idea (I realize the work required to implement, but still) that I don't see this as the ideal that open source advocates should be striving for.
This sort of "the same but free" bullshit is all too common.
Here's an idea: software choice!
How about if free software doesn't go down the same path that the commercial world went down with Microsoft? That means: not everyone wants to use the same software, not everyone wants to use the same word processor.
One tool doesn't fit all.
D.
Even nominally having a browser isn't really enough if netscape really thinks that we aren't important. Here is a script that I wrote a few days ago.
#!/usr/bin/perl
#
# Netscape really does suck. This is a script
# that runs netscape and when it crashes it
# runs it again
while( 1 )
{
$rc = 0xffff & system( "netscape" );
if( $rc == 0 )
{
exit 0;
}
# It crashed.
unlink "~/.netscape/lock";
system( "date >>~/.netscape-sucks" );
}
See the results (so far).
> Stores can't make money with books anymore
I can't believe you can be so incredibly blase about that. Does
questioning anything now make you an idealist?
I don't buy many toys. I don't send e-cards. I buy books. If stores
can't make money selling books I don't see the long-term prognosis for
the book market being good.
I'm not anti-capitalist per se. In fact, what I'd like to do is go to
a store that wants to sell me want I want to buy and give them some
cash. Sounds like capitalism to me. There are different forms of
capitalism and markets. Look at TV vs. movies. Selling the same
product, at the root, but different "business models" equals different
results. Which is better? I think the one you pay for is better.
Buy books at bookstores, not wal-mart. Vote with your dollars, vote
with your vote.
D.