Damn, you beat me to the water analogy. Mine was going to involve a discussion of the potential energy of a damn as a metaphor for nuclear secrets.
Well done.
The interesting point is not that it worked, but that it worked in a single room without billions of dollars of equipment (the last bit about money is only my inference). Think spring loaded mouse trap versus Rube Goldberg mouse trap.
I believe that to some extent what you say is true, but I also think there is another issue to pay attention to here. If you look at how the Patriot Act was written, there is a very intentional obfuscation. Some of these measures are misdirected efforts to fight the previous war, and some are ham handed grabs for power by our government. The line is blurred, and there are well intentioned people at all levels of government that don't understand what they are doing to our country in the name of security, but there are also some who are making a concerted effort to erode our liberties. The trick is deciding whos who, and giving the culprits the treatment they deserve.
Yours is a very simplistic analysis. It is illegal to violate copywrite laws and that comes with a potential penalty. The calculation to determine how much theft will occur has to include the cost of the songs as well as the severity of the punishment.
We've had people working hard on making the punishment more severe, it seems to me that a little pressure on the other side of the equation should be welcomed, not dismissed out of hand.
You have to charge for something. Nobody charges you for the ocean, but they might rent you a canoe. They might sell you a car to get there or the gas to fuel the car.
Free software simply shifts the revenue stream from development to hardware and support. If you want extra value attached to the support you provide for free software, it makes sense to keep it free. Just like the canoe rental shop doesn't want to add a charge to visit the ocean (unless they get to keep it).
Do you want to write code? Do you want to manage others? Do you want to be a soul sucking salesman?
By all means get an MBA and look for the highest paying job you can find, if what you want is a nice car. If the work itself is important to you, then you are going to have to answer this question by yourself.
The people I envy most accidently find out they can make money while they are busy doing something they would do anyway.
I was playing around with some spare parts and plugged in an old dual boot hard drive from a different system. I booted into linux thinking it would be easier than trying to get W2k working on new hardware. Sure enough, RH 7.6 asked me politely if I would like to use this new hardware, and then just worked.
It turns out the data I was trying to retrieve was on an NTFS partition, so I booted into w2k to see if I could get my data. After an hour of trying to update drivers without having a driver for the nic, I gave up. Too bad I used W2k in the first place.
Dovorak's comments are wrong for a different reason. He was attempting to establish a method whereby MS could leverage their effective monopoly on device drivers without giving away access to these drivers to other distributions.
If they merely released a version of Linux that used Windows drivers, they would be forced to GPL the code used to access the drivers, and other distros could follow suit thus destroying their effective driver monopoly. If they distributed a proprietary closed source interface layer to access drivers, they would not have to share it.
This argument ignores some obvious problems,like the fact that MS would be encouraging competition to Windows software that currently makes them money. Also, device drivers are written predominantly by hardware manufacturers. If they discovered that they were leaving money on the table by granting MS an effective monopoly on their code, they would surely write linux drivers themselves right? In fact this is already happening on a large scale.
How about some off topic mods here? The gentleman asked an interesting question about applying technology to parenting problems and got a bunch of junk psychology back. If he wanted junk psychology he could subscribe to parenting rags. Let's give the man some tech advice.
Personally, I looked into building some DIY radio circuits so I could use any radio in the house as a monitor, but I quickly found that I would rather have my kid with me if I am in the house. He is not old enough to be on his own, and my wife and I have complimentary work schedules, so we haven't needed remote monitoring yet.
There is an implied social contract that we as "consumers" need to understand. When we enter a market place literally and figuratively we assume a fairness. We assume the marketplace upholds a fundamental morality that most of us possess which would prevent the exploitation of workers and other such abuses.
Inherent in these assumptions are that certain systems are in place. We assume that the legislation we have in place is preventing abusive and monopolistic business practices. We assume that our media will report any lapses in the intended operation of our marketplaces.
Time to check your assumptions people. I for one am not happy about another corporate behemoth entering the digital media market.
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Damn, you beat me to the water analogy. Mine was going to involve a discussion of the potential energy of a damn as a metaphor for nuclear secrets.
Well done.
The interesting point is not that it worked, but that it worked in a single room without billions of dollars of equipment (the last bit about money is only my inference). Think spring loaded mouse trap versus Rube Goldberg mouse trap.
It's a tool. It is only as annoying as the implementation. If you have features turned on that you don't need it's not Asterisk's fault.
You're right. My bad. Always got those two names mixed up for some reason.
I figured I should take my own advice and found my mistake almost as soon as you could point it out.
Thanks for pointing out my idiocy, but in my defense it is really closer to haste and hypocrisy.
CS Lewis was a science fiction writer as well. Among other things he foretold the geo-stationary satellite.
If you can't be bothered to read the books, at least google first.
I believe that to some extent what you say is true, but I also think there is another issue to pay attention to here. If you look at how the Patriot Act was written, there is a very intentional obfuscation. Some of these measures are misdirected efforts to fight the previous war, and some are ham handed grabs for power by our government. The line is blurred, and there are well intentioned people at all levels of government that don't understand what they are doing to our country in the name of security, but there are also some who are making a concerted effort to erode our liberties. The trick is deciding whos who, and giving the culprits the treatment they deserve.
Yours is a very simplistic analysis. It is illegal to violate copywrite laws and that comes with a potential penalty. The calculation to determine how much theft will occur has to include the cost of the songs as well as the severity of the punishment.
We've had people working hard on making the punishment more severe, it seems to me that a little pressure on the other side of the equation should be welcomed, not dismissed out of hand.
You have to charge for something. Nobody charges you for the ocean, but they might rent you a canoe. They might sell you a car to get there or the gas to fuel the car.
Free software simply shifts the revenue stream from development to hardware and support. If you want extra value attached to the support you provide for free software, it makes sense to keep it free. Just like the canoe rental shop doesn't want to add a charge to visit the ocean (unless they get to keep it).
Do you want to write code? Do you want to manage others? Do you want to be a soul sucking salesman?
By all means get an MBA and look for the highest paying job you can find, if what you want is a nice car. If the work itself is important to you, then you are going to have to answer this question by yourself.
The people I envy most accidently find out they can make money while they are busy doing something they would do anyway.
I was playing around with some spare parts and plugged in an old dual boot hard drive from a different system. I booted into linux thinking it would be easier than trying to get W2k working on new hardware. Sure enough, RH 7.6 asked me politely if I would like to use this new hardware, and then just worked.
It turns out the data I was trying to retrieve was on an NTFS partition, so I booted into w2k to see if I could get my data. After an hour of trying to update drivers without having a driver for the nic, I gave up. Too bad I used W2k in the first place.
I think the good news is that if they attack at the kernel level, or app level, they are undercutting their own ability to lock users in.
Dovorak's comments are wrong for a different reason. He was attempting to establish a method whereby MS could leverage their effective monopoly on device drivers without giving away access to these drivers to other distributions.
If they merely released a version of Linux that used Windows drivers, they would be forced to GPL the code used to access the drivers, and other distros could follow suit thus destroying their effective driver monopoly. If they distributed a proprietary closed source interface layer to access drivers, they would not have to share it.
This argument ignores some obvious problems,like the fact that MS would be encouraging competition to Windows software that currently makes them money. Also, device drivers are written predominantly by hardware manufacturers. If they discovered that they were leaving money on the table by granting MS an effective monopoly on their code, they would surely write linux drivers themselves right? In fact this is already happening on a large scale.
How about some off topic mods here? The gentleman asked an interesting question about applying technology to parenting problems and got a bunch of junk psychology back. If he wanted junk psychology he could subscribe to parenting rags. Let's give the man some tech advice.
Personally, I looked into building some DIY radio circuits so I could use any radio in the house as a monitor, but I quickly found that I would rather have my kid with me if I am in the house. He is not old enough to be on his own, and my wife and I have complimentary work schedules, so we haven't needed remote monitoring yet.
Good luck with your project.
There is an implied social contract that we as "consumers" need to understand. When we enter a market place literally and figuratively we assume a fairness. We assume the marketplace upholds a fundamental morality that most of us possess which would prevent the exploitation of workers and other such abuses. Inherent in these assumptions are that certain systems are in place. We assume that the legislation we have in place is preventing abusive and monopolistic business practices. We assume that our media will report any lapses in the intended operation of our marketplaces. Time to check your assumptions people. I for one am not happy about another corporate behemoth entering the digital media market.