The problem with that particular belief in Open Source, is the mistaken belief that pride is the highest motivator. It's not, it's the second-most important.
The primary motivation is the resolution of the writer's personal problem, whether it's a particular feature needed in an existing project, or some entirely new program, or the resolution of some kind of bug.
In all cases, it's to counter a very personal irritant in the software (or lack thereof). The people who get into OSS primarily for the fame/ego find themselves months later losing interest, because there's nothing there to keep them, if not for a more personal motivator; a problem to solve.
Think about it, this is the exact same difference between the "Skript kiddie" and the real hacker. The former may know some programming, but they don't really have the same motivation as the latter.
> And it seems to me that Microsoft chose the name "Windows" to leech off the collective mindshare of such projects as Xwindows.
First of all, X is X. The X window system. "window system" is separate from the X, and not the name of the system, but a description of what X does. "X Window" and "X Windows" are informal names.
As for Windows(tm), it was originally prefaced with the company's name until it became a household name... erm, so to speak.;)
The fact is that Microsoft trademarked it's Windowing system's name, "Windows" before anyone else. While Apple chose the name "Macintosh," Atari "TOS," Amiga "Workbench," Berkeley "GEOS," and so on, Microsoft picked a simple name that stuck to the mind. "Windows." It was a choice that was Microsoft's own, and the name was not stolen. It simply stuck to the brain while the others were forgotten.
Marketing 101, my friends... Pick an easy name, and people will remember it in dollars.
Seems to me that Lindows chose that name specifically to leech off of Microsoft's mindshare. Let's face it, can you give me another reason that would explain that choice in names?
Add to this that the distribution acts a little too dangerously like Windows (complete with the default-administrator-user access), and I can't really say that Microsoft isn't justified in it's attacks on this company.
I work in software retail, and one thing I notice is the number of people who are under the mistaken impression that Lindows is Windows. Add to that the number of people who think it's binary compatibility is perfect (it'll run all their old windows apps). I've yet to see Wine reach that level of accuracy.
I will generally ward people away from this distribution, and point to the green or blue SuSE boxes on the shelf nearby; that's just as easy, and much more secure. (I used to point to the Redhat boxes, but since the personal version has been discontinued, it's more cost-effective for customers to buy SuSE)
You fail to understand one little fact, though. Trusting feelings could be a good indication that the "pattern machine" has supplied an output, but it could also be a false positive based on conditioning. This is why people refer to childrens' minds as impressionable; those impressions are truly unbiased, and the subconscious mind burns these paths the most deeply.
Once those paths are burned, all other paths are burned in relation to these; similar in the way that the Internet is based on branches out from several major backbones; if something takes out the backbones, huge parts of the Internet will be taken out until the backbone is back in operation.
The same applies to the mind; the initial experiences, the ones that are had by children, are deep in the mind, which actually are programmed into the subconscious mind; that mind will match all the person's knowledge with the information that was taken in, and form their solution from the discrepancies.
In cases of mathematics, there's no wiggle room, so naturally, the mind will be more likely to come to a correct conclusion. However, this doesn't mean that sleeping on more subjective matters is going to yield any more than a possible solution flavored by one's own opinions.
Another point, however, the same applies for the above-mentioned attitude; there are a lot of people out there, like myself, who, as they learn more, they realize there's far more out there to know... in short, as they get smarter, the more they realize just how blind they were to the vastness of the topic in which they previously believed themselves close to discovering.
An example:
Once upon a time, doctors were doctors; physicians who knew medical procedures for a large number of ills; the field was limited, and thus, easy enough for one man to practice.
However, as time marched on, the field grew, and grew, and grew; people began to realize that the topic was much, much vaster than previously believed, and thus the age of specialization began; each person focused on a specific part of the body, be it the epidermal layer, the pancreas, eyes, feet, or the nervous system, and focused only on that.
But I digress.
The point here is that the mind is limited, even in the sub- and unconscious minds by the past experiences and opinions that make up a person's emotional makeup; even sleeping on a topic isn't going to make a person change their preconceived notions, unless those notions are recently-acquired. Otherwise, they will usually suffer a catastrophic loss of confidence, sometimes to the point of losing their grip on reality.
After all, what you grew up with defines your perception of reality, and when something so deeply defined is disrupted, even your subconscious mind will doubt the validity of the rest of your deep definitions....or maybe I am just spouting nonsense, who knows?
Politesse is important when conversing with a company that possesses some measure of value to your own, or to individuals who can provide services that can get things done.
This case, he was responding to an extortion threat from a company that has nothing to offer him. It's not necessary to be polite, because the company has already proven that 1: They have nothing of value to him, and 2: They cannot even get the suit over with, much less get anything done!
As such, he used an appropriate economy of words, and spoke as, in my opinion, a true professional.
Interesting that the observation about the high ID number came from an Anonymous poster.
Whether that's a true story or not, I don't care. With the improvements to the 2.6 kernel, if it was close before, it'll dust MS's offerings soon enough.
Besides, I don't worry about it; TCO is useful only if you need to maintain the server; Linux is pretty much self-maintaining these days; security patches are easily applied using whatever package tools each distro provides... if you can set a cronjob, then it becomes very much set and forget.
> Ok, a more serious question: How does downloading a file from the P2P client someone is willingly running trespass on someone's property?
Hacked clients to report the contents of a computer's hard drive? Genuine P2P clients only offer what the actual person permits... hence permission.
> One more: If a person genuinely believes someone else is committing a felony against his property, is he allowed to do otherwise illegal acts (like waving a gun around) in defense?
Self-defence for survival's sake (life/death, not property) is an argument a defendant can use. However, police or otherwise, evidence gotten illegally cannot be admitted in court, and therefore, is useless.
>> It also looks like illegal search and seizure--and an unconstitutional invasion of privacy and misuse of private property.
>The Constitution only restricts the actions of governments, not private groups like the RIAA. (And it doesn't guarantee privacy either.)
Unconstitutional Search and Seizure, Illegal trespassing, same difference. Someone's in someone else's private property without permission. Any questions?
I'm pretty glad that this has occurred. The argument is not about name-holding, but confusing the customer.
I work in software sales, and there's been a good number of times someone was under the impression that Lindows was another version of Windows... just because of the name.
The benefit is that at least I can begin my spiel about Linux.;) Particularly the pretty blue boxes with the picture of the chameleon...
I know there's supposed to be a difference between the two in your post, but I'll have to admit I don't see it... MS's biggest competitor is their older products.
It's not irrelevant; the use of such language in law (Such as the "No Electronic Theft" Act of 1997, where this particular snippet comes from) provides a precedent for translation to future legal situations, such as this particular case.
It has no relevance in the document that spawned it, but it's perfectly valid as an argument, and will expand the use of such language to enforce it where the GPL is concerned.
I wonder if they would try to split the Hobbit into a movie trilogy, simply as a way to be closer to the story in question... I'm still disappointed in the lack of one particular singing being in the LotR...
Slashdot Mirror
> Still, I suppose that the latest story is written by someone who has Clue. I'm told that they exist, even at the BBC.
;)
Careful, now! These are the people who brought us the Doctor... I'm certain it took some amount of "Clue" to manage that, eh?
The problem with that particular belief in Open Source, is the mistaken belief that pride is the highest motivator. It's not, it's the second-most important.
The primary motivation is the resolution of the writer's personal problem, whether it's a particular feature needed in an existing project, or some entirely new program, or the resolution of some kind of bug.
In all cases, it's to counter a very personal irritant in the software (or lack thereof). The people who get into OSS primarily for the fame/ego find themselves months later losing interest, because there's nothing there to keep them, if not for a more personal motivator; a problem to solve.
Think about it, this is the exact same difference between the "Skript kiddie" and the real hacker. The former may know some programming, but they don't really have the same motivation as the latter.
Please, us low-number posters are people, too! We just want to be friends!
Can't we all just... get along?
> And it seems to me that Microsoft chose the name "Windows" to leech off the collective mindshare of such projects as Xwindows.
;)
First of all, X is X. The X window system. "window system" is separate from the X, and not the name of the system, but a description of what X does. "X Window" and "X Windows" are informal names.
As for Windows(tm), it was originally prefaced with the company's name until it became a household name... erm, so to speak.
The fact is that Microsoft trademarked it's Windowing system's name, "Windows" before anyone else. While Apple chose the name "Macintosh," Atari "TOS," Amiga "Workbench," Berkeley "GEOS," and so on, Microsoft picked a simple name that stuck to the mind. "Windows." It was a choice that was Microsoft's own, and the name was not stolen. It simply stuck to the brain while the others were forgotten.
Marketing 101, my friends... Pick an easy name, and people will remember it in dollars.
Seems to me that Lindows chose that name specifically to leech off of Microsoft's mindshare. Let's face it, can you give me another reason that would explain that choice in names?
Add to this that the distribution acts a little too dangerously like Windows (complete with the default-administrator-user access), and I can't really say that Microsoft isn't justified in it's attacks on this company.
I work in software retail, and one thing I notice is the number of people who are under the mistaken impression that Lindows is Windows. Add to that the number of people who think it's binary compatibility is perfect (it'll run all their old windows apps). I've yet to see Wine reach that level of accuracy.
I will generally ward people away from this distribution, and point to the green or blue SuSE boxes on the shelf nearby; that's just as easy, and much more secure. (I used to point to the Redhat boxes, but since the personal version has been discontinued, it's more cost-effective for customers to buy SuSE)
What, no "???" ?
You fail to understand one little fact, though. Trusting feelings could be a good indication that the "pattern machine" has supplied an output, but it could also be a false positive based on conditioning. This is why people refer to childrens' minds as impressionable; those impressions are truly unbiased, and the subconscious mind burns these paths the most deeply.
...or maybe I am just spouting nonsense, who knows?
Once those paths are burned, all other paths are burned in relation to these; similar in the way that the Internet is based on branches out from several major backbones; if something takes out the backbones, huge parts of the Internet will be taken out until the backbone is back in operation.
The same applies to the mind; the initial experiences, the ones that are had by children, are deep in the mind, which actually are programmed into the subconscious mind; that mind will match all the person's knowledge with the information that was taken in, and form their solution from the discrepancies.
In cases of mathematics, there's no wiggle room, so naturally, the mind will be more likely to come to a correct conclusion. However, this doesn't mean that sleeping on more subjective matters is going to yield any more than a possible solution flavored by one's own opinions.
Another point, however, the same applies for the above-mentioned attitude; there are a lot of people out there, like myself, who, as they learn more, they realize there's far more out there to know... in short, as they get smarter, the more they realize just how blind they were to the vastness of the topic in which they previously believed themselves close to discovering.
An example:
Once upon a time, doctors were doctors; physicians who knew medical procedures for a large number of ills; the field was limited, and thus, easy enough for one man to practice.
However, as time marched on, the field grew, and grew, and grew; people began to realize that the topic was much, much vaster than previously believed, and thus the age of specialization began; each person focused on a specific part of the body, be it the epidermal layer, the pancreas, eyes, feet, or the nervous system, and focused only on that.
But I digress.
The point here is that the mind is limited, even in the sub- and unconscious minds by the past experiences and opinions that make up a person's emotional makeup; even sleeping on a topic isn't going to make a person change their preconceived notions, unless those notions are recently-acquired. Otherwise, they will usually suffer a catastrophic loss of confidence, sometimes to the point of losing their grip on reality.
After all, what you grew up with defines your perception of reality, and when something so deeply defined is disrupted, even your subconscious mind will doubt the validity of the rest of your deep definitions.
That response is a professional response.
Politesse is important when conversing with a company that possesses some measure of value to your own, or to individuals who can provide services that can get things done.
This case, he was responding to an extortion threat from a company that has nothing to offer him. It's not necessary to be polite, because the company has already proven that 1: They have nothing of value to him, and 2: They cannot even get the suit over with, much less get anything done!
As such, he used an appropriate economy of words, and spoke as, in my opinion, a true professional.
Yeah! And a hundred, and you get a cool decoder ring! Just the kind of thing to descrable those symbol-font files they issue!
Interesting that the observation about the high ID number came from an Anonymous poster.
;)
Whether that's a true story or not, I don't care. With the improvements to the 2.6 kernel, if it was close before, it'll dust MS's offerings soon enough.
Besides, I don't worry about it; TCO is useful only if you need to maintain the server; Linux is pretty much self-maintaining these days; security patches are easily applied using whatever package tools each distro provides... if you can set a cronjob, then it becomes very much set and forget.
Oh, and Hi, all.
vi vs. EMACS
KDE vs. GNOME
GUI vs. CLI
C++ vs. Java vs. C
Linux vs. *BSD
Since when have we NOT been polarized?!
>> it reads FAT filesystems...
Ah HAH!!! Hence the Patent licensing!!!
Well, Konqueror worked fine.
Yup... Just a case of the dyslexic leading the blind... for a fee.
> Ok, a more serious question: How does downloading a file from the P2P client someone is willingly running trespass on someone's property?
Hacked clients to report the contents of a computer's hard drive? Genuine P2P clients only offer what the actual person permits... hence permission.
> One more: If a person genuinely believes someone else is committing a felony against his property, is he allowed to do otherwise illegal acts (like waving a gun around) in defense?
Self-defence for survival's sake (life/death, not property) is an argument a defendant can use. However, police or otherwise, evidence gotten illegally cannot be admitted in court, and therefore, is useless.
>> It also looks like illegal search and seizure--and an unconstitutional invasion of privacy and misuse of private property.
>The Constitution only restricts the actions of governments, not private groups like the RIAA. (And it doesn't guarantee privacy either.)
Unconstitutional Search and Seizure, Illegal trespassing, same difference. Someone's in someone else's private property without permission. Any questions?
I'm pretty glad that this has occurred. The argument is not about name-holding, but confusing the customer.
;) Particularly the pretty blue boxes with the picture of the chameleon...
I work in software sales, and there's been a good number of times someone was under the impression that Lindows was another version of Windows... just because of the name.
The benefit is that at least I can begin my spiel about Linux.
*chuckle* But who's gonna work it more?
Heh... combine Wasabi with xmms... problem solved. ;)
> Is america litterly going to shop itself out of existance with a blind eye towards supporting our own economy and local jobs?
Of course not... it's taxing it's biggest job providers to death... in the name of helping the needy.
I know there's supposed to be a difference between the two in your post, but I'll have to admit I don't see it... MS's biggest competitor is their older products.
Three words:
Free Zone Alarm.
Any questions?
It's not irrelevant; the use of such language in law (Such as the "No Electronic Theft" Act of 1997, where this particular snippet comes from) provides a precedent for translation to future legal situations, such as this particular case.
It has no relevance in the document that spawned it, but it's perfectly valid as an argument, and will expand the use of such language to enforce it where the GPL is concerned.
What, you mean it's not going to be called DirectXX?
It would certainly get someone's attention...
I wonder if they would try to split the Hobbit into a movie trilogy, simply as a way to be closer to the story in question... I'm still disappointed in the lack of one particular singing being in the LotR...