and a corporation is controlled by shareholders and works for them. i'm not sure what that has to do with the issue i raised.
surely a monopoly is nearly always a bad thing? you might be able to argue with me about power lines or roads. but tv news? are you suggesting that choice is bad in tv news? or that consumers shouldn't get an opportunity to receive their product at a competitive price instead of a price set by a monopoly? or the government?
not to mention what if you don't watch tv news. you are still forced to pay for it.
are there other british tv news outlets? i actually don't really know the answer to that.
your criticism may be a good one though. certainly there are other tv news outlets (in other freer, more democratic, more libertarian, more capitalistic parts of the world).
i will change my stance: it is unfair that the bbc is publicly funded. and therefore the BBC license fee is a bad thing.
indian tech workers are not slaves. they are employees who are quite happy to have the work. and why should companies have to pay indian employees the same as US wages?
quality is not the only way to compete. if i make the same product of the same quality but its cheaper, then hey i'm competing. and what is immoral or unfair about that competition? indian employees are not slaves. they are quite happy to have the work.
think about it this way. if i can make hamburgers cheaper than mcdonalds why would anyone buy from mcdonalds? more importantly, why would it be immoral or necessary to pass a law that we have to buy the more expensive hamburgers from mcdonalds?
why is it the people see greed as a vice when its really a virtue? the people without greed are the people who don't want things from life. those are the people we call lazy. those are the people who sit on the couch, don't study or work or do anything. they are boring.
the thing is most windows installers are graphical. i could make the.bat script run the installer but i would still have to click through all the windows. i guess i could dig through my machine and figure out where the installer put each of the bazillion files it puked onto my system, but jeez what a pain.
besides i'm a contractor. i'll be gone in a month and how many companies out there are using extreme programming. hopefully not very many.
well at work we are doing extreme programming. which means i am supposed to change computers everyday or every week at least.
if we used unix/nfs this wouldn't be a problem, but we use windows98 so every time i change computers i get to install my preferred settings, browser, development tools, etc. wahoo.
i work in a lab of about 20 machines though, so i only have to do it about 20 times. some programs i can put on a shared drive, but i still have to set up shortcuts and some programs have registry keys and stuff so mostly it just sucks a lot.
right. i'm not sure which 3rd world country you're dreaming about, but the $20,000 debt daniel robbins has isn't going to let him live comfortably anywhere forever. how do you live off of negative money?
not to mention he has a wife and kids. i don't think you can support a wife and kids for less than $5000 a year.
I do _not_ find it fun to spend hours clicking through obsolete, incomplete help dialogue boxes just to find out that I need to click a checkbox in some obscure dialogue box and have to guess if its the customize menu option or the options option and then click through all 15 tabs searching for the checkbox. Bonus points if the option is disabled or expects some obscure registry key to set. More bonus points if clippy or some other annoying dialogue box pops up asking if i'm really sure i want to do that. Double bonus if my program crashes and without an error message, or i get a bsod which outputs some cryptic error messages like "1962 Short School Bus", that don't even tell me what the **** went wrong there. Not to mention customizing a shell script is a lot easier than customizing a gui. Not to mention you can't script guis.
Gimme a break. My time is too valuable to spend it on that kind of crap.
Give me a CLI which has prompts me for the stuff I need to enter. If it's a file name, don't give me a file selector dialog where i have to manually click through 20 directores to find it. If I'm supposed to enter options, don't give me checkboxes, radio buttons, or drop down combos. And, ffs, give me an up to date help for it. And clear, humanly understandable error codes.
And you know what? I'm surprised how much energy goes into defending the sacred right to produce crap code and piss-poor interfaces.
Here's an idea: if half the time that went into whining about how the 80's graphical user interfaces are better for the user, went instead into throwing together a simple user-friendly shell script or learning how to use existing cli interface we'd all be far better off than we are today.
Yearly millions of hours go into just learning to use some crap software. It isn't learning some l33t skillz, it isn't "getting a clue", it's just _wasted_. It's time when you're _not_ doing what you needed to do in the first place. Time where, like in the example above, instead of already having your file printed on that networked printer, you're still searching through obsolete help dialogues and trying stuff that fails for no obvious reason.
look. point taken that for some people in some situations, point and drool might be better. i'm a cli advocate, but not for every situation. but a lot of the things you mention are just poor program design. i like having man pages and open source because if something doesn't work i've got real in depth documentation and if i have to, i can figure out what the heck is wrong. with a gui in a closed source world, you are just sol. even with a gui in an open source world, the code is more complex and less accessible. granted this is not for newbs, but it does help non newbs. and it gives newbs an option to become non newbs -- they can learn if they want. if they don't want, then hey nothing lost.
yeah and i bet microsoft isn't contributing anything to the democrats. i haven't looked it up or anything, but big well funded companies like that tend to cover all their bases.
i'm not sure ayn rand would necessarily be against open source.
true she wouldn't approve of it for some of the purely altruistic reasons that are put forward here. but i don't think open source is necessarily anti capitalist.
one of the reasons i use linux and open source tools is i don't want to pay for microsoft products -- the os and the developer software. why do that when i can get a more powerful product for free? i use the open source community to learn new programming skills. i get access to other people's ideas and they get access to mine. then i go to a company and get paid to write their in house proprietary / highly specialized / customized / closed code. its like a free education.
i think thats one good capitalist reason to use linux. i think there are many others. ibm is making money off of it.
so.. java shouldn't be open source? ibm is bad just because they make money? of course ibm benefits. otherwise they wouldn't spend the time on it. so what. people are always motivated by selfishness. thats the whole basis of capitalism, democracy, and our whole society. and it works and it is good.
i'm not anti ms or anti sco because they make money. i'm against ms because their product sucks. and i'm against sco because they're against the gpl which i like.
what you mean like apache? yeah there is no support or garuntees there. better use a microsoft product.
really. ibm supports a lot of open source stuff if support is what you need. not to mention all the benefits of open source: security, a support community, documentation, clean documented code that works. (at least for most of the larger projects). ibm provides support for a ton of open source stuff if you really want to pay for something.
my company chose to buy remedy a bug tracking tool instead of using bugzilla. the company that makes remedy went out of business shortly afterwards. the product is crap. the ui is awful. every time you click a button the thing crashes. so much for support. so much for garuntees. so much for that product being around forever.
i would personally feel more comfortable if java were open sourced. sun hasn't been doing so hot lately. what if they go out of business? what happens to java then?
well its not what i want. its like a little jail on my monitor. makes me feel all constrained.
and i would devote an entire desktop to the gimp regardless. actually i usually have one task per group of 6 desktops. i use kahakai and it uses 2 dimensional virtualness like enlightenment.
6 desktops for coding project A 6 desktops for coding project B 6 desktops for mail/xmms/crap 6 desktops for web surfing
i've been doing this for a couple months now. not sure i'm real happy with it or not. some pluses, some minuses.
phew. its a relief to hear a liberal say that being rich isn't a bad thing. i liked your post.
my one question, is which government services did bush and reagan provide to rich people? rich people don't get wellfare or food stamps or unemployment (cuz they are employed) or anything like that. and they pay more in taxes. so aren't we taking money out of the pockets of the rich (taxes) and giving to the poor (government services). i guess i think we do that too much, but whatever.
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and a corporation is controlled by shareholders and works for them. i'm not sure what that has to do with the issue i raised.
surely a monopoly is nearly always a bad thing? you might be able to argue with me about power lines or roads. but tv news? are you suggesting that choice is bad in tv news? or that consumers shouldn't get an opportunity to receive their product at a competitive price instead of a price set by a monopoly? or the government?
not to mention what if you don't watch tv news. you are still forced to pay for it.
are there other british tv news outlets? i actually don't really know the answer to that.
your criticism may be a good one though. certainly there are other tv news outlets (in other freer, more democratic, more libertarian, more capitalistic parts of the world).
i will change my stance: it is unfair that the bbc is publicly funded. and therefore the BBC license fee is a bad thing.
Yet more proof that the BBC license fee is an unmitigated Good Thing(TM)
so a government monopoly is somehow better than a private monopoly?
yeah i was just thinking that. but, its not really a reason is it. i mean. well. i guess i'm not religious and thats my problem.
i mean its so old fashioned to hold an opinion just because a book says so. i want people to have a rational reason.
well laa dee daa.
indian tech workers are not slaves. they are employees who are quite happy to have the work. and why should companies have to pay indian employees the same as US wages?
quality is not the only way to compete. if i make the same product of the same quality but its cheaper, then hey i'm competing. and what is immoral or unfair about that competition? indian employees are not slaves. they are quite happy to have the work.
think about it this way. if i can make hamburgers cheaper than mcdonalds why would anyone buy from mcdonalds? more importantly, why would it be immoral or necessary to pass a law that we have to buy the more expensive hamburgers from mcdonalds?
why is it the people see greed as a vice when its really a virtue? the people without greed are the people who don't want things from life. those are the people we call lazy. those are the people who sit on the couch, don't study or work or do anything. they are boring.
amen.
the thing is most windows installers are graphical. i could make the .bat script run the installer but i would still have to click through all the windows. i guess i could dig through my machine and figure out where the installer put each of the bazillion files it puked onto my system, but jeez what a pain.
besides i'm a contractor. i'll be gone in a month and how many companies out there are using extreme programming. hopefully not very many.
well at work we are doing extreme programming. which means i am supposed to change computers everyday or every week at least.
if we used unix/nfs this wouldn't be a problem, but we use windows98 so every time i change computers i get to install my preferred settings, browser, development tools, etc. wahoo.
i work in a lab of about 20 machines though, so i only have to do it about 20 times. some programs i can put on a shared drive, but i still have to set up shortcuts and some programs have registry keys and stuff so mostly it just sucks a lot.
right. i'm not sure which 3rd world country you're dreaming about, but the $20,000 debt daniel robbins has isn't going to let him live comfortably anywhere forever. how do you live off of negative money?
not to mention he has a wife and kids. i don't think you can support a wife and kids for less than $5000 a year.
yeah i suppose. or you could CLEAN YOUR HOME DIRECTORY. =) holy cow. put all your images in a subdirectory named images.
but yeah there are instances where this could be a useful feature.
I do _not_ find it fun to spend hours clicking through obsolete, incomplete help dialogue boxes just to find out that I need to click a checkbox in some obscure dialogue box and have to guess if its the customize menu option or the options option and then click through all 15 tabs searching for the checkbox. Bonus points if the option is disabled or expects some obscure registry key to set. More bonus points if clippy or some other annoying dialogue box pops up asking if i'm really sure i want to do that. Double bonus if my program crashes and without an error message, or i get a bsod which outputs some cryptic error messages like "1962 Short School Bus", that don't even tell me what the **** went wrong there. Not to mention customizing a shell script is a lot easier than customizing a gui. Not to mention you can't script guis.
Gimme a break. My time is too valuable to spend it on that kind of crap.
Give me a CLI which has prompts me for the stuff I need to enter. If it's a file name, don't give me a file selector dialog where i have to manually click through 20 directores to find it. If I'm supposed to enter options, don't give me checkboxes, radio buttons, or drop down combos. And, ffs, give me an up to date help for it. And clear, humanly understandable error codes.
And you know what? I'm surprised how much energy goes into defending the sacred right to produce crap code and piss-poor interfaces.
Here's an idea: if half the time that went into whining about how the 80's graphical user interfaces are better for the user, went instead into throwing together a simple user-friendly shell script or learning how to use existing cli interface we'd all be far better off than we are today.
Yearly millions of hours go into just learning to use some crap software. It isn't learning some l33t skillz, it isn't "getting a clue", it's just _wasted_. It's time when you're _not_ doing what you needed to do in the first place. Time where, like in the example above, instead of already having your file printed on that networked printer, you're still searching through obsolete help dialogues and trying stuff that fails for no obvious reason.
look. point taken that for some people in some situations, point and drool might be better. i'm a cli advocate, but not for every situation. but a lot of the things you mention are just poor program design. i like having man pages and open source because if something doesn't work i've got real in depth documentation and if i have to, i can figure out what the heck is wrong. with a gui in a closed source world, you are just sol. even with a gui in an open source world, the code is more complex and less accessible. granted this is not for newbs, but it does help non newbs. and it gives newbs an option to become non newbs -- they can learn if they want. if they don't want, then hey nothing lost.
i agree.
except for "Really I wish there were better ways to select groups of files (by type maybe) in a CLI for batch transfers."
how about um $ scp *.jpg username@host:foo/
yeah and i bet microsoft isn't contributing anything to the democrats. i haven't looked it up or anything, but big well funded companies like that tend to cover all their bases.
besides outsourcing is good for everyone.
hey thats an interesting theory. someone plug stuff into perl's soundex module and see what happens.
uh someone else other than me. i'm going home from work now and i'm sick of my computer for the day.
its weird though, because a search for xfree yields non porn results including xfree86.org
i think alan greenspan and several higher ups in the bush administration were friends of ayn rand when she was alive.
i'm not sure ayn rand would necessarily be against open source.
true she wouldn't approve of it for some of the purely altruistic reasons that are put forward here. but i don't think open source is necessarily anti capitalist.
one of the reasons i use linux and open source tools is i don't want to pay for microsoft products -- the os and the developer software. why do that when i can get a more powerful product for free? i use the open source community to learn new programming skills. i get access to other people's ideas and they get access to mine. then i go to a company and get paid to write their in house proprietary / highly specialized / customized / closed code. its like a free education.
i think thats one good capitalist reason to use linux. i think there are many others. ibm is making money off of it.
so .. java shouldn't be open source? ibm is bad just because they make money? of course ibm benefits. otherwise they wouldn't spend the time on it. so what. people are always motivated by selfishness. thats the whole basis of capitalism, democracy, and our whole society. and it works and it is good.
i'm not anti ms or anti sco because they make money. i'm against ms because their product sucks. and i'm against sco because they're against the gpl which i like.
what you mean like apache? yeah there is no support or garuntees there. better use a microsoft product.
really. ibm supports a lot of open source stuff if support is what you need. not to mention all the benefits of open source: security, a support community, documentation, clean documented code that works. (at least for most of the larger projects). ibm provides support for a ton of open source stuff if you really want to pay for something.
my company chose to buy remedy a bug tracking tool instead of using bugzilla. the company that makes remedy went out of business shortly afterwards. the product is crap. the ui is awful. every time you click a button the thing crashes. so much for support. so much for garuntees. so much for that product being around forever.
i would personally feel more comfortable if java were open sourced. sun hasn't been doing so hot lately. what if they go out of business? what happens to java then?
i liked it.
well its not what i want. its like a little jail on my monitor. makes me feel all constrained.
and i would devote an entire desktop to the gimp regardless. actually i usually have one task per group of 6 desktops. i use kahakai and it uses 2 dimensional virtualness like enlightenment.
6 desktops for coding project A
6 desktops for coding project B
6 desktops for mail/xmms/crap
6 desktops for web surfing
i've been doing this for a couple months now. not sure i'm real happy with it or not. some pluses, some minuses.
phew. its a relief to hear a liberal say that being rich isn't a bad thing. i liked your post.
my one question, is which government services did bush and reagan provide to rich people? rich people don't get wellfare or food stamps or unemployment (cuz they are employed) or anything like that. and they pay more in taxes. so aren't we taking money out of the pockets of the rich (taxes) and giving to the poor (government services). i guess i think we do that too much, but whatever.