We can believe him. Unfortunately all his article brings are the downsides, and these are from the providers point of view, the software authors, and he frames it as some "mysterious outside force", when in fact its simply other software authors who instead see a benefit or a reason to do what they do, release free software.
So essentially what we have is the free software authors undercutting the shareware or paid software authors. So while he disguises his argument as "a problem caused by open source", in reality, he has just been undercut by competition.
Now of course, we could then follow with the argument of "dumping" as an unfair competitive strategy, but to prosecute this would be to eliminate the free distribution of software. I'm just not comfortable with that notion.
I didn't get that he was trying to label OSS "communistic", he was simply saying that not every argument you hear for OSS is a good argument, and was pointing out the flaws in the most common ones.
I didn't see him call it communistic either but certainly pushes in the same direction as those who do. I bet Microsoft would love to point to a programmer saying "open source reduced my money making opportunities," just to imagine one example.
The software industry in the 80's had far fewer programmers because computers affordable to individuals was pretty new back then. Now, almost every kid grows up with a computer, many have broadband, and the technically curious kids will pick up programming. What you have now is a glut of selftaught programmers and that will put pressure on the "crap little app" that used to try for $19.95 in the shareware market.
Still, I've seen software projects and websites that can put up a simple appeal for funds and depending on their sales pitch, could possibly pull in 4 and 5 digits during a single plea for funds. And theres still shareware out there.
The danger with articles like this is that it reinforces the trend to call OSS "communistic" and "against the American way" when in reality, the freedom to program for whatever renumeration you want should be the most important thing to protect, even if you want to give your work away.
If you don't mind having temporary access to drm'ed media then I'd have to say that drm isn't that bad. Unfortunately, non drm'ed media still has too many advantages, such as much longer availability. The trick is to eliminate non drm'ed media so that the consumer only has drm media to choose from.
I would guess that costs would go up as the networks become congested and in need of beefing up. Don't we see articles occasionally about high useage folks getting the boot? Or will there just be more of these folks getting the boot?
Gonna be wierd when the folks who actually put broadband to heavy use end up being trapped on dialup:-)
Interesting area for thought. I've recommended double rotations of backups (major and minor, to hold some tapes out of the immediate rotation) and at least one offsite storage for backup media. Clearly some world trade center residents fell into this trap that each tower was the others offsite backup, but I'm wondering what kind of "event" would erase years of data at hotmail. Could some databases just be too big to back up or restore reliably? Its interesting that even folks at Microsoft have run into datasets that can't be stored with any sort of reliability. (I'm also sorta leaning that its not cost effective for Microsoft to make hotmail reliable, but thats just me.)
When I got on my new job as a databaser, I specifically asked for non admin priveleges on my account. This is in line with practices that separate administration of servers from software development. Even on VMS, it was highly recommended to use a non system account to keep yourself from shooting yourself in the foot. I actively avoid administration duties to focus on code.
classic example for me, compiler tech. Metadata rules here, you are building structures about structures, etc, and I'd hate to build one having all my data stored in an sql server;-)
Look at how cheap recording tech is nowadays and the distribution medium, the net, is incredibly efficient.
Of course you'll hear folks say that no, you need millions of dollars for "real" recording gear for pristine sound, but if that were really the case, nobody would care about kids sharing 128kbs mp3's.
The music industry is really afraid that they're losing the most important job here: determining who are the artists worth paying attention to.
When I was a convenience store clerk, I had ppp, and windows and somebody gave me a crap old pc, so I spent 10 bucks on network cards and I was instantly networking with a linux doing the ppp and windows 3.1 as my browsing environment (couldn't afford 95). Folks even vaguely interested in computers should be networking asap dialup or not. Given somebody interested in hurd, they'll most likely not have to push it to be the dialup pc.
Normalization and all of the other disciplines are good when you have to enforce rules of reliability (think a farm of vb monkeys), but for hard problems with skilled designers, this would just put roadblocks in the way of solutions.
Maybe some things just aren't efficiently represented as tables. Thinking about lisp for instance, I'd be hard pressed to represent all of it in tables, while I'm sure its possible, is it preferable?
From what it looks like in the US, nobody is willing to risk a financial disaster to test your perfectly valid theory. I think its a shame, but for whatever reason, the extraordinarily disproportionate maximum fines keep most folks out of court.
I believe theres a few actual cases pending with a few folks who have refused to settle, so that could be an interesting test.
The publishers have the only legal right to distribute or publish. When you distribute illegally, you're "stealing" from their exclusive right to distribute or publish.
The downloaders are just benefitting from your theft. Its all about the right to distribute or publish.
on fancified guesswork like this ill informed piece of crap would be better spent safeguarding potential targets and hiring air marshals. Really, if you focus on your classic "terrorist" like characteristics and leave targets unprotected and weapon detection underfunded, any future Timothy McVey is going to have an even easier time of it.
Right now many segments of the air travel and shipping industry are still woefully vulnerable, and thats just one particular area of interest.
Googles real strength is in their indexing. Of course they index for great performing search. Remember, they already have filters for pdf's and other non text docs and this can be pretty big for searching your average windows desktop.
I'm currently working on a linux file system driver that uses google email boxes. Performance isn't that great, but I'm working on that. I can already tell that fsck.google is gonna be a bitch.
And this is further support for a pragmatic attitude regarding binary only modules. Companies continue to prefer having trade secrets for competitive advantage, and linux advocates should keep a bit of pragmatism available for those companies who at least offer binary drivers for download instead of going all batshit RMS-like.
Its very important to me that I have a safe browser to use when I run windows. Why Microsoft can't drill down and work on the safety of their OS and hire wizards like the Opera developers for the browser is beyond me.
The disadvantages of throwing everything into the OS is clear, complexity of tightly coupled systems removes from modular development recommendations that are central to safe programming practices. Why Microsoft is afraid of competition at the browser level is mystifying at the very least.
Any email address that I've had quickly becomes crap if I publish it publically in any way irregardless of any blacklisting, spamcopping, whatever. I suspect most of spam nowadays is from armies of zombie pc's rented to scammers and I'm just not really sure you can blacklist an isp based on the cluelessness of their users.
Additionally, I'm finding that in more and more instances, folks cannot email me because they may also be on blacklisted email servers.
My ideal solution would be to have an unpublished email account on an email server that was not blacklisted and also does not use blacklists. I'm afraid that pretty soon that won't exist as all email servers will be either in one set or another, and for me, universally available email that connects everyone won't exist anymore. (I've already gave up on emailing my brother for example, he just never gets my email and I don't get his. The phone still works so I don't mind.)
Probably an unpopular opinion, but I have many nontechnically inclined folks I'd like to keep in touch with and they probably have no control over their email servers whether they're blacklisted or themselves use blacklists. Already I can't email family and friends because my email can't reach theirs or vice versa.
Slashdot Mirror
So essentially what we have is the free software authors undercutting the shareware or paid software authors. So while he disguises his argument as "a problem caused by open source", in reality, he has just been undercut by competition.
Now of course, we could then follow with the argument of "dumping" as an unfair competitive strategy, but to prosecute this would be to eliminate the free distribution of software. I'm just not comfortable with that notion.
I didn't see him call it communistic either but certainly pushes in the same direction as those who do. I bet Microsoft would love to point to a programmer saying "open source reduced my money making opportunities," just to imagine one example.
Still, I've seen software projects and websites that can put up a simple appeal for funds and depending on their sales pitch, could possibly pull in 4 and 5 digits during a single plea for funds. And theres still shareware out there.
The danger with articles like this is that it reinforces the trend to call OSS "communistic" and "against the American way" when in reality, the freedom to program for whatever renumeration you want should be the most important thing to protect, even if you want to give your work away.
However its more like video on request and you have to ask nicely or else you'll get flamed.
If you don't mind having temporary access to drm'ed media then I'd have to say that drm isn't that bad. Unfortunately, non drm'ed media still has too many advantages, such as much longer availability. The trick is to eliminate non drm'ed media so that the consumer only has drm media to choose from.
You mispelled "previously arrested suspect."
Gonna be wierd when the folks who actually put broadband to heavy use end up being trapped on dialup :-)
Interesting area for thought. I've recommended double rotations of backups (major and minor, to hold some tapes out of the immediate rotation) and at least one offsite storage for backup media. Clearly some world trade center residents fell into this trap that each tower was the others offsite backup, but I'm wondering what kind of "event" would erase years of data at hotmail. Could some databases just be too big to back up or restore reliably? Its interesting that even folks at Microsoft have run into datasets that can't be stored with any sort of reliability. (I'm also sorta leaning that its not cost effective for Microsoft to make hotmail reliable, but thats just me.)
When I got on my new job as a databaser, I specifically asked for non admin priveleges on my account. This is in line with practices that separate administration of servers from software development. Even on VMS, it was highly recommended to use a non system account to keep yourself from shooting yourself in the foot. I actively avoid administration duties to focus on code.
classic example for me, compiler tech. Metadata rules here, you are building structures about structures, etc, and I'd hate to build one having all my data stored in an sql server ;-)
Look at how cheap recording tech is nowadays and the distribution medium, the net, is incredibly efficient.
Of course you'll hear folks say that no, you need millions of dollars for "real" recording gear for pristine sound, but if that were really the case, nobody would care about kids sharing 128kbs mp3's.
The music industry is really afraid that they're losing the most important job here: determining who are the artists worth paying attention to.
When I was a convenience store clerk, I had ppp, and windows and somebody gave me a crap old pc, so I spent 10 bucks on network cards and I was instantly networking with a linux doing the ppp and windows 3.1 as my browsing environment (couldn't afford 95). Folks even vaguely interested in computers should be networking asap dialup or not. Given somebody interested in hurd, they'll most likely not have to push it to be the dialup pc.
Normalization and all of the other disciplines are good when you have to enforce rules of reliability (think a farm of vb monkeys), but for hard problems with skilled designers, this would just put roadblocks in the way of solutions.
Maybe some things just aren't efficiently represented as tables. Thinking about lisp for instance, I'd be hard pressed to represent all of it in tables, while I'm sure its possible, is it preferable?
I believe theres a few actual cases pending with a few folks who have refused to settle, so that could be an interesting test.
The downloaders are just benefitting from your theft. Its all about the right to distribute or publish.
Right now many segments of the air travel and shipping industry are still woefully vulnerable, and thats just one particular area of interest.
Googles real strength is in their indexing. Of course they index for great performing search. Remember, they already have filters for pdf's and other non text docs and this can be pretty big for searching your average windows desktop.
I'm currently working on a linux file system driver that uses google email boxes. Performance isn't that great, but I'm working on that. I can already tell that fsck.google is gonna be a bitch.
?!?!?!
What I want to know is who are they leading?.
And this is further support for a pragmatic attitude regarding binary only modules. Companies continue to prefer having trade secrets for competitive advantage, and linux advocates should keep a bit of pragmatism available for those companies who at least offer binary drivers for download instead of going all batshit RMS-like.
Its very important to me that I have a safe browser to use when I run windows. Why Microsoft can't drill down and work on the safety of their OS and hire wizards like the Opera developers for the browser is beyond me.
The disadvantages of throwing everything into the OS is clear, complexity of tightly coupled systems removes from modular development recommendations that are central to safe programming practices. Why Microsoft is afraid of competition at the browser level is mystifying at the very least.
I read somewhere that, in that case, God kills a kitten.
Because even Apple knows where the real bozos work: in the patent office.
Additionally, I'm finding that in more and more instances, folks cannot email me because they may also be on blacklisted email servers.
My ideal solution would be to have an unpublished email account on an email server that was not blacklisted and also does not use blacklists. I'm afraid that pretty soon that won't exist as all email servers will be either in one set or another, and for me, universally available email that connects everyone won't exist anymore. (I've already gave up on emailing my brother for example, he just never gets my email and I don't get his. The phone still works so I don't mind.)
Probably an unpopular opinion, but I have many nontechnically inclined folks I'd like to keep in touch with and they probably have no control over their email servers whether they're blacklisted or themselves use blacklists. Already I can't email family and friends because my email can't reach theirs or vice versa.