That is exactly the point. It's the after-market they're going after. Since I decided to go back to school I have been spending about a TENTH of what my school's book store (University of Denver) would charge me for the new items. Some books I may sell, some I may want to keep for future reference, and I can choose to do that because I got them for cheap. What's more, buy turning this into a fee, they are taking away from me the freedom to pick where I want to buy my books now! What's worse than a new tax? A new tax payed to a private corporation! (which my university happens to be)
I've been saying this since the late 90s. Looks like somebody else has been paying attention. And, it's not just to re-secure advertising; it's to close the game down to the currently existing players. Murdoch and others won't make the same mistake again, of allowing the likes of Google, Facebook, and the rest to change their game and become big players in the process. It's all about right to access. They won't be happy until I can't have my web server in the basement and the ability to reach anybody with an Internet connection without going through their services.
People buy books at thrift stores and library sales because they love books. People donate books to libraries because they want to share their love of books. If this becomes any popular, it will drive the price up for one thing; it will take the books from people who might pick one up because it's cheap, and love it, and put it in the hands of people who are trying to make a profit from it. Because as with everything, it takes something that people do for love of knowledge, art, or craft, and pollute it with people who don't care for it at all, just for the money it represents. That is why you feel shame doing it. Not to mention that if this becomes really profitable, how long until publishers, editors and authors see the "lost profits" and crack down on it like they are doing with music and movies? Once again, thank you for ruining it for the rest of us for the sake of your short term greed.
It means we are making a difference. If you fight a tyrant, expect the tyrant to fight back. Let's hope for a good fight and may our champion slay the beast in the end.
Precisely. That's exactly what I meant. People only think in terms of desktop support; and even if you can compare that to handymen, IT is far more than desktop support.
Not that I object to the comparison between support personnel and a handy-man
Why not? Not to diminish what a handyman does, but most handyman jobs don't require 4 years of college. One of the problems I see, and it's even very present here on/., is that people can't see beyond their own desktops. IT = desktop support. Of course the guy who can help you navigate the intricacies of Outlook knows everything there is to know about computers, right? Well, we don't have handymen design our buildings, do we? We don't have custodians deciding on office ergonomics, do we? I mean, these are two groups of people, handymen and custodians, that know our buildings really really well, a lot better than most of us do. Yet when it comes to designing our offices we turn to engineers and architects. So, nothing wrong comparing support personnel and handymen; but please don't have your support personnel designing your network and deciding which server OS to buy. You might end up with a flat network flooded with broadcast packets from Windows servers and... Oh, wait...
I've seen some companies where IT operates under the Finance department. I've never really understood why, except maybe because early computer use in many companies was limited to accounting, and it stuck in Finance for legacy reasons.
I used to work for a bank where IT started as its own department with a head that reported to the president; then ended up under Finance because the CFO was convinced that IT only cost what it did because the head of IT must be incompetent. Turns out that the CFO really had no grasp of what IT does, cut the budget in half and made it our job to make do with that and drove the department - and the bank - into the ground. I wish I could tell you the organization learned a valuable lesson and this person payed for his mistakes, but the reality is that he went on to a similar position at a much larger bank along with a nice severance package, right before the bank was liquidated when it was decided that the investment to make it competitive again, after years of technological neglect, was not worth the trouble. Better sell the assets.
15 years ago, when I was working as a Systems Analyst at a Brazilian bank that shall remain nameless, it was common knowledge that trading desks all over the country were engaging in this kind of thing. They would create "financial products" tied to World Cup statistics and use all the technology, corporate and individual knowledge at their disposal to try to predict the outcomes and win or lose huge sums of money. Individuals bet with their own money and the corporations they worked for (and who provided the infrastructure for this) tended to look the other way. One such "product" I remember well was the so-called "GDC" ("Gols Da Copa" - Cup Goals) which created a market around the total number of goals to be scored during the World Cup. I knew one trader who payed for his house with his GDC money. Most of the time it was a mostly harmless hobby (if you discount the fact that gambling is illegal in Brazil) but as the World Cup final approached, I was very aware that the resources who were supposed to be working on models of commodities, foreign exchange and other markets did little else than model the World Cup; this included both people and computational resources. I wonder if some of my old colleagues in Brazilian banking ended up finding positions in Wall St.
I mean, hell, we can't police what we view ourselves so fuck it, lets have everyone self censor so I can live happily the way I want to.
You mean, kinda like the US is doing trying to change everybody's copyright laws so that the police of all countries will do the MPAA/RIAA's dirty work for them?
"moderated computing." Someone other than you decides what you can and cannot do. Good idea from the point of view of end users, people who really couldn't care less about the technology itself, only what it enables them to do. But terrible idea for the rest of us. How long until general purpose computers become a niche application or a hobby like ham radio? And of course become a "boutique" item costing orders of magnitude more than "consumer" toys?
I expect this is just a scaled up version of the problems I deal with every day. And I'm sure I'm not the only one. Users have grown so dependent on system services and management has grown so apart from the trenches that completely unreasonable expectations are the norm. Where I work for instance it's almost impossible to even *test* backup power and failover mechanisms and procedures because users consider even minor outages in the middle of the night unacceptable and managers either don't have the clout or don't understand the problem well enough to put limits to such expectations. As a result often times the only tests such systems get happen during real emergencies, when they are actually needed. I don't know how, but I feel we should start educating our users and managers better, not to mention being realistic about risks and expectations.
You are correct. But the fact that something is in the Constitution doesn't make it right. The parts of the Brazilian Constitution you quote are, to me, a source of embarrassment. IAAB (I am a Brazilian). Those things have been placed there as a compromise to help shield former members of the military dictatorship from prosecution, for ever. More than that, they is also constantly abused and used to shield corrupt politicians and criminals. Based on those articles, you can obtain a gag order against all media, effectively prohibiting them from exposing facts all Brazilians should have access to. Maybe now that Orkut is causing usage of these articles to be more visible, Brazilians will start realizing there's something wrong with them.
IAAAB. I am also a Brazilian. And I find this very Brazilian. Instead of realizing that there's something wrong with the Constitution and working to change it (or not putting it there in the first place), Brazilians learn to live with such aberrations. The problem is that aberrations in the Constitution are only funny while everybody agrees they are aberrations. The moment somebody takes them seriously, you either get a travesty like this Google ruling or you turn your Constitution into a useless heap of paper. Yes, the judge has a problem understanding how the Internet works. But the Brazilian Constitution, as written, makes Google, Youtube and most social networking illegal. Brazilians need to get a grip and start working for change in the Constitution. If they did, I might even consider moving back to Brazil...
This, my friends, is the main reason why I left my native country. I have pissed off many of my compatriots by saying this, and I will say it again: recent statistics are not only meaningless, they are also the result of the previous administration, not the current one.
My fellow Brazilians, put down your flags. Stop dancing for a minute. You may be growing more than almost anybody but China. You seem to have found a shitload of oil in your shores. You will be hosting both the Olympics and the World Cup in the next few years. The 10% of your people who constitute the elite can finally afford new, modern cars. The 90% of your miserably poor, suffering, underfed, uneducated masses can finally afford basic plumbing outside major cities. Obama has called your president "the guy." But consider this:
- You shouldn't compare your economic growth to China's, unless you want millions of salaried slaves doing nothing but work from cradle to grave
- You should be too happy about your new found oil, unless you like what you see (wealth distribution even worse than yours, religious and political extremism, terrorism, etc) in countries that went down that road before like most of the Middle East and your neighbor Venezuela.
- Sports and international events are but temporary glory - just ask the no-longer-existing Soviet Union
- Notice that Obama didn't even invite you to the latest international talks; and when your president showed up there, uninvited, he was thoroughly ignored.
- Ask your elites if their shiny new cars are worth living behind bars in luxury condos, if their annual trips to Disney World are worth the kidnappings, if their smuggled iPads are worth the rape of their daughters.
- Your poor are probably better off with some plumbing, but ask them if this is enough or if they also want access to health care, nice safe houses, access to a college education.
My fellow Brazilians, please learn something. You have a basic flaw in your principles. Learn about what freedom actually means; learn that it must include freedom of speech. I know it's a big leap for you, but try to understand that a judge or a celebrity do not merit immediate and automatic compliance. That the opposite is actually closer to the truth. It would be relatively easy to repeal your laws of contempt of authority and the rest of that rubbish; but repealing a law means nothing if the spirit of the law is in the spirit of the people. My fellow Brazilians, you must abandon the colonial ages, leave behind values meant for 17th century Portugal, and join the twentieth century at last. When you've done that you can start aspiring for the twenty-first.
That's just bad all around, and I see no reason that it should be allowed to continue as it has been.
That might be true, but as an H1B worker myself, and I realize I can only speak for myself, I can say a) I am not from India; b) I make exactly as much as my American coworkers; c) I don't feel my employer treats me unfairly in any way.
I do agree with the basic unfairness of some features of the program. I really don't like living with the constant possibility that I might have to leave the country on short notice. I am not "afraid to be sent back"; it just makes basic things like planning my future, thinking about retirement, even finding a good school for my child (who happens to be an American citizen by the way) that much harder. I also don't like it that I really don't have a lot of leverage when it comes to discussing promotions and raises, although so far my employer has treated me no different than any of my colleagues.
It must be said though that I knew what the rules were when I got into it. If I don't like the rules I am free to leave at any moment. I don't care much what people's preconceived notions about "not knowing their rights in our country" are, to quote someone up the thread. The fact is that I, and I suspect most of my fellow H1B holders, are sophisticated enough to be able to learn how to live in a foreign country. If any of us chooses not to invest the time to understand the country, its laws and its culture, that's their problem. So say what you will about reforming the system but please be aware that I knew exactly what I was getting into; I am free to leave at any time; I am upholding my side of the bargain; and I expect the U.S. government to uphold their side. Please do not speak on my behalf. I don't want the rules of the game to change before the game is over. Or I want a say in how those rules get changed. Anything less would be extremely unfair.
Now, you are certainly free to complain on your own behalf. If you feel strongly about the H1B program, by all means go learn all you can about it and do everything the law allows you to do to change what you don't like. Just don't say you have *my* interests in mind when you do it.
I agree with you in principle. However there is something to be said for the "cultural integration" process. As an immigrant myself I can tell you there are many many reasons why someone would want to live in a different country. Money may be the most common, but I'm not even sure of that.
In my case, there is very little difference in quality of life. I used to own a consultancy business in the "old country" and I was making a lot more money than I do now in the U.S. The fact that cost of life is cheaper here makes up for the difference, somewhat.
My reason to come here was an affinity and an appreciation for basic principles. Call my corny but my reasons to want to stay here are two: the U.S. Constitution and the willingness of its people to take that seriously.
People, including my compatriots, who come here for the big house and the big car; and then bring with them an attitude of "legal relativism," of "it's OK so long as you don't get caught," of "everybody's doing it so I'd be a fool for not doing it", offend me. They are the reason why I left my country in the first place. It's not "immigrant mentality." It's admiring a culture, wanting to be part of it and putting in the effort to make that happen. It makes me protective of that culture.
If a culture is worth abandoning your country for, it's worth defending. Even from your former countrymen.
2. Why should Open Source projects be profitable? Profits are a byproduct for Open Source projects - and an indirect one at best. It's not why the Open Source / Free Software movements were started. Open Source is about freedom, is about avoiding vendor lock-in, is about scratching itches. Go read the Cathedral and the Bazaar. (nothing against profits by the way. They have their place.) If this is not enough for Oracle, I say they cut the Open Source projects loose. If OpenSolaris and the others really have a community behind them, they'll manage. Linus started from scratch; Stallman started from scratch. They have a lot more than that. If the community support is not there, it's not a worthy project anyway. And if it proves to be impossible to fork, well, sorry, but serves them right for not using a GPL license anyway. Go away, Oracle. Stop distracting us.
But, overall, people are today less satisfied with their lives than they used to be.
I am not so sure. This may simply be the tendency people have to remember what is good and forget what is bad. We all do it. Try this: with no distractions, make a serious effort to remember some particularly happy period of your life. Start with why you think it was so happy. Then remember surrounding events and the general feel of those days. Most often and if you're honest and barring marginal cases, you will come up with a history that's not particularly worse or better than it is today. Depending on how old you are this may be easier or harder to do. Bottom line is, every generation remembers the "good old times." The usual explanation is that during the good old times they were young. Of course life seems more fun and more interesting.
My personal example: the bottom half of the eighties. I still smile when I think of those times. I forged friendships that last to this day. I used to spend days and nights with my best friends doing exactly what we wanted. I found love for the first time. If I think hard about then however I know there were infinite boring hours sitting in classrooms, there was having to beg my parents for money, there was homework and tests and bullies and rejection and anguish. The first love thing felt wonderful but actually meant putting something as stable as a sixteen year old girl in charge of my health and happiness.
My conclusion is, it was really not a very happy time. But I still feel like it was the best time ever...
I agree with most of what you said but I'd like to offer a couple of comments on this:
Strictly speaking, if you don't believe in science, you're an extreme moron.
- Religious people tend to define their world based on beliefs. The word "believe" has a different, special meaning to them. Nothing is more natural to religious people than to think we "believe" in Science the way they "believe" in religion. Their belief is based on faith, which ultimately comes from authority - the Pope, bishop, shaman as interpreters of some ultimate authority that emanates from the divine - a book or the stars or whatever. They find it natural to transfer that to us and they think we take our beliefs from the authority of some fuzzy hierarchy revolving around Academia. I find it useful when talking to rational religious people (they exist but their voices are drowned by their irrational colleagues), to think of Science as some kind of opposite to belief. Mostly we *don't* believe; until the moment when a preponderance of evidence tips the scale and we tend to believe some fact. We have no absolute beliefs, only degrees of certainty. We're pretty sure Newton is right, as modified by Einstein as modified by Hawkins. We're not as sure of Einstein as we are of Newton and we are a lot less sure of Hawkins as we are of Einstein. Out "beliefs", or actually the degree to which we believe anything, changes over time as evidence piles up for or against it. So your sentence about believing is Science does not make a lot of sense in this context (discussions with religious people).
- Even if it did make any sort of sense, it's extremely disrespectful and, frankly, anti-scientific to call someone a moron based on their beliefs. You can't be a scientist without an open mind. You can't have an honest discussion without basic respect. In defending Science, please attack the argument and not the person.
Slashdot Mirror
That is exactly the point. It's the after-market they're going after. Since I decided to go back to school I have been spending about a TENTH of what my school's book store (University of Denver) would charge me for the new items. Some books I may sell, some I may want to keep for future reference, and I can choose to do that because I got them for cheap. What's more, buy turning this into a fee, they are taking away from me the freedom to pick where I want to buy my books now! What's worse than a new tax? A new tax payed to a private corporation! (which my university happens to be)
I've been saying this since the late 90s. Looks like somebody else has been paying attention. And, it's not just to re-secure advertising; it's to close the game down to the currently existing players. Murdoch and others won't make the same mistake again, of allowing the likes of Google, Facebook, and the rest to change their game and become big players in the process. It's all about right to access. They won't be happy until I can't have my web server in the basement and the ability to reach anybody with an Internet connection without going through their services.
People buy books at thrift stores and library sales because they love books. People donate books to libraries because they want to share their love of books. If this becomes any popular, it will drive the price up for one thing; it will take the books from people who might pick one up because it's cheap, and love it, and put it in the hands of people who are trying to make a profit from it. Because as with everything, it takes something that people do for love of knowledge, art, or craft, and pollute it with people who don't care for it at all, just for the money it represents. That is why you feel shame doing it. Not to mention that if this becomes really profitable, how long until publishers, editors and authors see the "lost profits" and crack down on it like they are doing with music and movies? Once again, thank you for ruining it for the rest of us for the sake of your short term greed.
It must feel good to always know the answer.
Please mod parent up. Gasland is a documentary on natural gas and completely relevant to this discussion.
It means we are making a difference. If you fight a tyrant, expect the tyrant to fight back. Let's hope for a good fight and may our champion slay the beast in the end.
Precisely. That's exactly what I meant. People only think in terms of desktop support; and even if you can compare that to handymen, IT is far more than desktop support.
Not that I object to the comparison between support personnel and a handy-man
Why not? Not to diminish what a handyman does, but most handyman jobs don't require 4 years of college. One of the problems I see, and it's even very present here on /., is that people can't see beyond their own desktops. IT = desktop support. Of course the guy who can help you navigate the intricacies of Outlook knows everything there is to know about computers, right? Well, we don't have handymen design our buildings, do we? We don't have custodians deciding on office ergonomics, do we? I mean, these are two groups of people, handymen and custodians, that know our buildings really really well, a lot better than most of us do. Yet when it comes to designing our offices we turn to engineers and architects. So, nothing wrong comparing support personnel and handymen; but please don't have your support personnel designing your network and deciding which server OS to buy. You might end up with a flat network flooded with broadcast packets from Windows servers and... Oh, wait...
I've seen some companies where IT operates under the Finance department. I've never really understood why, except maybe because early computer use in many companies was limited to accounting, and it stuck in Finance for legacy reasons.
I used to work for a bank where IT started as its own department with a head that reported to the president; then ended up under Finance because the CFO was convinced that IT only cost what it did because the head of IT must be incompetent. Turns out that the CFO really had no grasp of what IT does, cut the budget in half and made it our job to make do with that and drove the department - and the bank - into the ground. I wish I could tell you the organization learned a valuable lesson and this person payed for his mistakes, but the reality is that he went on to a similar position at a much larger bank along with a nice severance package, right before the bank was liquidated when it was decided that the investment to make it competitive again, after years of technological neglect, was not worth the trouble. Better sell the assets.
15 years ago, when I was working as a Systems Analyst at a Brazilian bank that shall remain nameless, it was common knowledge that trading desks all over the country were engaging in this kind of thing. They would create "financial products" tied to World Cup statistics and use all the technology, corporate and individual knowledge at their disposal to try to predict the outcomes and win or lose huge sums of money. Individuals bet with their own money and the corporations they worked for (and who provided the infrastructure for this) tended to look the other way. One such "product" I remember well was the so-called "GDC" ("Gols Da Copa" - Cup Goals) which created a market around the total number of goals to be scored during the World Cup. I knew one trader who payed for his house with his GDC money. Most of the time it was a mostly harmless hobby (if you discount the fact that gambling is illegal in Brazil) but as the World Cup final approached, I was very aware that the resources who were supposed to be working on models of commodities, foreign exchange and other markets did little else than model the World Cup; this included both people and computational resources. I wonder if some of my old colleagues in Brazilian banking ended up finding positions in Wall St.
I mean, hell, we can't police what we view ourselves so fuck it, lets have everyone self censor so I can live happily the way I want to.
You mean, kinda like the US is doing trying to change everybody's copyright laws so that the police of all countries will do the MPAA/RIAA's dirty work for them?
"moderated computing." Someone other than you decides what you can and cannot do. Good idea from the point of view of end users, people who really couldn't care less about the technology itself, only what it enables them to do. But terrible idea for the rest of us. How long until general purpose computers become a niche application or a hobby like ham radio? And of course become a "boutique" item costing orders of magnitude more than "consumer" toys?
I expect this is just a scaled up version of the problems I deal with every day. And I'm sure I'm not the only one. Users have grown so dependent on system services and management has grown so apart from the trenches that completely unreasonable expectations are the norm. Where I work for instance it's almost impossible to even *test* backup power and failover mechanisms and procedures because users consider even minor outages in the middle of the night unacceptable and managers either don't have the clout or don't understand the problem well enough to put limits to such expectations. As a result often times the only tests such systems get happen during real emergencies, when they are actually needed. I don't know how, but I feel we should start educating our users and managers better, not to mention being realistic about risks and expectations.
You are correct. But the fact that something is in the Constitution doesn't make it right. The parts of the Brazilian Constitution you quote are, to me, a source of embarrassment. IAAB (I am a Brazilian). Those things have been placed there as a compromise to help shield former members of the military dictatorship from prosecution, for ever. More than that, they is also constantly abused and used to shield corrupt politicians and criminals. Based on those articles, you can obtain a gag order against all media, effectively prohibiting them from exposing facts all Brazilians should have access to. Maybe now that Orkut is causing usage of these articles to be more visible, Brazilians will start realizing there's something wrong with them.
IAAAB. I am also a Brazilian. And I find this very Brazilian. Instead of realizing that there's something wrong with the Constitution and working to change it (or not putting it there in the first place), Brazilians learn to live with such aberrations. The problem is that aberrations in the Constitution are only funny while everybody agrees they are aberrations. The moment somebody takes them seriously, you either get a travesty like this Google ruling or you turn your Constitution into a useless heap of paper. Yes, the judge has a problem understanding how the Internet works. But the Brazilian Constitution, as written, makes Google, Youtube and most social networking illegal. Brazilians need to get a grip and start working for change in the Constitution. If they did, I might even consider moving back to Brazil...
My fellow Brazilians, put down your flags. Stop dancing for a minute. You may be growing more than almost anybody but China. You seem to have found a shitload of oil in your shores. You will be hosting both the Olympics and the World Cup in the next few years. The 10% of your people who constitute the elite can finally afford new, modern cars. The 90% of your miserably poor, suffering, underfed, uneducated masses can finally afford basic plumbing outside major cities. Obama has called your president "the guy." But consider this:
- You shouldn't compare your economic growth to China's, unless you want millions of salaried slaves doing nothing but work from cradle to grave
- You should be too happy about your new found oil, unless you like what you see (wealth distribution even worse than yours, religious and political extremism, terrorism, etc) in countries that went down that road before like most of the Middle East and your neighbor Venezuela.
- Sports and international events are but temporary glory - just ask the no-longer-existing Soviet Union
- Notice that Obama didn't even invite you to the latest international talks; and when your president showed up there, uninvited, he was thoroughly ignored. - Ask your elites if their shiny new cars are worth living behind bars in luxury condos, if their annual trips to Disney World are worth the kidnappings, if their smuggled iPads are worth the rape of their daughters.
- Your poor are probably better off with some plumbing, but ask them if this is enough or if they also want access to health care, nice safe houses, access to a college education.
My fellow Brazilians, please learn something. You have a basic flaw in your principles. Learn about what freedom actually means; learn that it must include freedom of speech. I know it's a big leap for you, but try to understand that a judge or a celebrity do not merit immediate and automatic compliance. That the opposite is actually closer to the truth. It would be relatively easy to repeal your laws of contempt of authority and the rest of that rubbish; but repealing a law means nothing if the spirit of the law is in the spirit of the people. My fellow Brazilians, you must abandon the colonial ages, leave behind values meant for 17th century Portugal, and join the twentieth century at last. When you've done that you can start aspiring for the twenty-first.
Thank you.
That's just bad all around, and I see no reason that it should be allowed to continue as it has been.
That might be true, but as an H1B worker myself, and I realize I can only speak for myself, I can say a) I am not from India; b) I make exactly as much as my American coworkers; c) I don't feel my employer treats me unfairly in any way.
I do agree with the basic unfairness of some features of the program. I really don't like living with the constant possibility that I might have to leave the country on short notice. I am not "afraid to be sent back"; it just makes basic things like planning my future, thinking about retirement, even finding a good school for my child (who happens to be an American citizen by the way) that much harder. I also don't like it that I really don't have a lot of leverage when it comes to discussing promotions and raises, although so far my employer has treated me no different than any of my colleagues.
It must be said though that I knew what the rules were when I got into it. If I don't like the rules I am free to leave at any moment. I don't care much what people's preconceived notions about "not knowing their rights in our country" are, to quote someone up the thread. The fact is that I, and I suspect most of my fellow H1B holders, are sophisticated enough to be able to learn how to live in a foreign country. If any of us chooses not to invest the time to understand the country, its laws and its culture, that's their problem. So say what you will about reforming the system but please be aware that I knew exactly what I was getting into; I am free to leave at any time; I am upholding my side of the bargain; and I expect the U.S. government to uphold their side. Please do not speak on my behalf. I don't want the rules of the game to change before the game is over. Or I want a say in how those rules get changed. Anything less would be extremely unfair.
Now, you are certainly free to complain on your own behalf. If you feel strongly about the H1B program, by all means go learn all you can about it and do everything the law allows you to do to change what you don't like. Just don't say you have *my* interests in mind when you do it.
In my case, there is very little difference in quality of life. I used to own a consultancy business in the "old country" and I was making a lot more money than I do now in the U.S. The fact that cost of life is cheaper here makes up for the difference, somewhat.
My reason to come here was an affinity and an appreciation for basic principles. Call my corny but my reasons to want to stay here are two: the U.S. Constitution and the willingness of its people to take that seriously.
People, including my compatriots, who come here for the big house and the big car; and then bring with them an attitude of "legal relativism," of "it's OK so long as you don't get caught," of "everybody's doing it so I'd be a fool for not doing it", offend me. They are the reason why I left my country in the first place. It's not "immigrant mentality." It's admiring a culture, wanting to be part of it and putting in the effort to make that happen. It makes me protective of that culture.
If a culture is worth abandoning your country for, it's worth defending. Even from your former countrymen.
2. Why should Open Source projects be profitable? Profits are a byproduct for Open Source projects - and an indirect one at best. It's not why the Open Source / Free Software movements were started. Open Source is about freedom, is about avoiding vendor lock-in, is about scratching itches. Go read the Cathedral and the Bazaar. (nothing against profits by the way. They have their place.) If this is not enough for Oracle, I say they cut the Open Source projects loose. If OpenSolaris and the others really have a community behind them, they'll manage. Linus started from scratch; Stallman started from scratch. They have a lot more than that. If the community support is not there, it's not a worthy project anyway. And if it proves to be impossible to fork, well, sorry, but serves them right for not using a GPL license anyway. Go away, Oracle. Stop distracting us.
Thank you, SomeGuy! I wish more people saw that.
All they need is to offer the Microsofties a way around the "But ODF is ISO approved" argument. Doesn't need to work or even make sense.
What we need is a solar-powered plane capable of safely carrying a couple dozen people 500 miles.
But, overall, people are today less satisfied with their lives than they used to be.
I am not so sure. This may simply be the tendency people have to remember what is good and forget what is bad. We all do it. Try this: with no distractions, make a serious effort to remember some particularly happy period of your life. Start with why you think it was so happy. Then remember surrounding events and the general feel of those days. Most often and if you're honest and barring marginal cases, you will come up with a history that's not particularly worse or better than it is today. Depending on how old you are this may be easier or harder to do. Bottom line is, every generation remembers the "good old times." The usual explanation is that during the good old times they were young. Of course life seems more fun and more interesting.
My personal example: the bottom half of the eighties. I still smile when I think of those times. I forged friendships that last to this day. I used to spend days and nights with my best friends doing exactly what we wanted. I found love for the first time. If I think hard about then however I know there were infinite boring hours sitting in classrooms, there was having to beg my parents for money, there was homework and tests and bullies and rejection and anguish. The first love thing felt wonderful but actually meant putting something as stable as a sixteen year old girl in charge of my health and happiness.
My conclusion is, it was really not a very happy time. But I still feel like it was the best time ever...
Strictly speaking, if you don't believe in science, you're an extreme moron.
- Religious people tend to define their world based on beliefs. The word "believe" has a different, special meaning to them. Nothing is more natural to religious people than to think we "believe" in Science the way they "believe" in religion. Their belief is based on faith, which ultimately comes from authority - the Pope, bishop, shaman as interpreters of some ultimate authority that emanates from the divine - a book or the stars or whatever. They find it natural to transfer that to us and they think we take our beliefs from the authority of some fuzzy hierarchy revolving around Academia. I find it useful when talking to rational religious people (they exist but their voices are drowned by their irrational colleagues), to think of Science as some kind of opposite to belief. Mostly we *don't* believe; until the moment when a preponderance of evidence tips the scale and we tend to believe some fact. We have no absolute beliefs, only degrees of certainty. We're pretty sure Newton is right, as modified by Einstein as modified by Hawkins. We're not as sure of Einstein as we are of Newton and we are a lot less sure of Hawkins as we are of Einstein. Out "beliefs", or actually the degree to which we believe anything, changes over time as evidence piles up for or against it. So your sentence about believing is Science does not make a lot of sense in this context (discussions with religious people).
- Even if it did make any sort of sense, it's extremely disrespectful and, frankly, anti-scientific to call someone a moron based on their beliefs. You can't be a scientist without an open mind. You can't have an honest discussion without basic respect. In defending Science, please attack the argument and not the person.