Many of the voting recommendations have more to do with politics than patents; when it has little to do with patents, it might be worth disobeying the recommendations in order to make a real vote, rather than simply boosting an arbitary choice.
I wish in fact that NoSoftwarePatents.com had made no recommendation when the was no patent-related issues for that candidate. Such block-voting recommendations also make it easier for people to write this kind of idiocy.
Even though I'd like to see the OpenDocument format tested in a government-sized scenario (I'm pro-Microsoft, but I'm still supportive of OSS), I'd put impaired government workers futures over the file format.
This sound a little narrow to me: a file-format that is accessable in the indefinate future is in the interests of everyone. The government primarily exists to serve the population, although they should endeavour to treat thier workers well.
The trade off is potentially all of our futures as against what is in practice a short-term hold-back for a few.
Short-term, because MS will support Open Document if there's the demand: they're on record saying precisely this. Also, other firms chasing the market opportunity will improve their support for the disabled.
"Blink first" is not good market strategy, any more than it is good diplomacy, and a strategy of always giving way to what there is supplied at present, and creating no new demand when there is a real long-term need of (in this case) document accessability, is simply cowardice.
Don't you mean r^2? Volumes are cubic, but the flux through the surface of a volume is inverse square, surely?
I agree that in general it's not that simple: gravity pulls the wind back, so that it falls off faster than that, but with a "quake" like this, gravity's going to have a hard job.
Real evolutionists get their morals from their biology textbooks.
Lessee: promotion of biodiversity, weakening selective pressures so that the global optimum is more likely to prevail over the local optimum. Am I right?
(Of course on/. I get modded down for pointing out sexism.)
Unfortunately, there are a few who will mod down anything that doesn't fit their world view. I expect that you username is a 'red flag' for many such people, as is anything that is clearly 'left-wing', or, for that matter, 'right-wing' (different people).
To get modded up, you're competing with everyone. To get modded down, consider the mind-set of those who mod posts down: "I disapprove" in some form. Such a mentality isn't so likely to be strongly correlated with open-mindedness.
"I'd always been taught gambling was evil," -- Bornert of WinHoldEm
My initial thought is that anyone who would run a pokerbot is evil...
I'd say that "evil" is a bit of a strong term, but it interesting how Bornert excuses himself for defeating other players' (maybe) legitimate expectations. A clear case of received values in itself giving an outcome of dubious morality.
On what basis is gambling evil? It appears that the reason is that he was brought up to believe this. Accordingly it's okay to rip off those who haven't been taught this. This is in truth relativism: to avoid relativism, you need reason beyond value inheritance.
1. We get a study that elucidates relative pros and cons of different OSs, or
2. Due to our paranoia, future advertising quotes that the Open Source crowd refused to participate in an 'objective' study.
One problem, of course, is that the study is likely doomed to unobjectivity anyway: future funding will sway whoever performs the study more than current funding, which is a given.
And who is likely to commission many future studies? The OSDL?
If you look at my amigos'journals, you'll find many using the same trick! "Wine" is a favourite for dinner parties...
Okay, taking a quick peek, there aren't any good examples on the first page or so [exception], but here's the list of icons, should you wish to put up a journal yourself!
Open source projects? Or commercial projects heavily rely on open source components? Software development model on FOSS is surely slow - lots of varying programmers working in their spare time that can sometimes take ages to achieve that holy grail of one point oh. However, once they reached it, it is usually very functional.
You still need good programmers to have a hand in there somewhere. Their input might be minimal, but seeing where one's efforts can make a difference is part of what makes a decent programmer.
If you've ever attempted to come to grips with others' spaghetti code, you'd see why bugs remain obscure. Good programmers solve bugs partly by refactoring, and partly by simply being less likely to code errors, so that their efforts are simply less likely to give rise to bugs whilst solving them.
Cheap and fully functional = means it will take a long, long, long, long time for the average and inexpensive programmers to build it
Forgetfulness (so that no programmer grasps the entire project), and introduction of new bugs whilst fixing others, is why this option isn't even on the menu.
Democracy is part of an important dynamic that underpins freedom, but it is not freedom itself.
In some ways, I'm gald that the FSF isn't democratic, but is rather transparent, and has a charter. If I send them money, I know what it is going to promote.
The FSF isn't a political party, and knowing exactly what you're supporting can be a lot more important than the detailed internal structure of that enitity. Besides, I don't want to support average opinion when I give to the FSF, but rather my own values. Why should I have this diluted? If the organisation is democratic, this dilution is inevitable by the very nature of democracy. Far better to promote freedom in a purer way, and possibly have the organisation receive less money than support less-than-freedom that is democratic.
In short: Why should I support someone else's values? Far better, surely, to support my own!
well, nokia did say in the latest issue of the personnel magazine ("Nokia People") that they have a linux strategy, but don't intend to dump symbian in favor of it... but i guess we'll see!
We both know that mistakes can be done without motive, and that sidebar does look a little childish, but who do you expect to hear from? I'm sure a K-5 student would offer advice with less ulterior motives, if he had any advice to give.
Why are they using a distro that has licensing fees at all? I mean, if you're going to migrate to Linux, why wouldn't you choose a free distro like Ubuntu, and if you needed support you could always urchase it from Canonical...
I suspect that it's because a free distro cannot easily jump though a purchasing department's hoops. Who's going to put in a bid? Who finds it worthwhile to put forth a dossier promoting something that is free?
Free is not a concept that the commercial world really knows how to work with, less still government...
Because there's just not that much "new stuff" to do, that people are interested in.
From the consumer-perspective, this makes sense, but it's not the same from the programmer's perspective: their interest curve is not the same.
When the issue is qualitative, there are plenty of programmers who are perfectionists. And when the issue is quantitative, programmers wanting something to do won't suddenly stop programming; they will simply want to move on to the next thing! The relative attractiveness of each possible task simply determines the order in which the tasks are performed in. Whilst this also means that programmers move onto other projects, the effect in totality is that the whole system improves, and once the overall standard is higher, they return.
Having a programmer-driven methodology makes a difference in that something being "good enough" for a customer is felt in the wallet, and a customer-focused company moves resources at that point, possibly even making their programmers, who would otherwise keep going, redundant. Whilst it is true that honing something to greater perfection is a little like debugging rather than creating, there are plenty who will do it. The spread of Linux is bound to bring new programmers onto the scene, some of which will want to be cutting their teeth on something "boring", as a first, or an early effort.
The vast bulk of Linux development in the last decade has done nothing more than bring it up to par with existing platforms. Ie: those "hackers" are just reimplementing (often without any improvements) existing concepts that have already been in other platforms for years.
This is something that I've never really understood, because it wouldn't really motivate me. However, it does in fact show that programmers are movitated to improve the user experience, presumably in this case by copying concepts that are well-loved, or that they themselves like into their favourite 'hacking' environment. Given such motivation, I expect that they would be willing to complete on another programmer's more imaginative conception, even if they're not creative enough to come up with it themselves.
Again this is an issue of prioritisation: copy that which is a sure hit first; do the risky stuff later. Besides, this isn't the "free software is/isn't innovative" argument; it's one about people honing what's already out there.
There is a fundamental difference between "innovation" in/services/ and/internal processes/ (which is what nearly all companies "using Linux as a base" are using it for) and "innovation" in the actual software, which is what (I assume) is being discussed here.
Distros tend to be focused upon overall usability of the suite. Not as strongly, perhaps, as the likes of Microsoft, but their interest in cohesion is unlikely to fade, as they will still want to differentiate their distribution form the others.
The competition will eventually put pressure upon Microsoft to improve their own products. The Open Source methodology has already moved Microsoft into their 'shared source' programme, so some of the benefits of free software are already being copied in a weak form.
Improvement rates tend to slow dramatically as the product reaches the "good enough" point. Another example is OS X, which for a few years had very quick releases with major improvements - but the flipside is it had a lot further to go. OS X's release rate has slowed dramatically as less things have needed improving. The same will happen to Linux.
This is probably true in general, but you need to ask yourself why this occurs. I would posit that the reason why is money-related: ie. it isn't worth a firm's while pouring more money in. But if Linux is instead improved by hackers who have a few ideas and want something interesting and worthwhile to do, innovation is likely to keep going.
In the above picture, I've naturally left out the commercial interest in improving Linux. Suffice to say that distros and tools are now embedded in a far more competitive environment, because of the relative ease of transition between distros and tools. This means that good enough is no longer good enough, especially if the free tools are perpetually playing "catch-up". Perpetual innovation is now the rule for a successful company that is using Linux as a base.
The Office analogy still holds up. The consumer feels he is under utilizing the product, and therefore chooses to violate the terms of use in the name of "fairness". I don't see how running Office in parallel invalidates the analogy, if anything it argues against sharing bandwidth since that represents a real cost (vs. MS losing the opportunity to sell another Office license).
It affects the degree of any offence. In reselling (or giving on) what you have already bought you could easily be protected by 'first sale' (moral and legal) rights, as you physically can't all use the same bandwidth; spare capacity is not analogous to a new instance (of Office).
As for the sum that the ISP possibly forgoes in not selling another connection, the validity of that concern depends upon the validity of the initial transfer of bandwidth, otherwise we're arguing that the ISP is suffering unjustly because you have more money in your wallet that you could give them.
I expect that the British Government will take the opportunity to soon move forward with liberty-restraining legislation.
What bugs me is that the G8 might have actually talked about African aid, farm subsidies, and global warming. At least that was the agenda by Blair. Now, well the terrorists are playing right into the hands of George Bush!
The plus side (in so far as there is one) is that other countries will want to show solidarity with the Brits. This could well help the British agenda, which is a good one, for a change.
My ISP (ntlworld.com) asks that the user doesn't download or upload more than 1 GB/day, consistently. They're very flexible over downloading single large files, but continuous, large-scale uploading or downloading, and you should really be getting yourself a business line, which you are allowed to do pretty much whatever you wish with.
I think that this is the right approach: have policies to deal with the fundamental problem: excessive use of bandwidth.
The Office analogy is pretty poor though, in my opinion, for several copies of Office can be run in parallel; bandwidth, however, is not multiply allocable. The problem of sustained excess use can be dealt with by using monthly limits.
Slashdot Mirror
Many of the voting recommendations have more to do with politics than patents; when it has little to do with patents, it might be worth disobeying the recommendations in order to make a real vote, rather than simply boosting an arbitary choice.
I wish in fact that NoSoftwarePatents.com had made no recommendation when the was no patent-related issues for that candidate. Such block-voting recommendations also make it easier for people to write this kind of idiocy.
The trade off is potentially all of our futures as against what is in practice a short-term hold-back for a few.
Short-term, because MS will support Open Document if there's the demand: they're on record saying precisely this. Also, other firms chasing the market opportunity will improve their support for the disabled.
"Blink first" is not good market strategy, any more than it is good diplomacy, and a strategy of always giving way to what there is supplied at present, and creating no new demand when there is a real long-term need of (in this case) document accessability, is simply cowardice.
I agree that in general it's not that simple: gravity pulls the wind back, so that it falls off faster than that, but with a "quake" like this, gravity's going to have a hard job.
Because the rest of us haven't slashdotted the article, you can actually get to read it!
To get modded up, you're competing with everyone. To get modded down, consider the mind-set of those who mod posts down: "I disapprove" in some form. Such a mentality isn't so likely to be strongly correlated with open-mindedness.
On what basis is gambling evil? It appears that the reason is that he was brought up to believe this. Accordingly it's okay to rip off those who haven't been taught this. This is in truth relativism: to avoid relativism, you need reason beyond value inheritance.
1. We get a study that elucidates relative pros and cons of different OSs, or
2. Due to our paranoia, future advertising quotes that the Open Source crowd refused to participate in an 'objective' study.
One problem, of course, is that the study is likely doomed to unobjectivity anyway: future funding will sway whoever performs the study more than current funding, which is a given.
And who is likely to commission many future studies? The OSDL?
MS also stands for Multiple Sclerosis. M$ resolves this ambiguity nicely.
Thus, no bonus, but no major injustice!
I'd have a +5 Funny give a +1 Karma bonus; +5 is more than "smart-arse"; it is often actually funny!
-- No Text --
Okay, taking a quick peek, there aren't any good examples on the first page or so [exception], but here's the list of icons, should you wish to put up a journal yourself!
If you've ever attempted to come to grips with others' spaghetti code, you'd see why bugs remain obscure. Good programmers solve bugs partly by refactoring, and partly by simply being less likely to code errors, so that their efforts are simply less likely to give rise to bugs whilst solving them.
In some ways, I'm gald that the FSF isn't democratic, but is rather transparent, and has a charter. If I send them money, I know what it is going to promote.
The FSF isn't a political party, and knowing exactly what you're supporting can be a lot more important than the detailed internal structure of that enitity. Besides, I don't want to support average opinion when I give to the FSF, but rather my own values. Why should I have this diluted? If the organisation is democratic, this dilution is inevitable by the very nature of democracy. Far better to promote freedom in a purer way, and possibly have the organisation receive less money than support less-than-freedom that is democratic.
In short: Why should I support someone else's values? Far better, surely, to support my own!
Ps. Moderation guide: Funny.
Free is not a concept that the commercial world really knows how to work with, less still government...
When the issue is qualitative, there are plenty of programmers who are perfectionists. And when the issue is quantitative, programmers wanting something to do won't suddenly stop programming; they will simply want to move on to the next thing! The relative attractiveness of each possible task simply determines the order in which the tasks are performed in. Whilst this also means that programmers move onto other projects, the effect in totality is that the whole system improves, and once the overall standard is higher, they return.
Having a programmer-driven methodology makes a difference in that something being "good enough" for a customer is felt in the wallet, and a customer-focused company moves resources at that point, possibly even making their programmers, who would otherwise keep going, redundant. Whilst it is true that honing something to greater perfection is a little like debugging rather than creating, there are plenty who will do it. The spread of Linux is bound to bring new programmers onto the scene, some of which will want to be cutting their teeth on something "boring", as a first, or an early effort.
This is something that I've never really understood, because it wouldn't really motivate me. However, it does in fact show that programmers are movitated to improve the user experience, presumably in this case by copying concepts that are well-loved, or that they themselves like into their favourite 'hacking' environment. Given such motivation, I expect that they would be willing to complete on another programmer's more imaginative conception, even if they're not creative enough to come up with it themselves.Again this is an issue of prioritisation: copy that which is a sure hit first; do the risky stuff later. Besides, this isn't the "free software is/isn't innovative" argument; it's one about people honing what's already out there.
Distros tend to be focused upon overall usability of the suite. Not as strongly, perhaps, as the likes of Microsoft, but their interest in cohesion is unlikely to fade, as they will still want to differentiate their distribution form the others.The competition will eventually put pressure upon Microsoft to improve their own products. The Open Source methodology has already moved Microsoft into their 'shared source' programme, so some of the benefits of free software are already being copied in a weak form.
In the above picture, I've naturally left out the commercial interest in improving Linux. Suffice to say that distros and tools are now embedded in a far more competitive environment, because of the relative ease of transition between distros and tools. This means that good enough is no longer good enough, especially if the free tools are perpetually playing "catch-up". Perpetual innovation is now the rule for a successful company that is using Linux as a base.
As for the sum that the ISP possibly forgoes in not selling another connection, the validity of that concern depends upon the validity of the initial transfer of bandwidth, otherwise we're arguing that the ISP is suffering unjustly because you have more money in your wallet that you could give them.
The thing is that if loads of people shared the same 'consumer WiFi' connection, their bandwidth would suck badly!
Maybe the doctine of first sale is appropriate. The bandwidth, having been sold to you, is now yours to resell.
I think that this is the right approach: have policies to deal with the fundamental problem: excessive use of bandwidth.
The Office analogy is pretty poor though, in my opinion, for several copies of Office can be run in parallel; bandwidth, however, is not multiply allocable. The problem of sustained excess use can be dealt with by using monthly limits.