They hate open source/free software. They hate it because Linux uses it, IBM uses it, Sun uses it, and Apple uses it.
Do all the above companies use open source/free software as RMS and ESR strictly define them? Of course not. But each of the above companies has made a point of differentiating themselves with open source/free software in one form or another.
Microsoft doesn't have to fight IBM, Sun, Apple, or Linux now. All it has to do is take open source/free software down a couple notches, and it gets to nail all of them for free.
Let's assume for a moment that MS does require you to contact them EVERY time you make a hardware change or otherwise change the "signature" of your machine.
Here's how you get MS to give up the practice: Simply follow it.
They will be so deluged with calls that they'll either give up the practice or wind up eating the cost of keeping it (which I think is unlikely).
There will have to be some middle ground here so no one group (MS + customers) gets too worked up about it.
I wouldn't sweat it. Besides, you could just use Linux and forget Windows if you don't like it. (Why so much complaining if everyone is using Linux?)
Wouldn't that encourage trolls to simply establish temporary accounts, do their deed, and then simply abandon the account?
I hear you on not getting modded up, but it really doesn't take more than a week or two to get 5 (for example) karma points if you're contributing somewhat regularly.
At any rate, I haven't gotten a response from Taco anyway, so my suggestion to him will probably stay in limbo.
Since you all are obviously reading these responses, I do have a question for you:
Why?
I'm not trying to be a jerk either. But I have to wonder, with the likes of Yahoo!, Google, et al, why is this better?
Granted, the idea of web indexes is important. The idea of 2D/3D maps of what are essentially semantic networks is somewhat cool too. (Tony Buzan's "mind" (idea) maps come to mind.) But were those two combined aspects enough to justify the (probably substantial) expenditures that were put into this?
What are you hoping to achieve?
Please think about your answer. I have already seen the "Why map.net?" clip on your site (Answer: "Because it's fun").
You'll notice the rather anemic levels of slashdot postings on this story. I think this item has bewildered more people than just me, so your answer may help spark our imaginations.
Thanks for your experiences. I may yet collapse and simply use Linux for a test RDBMS server, but I suspect my client will opt for the perceived safety of SQL Server 2000. That's OK, it'll look good on my resume!;+)
I have been unable to locate binaries for Windows NT/2000? Does anyone know where/if such a thing exists? I would like to evaluate PostgreSQL for our project instead of SQL Server 7.0 or 2000. I would also appreciate comments anyone has on such a move.
This sucks.. this is one discussion really close to home for me *and* I have moderator points today.
Post or moderate? Post or moderate?
POST!
Don't like Java's (too low) level of abstraction? Tired of being stuck on Windows because of your employers obsession with VB?
Convert them to Python! They'll be happy how fast you get things done AND they'll love the easy portability to Linux, Solaris, Macs, etc.
It just makes sense. Today, I can even run Python in a JVM. I can run Python in the.NET CLR (take a look at ActiveState, they seem to be in bed with MS - there's a Python.NET beta ongoing right now).
If Microsoft never ports the CLR to OSs other than Windows, you STILL win.
Now, here's the kicker: Java will be available for.NET too. (Or maybe not, this might be pure FUD, but SOMEONE will do it, even if Rational drags their feet.)
Now, observant people will point out that regardless of the fact that you would be using Python or Java, the fact that you're using it in a JVM or CLR naturally means you will use the libraries in those environments. And that's true. However, it's nothing a good designer couldn't mitigate to a large extent (not perfectly I know) using the GoF strategy pattern and other abstraction techniques. Furthermore, most of Python's standard libraries are already ported to the JVM. It's just a matter of time before they show up for the CLR too (and for Java too).
Also, learning both sets of libraries and both Java and Python will simply be good for your career. You'll honestly be able to claim multi-architectural proficiencies, from the comfort of a high-level development language (or at least a "higher-level" development language in the case of Java).
Now, anyone who can poke substantial holes in this will be doing me a favor. My general career direction in the near future will be Python/Java heavy because of my assumptions above.
Just to clarify something: I approach this purely as a corporate applications designer and developer. I have no interest in systems-level stuff, embedded systems, real-time systems, etc. Very little of the above even matters for those area (although there are embeddable versions of Python AND Java, as well as a hard real time version of Java).
I am continually surprised by the number of developers I have met who routinely design and implement tables/views/indexes who have no knowledge whatsoever of normalization, etc. Now, some knowledgeable people will take you to task for getting religious about normalizing tables, but these folks don't have enough knowledge to break the rules; they don't even know there are rules.
Do you really want people who work for you to be designing databases on a hunch only? Wouldn't you rather there be some sembelence of real engineering? Granted, even strict adherence to normalization isn't REAL engineering (in the hard-core measure it, prove it, test it kind of way), but it's better than nothing.
Anyway, I'm all for any material which attempts to alleviate this sort of (complete preventable) ignorance. It can only help.
"Maybe it is time to blow the hell out of this country. "
No real offense meant dude, but if that's how you really feel, then I really would rather that you just leave.
Do us both a favor and just go. When you get tired of corruption, etc. elsewhere maybe you'll see that you're just playing the part of "frustrated victim" for its own sake, and not for any real purpose.
The moment US government becomes efficient, is the moment when I'll be fighting to get out too.
Just wanted to throw out some thoughts on why I steered the project I'm currently working on towards Python. My background is mostly in the MS suite of things. I also know Java, Python, Smalltalk, LISP, C, C++, and I've tinkered with Perl, REBOL, Prolog, etc. so I'm no MS bigot; that's just the majority of my experience.
First of all, why did we choose Python? The project is basically fat client, and could have been done with almost any development environment.
In our case, Java and VB were the other primary contenders. We need a rapidly developed application that is cross-platform. The customer doesn't have much money at this point, and therefore not much time either. Therefore Java is out. That seems counter-intuitive right? Java is supposed to save a lot of time after all. However, that's only true when you compare Java development time to C or C++ development time. Compare Java's development time to VB or Python's, and it's a completely different story. Java just didn't seem to work at a high enough level of abstraction to get the job done.
So, why didn't we use VB? That's simple: it's developed for, and stays on, Windows. And that's it. Yes there are products that will let you translate VB to Java. There are some cross-platform Basic products out there. Have you used them though? They don't get the job done very well. And they normally leave it to you to figure out where a translation/cross-compile goes wrong. All in all, it just doesn't have a professional feel to it. Also, while the.NET initiative may push VB into the cross-platform arena soon, it won't be soon enough for me.
Now, I suppose we could have used Perl, but frankly I fear Perl. Why? Because of the very flexibility it asserts as an advantage. Yes, I can write the solution in pretty much the way I think. Given the fact that I have yet to find two people who think about a problem in the same way though, that's a maintenance problem in what may become a large project.
Once I selected Python on a preliminary basis, I had to make sure it would actually work. I developed GUIs for it with no problem. We did an XML proof. I did proofs on its object capabilities. I looked at sites and applications developed in Python. Could it handle the (relatively tiny) needs of my project? You bet it can. It can do all of that and more.
Anyone who wants a relatively impressive sample of what Python can do should take a look at http://wildsau.idv.uni-linz.ac.at/mfx/pysol/. It's a huge (free!) solitaire game with all sorts of options and games. I haven't seen anything else like it come from the other scripting languages (not picking on any one language here though), except VB, and that is not on the list. Pile that game on top of the fact that Python gets used for server-side applications, has two companies actively working on its development (BeOpen and ActiveState), can be used in the JVM (JPython), will be usable in the MS.NET world, and throw in Zope for good measure.
If you know the structure of the document in advance of its composition (as you might if the document/book is fatual in nature), then your problem is trivial to solve. Simply allow entry of the structure/outline of the document into some widely accessible and centralized format (e.g. a web page application - PHP should work) and allow a document entry for each "leaf" on the document's "tree". Allow only one person at a time to change each document. Versioning can be done behind the scenes or explicitly by the user. Put together a tool that can extract a document from the collected contents at any one given time, and voila!
Pros: structured document entry (lends itself to conversions to other formats, like XML), primitive concurrency control, centralization of the documentation, no more proprietary documentation formats
Cons: requires a centralized server that will need administration and other upkeep, whining from users about having to use a web page instead of Word, training costs, potentially limits your users document contents, requires an agreed-upon document structure before composition occurs
I'm afraid this wanders a bit, but hopefully it sparks some real thinking (the source article wanders too so I'm just being consistent:).
Crowell's article makes a fundamental assumption: that (educational) books are the best way to learn real information. I agree that books are the best way to hunker down for a nice enjoyable read, but that's not information in the educational sense, that's entertainment (however sublime the author's writing - yes it can be educational too, but let's not get into that).
For those who did not read the article: he basically goes into the fact that because the price of entry into printing is so high, that open source books, or even collaborative books for that matter which are intended to be as useful as possible (rather than as profitable as possible) don't stand much of a chance in today's markets. He also despairs over the lack of other real options (aside from Latex, which he dubs as too complicated for the average user).
What is it about printed books that makes it a superior format for textbooks and other kinds of changing information? Is it the fact that every change requires a new generation of trees to be sacrificed to propagate the update? No. It's the fact that printing is so systemized that it's become relatively cheap (compared to word of mouth and compared to computers). In fact, books are very inconvenient to use for dissemination of changing (educational or otherwise) information. Textbooks must change to keep up with changing information and to keep up with the changing demands of society. (Crowell also mentions how horrible textbooks are today and seems to imply that open source books would remedy that somewhat, but that's more of an assumption on his part which is irrelevant to the feasibility and methodology of open source texts).
As a side note: Information taught in schools is crucial to modern civilization, so this is not a trivial issue. If the medium becomes restrictive or inaccessible, then civilization's very development will be hampered. Yes, I do think that key-locked DVD textbooks are inherently evil. They should be outright illegal or legally unsupportable for intellectual property suits.
Another side note: Is information best taught in the linear format used in textbooks? Think about how you think for a moment. How does your sense of curiosity work? Maybe it's only geeks that do this (thank you, but no I personally am not a nerd), but it seems to me that our thinking about a subject will network, regardless of a subject's real complexity. Again, this branches into yet another discussion about the best way to learn, yadda, yadda, yadda; but I think the point is clear: the few of us who do think like a textbook (linearly only) are clearly at a disadvantage. (Yes, I have met in-DUH-viduals like this. It's pretty sad.)
So what now? Well, we'll probably be stuck with paper until something as accessible and just as cheap comes along. So, until those nifty plastic screens with low-energy processing units (preferably solar powered), high resolution and easily readable characters, and ubiquitous and cheap networking (for new and *open* content) become available, we're pretty much stuck. But I will go out on a limb here: those sorts of devices WILL replace paper within 50 years, and much more quickly I hope. It will become necessary primarily for economic reasons: as the price of dead-tree resources skyrockets, impetus will exist to move to this new format.
The masses will be ultimately intolerant of locked down or closed educational information. The market will adapt to allow the masses to have open content. Any solution that doesn't do this will lead to despotism.
The tech culture DOES remember its roots
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We haven't forgotten our roots. However, we live them so intensely that we tend to forget that they're not delivered for everyone else. Most of us live in very privileged conditions, and we very much feel like we're in McLuhan's "global village" (McLuhan's idea; NOT Clinton's). This is especially true compared to the cold-war, pre-Internet era when simply having a Russian accent in America was considered exotic. (Or vice versa - I've heard stories about either.)
In a world where over half the world population goes hungry every night, and where maybe only 1% of the world population has access to a computer, much less the internet; the global (well fed, at peace, and in touch with their spirituality) village is far from achieved. But then is a state of utopia really achievable anyway? (Another discussion altogether.)
It is indeed a romantic vision that allows us to believe that everybody benefits from this fairly small-scaled renaissance that is occurring because of technology. The whole world will not be the tribe until the whole world has access to the same infrastructure.
If we're lucky, we might a achieve a worldwide tribe of the intelligentsia. That would at least allow the world's thinkers and leaders to have the medium as a support mechanism when they implement the best-of-breed cultural norms through the influences of their writing, art, etc.
Develop a phone Ethernet adaptor. I don't know if the phone jack would be able to scale up to anywhere near 10 mbps, much less 100 mbps, but it would be neat to see now far you get.
By the way - When you've finished this, start selling/.'s copies of this gadget for $5USD or less each.
Sorry Jon, but even the Columbine stories had this theme and it appears to be the shtick you stick with. Where your stories disappoint me is in the fact that you always seems to paint a panicky picture of no hope; that's simply not the world the vast majority of us live in.
Techno-fear is not for the techno-mages. Maybe this is the right message for people who don't understand how they *could* lose their individual freedoms if we're not vigilant, but I think Slashdot is the wrong crowd. (If nothing else, I guess we probably give really good feedback.)
Why? Not because open source software in general doesn't deliver operationally speaking, it clearly does.
However, how many investors like him have been able to get rich because of open source related IPOs? I'm thinking that he may be simply looking at the bottom line compared to "traditional" e-commerce related IPOs and not seeing much net take-away; which is somewhat true.
I do think he did a horrible job of explaining himself though. Beating on Mozilla because its been a while in the making is quite pointless also. Heck, you can pick pretty much any organization for that "crime" and get away with it.
VB suffered from this problem too...
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Our development group (which does hard core ActiveX controls and servers in VB 6.0) has always gotten this comment from people who don't understand VB. Without exception, if something performs poorly in VB it's because they're trying to do something VB wasn't designed for (3D gaming calculations anyone?), because they're programming it poorly, or because they're simply trying to do some pretty complicated database stuff (which should almost always take place in server side procedures).
Small comfort I suppose, but VB'ers had to go through the same thing. I suppose C++ had this curve too. History repeats itself I guess.
Couldn't you use neural networks to correlate dolphin sounds with dolphin actions? You would have to have a fairly complete catalog of dolphin motions and sounds. This would require simply recording all actions and all sounds dolphins make, and then dividing those items into "words". Then catalog all the motions and sounds. Then feed sequences of dolphin actions and sounds into the neural network to train it for pattern recognition. Then, you could start a Q&A process with the network where the question you ask is a series of simulated dolphin actions/words, then record the answers you get. Once you do this several times over, re-training the neural network from scratch each time, you may start to come up with consistent correlations which can be used to interpret dolphins.
The big trick here would be in tracking the dolphin sounds and actions. Before this could be done, you would have to catalog all known actions and sounds. Then tracking is another problem... could recording equipment with some recognition software perform this accurately enough? Don't forget that some actions may be difficult or impossible to track with sensors; we probably don't know all the actions/sounds that dolphins find relevant yet, much less have the equipment for it.
I think doing this for SETI is significantly more difficult as the range of signals you may get could be so complex so as to resemble random noise. Also, you don't know what frequencies to even look for. This makes dolphins look like easy game as far as language recognition goes.
In light of some of the more visionary ideas evolving in the marketplace (application servers, write once - run anywhere, and universal interoperability (XML) being the keys ones IMHO), how does Corel intend to leverage Linux and/or open source in order to effectively compete with the likes of Microsoft and other large companies?
In other words, is Corel only going to continue to pursue the desktop market via Linux and Windows, or will it put together a broader strategy which makes good on some of the promises that the above visions imply?
What bugs me about incidents like this is that consumers are STILL liable for the first $50 of the fraudulent charges (at least in the US). But what if the card is actually a debit card? I could be wrong, but I think you're just out the money, because the account leads to real money and not just a billable account.
I'm of the mind that credit cards are NOT secure enough to use on the Internet. They don't even require any special knowledge (like a password), to use. We should at least have the option of securing all of our cards with a password, that way a ripped off card wouldn't be a substantial risk unless the thief also managed to rip the passwords from the card companies too (which could happen)!
(Of course, most of this would be moot with standardized biometrics, but that probably won't happen for a while.)
Slashdot Mirror
They hate open source/free software. They hate it because Linux uses it, IBM uses it, Sun uses it, and Apple uses it.
Do all the above companies use open source/free software as RMS and ESR strictly define them? Of course not. But each of the above companies has made a point of differentiating themselves with open source/free software in one form or another.
Microsoft doesn't have to fight IBM, Sun, Apple, or Linux now. All it has to do is take open source/free software down a couple notches, and it gets to nail all of them for free.
It really is pure genius.
Let's assume for a moment that MS does require you to contact them EVERY time you make a hardware change or otherwise change the "signature" of your machine.
Here's how you get MS to give up the practice: Simply follow it.
They will be so deluged with calls that they'll either give up the practice or wind up eating the cost of keeping it (which I think is unlikely).
There will have to be some middle ground here so no one group (MS + customers) gets too worked up about it.
I wouldn't sweat it. Besides, you could just use Linux and forget Windows if you don't like it. (Why so much complaining if everyone is using Linux?)
Wouldn't that encourage trolls to simply establish temporary accounts, do their deed, and then simply abandon the account?
I hear you on not getting modded up, but it really doesn't take more than a week or two to get 5 (for example) karma points if you're contributing somewhat regularly.
At any rate, I haven't gotten a response from Taco anyway, so my suggestion to him will probably stay in limbo.
Since you all are obviously reading these responses, I do have a question for you:
Why?
I'm not trying to be a jerk either. But I have to wonder, with the likes of Yahoo!, Google, et al, why is this better?
Granted, the idea of web indexes is important. The idea of 2D/3D maps of what are essentially semantic networks is somewhat cool too. (Tony Buzan's "mind" (idea) maps come to mind.) But were those two combined aspects enough to justify the (probably substantial) expenditures that were put into this?
What are you hoping to achieve?
Please think about your answer. I have already seen the "Why map.net?" clip on your site (Answer: "Because it's fun").
You'll notice the rather anemic levels of slashdot postings on this story. I think this item has bewildered more people than just me, so your answer may help spark our imaginations.
Thanks for the book reference! I think I'll be buying a copy today. (Although I prefer Amazon. :+)
Yeah, I'm a nerd. But that's the whole point.
I would GLADLY stick a bleepin dot to my forehead and wiggle my head around to be done with my mouse. I would at least like to try it.
I used to be a right hand mouser. RSI.
I am currently a left hand mouser. RSI.
If they don't come out with something for some other body part where I can move the pointer around without a mouse, I'll be doing surgery someday.
Oh well....
Thanks for your experiences. I may yet collapse and simply use Linux for a test RDBMS server, but I suspect my client will opt for the perceived safety of SQL Server 2000. That's OK, it'll look good on my resume! ;+)
Subject says it all.
I have been unable to locate binaries for Windows NT/2000? Does anyone know where/if such a thing exists? I would like to evaluate PostgreSQL for our project instead of SQL Server 7.0 or 2000. I would also appreciate comments anyone has on such a move.
Thanks in advance!
This sucks.. this is one discussion really close to home for me *and* I have moderator points today.
.NET CLR (take a look at ActiveState, they seem to be in bed with MS - there's a Python .NET beta ongoing right now).
.NET too. (Or maybe not, this might be pure FUD, but SOMEONE will do it, even if Rational drags their feet.)
;+)
Post or moderate? Post or moderate?
POST!
Don't like Java's (too low) level of abstraction? Tired of being stuck on Windows because of your employers obsession with VB?
Convert them to Python! They'll be happy how fast you get things done AND they'll love the easy portability to Linux, Solaris, Macs, etc.
It just makes sense. Today, I can even run Python in a JVM. I can run Python in the
If Microsoft never ports the CLR to OSs other than Windows, you STILL win.
Now, here's the kicker: Java will be available for
Now, observant people will point out that regardless of the fact that you would be using Python or Java, the fact that you're using it in a JVM or CLR naturally means you will use the libraries in those environments. And that's true. However, it's nothing a good designer couldn't mitigate to a large extent (not perfectly I know) using the GoF strategy pattern and other abstraction techniques. Furthermore, most of Python's standard libraries are already ported to the JVM. It's just a matter of time before they show up for the CLR too (and for Java too).
Also, learning both sets of libraries and both Java and Python will simply be good for your career. You'll honestly be able to claim multi-architectural proficiencies, from the comfort of a high-level development language (or at least a "higher-level" development language in the case of Java).
Now, anyone who can poke substantial holes in this will be doing me a favor. My general career direction in the near future will be Python/Java heavy because of my assumptions above.
Just to clarify something: I approach this purely as a corporate applications designer and developer. I have no interest in systems-level stuff, embedded systems, real-time systems, etc. Very little of the above even matters for those area (although there are embeddable versions of Python AND Java, as well as a hard real time version of Java).
Thanks in advance for your rabid attacks!
I am continually surprised by the number of developers I have met who routinely design and implement tables/views/indexes who have no knowledge whatsoever of normalization, etc. Now, some knowledgeable people will take you to task for getting religious about normalizing tables, but these folks don't have enough knowledge to break the rules; they don't even know there are rules.
Do you really want people who work for you to be designing databases on a hunch only? Wouldn't you rather there be some sembelence of real engineering? Granted, even strict adherence to normalization isn't REAL engineering (in the hard-core measure it, prove it, test it kind of way), but it's better than nothing.
Anyway, I'm all for any material which attempts to alleviate this sort of (complete preventable) ignorance. It can only help.
"Maybe it is time to blow the hell out of this country. "
No real offense meant dude, but if that's how you really feel, then I really would rather that you just leave.
Do us both a favor and just go. When you get tired of corruption, etc. elsewhere maybe you'll see that you're just playing the part of "frustrated victim" for its own sake, and not for any real purpose.
The moment US government becomes efficient, is the moment when I'll be fighting to get out too.
Just wanted to throw out some thoughts on why I steered the project I'm currently working on towards Python. My background is mostly in the MS suite of things. I also know Java, Python, Smalltalk, LISP, C, C++, and I've tinkered with Perl, REBOL, Prolog, etc. so I'm no MS bigot; that's just the majority of my experience.
.NET initiative may push VB into the cross-platform arena soon, it won't be soon enough for me.
.NET world, and throw in Zope for good measure.
First of all, why did we choose Python? The project is basically fat client, and could have been done with almost any development environment.
In our case, Java and VB were the other primary contenders. We need a rapidly developed application that is cross-platform. The customer doesn't have much money at this point, and therefore not much time either. Therefore Java is out. That seems counter-intuitive right? Java is supposed to save a lot of time after all. However, that's only true when you compare Java development time to C or C++ development time. Compare Java's development time to VB or Python's, and it's a completely different story. Java just didn't seem to work at a high enough level of abstraction to get the job done.
So, why didn't we use VB? That's simple: it's developed for, and stays on, Windows. And that's it. Yes there are products that will let you translate VB to Java. There are some cross-platform Basic products out there. Have you used them though? They don't get the job done very well. And they normally leave it to you to figure out where a translation/cross-compile goes wrong. All in all, it just doesn't have a professional feel to it. Also, while the
Now, I suppose we could have used Perl, but frankly I fear Perl. Why? Because of the very flexibility it asserts as an advantage. Yes, I can write the solution in pretty much the way I think. Given the fact that I have yet to find two people who think about a problem in the same way though, that's a maintenance problem in what may become a large project.
Once I selected Python on a preliminary basis, I had to make sure it would actually work. I developed GUIs for it with no problem. We did an XML proof. I did proofs on its object capabilities. I looked at sites and applications developed in Python. Could it handle the (relatively tiny) needs of my project? You bet it can. It can do all of that and more.
Anyone who wants a relatively impressive sample of what Python can do should take a look at http://wildsau.idv.uni-linz.ac.at/mfx/pysol/. It's a huge (free!) solitaire game with all sorts of options and games. I haven't seen anything else like it come from the other scripting languages (not picking on any one language here though), except VB, and that is not on the list. Pile that game on top of the fact that Python gets used for server-side applications, has two companies actively working on its development (BeOpen and ActiveState), can be used in the JVM (JPython), will be usable in the MS
Python is a VERY strong VB replacement contender.
What's your source? A decrease of 50% huh? So, where did you get standardized IQ scores from 250 years ago?
If you know the structure of the document in advance of its composition (as you might if the document/book is fatual in nature), then your problem is trivial to solve. Simply allow entry of the structure/outline of the document into some widely accessible and centralized format (e.g. a web page application - PHP should work) and allow a document entry for each "leaf" on the document's "tree". Allow only one person at a time to change each document. Versioning can be done behind the scenes or explicitly by the user. Put together a tool that can extract a document from the collected contents at any one given time, and voila!
Pros: structured document entry (lends itself to conversions to other formats, like XML), primitive concurrency control, centralization of the documentation, no more proprietary documentation formats
Cons: requires a centralized server that will need administration and other upkeep, whining from users about having to use a web page instead of Word, training costs, potentially limits your users document contents, requires an agreed-upon document structure before composition occurs
I'm afraid this wanders a bit, but hopefully it sparks some real thinking (the source article wanders too so I'm just being consistent :).
Crowell's article makes a fundamental assumption: that (educational) books are the best way to learn real information. I agree that books are the best way to hunker down for a nice enjoyable read, but that's not information in the educational sense, that's entertainment (however sublime the author's writing - yes it can be educational too, but let's not get into that).
For those who did not read the article: he basically goes into the fact that because the price of entry into printing is so high, that open source books, or even collaborative books for that matter which are intended to be as useful as possible (rather than as profitable as possible) don't stand much of a chance in today's markets. He also despairs over the lack of other real options (aside from Latex, which he dubs as too complicated for the average user).
What is it about printed books that makes it a superior format for textbooks and other kinds of changing information? Is it the fact that every change requires a new generation of trees to be sacrificed to propagate the update? No. It's the fact that printing is so systemized that it's become relatively cheap (compared to word of mouth and compared to computers). In fact, books are very inconvenient to use for dissemination of changing (educational or otherwise) information. Textbooks must change to keep up with changing information and to keep up with the changing demands of society. (Crowell also mentions how horrible textbooks are today and seems to imply that open source books would remedy that somewhat, but that's more of an assumption on his part which is irrelevant to the feasibility and methodology of open source texts).
As a side note: Information taught in schools is crucial to modern civilization, so this is not a trivial issue. If the medium becomes restrictive or inaccessible, then civilization's very development will be hampered. Yes, I do think that key-locked DVD textbooks are inherently evil. They should be outright illegal or legally unsupportable for intellectual property suits.
Another side note: Is information best taught in the linear format used in textbooks? Think about how you think for a moment. How does your sense of curiosity work? Maybe it's only geeks that do this (thank you, but no I personally am not a nerd), but it seems to me that our thinking about a subject will network, regardless of a subject's real complexity. Again, this branches into yet another discussion about the best way to learn, yadda, yadda, yadda; but I think the point is clear: the few of us who do think like a textbook (linearly only) are clearly at a disadvantage. (Yes, I have met in-DUH-viduals like this. It's pretty sad.)
So what now? Well, we'll probably be stuck with paper until something as accessible and just as cheap comes along. So, until those nifty plastic screens with low-energy processing units (preferably solar powered), high resolution and easily readable characters, and ubiquitous and cheap networking (for new and *open* content) become available, we're pretty much stuck. But I will go out on a limb here: those sorts of devices WILL replace paper within 50 years, and much more quickly I hope. It will become necessary primarily for economic reasons: as the price of dead-tree resources skyrockets, impetus will exist to move to this new format.
The masses will be ultimately intolerant of locked down or closed educational information. The market will adapt to allow the masses to have open content. Any solution that doesn't do this will lead to despotism.
We haven't forgotten our roots. However, we live them so intensely that we tend to forget that they're not delivered for everyone else. Most of us live in very privileged conditions, and we very much feel like we're in McLuhan's "global village" (McLuhan's idea; NOT Clinton's). This is especially true compared to the cold-war, pre-Internet era when simply having a Russian accent in America was considered exotic. (Or vice versa - I've heard stories about either.)
In a world where over half the world population goes hungry every night, and where maybe only 1% of the world population has access to a computer, much less the internet; the global (well fed, at peace, and in touch with their spirituality) village is far from achieved. But then is a state of utopia really achievable anyway? (Another discussion altogether.)
It is indeed a romantic vision that allows us to believe that everybody benefits from this fairly small-scaled renaissance that is occurring because of technology. The whole world will not be the tribe until the whole world has access to the same infrastructure.
If we're lucky, we might a achieve a worldwide tribe of the intelligentsia. That would at least allow the world's thinkers and leaders to have the medium as a support mechanism when they implement the best-of-breed cultural norms through the influences of their writing, art, etc.
Develop a phone Ethernet adaptor. I don't know if the phone jack would be able to scale up to anywhere near 10 mbps, much less 100 mbps, but it would be neat to see now far you get.
/.'s copies of this gadget for $5USD or less each.
;+)
By the way - When you've finished this, start selling
Thanks in advance!
Sorry Jon, but even the Columbine stories had this theme and it appears to be the shtick you stick with. Where your stories disappoint me is in the fact that you always seems to paint a panicky picture of no hope; that's simply not the world the vast majority of us live in.
Techno-fear is not for the techno-mages. Maybe this is the right message for people who don't understand how they *could* lose their individual freedoms if we're not vigilant, but I think Slashdot is the wrong crowd. (If nothing else, I guess we probably give really good feedback.)
Our database admin is going to love this. Not only can I write SQL now, I can PLAY it.
Yes!!!!
;+)
Why? Not because open source software in general doesn't deliver operationally speaking, it clearly does.
However, how many investors like him have been able to get rich because of open source related IPOs? I'm thinking that he may be simply looking at the bottom line compared to "traditional" e-commerce related IPOs and not seeing much net take-away; which is somewhat true.
I do think he did a horrible job of explaining himself though. Beating on Mozilla because its been a while in the making is quite pointless also. Heck, you can pick pretty much any organization for that "crime" and get away with it.
Our development group (which does hard core ActiveX controls and servers in VB 6.0) has always gotten this comment from people who don't understand VB. Without exception, if something performs poorly in VB it's because they're trying to do something VB wasn't designed for (3D gaming calculations anyone?), because they're programming it poorly, or because they're simply trying to do some pretty complicated database stuff (which should almost always take place in server side procedures).
Small comfort I suppose, but VB'ers had to go through the same thing. I suppose C++ had this curve too. History repeats itself I guess.
Couldn't you use neural networks to correlate dolphin sounds with dolphin actions? You would have to have a fairly complete catalog of dolphin motions and sounds. This would require simply recording all actions and all sounds dolphins make, and then dividing those items into "words". Then catalog all the motions and sounds. Then feed sequences of dolphin actions and sounds into the neural network to train it for pattern recognition. Then, you could start a Q&A process with the network where the question you ask is a series of simulated dolphin actions/words, then record the answers you get. Once you do this several times over, re-training the neural network from scratch each time, you may start to come up with consistent correlations which can be used to interpret dolphins.
The big trick here would be in tracking the dolphin sounds and actions. Before this could be done, you would have to catalog all known actions and sounds. Then tracking is another problem... could recording equipment with some recognition software perform this accurately enough? Don't forget that some actions may be difficult or impossible to track with sensors; we probably don't know all the actions/sounds that dolphins find relevant yet, much less have the equipment for it.
I think doing this for SETI is significantly more difficult as the range of signals you may get could be so complex so as to resemble random noise. Also, you don't know what frequencies to even look for. This makes dolphins look like easy game as far as language recognition goes.
In light of some of the more visionary ideas evolving in the marketplace (application servers, write once - run anywhere, and universal interoperability (XML) being the keys ones IMHO), how does Corel intend to leverage Linux and/or open source in order to effectively compete with the likes of Microsoft and other large companies?
In other words, is Corel only going to continue to pursue the desktop market via Linux and Windows, or will it put together a broader strategy which makes good on some of the promises that the above visions imply?
What bugs me about incidents like this is that consumers are STILL liable for the first $50 of the fraudulent charges (at least in the US). But what if the card is actually a debit card? I could be wrong, but I think you're just out the money, because the account leads to real money and not just a billable account.
;+)
I'm of the mind that credit cards are NOT secure enough to use on the Internet. They don't even require any special knowledge (like a password), to use. We should at least have the option of securing all of our cards with a password, that way a ripped off card wouldn't be a substantial risk unless the thief also managed to rip the passwords from the card companies too (which could happen)!
(Of course, most of this would be moot with standardized biometrics, but that probably won't happen for a while.)
Yeah, I got issues.