but not via a download. Come on, give us a 4GB iso that can be burnt to a DVD and watched like a regular DVD. Sigh. It's not like it's costing them that much in the way of bandwidth as it's torrented. I imagine that it will probably cost more (bandwidth wise) if they decide to release a full DVD version for download in the future because their won't be so many peers.
It's engineering plain and simple. To dress it up as anything else undermines the skill that is envolved in creating good code. The dictionary (dictionary.com) defines engineering as
The application of scientific and mathematical principles to practical ends such as the design, manufacture, and operation of efficient and economical structures, machines, processes, and systems.
if that doesn't define writing code I don't know what does. There is nothing wrong with being an engineer.
I have to question the whole push to next generation dvd. I don't really see that it buys us anything we don't already have and it costs a small fortune with upgrades. If you look at what these companies are intending to ship on HD/BR-DVD it is pretty obvious that, for now at least, they would be better off just sticking with regular DVD. I can only think of a hand full of games that have a DVD version and, lets face it, there is no advantage to the DVD version other than it has fewer disks (eg the graphics / cut scenes aren't any better). Music has fallen flat on it's face on the DVD format because most people think CD quality is good enough. Films might benifit from a switch to HD/BR-DVD but I am very skeptical.
With better compression technologies available now than which DVD first came out I am sure that it would be possible to put a much better quality film (visually at least;o) on a standard DVD. Personally I think currently DVD quality is generally good enough - there are, I admit, one or two places where the compression shows thorough. I certainly wouldn't even consider buying a film I already own on DVD on HD/BR-DVD.
I wonder if the switch to HD/BR-DVD has more to do with lockign down the media more than it has to do with improving and extending?
Simple, while a company might not have a policy of supporting open source directly most would turn a blind eye to their developers submitting occasional patches and bug reports for problems they find. In this way open source has thousands of highly skilled people checking over the code which it wouldn't otherwise have if the company had chosen a closed source alternative. While it is hard to quantify the loss I'm sure a clause such as was mentioned in the artice would, in the long run, hurt progress on many open source projects.
The point is fairly moot though since the article was, at best, badly worded if not out right wrong.
I really hope you are right. If not I can see free software going the way of the dodo. All the companies I have have worked for have taken a dim view of GPLed code anyway. For the most part they have accepted it into the fold because they are producing web applications that would never be used outside the company. One wiff of the type of clause mentioned in the article and they would ditch GPL software in the blink of an eye.
I think there are probably quite a few companies unknowingly helping open source software. A developer who finds a bug in a piece of open source code is likely to at least flag it to the developers and possibly even develop a patch. While the company might not be directly supporting open source millions of little patches can make for robust software. These patches just wouldn't appear if companies are scared away from the GPL.
I would rather see a unified sound system rather than a unified look and feel. The half dozen different look and feels that are widely used all work in (baiscally) the same way - a buttons a button whatever tool kit you use. Sound on the other hand is a disaster. esd and arts duke it out over who is going to get control of the sound card while some other app that doesn't understand either nips in and addresses alsa directly making the whole thing moot. That's if you can get the sound working at all.
About the only thing I ever have problems with in Linux is getting sound to work properly. It looks like things are only going to get worse in the future with everyone and their uncle writting a next generation sound server. Deep joy.
What I don't understand is how they can fail to make money at $1 a track. Everyone bangs on about how little the artist cough pretty face cough gets paid. so that must therefore mean a large portion, lets say 90c (and I think that 10c to the artist is generous), of that $1 is being spent on other things.
What could possibly cost that much? Recording studios don't come cheap but it's not like they have to be lined in gold. Porduction costs a bob or to. Bandwidth, yep that costs a little as do the servers. I still can't believe that comes to more than 40c though leaving 50c.
My money is on that 50c being spent on marketing the pap to the masses. The record companies want more money per track to market their rubbish to us more not because they are short of money. The true cost of producing the mouse must be peanuts compared to the cost of the marketing and flying over paid execs about.
That's easy to fix just go to Wikipedia and update the article to make it reflect what is needed. Once the trademark has been granted change it back. Problem solved:o)
ITER will cost about $10 billion to build with a running cost of about $4 billion over 20 years (although that seems a little low to me). With what it will cost to play on the moon we could build 10 fusion reactors and probably crack that particular technology.
Thanks, the hydrogen I used always came from a big black cylinder. Seriously though, I understand that hydrogen doesn't grow on trees and that production will always be more expensive energy wise than we recover burning the fuel.
We can, however, place large hydrogen production facilites in uninhabited areas and ship the hydrogen around to where it is needed. I, personnaly, would concrete over the deserts and turn them into hydrogen production plants. At the end of the day we are going to have to destroy some habitat so why not make it the one that is currently most devoid of life.
I quite agree that we need to get off this rock eventually but are we trying to do it now for the wrong reasons? A base on the moon will be about as useful as the IIS. I love the IIS I think it's great that mankind has come together to build something but from a science point of view can you really justify the expense? I can't think of a single piece of technology or widely applicable science that has come about as a result of low gravity experiments. Sure there have been a few interesting results but what have we missed because the money was diverted to building the IIS? I can't help feeling that half the time they are looking for something to do with it now that they have built it. I fear the same result for a moon base.
I have to ask why there is this fascination with having people walk around on Mars as well. I admit that a human is more versatile than most robot landers but $100 billion spent on robotics research is going to come up with enough advances that many of the limitations of current landers will be forgotten. The difference is robotics research has some obvious and easily exploited benefits where as the benefits of knowing how to build a moon base are somewhat harder to exploit.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't ever go just that there isn't much point in going now. Many people draw parallels with great explorers but I believe that is wrong. For a start most explorers were doing it money not science. At the end of the day the quest for more money (wealth) is what drives science not a desire for a deeper understanding. Explorers of old didn't require massive portions of a nations wealth. Often it was a few ships which while not cheap probably didn't cost proportionally as much. There was also a good chance they would bring something back that would make the mission pay for itself. What are we going to bring back from Mars?
Just remind me again why America is going back to the moon. Did you leave something behind?
Seriously though why go back? Is it because the chinese will be able to get there soon so it's time to flex some muscle and show them who's boss?
I'm not going to whine about how the money could be better spent on feeding the poor etc etc. I firmly believe that the money should be spent on science but come on. Surely you can get more bang for you buck from other areas of research. $100 billion would build a fusion reactor. It would go a long way to producing a hydrogen economy. I could cure a number of diseases. Why fritter it away so that a couple of people can walk around on a not very interesting bit of rock.
And you wonder why people are stranded on the side of the road with a flat they can't change.
Poor choice of example. A friend just bought a new car with run flat tires. If you get a puncture you don't even need to slow down. It's (or perhaps I should say its considering the other posts;o))just another example of where technology has taken a while to fix the problem but it has got there just as it will eventually with grammar checkers.
I hardly understand anything as it is in a few years... maybe I/m just growing old and losing my/\/\ad leet hax0r sk11z. I'll curl up under my blanket with a cup of cocca and think about it while I have a snooze.
Shhhhh, don't give them ideas. If the X-Windows people get sued off the face of the Earth and Linux slowly dies a death it will all be your fault and you will have to live with it for the rest of your days:o). All because of one misplaced comment. Sigh.
I've noticed that I've been getting through a few mice recently as well. Perhaps I should have gone for the warrenty after all.
I admit that a very small number of items aren't badly priced. They really sucker people in on things like CD-Rs and cables though. Their component section (if they have one) is always very expensive as well. I have considered buying a projector from them as well.
We all know this but I can't believe that PC World are actually saying it. They are one of the hardest sellers of extended warranties that I know. They once tried to sell me a warranty for a £10 mouse. IIRC the warranty was £15 but covered me for 3 years! No I don't shop there on a regular basis I just needed a mouse quickly.
As far as I can tell they make their money from running virus scanners on ill informed customers PC's. Their customer service is awful at best even when they are taking large sums of your money. I suppose that is the result of them being the only show in town. The last thing that really bugs me though is that they always have a security guard on the door.
Ok, I must be missing sonething here. I haven't RTA (sorry) but how can Verizon sue the spammers? If the spammers are paying to send the messages then they are at worst in breach of their contract with Verizon? If they aren't paying to send the messages then thats a whole different ball game and surely there must be some form of criminal activity going on. In which case the police should be involved.
I hate spam in all it's forms but I can't help feeling this is like the mail service suing junk mail producers.
Yeah my heart really bleeds for them as well. Don't forget though that the majority of the price of fuel in most European countries is tax. I believe in the UK the fuel tax rate is the equivalent of about 600% (it's actually taxed as a number of pence per litre not a percentage).
While I see the guys point he probably couldn't be more wrong if he tried. I never used to release anything I wrote or developed into the public domain. As restrictions increase though I am more and more inclined to release my material, in part, as a protest. Most of it is not really worth anything to anyone but me but there are a few gems in amongst it that potentially have value.
While I don't imagine everyone will follow my course I imagine that there are suficient like minded people that will do the same to ensure that we will always have a body of public domain work. As restrictions increase public domain works become more and more appealing. Public domain will never replace private domain as there is to much money in it. Public domain work, though, can certainly keep the private domain in check and limit its powers. The only danger is nutty legislation that effectivly bans public domain work and I can't ever see that happening.
I actually don't see copyright as being all that bad. In fact I would go as far as to say I quite like it. The length copyright applies for is far to long. IMHO it should be more like 20 or 30 years but I could be persuaded that it should be somewhat longer. I like the way the author doesn't have to apply to any central body to copyright a work. It just magically happens. That's great because it stops leeches making a quick buck of other peoples work.
I know that some days there isn't a lot going on and today is so obviously one of those. But come on. Why on earth did anyone think that a site squarely pointed at *nix would be interested in this?
Slashdot Mirror
but not via a download. Come on, give us a 4GB iso that can be burnt to a DVD and watched like a regular DVD. Sigh. It's not like it's costing them that much in the way of bandwidth as it's torrented. I imagine that it will probably cost more (bandwidth wise) if they decide to release a full DVD version for download in the future because their won't be so many peers.
It's engineering plain and simple. To dress it up as anything else undermines the skill that is envolved in creating good code. The dictionary (dictionary.com) defines engineering as
The application of scientific and mathematical principles to practical ends such as the design, manufacture, and operation of efficient and economical structures, machines, processes, and systems.if that doesn't define writing code I don't know what does. There is nothing wrong with being an engineer.
I have to question the whole push to next generation dvd. I don't really see that it buys us anything we don't already have and it costs a small fortune with upgrades. If you look at what these companies are intending to ship on HD/BR-DVD it is pretty obvious that, for now at least, they would be better off just sticking with regular DVD. I can only think of a hand full of games that have a DVD version and, lets face it, there is no advantage to the DVD version other than it has fewer disks (eg the graphics / cut scenes aren't any better). Music has fallen flat on it's face on the DVD format because most people think CD quality is good enough. Films might benifit from a switch to HD/BR-DVD but I am very skeptical.
With better compression technologies available now than which DVD first came out I am sure that it would be possible to put a much better quality film (visually at least ;o) on a standard DVD. Personally I think currently DVD quality is generally good enough - there are, I admit, one or two places where the compression shows thorough. I certainly wouldn't even consider buying a film I already own on DVD on HD/BR-DVD.
I wonder if the switch to HD/BR-DVD has more to do with lockign down the media more than it has to do with improving and extending?
Simple, while a company might not have a policy of supporting open source directly most would turn a blind eye to their developers submitting occasional patches and bug reports for problems they find. In this way open source has thousands of highly skilled people checking over the code which it wouldn't otherwise have if the company had chosen a closed source alternative. While it is hard to quantify the loss I'm sure a clause such as was mentioned in the artice would, in the long run, hurt progress on many open source projects.
The point is fairly moot though since the article was, at best, badly worded if not out right wrong.
I really hope you are right. If not I can see free software going the way of the dodo. All the companies I have have worked for have taken a dim view of GPLed code anyway. For the most part they have accepted it into the fold because they are producing web applications that would never be used outside the company. One wiff of the type of clause mentioned in the article and they would ditch GPL software in the blink of an eye.
I think there are probably quite a few companies unknowingly helping open source software. A developer who finds a bug in a piece of open source code is likely to at least flag it to the developers and possibly even develop a patch. While the company might not be directly supporting open source millions of little patches can make for robust software. These patches just wouldn't appear if companies are scared away from the GPL.
I would rather see a unified sound system rather than a unified look and feel. The half dozen different look and feels that are widely used all work in (baiscally) the same way - a buttons a button whatever tool kit you use. Sound on the other hand is a disaster. esd and arts duke it out over who is going to get control of the sound card while some other app that doesn't understand either nips in and addresses alsa directly making the whole thing moot. That's if you can get the sound working at all.
About the only thing I ever have problems with in Linux is getting sound to work properly. It looks like things are only going to get worse in the future with everyone and their uncle writting a next generation sound server. Deep joy.
What I don't understand is how they can fail to make money at $1 a track. Everyone bangs on about how little the artist cough pretty face cough gets paid. so that must therefore mean a large portion, lets say 90c (and I think that 10c to the artist is generous), of that $1 is being spent on other things.
What could possibly cost that much? Recording studios don't come cheap but it's not like they have to be lined in gold. Porduction costs a bob or to. Bandwidth, yep that costs a little as do the servers. I still can't believe that comes to more than 40c though leaving 50c.
My money is on that 50c being spent on marketing the pap to the masses. The record companies want more money per track to market their rubbish to us more not because they are short of money. The true cost of producing the mouse must be peanuts compared to the cost of the marketing and flying over paid execs about.
That's easy to fix just go to Wikipedia and update the article to make it reflect what is needed. Once the trademark has been granted change it back. Problem solved :o)
ITER will cost about $10 billion to build with a running cost of about $4 billion over 20 years (although that seems a little low to me). With what it will cost to play on the moon we could build 10 fusion reactors and probably crack that particular technology.
Thanks, the hydrogen I used always came from a big black cylinder. Seriously though, I understand that hydrogen doesn't grow on trees and that production will always be more expensive energy wise than we recover burning the fuel.
We can, however, place large hydrogen production facilites in uninhabited areas and ship the hydrogen around to where it is needed. I, personnaly, would concrete over the deserts and turn them into hydrogen production plants. At the end of the day we are going to have to destroy some habitat so why not make it the one that is currently most devoid of life.
I quite agree that we need to get off this rock eventually but are we trying to do it now for the wrong reasons? A base on the moon will be about as useful as the IIS. I love the IIS I think it's great that mankind has come together to build something but from a science point of view can you really justify the expense? I can't think of a single piece of technology or widely applicable science that has come about as a result of low gravity experiments. Sure there have been a few interesting results but what have we missed because the money was diverted to building the IIS? I can't help feeling that half the time they are looking for something to do with it now that they have built it. I fear the same result for a moon base.
I have to ask why there is this fascination with having people walk around on Mars as well. I admit that a human is more versatile than most robot landers but $100 billion spent on robotics research is going to come up with enough advances that many of the limitations of current landers will be forgotten. The difference is robotics research has some obvious and easily exploited benefits where as the benefits of knowing how to build a moon base are somewhat harder to exploit.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't ever go just that there isn't much point in going now. Many people draw parallels with great explorers but I believe that is wrong. For a start most explorers were doing it money not science. At the end of the day the quest for more money (wealth) is what drives science not a desire for a deeper understanding. Explorers of old didn't require massive portions of a nations wealth. Often it was a few ships which while not cheap probably didn't cost proportionally as much. There was also a good chance they would bring something back that would make the mission pay for itself. What are we going to bring back from Mars?
Just remind me again why America is going back to the moon. Did you leave something behind?
Seriously though why go back? Is it because the chinese will be able to get there soon so it's time to flex some muscle and show them who's boss?
I'm not going to whine about how the money could be better spent on feeding the poor etc etc. I firmly believe that the money should be spent on science but come on. Surely you can get more bang for you buck from other areas of research. $100 billion would build a fusion reactor. It would go a long way to producing a hydrogen economy. I could cure a number of diseases. Why fritter it away so that a couple of people can walk around on a not very interesting bit of rock.
And you wonder why people are stranded on the side of the road with a flat they can't change.
Poor choice of example. A friend just bought a new car with run flat tires. If you get a puncture you don't even need to slow down. It's (or perhaps I should say its considering the other posts ;o))just another example of where technology has taken a while to fix the problem but it has got there just as it will eventually with grammar checkers.
I hardly understand anything as it is in a few years... maybe I/m just growing old and losing my /\/\ad leet hax0r sk11z. I'll curl up under my blanket with a cup of cocca and think about it while I have a snooze.
Oh you said deaf not blind. Damn, that joke only works in the real world.
Shhhhh, don't give them ideas. If the X-Windows people get sued off the face of the Earth and Linux slowly dies a death it will all be your fault and you will have to live with it for the rest of your days :o). All because of one misplaced comment. Sigh.
I've noticed that I've been getting through a few mice recently as well. Perhaps I should have gone for the warrenty after all.
I admit that a very small number of items aren't badly priced. They really sucker people in on things like CD-Rs and cables though. Their component section (if they have one) is always very expensive as well. I have considered buying a projector from them as well.
Doh! Should have guessed that PC World (the shop) wouldn't be shooting themselves in the foot like that. Thanks. I'll go hide my head in shame now.
We all know this but I can't believe that PC World are actually saying it. They are one of the hardest sellers of extended warranties that I know. They once tried to sell me a warranty for a £10 mouse. IIRC the warranty was £15 but covered me for 3 years! No I don't shop there on a regular basis I just needed a mouse quickly.
As far as I can tell they make their money from running virus scanners on ill informed customers PC's. Their customer service is awful at best even when they are taking large sums of your money. I suppose that is the result of them being the only show in town. The last thing that really bugs me though is that they always have a security guard on the door.
Ok, I must be missing sonething here. I haven't RTA (sorry) but how can Verizon sue the spammers? If the spammers are paying to send the messages then they are at worst in breach of their contract with Verizon? If they aren't paying to send the messages then thats a whole different ball game and surely there must be some form of criminal activity going on. In which case the police should be involved.
I hate spam in all it's forms but I can't help feeling this is like the mail service suing junk mail producers.
Yeah my heart really bleeds for them as well. Don't forget though that the majority of the price of fuel in most European countries is tax. I believe in the UK the fuel tax rate is the equivalent of about 600% (it's actually taxed as a number of pence per litre not a percentage).
While I see the guys point he probably couldn't be more wrong if he tried. I never used to release anything I wrote or developed into the public domain. As restrictions increase though I am more and more inclined to release my material, in part, as a protest. Most of it is not really worth anything to anyone but me but there are a few gems in amongst it that potentially have value.
While I don't imagine everyone will follow my course I imagine that there are suficient like minded people that will do the same to ensure that we will always have a body of public domain work. As restrictions increase public domain works become more and more appealing. Public domain will never replace private domain as there is to much money in it. Public domain work, though, can certainly keep the private domain in check and limit its powers. The only danger is nutty legislation that effectivly bans public domain work and I can't ever see that happening.
I actually don't see copyright as being all that bad. In fact I would go as far as to say I quite like it. The length copyright applies for is far to long. IMHO it should be more like 20 or 30 years but I could be persuaded that it should be somewhat longer. I like the way the author doesn't have to apply to any central body to copyright a work. It just magically happens. That's great because it stops leeches making a quick buck of other peoples work.
I know that some days there isn't a lot going on and today is so obviously one of those. But come on. Why on earth did anyone think that a site squarely pointed at *nix would be interested in this?
This "story" is my vote for worst story ever.
The head shot is the only true stopper.