Not that I would agree with the grandparent (as a small-scale OSS developer I don't, actually), but having the people offering quality code as a community service is exactly what he was arguing against. In other words: he fears that having armies of OSS developers offering their work as a community service will destroy the market for the rest of us, who want to earn for living by exercising the software engineering skills which took years and years of hard work to build up. From your (end-user) point of view, having all software in a free-of-charge GPL form is only a good thing, of course.:-)
To be honest, his stance is not without a merit. However, what he does forget, is that the shrink-wrapped software, which stands in direct competition with the GPL software, makes only a small percentage of the world software market. The vast market of custom-built software is largely unaffected by the GPL.
Yes, the GPL could drive a part of the software engineering world out of bussines (at least the part holding on to their old bussines models) - denying that would be just as ignorant as claiming GPL would be the doom for the software developing world as a such. For the industry as a whole, however, it won't make a difference.
So, how do you define free speech? Is it political speech and not commercial speech? Or is it public speech and not private speech? Or is it short speech and not long speech?
Nothing against free speech in any form, for as long as:
1. it is not forced upon me (i.e. I have the freedom to choose not to listen)
2. it does not force financial costs on me even if I don't want to listen to it
(those two points as far as spamming goes; in general, there would have to be a few points more).
The first amendment guarantees you the right to voice your opinion, NOT the right to force everybody and their dogs to pay for that privilege of yours, or even to listen to you.
"1 order of magnitude more" means "10 times as much". Order of magnitude change is a +/-1 exponential change. From your list above, it seems only Australia contributed an order of magnitude more than China. Yes, this still leaves China in the last place (measured by absolute values various countries donated), but let's not exaggerate.
Surface area of a sphere is 4*pi*r^2, actually.;-)
Anyway, this is not the problem of traveling over a long distance while all the time remaining "attached" to the surface of a (virtual) sphere, as it seems you wanted to imply. The actual (fuel consuming) trouble is reaching the correct altitude with the correct velocity vector.
I suppose the IDC reports are not meant for the average/. reader, but rather for "decision makers" (read: PHBs). Sad as it is, the most managers pay much greater attention to what professional analysts are saying, than to the oppinion of own tech departments.
Having the IDC report in your hand, it should become somewhat easier to introduce Linux in the company you're working for. I say way to go, we need more such papers!
I never actually *learned* how to type. I just started out by looking for a key, then pressing it, and checking whether it was a correct one. I was 13 or 14 years old. By the time I was 18, I was a fast typer already (at least as far as BASIC, Z80 assembler and PASCAL constructs go:-) ). At the time being (I'm over 30), I don't know that many people who can type faster than me. I think your implication that teenagers are somehow hard to teach to type is not valid.
Insightful? I beg to differ! Being allowed to explore the computer (ZX Spectrum with 48K of RAM and 16K of ROM, integrated BASIC) all by myself was the main reason I fell in love with it in the first place. Every little success I achieved by doing so gave me a great feeling and made me want to learn more. I sure am happy my parents didn't look for a "trained instructor" to teach me what I taught myself.
Look, you are obviously a technically informed kind of person, if not even an IT pro. How about sitting down with your kids, giving them a few first hints, maybe a good book too, and see how they'll do on their own? Having trained instructors teach you sure is an extremely valuable thing once you reach a certain level from where moving further forward by means of self-education gets really damn hard. However, for the basics, a trained instructor would more probably scare the kids away, instead of attracting them to the subject.
Uhh... embarrasing.:-) I read "meteorite" and parsed that as "meteor" (for which reason whatsoever). Please receive my appologies - you were right, I was wrong.
Asteroid, actually. Meteorite is an asteroid burning in the atmosphere (aka "shooting star"). As far as I can remember, Iapetus does not have any atmosphere worth mentioning. Check this for details.
Just three days ago I bought myself a 17" Samsung SyncMaster 710N for EUR 360. The salesman told me they never had a single dead pixel complaint with Samsung monitors. A few dead monitors yes, but no dead pixels. With some other brands (he didn't want to get more specific) the dead pixel problem seems to be more common.
A bit off-topic, but anyway: in case somebody is looking for a decent 17" TFT, based on the few days experience I can warmly recommend the 710N. There's a recent review of a bunch of 17" monitors at Tom's hardware page, the 710N became the "Editors Choice" label.
My wife - with respect to operating systems a rather non-tech-knowledgable person - doesn't seem to have any problems whatsoever with Linux, at least as far as text editing, web surfing, listening to our MP3-ized CDs and e-mail goes. The only reason she ever boots to windows is the lack of a specific peace of software she can't do without.
This doesn't mean she'd necessarily be able to install a linux distro from scratch. Of course, she'd most probably have exactly the same trouble installing Windows on a clean box.
(I never found a Linux distro I considered usable)
Off-topic, I know, but anyway: what was the major point that qualified your Linux distros as not usable, and how did your FreeBSD desktop solve those? I mean, there are reasons to choose FreeBSD over Linux (not compelling for me, but YMMV), however this is probably the first time I hear somebody say FreeBSD would be usable on desktop, while in the same sentence claiming Linux is not.
So, you don't have the problems with the stability that I have experienced, or have you learned, by experience, where the "flaky" parts of the editor are? I also dislike the footprint of the OOo, and even LaTeX can sometimes be a pain in the ass, but it seems AbiWord just keeps crashing on me much more often than it does for other people..:-)
I was always wondering what attracts so many people to AbiWord. In my experience, it's not quite stable enough for me to replace the xemacs/LaTeX combination, or (more recently) OOo.
I just gave 2.0.5 a try. Writing a few lines of text, using mixed fonts, all in one section, went well. Then I tried to add a picture in tif format, which didn't work (it seems tif is not supported, at least on my installation). After accidentally trying to import the xcf version of the same picture (xcf is gimp format), AbiWord started to consume almost 100% of the CPU. After some 5-6 minutes, I had to kill it. File size was a few kilobytes, so that can't be the reason. All in all, I managed to bring it to fall by using it for only a few minutes.:-(
Now, this is a rather fresh installation of SuSE 9.1. Previous to this test, I already had some testing experience with older versions of AbiWord - all of which ended similarly. What am I missing? Why are, as it seems, so many people so attracted to AbiWord? It's one of only the few open source programs that never worked for me.
I *have* had quite a few support calls in area where the loss of service doesn't mean a mere loss of revenue, but rather loss of life. Our customers (mostly military, not only in the country I live and work at - we are a global player) were always very satisfied with the quality of both my code as well as my phone and on-site support. In the past few years, I've been spending most of my time fixing the buggy and underperforming software produced - to an extent - off-shore. Software that passed between 2 and 3 independent QA departments as "good", before it came to my desk. My work is a mix of QA, user support, consulting, trouble-shooting, requirement engineering/clarification, customer care and software development (started out as a software developer only). Living with tight deadlines, where missing them means screwing the schedule of a whole bunch of other companies depending on your performance, is the integral part of my job. So, stop making a fool out of yourself by just assuming things about me and my qualifications, or for that matter about the size of my ego, you don't know anything about them.
My original posting was a kind of a QA work too, slapping a little greenhorn who thought hummiliating colleagues was *the* right thing to do as a QA guy. It's not.
And don't worry, my "tummy" was not upset. I was more like amused by your reply than anything else.
I don't have anything against constructive criticism, or agains QA. Au contraire, a good QA is priceless, both from the viewpoint of the company, as well as from the viewpoint of the engineering. Now, if you care to read a few postings back in the thread, you'll see I was responding to a guy whose idea of a constructive QA was first to say "the product of your work sucks", then - after receiving an update - to claim "it still sucks". If that weren't enough, he poked fun at his co-workers clothing style. If that's your idea of a good QA job, you should go back to producing your "award winning software" (whatever that might have been - judging on the style of your post, you most probably just made it up).
Besides, it's rather funny of you to complain about my "soft skills" in the same posting in which you called me a complete prick, shitty, myopic code monkey, called for parental violence against children, expressed your bad feelings about not being in a position to exercise violence against myself (i.e. punch me in the face), and have shown generally zero respect for engineering departments as such (without which, I must add, there'd exist no need for your QA department).
I suppose you now realize which part of the QA staff I had on mind as I wrote my previous post. I'll give you a clue: it's guys like you and like the poster who triggered this sub-thread.
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If you do, you're burned for the rest of your life!
Are you 2-digit-ID guys all burned out like this? :-)
Don't forget the cheerleaders in TX!
I don't know about your driving habits, but suddenly not seeing through the windshield would not exactly reduce my tension. :-)
Not that I would agree with the grandparent (as a small-scale OSS developer I don't, actually), but having the people offering quality code as a community service is exactly what he was arguing against. In other words: he fears that having armies of OSS developers offering their work as a community service will destroy the market for the rest of us, who want to earn for living by exercising the software engineering skills which took years and years of hard work to build up. From your (end-user) point of view, having all software in a free-of-charge GPL form is only a good thing, of course. :-)
To be honest, his stance is not without a merit. However, what he does forget, is that the shrink-wrapped software, which stands in direct competition with the GPL software, makes only a small percentage of the world software market. The vast market of custom-built software is largely unaffected by the GPL.
Yes, the GPL could drive a part of the software engineering world out of bussines (at least the part holding on to their old bussines models) - denying that would be just as ignorant as claiming GPL would be the doom for the software developing world as a such. For the industry as a whole, however, it won't make a difference.
So, how do you define free speech? Is it political speech and not commercial speech? Or is it public speech and not private speech? Or is it short speech and not long speech?
Nothing against free speech in any form, for as long as:
1. it is not forced upon me (i.e. I have the freedom to choose not to listen)
2. it does not force financial costs on me even if I don't want to listen to it
(those two points as far as spamming goes; in general, there would have to be a few points more).
The first amendment guarantees you the right to voice your opinion, NOT the right to force everybody and their dogs to pay for that privilege of yours, or even to listen to you.
> The joke is on Thompson, he reinvented VMS badly.
Sure. UNIX was available for YEARS before VMS came around.
> Here, here!
Where?? WHERE????
"1 order of magnitude more" means "10 times as much". Order of magnitude change is a +/-1 exponential change. From your list above, it seems only Australia contributed an order of magnitude more than China. Yes, this still leaves China in the last place (measured by absolute values various countries donated), but let's not exaggerate.
Just RTFA, and you'll also find it funny.
For impatient: the version of the program described in the article had a bug which made restoring individual files/directories impossible.
Surface area of a sphere is 4*pi*r^2, actually. ;-)
Anyway, this is not the problem of traveling over a long distance while all the time remaining "attached" to the surface of a (virtual) sphere, as it seems you wanted to imply. The actual (fuel consuming) trouble is reaching the correct altitude with the correct velocity vector.
I suppose the IDC reports are not meant for the average /. reader, but rather for "decision makers" (read: PHBs). Sad as it is, the most managers pay much greater attention to what professional analysts are saying, than to the oppinion of own tech departments.
Having the IDC report in your hand, it should become somewhat easier to introduce Linux in the company you're working for. I say way to go, we need more such papers!
I never actually *learned* how to type. I just started out by looking for a key, then pressing it, and checking whether it was a correct one. I was 13 or 14 years old. By the time I was 18, I was a fast typer already (at least as far as BASIC, Z80 assembler and PASCAL constructs go :-) ). At the time being (I'm over 30), I don't know that many people who can type faster than me. I think your implication that teenagers are somehow hard to teach to type is not valid.
Insightful? I beg to differ! Being allowed to explore the computer (ZX Spectrum with 48K of RAM and 16K of ROM, integrated BASIC) all by myself was the main reason I fell in love with it in the first place. Every little success I achieved by doing so gave me a great feeling and made me want to learn more. I sure am happy my parents didn't look for a "trained instructor" to teach me what I taught myself.
Look, you are obviously a technically informed kind of person, if not even an IT pro. How about sitting down with your kids, giving them a few first hints, maybe a good book too, and see how they'll do on their own? Having trained instructors teach you sure is an extremely valuable thing once you reach a certain level from where moving further forward by means of self-education gets really damn hard. However, for the basics, a trained instructor would more probably scare the kids away, instead of attracting them to the subject.
Uhh... embarrasing. :-) I read "meteorite" and parsed that as "meteor" (for which reason whatsoever). Please receive my appologies - you were right, I was wrong.
Asteroid, actually. Meteorite is an asteroid burning in the atmosphere (aka "shooting star"). As far as I can remember, Iapetus does not have any atmosphere worth mentioning. Check this for details.
Just three days ago I bought myself a 17" Samsung SyncMaster 710N for EUR 360. The salesman told me they never had a single dead pixel complaint with Samsung monitors. A few dead monitors yes, but no dead pixels. With some other brands (he didn't want to get more specific) the dead pixel problem seems to be more common.
A bit off-topic, but anyway: in case somebody is looking for a decent 17" TFT, based on the few days experience I can warmly recommend the 710N. There's a recent review of a bunch of 17" monitors at Tom's hardware page, the 710N became the "Editors Choice" label.
My wife - with respect to operating systems a rather non-tech-knowledgable person - doesn't seem to have any problems whatsoever with Linux, at least as far as text editing, web surfing, listening to our MP3-ized CDs and e-mail goes. The only reason she ever boots to windows is the lack of a specific peace of software she can't do without.
This doesn't mean she'd necessarily be able to install a linux distro from scratch. Of course, she'd most probably have exactly the same trouble installing Windows on a clean box.
(I never found a Linux distro I considered usable)
Off-topic, I know, but anyway: what was the major point that qualified your Linux distros as not usable, and how did your FreeBSD desktop solve those? I mean, there are reasons to choose FreeBSD over Linux (not compelling for me, but YMMV), however this is probably the first time I hear somebody say FreeBSD would be usable on desktop, while in the same sentence claiming Linux is not.
Go ask Darl, he'll be happy to finally find somebody who wants to listen.
Not that you'd learn much from his answers, though...
So, you don't have the problems with the stability that I have experienced, or have you learned, by experience, where the "flaky" parts of the editor are? I also dislike the footprint of the OOo, and even LaTeX can sometimes be a pain in the ass, but it seems AbiWord just keeps crashing on me much more often than it does for other people.. :-)
I was always wondering what attracts so many people to AbiWord. In my experience, it's not quite stable enough for me to replace the xemacs/LaTeX combination, or (more recently) OOo.
:-(
I just gave 2.0.5 a try. Writing a few lines of text, using mixed fonts, all in one section, went well. Then I tried to add a picture in tif format, which didn't work (it seems tif is not supported, at least on my installation). After accidentally trying to import the xcf version of the same picture (xcf is gimp format), AbiWord started to consume almost 100% of the CPU. After some 5-6 minutes, I had to kill it. File size was a few kilobytes, so that can't be the reason. All in all, I managed to bring it to fall by using it for only a few minutes.
Now, this is a rather fresh installation of SuSE 9.1. Previous to this test, I already had some testing experience with older versions of AbiWord - all of which ended similarly. What am I missing? Why are, as it seems, so many people so attracted to AbiWord? It's one of only the few open source programs that never worked for me.
I didn't go "emo". I was pointing out facts.
I *have* had quite a few support calls in area where the loss of service doesn't mean a mere loss of revenue, but rather loss of life. Our customers (mostly military, not only in the country I live and work at - we are a global player) were always very satisfied with the quality of both my code as well as my phone and on-site support. In the past few years, I've been spending most of my time fixing the buggy and underperforming software produced - to an extent - off-shore. Software that passed between 2 and 3 independent QA departments as "good", before it came to my desk. My work is a mix of QA, user support, consulting, trouble-shooting, requirement engineering/clarification, customer care and software development (started out as a software developer only). Living with tight deadlines, where missing them means screwing the schedule of a whole bunch of other companies depending on your performance, is the integral part of my job. So, stop making a fool out of yourself by just assuming things about me and my qualifications, or for that matter about the size of my ego, you don't know anything about them.
My original posting was a kind of a QA work too, slapping a little greenhorn who thought hummiliating colleagues was *the* right thing to do as a QA guy. It's not.
And don't worry, my "tummy" was not upset. I was more like amused by your reply than anything else.
I don't have anything against constructive criticism, or agains QA. Au contraire, a good QA is priceless, both from the viewpoint of the company, as well as from the viewpoint of the engineering. Now, if you care to read a few postings back in the thread, you'll see I was responding to a guy whose idea of a constructive QA was first to say "the product of your work sucks", then - after receiving an update - to claim "it still sucks". If that weren't enough, he poked fun at his co-workers clothing style. If that's your idea of a good QA job, you should go back to producing your "award winning software" (whatever that might have been - judging on the style of your post, you most probably just made it up).
Besides, it's rather funny of you to complain about my "soft skills" in the same posting in which you called me a complete prick, shitty, myopic code monkey, called for parental violence against children, expressed your bad feelings about not being in a position to exercise violence against myself (i.e. punch me in the face), and have shown generally zero respect for engineering departments as such (without which, I must add, there'd exist no need for your QA department).
I suppose you now realize which part of the QA staff I had on mind as I wrote my previous post. I'll give you a clue: it's guys like you and like the poster who triggered this sub-thread.
No problems - the /. indentation system can be rather confusing. :-)