1) Creationists claim the science doesn't provide thorough enough proof of evolution 2) Evolutionary biologists should fudge their results to re-define something as being proof 3) ??? 4) Profit Something makes me think this scheme would just give creationists a big stick labelled "evolutionists fudge their results; it's all a load of cobblers" to beat the biologists with.
Agreed, although this is one reason why Firefox will likely still have a life -- it's unaffiliated with a company that makes money through advertising.
You mean apart from Google providing the vast majority of their funding, in exchange for Firefox pointing its default homepage and search provider to Google.
Go check out an original version of Grimm's Fairy Tales. I can guarantee you it won't be the Disneyfied stuff you're force feeding your kid.
Go pick (even at random) any historical culture. Look at their myths. Those won't be the Disneyfied crap you're force feeding your kid.
Go look up the ancient Romans or Greeks, the foundation of Western Civilization. I bet there'd be a lot of stuff you wouldn't let your kid see.
There are many things that I would let my son see that I would not let him be. Seeing that bullying and victimisation occur, and that unfortunately there are people in the world who enjoy being nasty, yes at some point he needs to see that. But being a bully and getting enjoyment from inflicting violence on defenseless victims without any possibility of facing consequences (because the player is the person outside the game holding the controller, not the pixellated on-screen figure), no.
Though it's sad that we do, we've seen enough actual shootings to base our decisions on actual data.
Happily, in countries with decent gun controls, we haven't.
This (incomplete) list has six.
Meanwhile, the US had 9 just in 2008 alone. Wowsers.
Show me one example of a gunman who chose to commit mass murder in a location where he knew he'd encounter armed resistance.
Since you asked for only one - plenty of guns drive up and down the highways each day, and the Beltway snipers didn't seem to care.
And those [accidents at home causing death by handguns] are relevant to this discussion how?
Hmm, let me think how innocent deaths by handguns might be relevant to a conversation about preventing innocent deaths by handguns. Tricky one; I'll get back to you on that.
"Hello, I'm having a problem with my Linux computer. The SuperSpoodle application says it won't work because it has the wrong version of something called ffmpeg" "I see. Ok, I'll talk you through updating that package. Do you usually use yum, yast, apt-get, or portage?" "What are those?" "They are package updaters. Ok, do you use Debian, Ubuntu, Suse, Gentoo, Fedora, or Linspire?" "What are those?" "Ok, maybe it would be easier if you just brought up a terminal window and I'll tell you letter by letter what to type" "Ok, how do I bring up a terminal window?" "Well, if there's not an icon on your desktop, then it depends. Does your Linux computer use Gnome, KDE, XFCE, or Enlightenment?" "Um, what are those?" "Those are different windowing environments you might have. Depending on which you have, the menus and interface could be very different."
(pregnant pause).
"I see... would it be possible to install Windows on this machine?" "Bring it in and we can do it overnight." "Thanks."
I don't think you thought this through. If software developers are held liable, especially for FOOS, then only the wealthy could afford to buy software. It would cost too much for open source projects to buy insurance. And commercial software, if it existed, would cost too much as well.
Silly argument. By that argument only the rich would be able to afford anything at all, as [in most countries] there is a statutory right that anything you buy is "of merchantable quality". Heck, even the company that sold me the bed I bought had to send someone out to fix it when it arrived with a part not nailed on properly, and yet most people [who are not homeless] can afford to purchase a bed to sleep in.
Haven't these people learned that they are just going to cause a much bigger problem then they are trying to solve? It saddens me to see how they are going after everything but the cause of it. Banning paintballing isn't going to solve a thing, stuff like this is still going to happen. Next thing you know they are going to try and ban all FPS games over there. Get to the root of the problem, not something they "think" is the cause.
Actually some aspects of the proposed laws do indeed get to the root of the problem. For instance tightening the restrictions on how registered guns are stored (the gun in this shooting was registered by the father but was not locked away -- had it been, this particular shooting certainly would have been much more difficult). As it is, there's talk of punishing the father through "involuntary manslaughter" under the existing laws (because the father knew his son was depressed and should have known this might happen) but that seems like vague retribution for the incident having occurred rather than unambiguous preventative legislation instructing gun owners that their guns must be securely locked away. Banning paintball is an odd reaction, but so far this is only a proposed bill -- AFAIK it's usual for proposed bills to be debated and to have things that turn out to be a bit silly taken out of them on the way through parliament (the Bundestag).
This time, as expected, the dialog box popped up explaining what the problem was, and exactly what to do to fix it. When I asked if she'd ever seen it before, she said "Oh yeah, I just click OK whenever I see it". I pointed out to her the first sentence in the box, which was something like "WARNING: read this carefully or you will probably lose important data!". Somehow, "lose important data" was not the same as "Why isn't the program remembering what I typed?".
And this was no idiot - she was a well trained, college/university graduated professional! There is lots of humor in society about the stupidity of the average Joe. Remember that, by definition, half of everybody is even dumber than that. Sad, when you think about it, huh?
Your users are not stupid; they have simply been desensitised by an endless stream of trivial messages marked "Warning" and "Important", and have intelligently deduced that those words are not meaningful because they are attached to every dang message and pop-up they receive. Ever notice how many pieces of trivial junk mail have the word "Important" on them? "Important notice for car-owners" about the latest insurance offer. "Warning! You may be paying too much for your haircut", etc. And recorded phone calls... "This is an important announcement about your finances... call Rip-Off-Consolidators Ltd for the best deals in town". Not to mention the endless stream "Warning! Contents of this coffee cup may be hot" [I dang well hope so]. And the "Important" license agreements that are actually irrelevant to your staff when they start corporate-installed software for the first time [the company has already made that decision], but must nonetheless click through. The "Important" email announcement about HR training on the safe way to open an envelope (warning of the terrible dangers of a paper cut)... The "important" notice on the intranet page about staff inductions (the only useful content of which is "where's the stationery kept").
It's mainly the cost of buying a car. The value of a car goes down the more you drive it. Drive it 200,000 miles and the car you might have bought new for $22K is now worth $2K. That's ten cents per mile. If you don't drive your car into the ground, and buy a new one after five years or so, then you probably lost value equivalent to 20 cents per mile. And then there's the cost of insurance. To get the big savings, you'd have to be able to do without a car, or if you're in a couple, share one car instead of having two.
So why don't they include the costs of your groceries going up because you can no longer get to that big cheap out-of-town supermarket but are having to buy your groceries at the more expensive local corner store or pay for delivery services. And (unless you do nothing but sit home of an evening), you've then got additional taxi fares to include (no buses after 7pm) to get you where you would have gone...
I think the correct balance is that the government owns the infrastructure (rail, roads, etc.) while companies provide the services on them. That way you get the benefit of limiting redundancy while providing competition. Whether that reflects the situation in the UK with the subsidies/etc. is another question.
That is the situation in the UK -- National Rail (a not-for-profit) owns the lines, and private operators run the trains. However, it still turns into a natural monopoly for the operators as you can't have two different companies operating a 7.55 to London on the same single piece of track. One of them has to delay slightly to, say, an 8.05 that now leaves yet another 10 minutes after the connecting bus arrives, and so is less ideal for customers, and if the 7.55 is running late all heck breaks loose on the timetabling as two companies need to sort it out between them. In fact, the UK sells local monopoly licenses to ensure that a single company runs the rail services in a particular area, making coordination more efficient but ensuring it really is a monopoly; pricing is then regulated by a government agency.
The biggest issue is actually a lack of redundancy -- the land surrounding railway lines has been sold off by governments that were keen on private enterprise and realising value, a lot of it has been built on, and so it's now almost impossible to add extra parallel tracks to add capacity to overloaded routes (it would cost many billions just to re-purchase the land back).
The ??? used to be selling the attention you generate on your free service to advertisers. Google AdSense being the most profitable one for many. But it seems like the attention economy is coming to an end, or at least the potential has been greatly reduced.
Twitter doesn't include ads in their tweets or even on their website. According to this Create a Revenue Model for Twitter contest they don't generate any revenue.
Twitter isn't worth anything right now other than what investors would like to get back if they sell. I can't think of any way that their customer base could financially benefit any other company. The folks at Twitter seem to be in the same boat since they haven't been able to generate any significant revenue from their users.
If I recall correctly (via the unsubstantiated-rumour-mill) business model for Twitter is supposed to work the other way around -- not advertising, but market research. Twitter cannot realistically advertise in a 160 character message; but they can data-mine the heck out of the posts made by several million people multiple times a day, and sell that collective intelligence back to companies. Want to know what the reaction is to the new multi-million dollar tv advert campaign you just launched? The responses will be appearing on Twitter within a day or so of it airing, ready to be mined. Is the proposed government policy on childcare tax rebates likely to be popular? Let's see what several hundred thousand voters just posted about it on Twitter.
If they are not allowed in the UK, then why is one of the running jokes in the Alex comic (Alex Masterly) about gardening leave? If I understand the context right it is about non-competes, although in the 6 month to 1 year range.
Traditionally, gardening leave was something given to incompetent executives. They're on a (say) two year contract, so it would be expensive to get rid of them quickly -- have to pay out the contract. So instead you stick them on gardening leave, paying out the contract slowly, but at least stopping them from earning yet more by going to your competitor (and telling them all your plans). It's different from a non-compete because the person on gardening leave is still under a paid contract.
Some people are receiving documents created in OpenOffice. Microsoft would like to have these people open those documents in Microsoft Office rather than download OpenOffice to open them. Otherwise, the next thing you know, people might actually use OpenOffice to create new documents. Ugh! This FOSS stuff spreads just like a virus!
How much browsing is done through the "default browser" setting anyway? Maybe the occasional click of an email link. Surely most of the time, however, browsers are invoked directly by double-clicking the icon of your usual browser, rather than through invoking the Windows default browser setting. And most browsers have an automatic pop-up asking you if you want to set them as your default browser, with "yes" pre-checked (as well as "run this check every time"), so most non-techy users would very quickly end right up back with their old browser setting again, just through their habit of saying OK without thinking very much.
IE remains the biggest security problem in Windows (besides user stupidity).
If webpages can override the render engine in IE8 then IE8 is only as secure as the worst render engine.
Hmm, seems a little like saying that a slightly sour aftertaste is the biggest problem with strychnine (besides death).
In any case, web pages can already call up any number of plugins the user probably has installed, already making browsers only as secure as the worst plugin (Adobe Reader being the popular culprit of the moment). The users who aren't savvy enough to be able to switch the browser default almost certainly aren't savvy enough to know which of their installed plugins are flawed.
Whenever you list online media sources like Hulu, you should remember they are available in the USA only due to restrictive regional licensing agreements by the major media cartels. The rest of the world can only download the same content illegally.
Stunningly enough, however, the rest of the world does have some technical nouse of its own, and isn't just twiddling its thumbs in the dark. iPlayer, iView, 4od,... rather a lot of channels in non-US countries provide their own Web TV services.
something hard to attain by price is folly, and are only treasured by the shallowest of humanity.
Those that work HARD are always more celebrated and respected. It's why a man that builds his own hotrod is far, FAR, more respected than the rich guy that bought his.
And yet the woolly jumper I knitted just doesn't seem to get the Prada-like respect it deserves.
IANAL but would this not be grounds for a mistrial and sanctions against the judge in question? I am pretty sure that in America, if you have a bias due to affiliation then you should recuse yourself from the case as a judge. I am not sure about Sweden, but this would only make sense since a judge is _supposed_ to be fair and impartial.
Maybe Jack Thompson should try that argument to get his license back: "I'm sorry but your decision to refuse my attempted appeal is invalid because you're biased by having been members of a Bar Association like the one that made the original decision. I demand my case be heard by someone who's never been a lawyer!"
Congratulations! With your very example [the original poster] actually managed to disprove [his] original assertion. See, [his] original claim was this:
"As the owner of a software development company I think your would have to be stark raving nuts to open source your main product."
But, the very first paragraph in that quoted text demonstrates that isn't actually the case. The community was very happy with and supportive of MySQL corporate.
The problem, as [he] pointed out, was the purchase by Sun. In that case, the customers didn't feel Sun would necessarily have their interests at heart, and so there was dissatisfaction. This is only increased by the fact that Sun has now been purchased by Oracle, a company that actually markets a product in the same general space (I would argue they aren't actually in the same market, and so MySQL has little to fear, but... people aren't exactly rational).
Unfortunately, in a business sense that's not good enough. If the community is blissfully happy with SuperGPLSoftwareStartup but nervous enough to fork the product if they get bought out, then SuperGPLSoftwareStartup is screwed. Young companies have venture capital funders, who are interested in an exit strategy -- how they will get their money back. That isn't "earning profits over twenty years" but an exit through a sale to a larger company or (more rarely) through an IPO. Both of those involve changes in ownership (and likely management) of the company, raising those "will they still have our interests at heart" questions.
It's quite possible that what we are seeing is the death of the GPL/commercial dual license business model. If Sun do not get any value from their purchase (but the community quickly forks MySQL) then the lesson will be quickly learned (not just by Sun) that buying GPL software companies is probably not worthwhile. Very quickly, VC firms would then realise that their main exit strategy from GPL software firms probably won't ever work again. That would translate into a rule of thumb "if your business plan contains the letters GPL, it will instantly go in the bin and never be funded".
Many years ago I worked at the Harvey Norman computer chain in Australia and the games guys often took games home at the weekend to check out. The reasoning was simple - if you've played a game and a customer wants advice on which game to buy you're in a position where you actually know what you're talking about rather than just staring at them blankly.
This was before the days of the internet being widely available, but I think the policy still holds true. If you're buying a game at a marked up price from your local software mart then the staff there better know what they're selling - otherwise how can you justify the retail space and the markup?
So far from being a scandal, I call this sensible business practice.
We do the same thing with Chup-A-Chup lollies. Give each flavour a bit of a lick, so the shop assistant can give knowledgeable advice about them, then wrap the lollies back up and sell them as new. After all, it'd be a waste of cash to actually set aside ones for the employees and not sell them. That'd just not be sensible business practice.
I'm concerned that my blue-sky thinking will be obscured by your cloud computing. Any advice?
We're hoping the collision of the different cloud paradigms will cause them to coalesce into a more tangible form, precipitating the knowledge and tools across the umbrella of all the technology community, from where it will flow into a deep reservoir of accumulated experience that can be processed, filtered, and piped out to the wider business community on tap. (To complete the water cycle analogy, the business suits will then piss it away, it'll all go down the sewer, and the industry will be all at sea until finally everything we've all worked on just evaporates.)
It's also costing $2,000 per person (far higher per tax payer)... it seems this kind of money could be better spent.
Hmm, by the time they wholesale out to ISPs -- perhaps in the same manner that electricity is retailed in Queensland -- and perhaps charge broadcasters for access to the network, the return on investment might be less than a decade. That's not bad for a government infrastructure project. Especially when a fair chunk of the money spent comes right back to the government in income tax, company taxes, etc.
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What do you mean they're not cheap? The corrugated steel roof has been the roof of choice for people who can't afford tarpaper for ages.
They're also one of the most common kinds of roof in Australian houses. Though it does tend to look a bit better than the kind you are referring to.
1) Creationists claim the science doesn't provide thorough enough proof of evolution
2) Evolutionary biologists should fudge their results to re-define something as being proof
3) ???
4) Profit
Something makes me think this scheme would just give creationists a big stick labelled "evolutionists fudge their results; it's all a load of cobblers" to beat the biologists with.
Agreed, although this is one reason why Firefox will likely still have a life -- it's unaffiliated with a company that makes money through advertising.
You mean apart from Google providing the vast majority of their funding, in exchange for Firefox pointing its default homepage and search provider to Google.
Postgresql has a terrible marketing and image, mysql doesn't.
Everyone knows that postgresql is hiding a monstrous secret.
Go check out an original version of Grimm's Fairy Tales. I can guarantee you it won't be the Disneyfied stuff you're force feeding your kid. Go pick (even at random) any historical culture. Look at their myths. Those won't be the Disneyfied crap you're force feeding your kid. Go look up the ancient Romans or Greeks, the foundation of Western Civilization. I bet there'd be a lot of stuff you wouldn't let your kid see.
There are many things that I would let my son see that I would not let him be. Seeing that bullying and victimisation occur, and that unfortunately there are people in the world who enjoy being nasty, yes at some point he needs to see that. But being a bully and getting enjoyment from inflicting violence on defenseless victims without any possibility of facing consequences (because the player is the person outside the game holding the controller, not the pixellated on-screen figure), no.
Though it's sad that we do, we've seen enough actual shootings to base our decisions on actual data.
Happily, in countries with decent gun controls, we haven't.
This (incomplete) list has six.
Meanwhile, the US had 9 just in 2008 alone. Wowsers.
Show me one example of a gunman who chose to commit mass murder in a location where he knew he'd encounter armed resistance.
Since you asked for only one - plenty of guns drive up and down the highways each day, and the Beltway snipers didn't seem to care.
And those [accidents at home causing death by handguns] are relevant to this discussion how?
Hmm, let me think how innocent deaths by handguns might be relevant to a conversation about preventing innocent deaths by handguns. Tricky one; I'll get back to you on that.
"Hello, I'm having a problem with my Linux computer. The SuperSpoodle application says it won't work because it has the wrong version of something called ffmpeg"
"I see. Ok, I'll talk you through updating that package. Do you usually use yum, yast, apt-get, or portage?"
"What are those?"
"They are package updaters. Ok, do you use Debian, Ubuntu, Suse, Gentoo, Fedora, or Linspire?"
"What are those?"
"Ok, maybe it would be easier if you just brought up a terminal window and I'll tell you letter by letter what to type"
"Ok, how do I bring up a terminal window?"
"Well, if there's not an icon on your desktop, then it depends. Does your Linux computer use Gnome, KDE, XFCE, or Enlightenment?"
"Um, what are those?"
"Those are different windowing environments you might have. Depending on which you have, the menus and interface could be very different."
(pregnant pause).
"I see ... would it be possible to install Windows on this machine?"
"Bring it in and we can do it overnight."
"Thanks."
I don't think you thought this through. If software developers are held liable, especially for FOOS, then only the wealthy could afford to buy software. It would cost too much for open source projects to buy insurance. And commercial software, if it existed, would cost too much as well.
Silly argument. By that argument only the rich would be able to afford anything at all, as [in most countries] there is a statutory right that anything you buy is "of merchantable quality". Heck, even the company that sold me the bed I bought had to send someone out to fix it when it arrived with a part not nailed on properly, and yet most people [who are not homeless] can afford to purchase a bed to sleep in.
Haven't these people learned that they are just going to cause a much bigger problem then they are trying to solve? It saddens me to see how they are going after everything but the cause of it. Banning paintballing isn't going to solve a thing, stuff like this is still going to happen. Next thing you know they are going to try and ban all FPS games over there. Get to the root of the problem, not something they "think" is the cause.
Actually some aspects of the proposed laws do indeed get to the root of the problem. For instance tightening the restrictions on how registered guns are stored (the gun in this shooting was registered by the father but was not locked away -- had it been, this particular shooting certainly would have been much more difficult). As it is, there's talk of punishing the father through "involuntary manslaughter" under the existing laws (because the father knew his son was depressed and should have known this might happen) but that seems like vague retribution for the incident having occurred rather than unambiguous preventative legislation instructing gun owners that their guns must be securely locked away. Banning paintball is an odd reaction, but so far this is only a proposed bill -- AFAIK it's usual for proposed bills to be debated and to have things that turn out to be a bit silly taken out of them on the way through parliament (the Bundestag).
This time, as expected, the dialog box popped up explaining what the problem was, and exactly what to do to fix it. When I asked if she'd ever seen it before, she said "Oh yeah, I just click OK whenever I see it". I pointed out to her the first sentence in the box, which was something like "WARNING: read this carefully or you will probably lose important data!". Somehow, "lose important data" was not the same as "Why isn't the program remembering what I typed?". And this was no idiot - she was a well trained, college/university graduated professional! There is lots of humor in society about the stupidity of the average Joe. Remember that, by definition, half of everybody is even dumber than that. Sad, when you think about it, huh?
Your users are not stupid; they have simply been desensitised by an endless stream of trivial messages marked "Warning" and "Important", and have intelligently deduced that those words are not meaningful because they are attached to every dang message and pop-up they receive. Ever notice how many pieces of trivial junk mail have the word "Important" on them? "Important notice for car-owners" about the latest insurance offer. "Warning! You may be paying too much for your haircut", etc. And recorded phone calls... "This is an important announcement about your finances ... call Rip-Off-Consolidators Ltd for the best deals in town". Not to mention the endless stream "Warning! Contents of this coffee cup may be hot" [I dang well hope so]. And the "Important" license agreements that are actually irrelevant to your staff when they start corporate-installed software for the first time [the company has already made that decision], but must nonetheless click through. The "Important" email announcement about HR training on the safe way to open an envelope (warning of the terrible dangers of a paper cut)... The "important" notice on the intranet page about staff inductions (the only useful content of which is "where's the stationery kept").
It's mainly the cost of buying a car. The value of a car goes down the more you drive it. Drive it 200,000 miles and the car you might have bought new for $22K is now worth $2K. That's ten cents per mile. If you don't drive your car into the ground, and buy a new one after five years or so, then you probably lost value equivalent to 20 cents per mile. And then there's the cost of insurance. To get the big savings, you'd have to be able to do without a car, or if you're in a couple, share one car instead of having two.
So why don't they include the costs of your groceries going up because you can no longer get to that big cheap out-of-town supermarket but are having to buy your groceries at the more expensive local corner store or pay for delivery services. And (unless you do nothing but sit home of an evening), you've then got additional taxi fares to include (no buses after 7pm) to get you where you would have gone...
I think the correct balance is that the government owns the infrastructure (rail, roads, etc.) while companies provide the services on them. That way you get the benefit of limiting redundancy while providing competition. Whether that reflects the situation in the UK with the subsidies/etc. is another question.
That is the situation in the UK -- National Rail (a not-for-profit) owns the lines, and private operators run the trains. However, it still turns into a natural monopoly for the operators as you can't have two different companies operating a 7.55 to London on the same single piece of track. One of them has to delay slightly to, say, an 8.05 that now leaves yet another 10 minutes after the connecting bus arrives, and so is less ideal for customers, and if the 7.55 is running late all heck breaks loose on the timetabling as two companies need to sort it out between them. In fact, the UK sells local monopoly licenses to ensure that a single company runs the rail services in a particular area, making coordination more efficient but ensuring it really is a monopoly; pricing is then regulated by a government agency.
The biggest issue is actually a lack of redundancy -- the land surrounding railway lines has been sold off by governments that were keen on private enterprise and realising value, a lot of it has been built on, and so it's now almost impossible to add extra parallel tracks to add capacity to overloaded routes (it would cost many billions just to re-purchase the land back).
The ??? used to be selling the attention you generate on your free service to advertisers. Google AdSense being the most profitable one for many. But it seems like the attention economy is coming to an end, or at least the potential has been greatly reduced. Twitter doesn't include ads in their tweets or even on their website. According to this Create a Revenue Model for Twitter contest they don't generate any revenue. Twitter isn't worth anything right now other than what investors would like to get back if they sell. I can't think of any way that their customer base could financially benefit any other company. The folks at Twitter seem to be in the same boat since they haven't been able to generate any significant revenue from their users.
If I recall correctly (via the unsubstantiated-rumour-mill) business model for Twitter is supposed to work the other way around -- not advertising, but market research. Twitter cannot realistically advertise in a 160 character message; but they can data-mine the heck out of the posts made by several million people multiple times a day, and sell that collective intelligence back to companies. Want to know what the reaction is to the new multi-million dollar tv advert campaign you just launched? The responses will be appearing on Twitter within a day or so of it airing, ready to be mined. Is the proposed government policy on childcare tax rebates likely to be popular? Let's see what several hundred thousand voters just posted about it on Twitter.
If they are not allowed in the UK, then why is one of the running jokes in the Alex comic (Alex Masterly) about gardening leave? If I understand the context right it is about non-competes, although in the 6 month to 1 year range.
Traditionally, gardening leave was something given to incompetent executives. They're on a (say) two year contract, so it would be expensive to get rid of them quickly -- have to pay out the contract. So instead you stick them on gardening leave, paying out the contract slowly, but at least stopping them from earning yet more by going to your competitor (and telling them all your plans). It's different from a non-compete because the person on gardening leave is still under a paid contract.
Some people are receiving documents created in OpenOffice. Microsoft would like to have these people open those documents in Microsoft Office rather than download OpenOffice to open them. Otherwise, the next thing you know, people might actually use OpenOffice to create new documents. Ugh! This FOSS stuff spreads just like a virus!
But fear not, Oracle will have cured it soon.
How much browsing is done through the "default browser" setting anyway? Maybe the occasional click of an email link. Surely most of the time, however, browsers are invoked directly by double-clicking the icon of your usual browser, rather than through invoking the Windows default browser setting. And most browsers have an automatic pop-up asking you if you want to set them as your default browser, with "yes" pre-checked (as well as "run this check every time"), so most non-techy users would very quickly end right up back with their old browser setting again, just through their habit of saying OK without thinking very much.
IE remains the biggest security problem in Windows (besides user stupidity).
If webpages can override the render engine in IE8 then IE8 is only as secure as the worst render engine.
Hmm, seems a little like saying that a slightly sour aftertaste is the biggest problem with strychnine (besides death).
In any case, web pages can already call up any number of plugins the user probably has installed, already making browsers only as secure as the worst plugin (Adobe Reader being the popular culprit of the moment). The users who aren't savvy enough to be able to switch the browser default almost certainly aren't savvy enough to know which of their installed plugins are flawed.
Whenever you list online media sources like Hulu, you should remember they are available in the USA only due to restrictive regional licensing agreements by the major media cartels. The rest of the world can only download the same content illegally.
Stunningly enough, however, the rest of the world does have some technical nouse of its own, and isn't just twiddling its thumbs in the dark. iPlayer, iView, 4od, ... rather a lot of channels in non-US countries provide their own Web TV services.
something hard to attain by price is folly, and are only treasured by the shallowest of humanity. Those that work HARD are always more celebrated and respected. It's why a man that builds his own hotrod is far, FAR, more respected than the rich guy that bought his.
And yet the woolly jumper I knitted just doesn't seem to get the Prada-like respect it deserves.
IANAL but would this not be grounds for a mistrial and sanctions against the judge in question? I am pretty sure that in America, if you have a bias due to affiliation then you should recuse yourself from the case as a judge. I am not sure about Sweden, but this would only make sense since a judge is _supposed_ to be fair and impartial.
Maybe Jack Thompson should try that argument to get his license back: "I'm sorry but your decision to refuse my attempted appeal is invalid because you're biased by having been members of a Bar Association like the one that made the original decision. I demand my case be heard by someone who's never been a lawyer!"
Congratulations! With your very example [the original poster] actually managed to disprove [his] original assertion. See, [his] original claim was this:
"As the owner of a software development company I think your would have to be stark raving nuts to open source your main product."
But, the very first paragraph in that quoted text demonstrates that isn't actually the case. The community was very happy with and supportive of MySQL corporate.
The problem, as [he] pointed out, was the purchase by Sun. In that case, the customers didn't feel Sun would necessarily have their interests at heart, and so there was dissatisfaction. This is only increased by the fact that Sun has now been purchased by Oracle, a company that actually markets a product in the same general space (I would argue they aren't actually in the same market, and so MySQL has little to fear, but... people aren't exactly rational).
Unfortunately, in a business sense that's not good enough. If the community is blissfully happy with SuperGPLSoftwareStartup but nervous enough to fork the product if they get bought out, then SuperGPLSoftwareStartup is screwed. Young companies have venture capital funders, who are interested in an exit strategy -- how they will get their money back. That isn't "earning profits over twenty years" but an exit through a sale to a larger company or (more rarely) through an IPO. Both of those involve changes in ownership (and likely management) of the company, raising those "will they still have our interests at heart" questions.
It's quite possible that what we are seeing is the death of the GPL/commercial dual license business model. If Sun do not get any value from their purchase (but the community quickly forks MySQL) then the lesson will be quickly learned (not just by Sun) that buying GPL software companies is probably not worthwhile. Very quickly, VC firms would then realise that their main exit strategy from GPL software firms probably won't ever work again. That would translate into a rule of thumb "if your business plan contains the letters GPL, it will instantly go in the bin and never be funded".
Many years ago I worked at the Harvey Norman computer chain in Australia and the games guys often took games home at the weekend to check out. The reasoning was simple - if you've played a game and a customer wants advice on which game to buy you're in a position where you actually know what you're talking about rather than just staring at them blankly. This was before the days of the internet being widely available, but I think the policy still holds true. If you're buying a game at a marked up price from your local software mart then the staff there better know what they're selling - otherwise how can you justify the retail space and the markup? So far from being a scandal, I call this sensible business practice.
We do the same thing with Chup-A-Chup lollies. Give each flavour a bit of a lick, so the shop assistant can give knowledgeable advice about them, then wrap the lollies back up and sell them as new. After all, it'd be a waste of cash to actually set aside ones for the employees and not sell them. That'd just not be sensible business practice.
I'm concerned that my blue-sky thinking will be obscured by your cloud computing. Any advice?
We're hoping the collision of the different cloud paradigms will cause them to coalesce into a more tangible form, precipitating the knowledge and tools across the umbrella of all the technology community, from where it will flow into a deep reservoir of accumulated experience that can be processed, filtered, and piped out to the wider business community on tap. (To complete the water cycle analogy, the business suits will then piss it away, it'll all go down the sewer, and the industry will be all at sea until finally everything we've all worked on just evaporates.)
Speaking of conscience, why is it that Slashdot is an oft-repeat offender in spreading anti-CFL nonsense?
Slashdot? Post grumpy contrarian material opposing "mainstream" cultural norms and expectations? Surely not!
Hmm, by the time they wholesale out to ISPs -- perhaps in the same manner that electricity is retailed in Queensland -- and perhaps charge broadcasters for access to the network, the return on investment might be less than a decade. That's not bad for a government infrastructure project. Especially when a fair chunk of the money spent comes right back to the government in income tax, company taxes, etc.