Do you really think this guy was the first to think of it? Surely you've had like 10 great ideas this week that you don't have the time, resources, or expertise to develop. How would you feel if next year, you finally get around to it, but then get sued by some jerk (or incorporated group of jerks) who beat you to the patent office?
To put it another way, maybe you "wouldn't have thought of it," but surely it doesn't follow that nobody would have or did.
Please notice that I wasn't replying to you, Vellmont, but to Broken_Ladder, who was either trolling, or, if he believes what he said, needs to hear what I told him. I suppose it would have been more clear if I quoted him in my response, since his posts start at 0 points.
Even if you don't understand the necessity of the "spooky action at a distance" idea (I don't understand it either), do you really think that you, John Q. Random Slashdotter, with only a layman's knowledge of physics, have found the obvious truth that pretty much every quantum physicist has missed? Get over yourself.
Well, if a private person is publishing blatent lies on a website, then under threat of lawsuit, they will probably stop and retract the statements. However, if a corporation's reputation is damaged, even by true statements, they will not hesitate to sue. That a lawsuit is taking place therefore lends some credance to the idea that the person believes she was telling the truth, but far less credance to idea that the corporation believes she was lying. People generally have ethics and very limited resources, corporations generally do not.
Maybe the logic is that people who infringe copyright are cyberterrorists. Any money they save by not buying CDs, which they then use to engage in activities, such as buying food, is funding terrorist activities.
How can anybody make such statements about abstract concepts with such authority? It's not like you can mathematically prove that rights are not granted - it's just a philosophy, and there are others. It seems to me like people like that philosophy, because under it, it's easy to frame any reduction in exclusive rights as not just non-beneficial but absolutely wrong. I don't think it's ever that black and white.
The disk drives, SCSI controllers, and to a lesser extent, BIOSes, conform to standards. Thus it really doesn't matter as much whether they are interally open source, closed source, or operated entirely by trained hamsters. As long as their interfacees are standard and open, it's easy to write open source code that works with them. And if it doesn't work, you can at least point to the problem, even if you can't fix it.
The bigger problem is when the interfaces are not publicly described at all. This tends to go hand-in-hand with binary drivers, because it's a result of a similar mindset, but it causes more problems. If the interfaces are proprietary, it's very hard to make a good quality open source driver.
I think that either CD-reader/CD-recorder manufacturers should have disallowed ripping of audio-CD's altogether, or they should have output a DRM-ed data format which can only be written to audio-CD's again by software compliant with SCMS.
Methinks the superior resolution and image quality of those CRTs you're stockpiling won't mean much when the computer you're borrowing from Microsoft won't trust you to play HD movies on it.
Why on earth would a company that has so much at stake, with hundreds of millions of customers around the world, not want to look out for itself within the context of how the government that's regulating the economy frames things?
Obviously a company should and does care about those things. But that does not mean the corporation (as a group) should be allowed to directly influence the democratic process. The employees can vote in the interest of the company, and if these votes aren't enough, the company can (pay to) raise public awareness about the cause. This works out well, because the influence the is proportional to the number of people who are affected by the fate of the company.
And out of curiosity, how does a president go about taking money from poor people? Does he have pictures of all of the congressional reps and senators with goats or something?
That was only a fictional example, designed to convey the idea that most shareholders would be in favor of the company lobbying for a law that would provide short-term benefit to the company, at society's expense.
I guess what it boils down to is, I have a big problem with the fact that the system allows entities with large amounts of cash at their disposal to essentially buy governmental decisions, because I think such decisions should be made by as pure a democratic process as possible. So I view a company participating in this system evil in that regard, and I consider it admirable for a company to abstain. And I'm rather depressed that the overemphasis of money imposed by the corporate system makes it so difficult for a company to do anything that doesn't immediately provide profit, even if everyone in the company agrees it's the right thing to do.
Perhaps I ought to clarify that a bit. It's not that I don't mind shoddy software (I despise it), it's that I respect the right of an organization to write shoddy software. It shouldn't be illegal. I do not, however, respect the right of corporations to directly influence the democratic process. (Business practices are kind of a grey area - on the one hand, that's the breaks, on the other, at least some regulation is necessary.)
Before everyone can complain about Slashdot's irrational love for Google, let me make it known that it's coming to an end, at least for me. My biggest complaint about Microsoft hasn't really been so much about poor software that doesn't obey standards, or horrible market practices, but that they're actively spending huge amounts of money to influence the Government of my country in ways that directly benefit them, at my expense. It's a sad fact that money has a huge influence on government, and that Bill Gates has more influence on government that probably thousands of regular voters combined. Google used to be above all this, but if they're not?
Granted they haven't done anything yet. But simply by buying governments, they make it so that in order not to be evil, their politics have to agree with mine, which means they won't agree with someone else. And why would they agree with me? Hiring lobyists is clearly the kind of thing they had to do to placate shareholders, who only care about money and would see nothing wrong if Google elected a president to do nothing but take money from poor people and give it to Google. It seems like because of this effect, it's really hard for a publicly traded company to stay "Non-Evil" (tm) for long.
One big practical limitation is that you can't actually take advantage of multiple CPUs. This used to not be very important, but with dual-core CPUs available, it's likely there will be a huge increase in the number of desktop machines with SMP. Granted you could modify these systems to run in two threads, but then you lose the cross-platform abilities which are the main benefit. If you can create 2 threads on all systems you support, why not just create as many as you need? It ends up making more sense to abstract the threading and locking primitives provided by the OSs you run on.
I agree with the first part, but regionalized licensing? Ugh. Presumably if Linux is doing less well in America's "there's no such thing as a free lunch" society, you'd want to change the license in America. To what?
At the moment, if some company can't bring itself to trust something it didn't pay for, there are plenty of companies that will "sell" them Linux. Or rather Linux support, which the decision makers probably can't distinguish from Linux itself anyway.
How do you explain the relative unpopularity of all the BSDs then? At the time Linux was made, they were technically superior to it and more widely distributed, but Linux has eclipsed them in popularity and attracted more developers.
As for freedom, it's not the users's freedom that's being affected in any way, it's the developers' freedom (and the users' freedom to become a developer). And it's not like limiting freedoms for the greater good is a new thing - that's pretty much the basis for all laws, even copyright.
And what's wrong with that? If doing something bad creates an opportunity to do good, then, given that the bad thing has already been done, surely it's better to take the opportunity for good than to waste it. If you're going to kill them anyway, you may as well use their organs.
Just admit it - you wish you'd thought of it first. I don't see anything fraudulent about it at all; there's no law saying you can't sell something for more than it's worth.
It sounds like your opinions don't fit into either of the two major parties - so why not vote for a third party candidiate? It doesn't really matter which one; at this point voting third party really just means "I want there to be a third party."
4. But, assuming your "scenario" is somehow remotely possible, have you ever heard of a public library? Free use of Internet-ready PC's with IE installed are available to anyone. In most cases you don't even need a library card, you just walk up, sit down, and start surfing.
Yes, because all libraries use IBM PCs running Windows and Explorer. Oh wait, that isn't the case. Granted many do (thus wasting our tax money on an overly-expensive solution), but that's the point. The point is, we're not talking about some company that is free to lose customers if it wants, we're talking about The Government, which is supposed to cater to everybody, and which is specifically designed to avoid tyranny of the majority, which is what you're advocating.
Slashdot Mirror
To put it another way, maybe you "wouldn't have thought of it," but surely it doesn't follow that nobody would have or did.
Please notice that I wasn't replying to you, Vellmont, but to Broken_Ladder, who was either trolling, or, if he believes what he said, needs to hear what I told him. I suppose it would have been more clear if I quoted him in my response, since his posts start at 0 points.
Even if you don't understand the necessity of the "spooky action at a distance" idea (I don't understand it either), do you really think that you, John Q. Random Slashdotter, with only a layman's knowledge of physics, have found the obvious truth that pretty much every quantum physicist has missed? Get over yourself.
Meh - 4GB ought to be enough for anybody.
Well, if a private person is publishing blatent lies on a website, then under threat of lawsuit, they will probably stop and retract the statements. However, if a corporation's reputation is damaged, even by true statements, they will not hesitate to sue. That a lawsuit is taking place therefore lends some credance to the idea that the person believes she was telling the truth, but far less credance to idea that the corporation believes she was lying. People generally have ethics and very limited resources, corporations generally do not.
Maybe the logic is that people who infringe copyright are cyberterrorists. Any money they save by not buying CDs, which they then use to engage in activities, such as buying food, is funding terrorist activities.
Yeah right - downloaders are freeloaders, like every red-blooded American!
How can anybody make such statements about abstract concepts with such authority? It's not like you can mathematically prove that rights are not granted - it's just a philosophy, and there are others. It seems to me like people like that philosophy, because under it, it's easy to frame any reduction in exclusive rights as not just non-beneficial but absolutely wrong. I don't think it's ever that black and white.
The bigger problem is when the interfaces are not publicly described at all. This tends to go hand-in-hand with binary drivers, because it's a result of a similar mindset, but it causes more problems. If the interfaces are proprietary, it's very hard to make a good quality open source driver.
Why is it impossible to produce gasoline from electrical power (and water and CO2)?
I think that would have sucked.
Methinks the superior resolution and image quality of those CRTs you're stockpiling won't mean much when the computer you're borrowing from Microsoft won't trust you to play HD movies on it.
Obviously a company should and does care about those things. But that does not mean the corporation (as a group) should be allowed to directly influence the democratic process. The employees can vote in the interest of the company, and if these votes aren't enough, the company can (pay to) raise public awareness about the cause. This works out well, because the influence the is proportional to the number of people who are affected by the fate of the company.
And out of curiosity, how does a president go about taking money from poor people? Does he have pictures of all of the congressional reps and senators with goats or something?
That was only a fictional example, designed to convey the idea that most shareholders would be in favor of the company lobbying for a law that would provide short-term benefit to the company, at society's expense.
I guess what it boils down to is, I have a big problem with the fact that the system allows entities with large amounts of cash at their disposal to essentially buy governmental decisions, because I think such decisions should be made by as pure a democratic process as possible. So I view a company participating in this system evil in that regard, and I consider it admirable for a company to abstain. And I'm rather depressed that the overemphasis of money imposed by the corporate system makes it so difficult for a company to do anything that doesn't immediately provide profit, even if everyone in the company agrees it's the right thing to do.
Perhaps I ought to clarify that a bit. It's not that I don't mind shoddy software (I despise it), it's that I respect the right of an organization to write shoddy software. It shouldn't be illegal. I do not, however, respect the right of corporations to directly influence the democratic process. (Business practices are kind of a grey area - on the one hand, that's the breaks, on the other, at least some regulation is necessary.)
Granted they haven't done anything yet. But simply by buying governments, they make it so that in order not to be evil, their politics have to agree with mine, which means they won't agree with someone else. And why would they agree with me? Hiring lobyists is clearly the kind of thing they had to do to placate shareholders, who only care about money and would see nothing wrong if Google elected a president to do nothing but take money from poor people and give it to Google. It seems like because of this effect, it's really hard for a publicly traded company to stay "Non-Evil" (tm) for long.
One big practical limitation is that you can't actually take advantage of multiple CPUs. This used to not be very important, but with dual-core CPUs available, it's likely there will be a huge increase in the number of desktop machines with SMP. Granted you could modify these systems to run in two threads, but then you lose the cross-platform abilities which are the main benefit. If you can create 2 threads on all systems you support, why not just create as many as you need? It ends up making more sense to abstract the threading and locking primitives provided by the OSs you run on.
At the moment, if some company can't bring itself to trust something it didn't pay for, there are plenty of companies that will "sell" them Linux. Or rather Linux support, which the decision makers probably can't distinguish from Linux itself anyway.
As for freedom, it's not the users's freedom that's being affected in any way, it's the developers' freedom (and the users' freedom to become a developer). And it's not like limiting freedoms for the greater good is a new thing - that's pretty much the basis for all laws, even copyright.
And what's wrong with that? If doing something bad creates an opportunity to do good, then, given that the bad thing has already been done, surely it's better to take the opportunity for good than to waste it. If you're going to kill them anyway, you may as well use their organs.
Of course it won't happen - not when people have an attitude like that. *sigh*
Just admit it - you wish you'd thought of it first. I don't see anything fraudulent about it at all; there's no law saying you can't sell something for more than it's worth.
It sounds like your opinions don't fit into either of the two major parties - so why not vote for a third party candidiate? It doesn't really matter which one; at this point voting third party really just means "I want there to be a third party."
4. But, assuming your "scenario" is somehow remotely possible, have you ever heard of a public library? Free use of Internet-ready PC's with IE installed are available to anyone. In most cases you don't even need a library card, you just walk up, sit down, and start surfing. Yes, because all libraries use IBM PCs running Windows and Explorer. Oh wait, that isn't the case. Granted many do (thus wasting our tax money on an overly-expensive solution), but that's the point. The point is, we're not talking about some company that is free to lose customers if it wants, we're talking about The Government, which is supposed to cater to everybody, and which is specifically designed to avoid tyranny of the majority, which is what you're advocating.
RAmen, brother.
When, exactly, was SCO in a position to start new legal actions? It hasn't stopped them before, why would it stop them now?