I've noticed how a lot of people who text me don't seem to grasp the fact that they don't actually need to reply to every message they get.
A friend of mine always seems to do this, and I'm pretty sure she's not alone.
"Hey! Seen Slashdot today?"
"No."
"M$ story cool. When will you read it?"
"Lunchtime. What's it about?"
"IE security flaws, monopolistic behaviour, Bill Gates. Mongrels, eh?"
I figure a reply's a waste of money, until,
"IE security flaws, monopolistic behaviour, Bill Gates. Mongrels, eh?"
"Yeah."
"Tell me when you've read it. You still using Mozilla?"
and on, and on, and on.
What she doesn't realise is that for the price of all of those text messages she could have made a thirty second phone call, got the info she needed, and be gone."
But then, it's probably not about information exchange. I'm sure as heck though, that like the Verizon ad, this inanity is the new bread and butter for telcos.
You're probably right---it's easy to confuse the two, and I probably should have looked up the details before posting (I'd never make a Debian developer!)
In fact, it's the social contract that draws me to Debian, and I'm glad that there are people who are so fastidious about sticking to it. I don't live in the US, but I can see that the work of the ACLU (and similar) is often good work that seems extreme by people who just don't care about freedom.
All licenses impose restrictions. That's the only thing licenses can do.
While I take your point, I thought that licences could only grant freedoms. Owning a copyright means that nobody can copy your work without a licence. That licence gives you the freedom to copy, but restrictive clauses simply delineate the extent of that freedom.
In other words, restrictions in a licence don't actually restrict---they simply signify that a freedom hasn't, in fact, been granted.
Then again, most of my legal training came from the school of Slashdot, so please take this with a brick of salt.
What's more, a lot of the internal problems at the Debian project are to do with people who are more extreme than RMS.
For example, the General Free Documentation Licence (or whatever it's called--the documentation version of the GPL) is considered by many to be non-free, and it almost caused Sarge to be released without half it's documentation.
Present a software question or problem to Stallman, any problem, and his answer will be 'release the source'. Bugs in your code? Release the source! Crashing all the time? Release the source! UI not user friendly? Release the source! Missing feature? Release the source! Not configurable enough? Release the source! Not compatible with something obscure? Release the source!
I think you're confusing RMS with Eric Raymond. Stallman, as he makes quite clear in this article (probably the clearest I've ever seen him put it) insists that the code all publically available software is released, even if it leads to inferior software. ERS, on the other hand, sees open source as the panacaea to software ills --- `Many eyes make all bugs shallow,' etc. RMS believes that opening source will eventually lead to better code, but, quite frankly, that's not the point.
RMS spells out the difference here quite well. Freedom of software has nothing to do with quality but freedom to do what you want with it, except restrict the freedoms of others.
Yeah, good one. If your English were perfect, you'd be able to complain. It's not. I can see at least two errors in your post without even looking hard. Cripes, I just found one in the post I'm writing now, and I haven't even hit the `Preview' button yet! There, fixed it... oh crap, another one. There, done.
Examples? Okay. First, 'windows' should have a capital `W', because it's a proper noun. Second (these are all random) the comma after `"experts"' should be inside the quotes instead of outside. No ambiguity will be caused by putting it there (look at the "`W'" in my first point for a contrary example) so that is where it should go.
That last point is often ignored in computing circles, however, because confusion can often crop up (for example, when quoting a command that has to be typed exactly it's best to leave non essential punctuation out of the quotes, and it's often better to be consistent than strictly correct.)
Crap, another mistake... fixed.
Slashdot has enough grammar and spelling Nazis to last it a while thank you. You don't really need to pick on someone's spelling because you don't like their otherwise valid point.
Aborigines in the north of Australia had a word for white people before (as far as history can tell) whites ever came to our sunny shores.
It turns out that the northern Aborigines did a fair bit of trade with Indonesians who would sail south to fish for trepang. The Indonesians knew the Dutch (or whatever we call them---this thread's confusing me) and called them 'Ballander,' derived from 'Hollander.'
Along with a lot of other Indonesian words, it somehow found its way into the Aboriginal languages up north, and spread around a bit---having never seen white people the Aborigines incorporated into some of the myths, which had white ghost type people in them.
As far as I know, the word 'Ballander' is still used to refer to white people in a lot of Aboriginal communities today, especially in the north.
Why would they want to pay for software to be developed that would become freely available to anyone else who chooses to use it?
A lot of companies do this---most notably Linux distributors. IBM does it, Sun does it, and so do a whole raft of other companies.
The idea is that the gain they get from improvements is greater than the loss they potentially take due to making the code available to the competition. If it's a GPL type licence, there's also the added extra that if the competition use those improvements and modify them, the original company can make use of those modifications too.
In other words, the software becomes common infrastructure. Contributing to a common code base is a bit like the way my business pays taxes which improve the roads our competition uses.
IIRC, Emacs was around in it's ancestral form long before RMS started the GNU project. It was a collection of macros that fit on top of a particular editor, which was, as I recall, collated by RMS and others. There were commercial versions of this, or at least free-as-in-beer-you-pay-for.
When RMS decided to start GNU, the first thing he did was a complete rewrite of Emacs based on the earlier versions. This was licensed under the predecessor of the GPL, the Emacs Public License (or something like that.)
Again, this is working from memory, so don't trust the details, but I think this might explain where Emacs fits into the Free Software scheme of things. Please, anyone, feel free to correct me!
Seriously, and realising that this is taking the topic elsewhere, a typical office job here in.au earns around $15 to $20 per hour. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (the last book I remember buying) cost me $25 hardback, a few weeks after release.
When I was 13 I still wasn't even allowed to use the phone without asking. Didn't matter, my ZX81 wouldn't even talk to the Dataset, let alone a telephone.
In fact, in Australia it's illegal to simply rip a CD (without appropriate licence) on to your own hard drive for your own private listening pleasure.
In a magazine article I read recently, a recording industry official, when asked if they intended to pursue people who did such a dastardly thing, answered, `Well, we haven't done it yet, have we?'
I'd pay ten dollars, but for once I'd prefer the Government to get it.
I got a mobile phone about four years ago, and learning to control it has been fantastic. I only call out when I need to, but if I don't want to be contacted, I've learnt to just turn it off.
It's there for my convenience, not everyone else's.
My mum has complained about this---`What's the point of having it if you done answer it...' yada yada yada.
My reply? `How did grandma contact you when you were my age? Contact me the same way.'
Now that she has her own mobie, she's learnt that lesson too.
Yep, and to miy amazement, I got all the way to the end!
Funny though, my stress levels went throught the roof because it's been about ten minutes since my last interruption, and I was enjoying the article. I was getting more and more paranoid as I went, and every little sound outside my office raised my blood pressure a couple of notches. So I had to speed read it so I could get to the end.
I guess it's a bit like driving at twice the speed limit so you can get home before you have an accident.
The whole time-between-ad-breaks thing is quite true, according to my experience. My fiance and I both lived with our folks until we got married, and we were too poor to afford a TV. So we had to do other things that lasted more than 6 1/2 minutes between ad breaks (make of that what you will...!)
It was incredible how much better our attention spans grew in just a month.
When we did get a TV, we couldn't stand watching commercial television, and we could only stomach the ABC (.au Government funded station, high quality programming, no ads).
Ten years on though, commercial TV reigns supreme, and I feel uncomfortable at the ten minute mark in any DVD I might pop in.
Slashdot Mirror
I've noticed how a lot of people who text me don't seem to grasp the fact that they don't actually need to reply to every message they get.
A friend of mine always seems to do this, and I'm pretty sure she's not alone.
"Hey! Seen Slashdot today?"
"No."
"M$ story cool. When will you read it?"
"Lunchtime. What's it about?"
"IE security flaws, monopolistic behaviour, Bill Gates. Mongrels, eh?"
I figure a reply's a waste of money, until,
"IE security flaws, monopolistic behaviour, Bill Gates. Mongrels, eh?"
"Yeah."
"Tell me when you've read it. You still using Mozilla?"
and on, and on, and on.
What she doesn't realise is that for the price of all of those text messages she could have made a thirty second phone call, got the info she needed, and be gone."
But then, it's probably not about information exchange. I'm sure as heck though, that like the Verizon ad, this inanity is the new bread and butter for telcos.
Yes.
Don't know what they're teaching there in the States, but I heard about glacial rebound at school in NZ.
Then again, I have no idea how your grade system works, so mod be down if I've made an idiot of myself.
You're right. Mplayer isn't a replacement for closed source, because it is.
As I understand it, it relies on a few closed libraries and so on.
I think you're a little confused. The article's about Freedom of Software (or at least, selling it off.) Your post is about Open Source.
There's a difference.
You're probably right---it's easy to confuse the two, and I probably should have looked up the details before posting (I'd never make a Debian developer!)
In fact, it's the social contract that draws me to Debian, and I'm glad that there are people who are so fastidious about sticking to it. I don't live in the US, but I can see that the work of the ACLU (and similar) is often good work that seems extreme by people who just don't care about freedom.
While I take your point, I thought that licences could only grant freedoms. Owning a copyright means that nobody can copy your work without a licence. That licence gives you the freedom to copy, but restrictive clauses simply delineate the extent of that freedom.
In other words, restrictions in a licence don't actually restrict---they simply signify that a freedom hasn't, in fact, been granted.
Then again, most of my legal training came from the school of Slashdot, so please take this with a brick of salt.
What's more, a lot of the internal problems at the Debian project are to do with people who are more extreme than RMS.
For example, the General Free Documentation Licence (or whatever it's called--the documentation version of the GPL) is considered by many to be non-free, and it almost caused Sarge to be released without half it's documentation.
I think you're confusing RMS with Eric Raymond. Stallman, as he makes quite clear in this article (probably the clearest I've ever seen him put it) insists that the code all publically available software is released, even if it leads to inferior software. ERS, on the other hand, sees open source as the panacaea to software ills --- `Many eyes make all bugs shallow,' etc. RMS believes that opening source will eventually lead to better code, but, quite frankly, that's not the point.
RMS spells out the difference here quite well. Freedom of software has nothing to do with quality but freedom to do what you want with it, except restrict the freedoms of others.
Yeah, good one. If your English were perfect, you'd be able to complain. It's not. I can see at least two errors in your post without even looking hard. Cripes, I just found one in the post I'm writing now, and I haven't even hit the `Preview' button yet! There, fixed it... oh crap, another one. There, done.
Examples? Okay. First, 'windows' should have a capital `W', because it's a proper noun. Second (these are all random) the comma after `"experts"' should be inside the quotes instead of outside. No ambiguity will be caused by putting it there (look at the "`W'" in my first point for a contrary example) so that is where it should go.
That last point is often ignored in computing circles, however, because confusion can often crop up (for example, when quoting a command that has to be typed exactly it's best to leave non essential punctuation out of the quotes, and it's often better to be consistent than strictly correct.)
Crap, another mistake... fixed.
Slashdot has enough grammar and spelling Nazis to last it a while thank you. You don't really need to pick on someone's spelling because you don't like their otherwise valid point.
That's interesting.
Aborigines in the north of Australia had a word for white people before (as far as history can tell) whites ever came to our sunny shores.
It turns out that the northern Aborigines did a fair bit of trade with Indonesians who would sail south to fish for trepang. The Indonesians knew the Dutch (or whatever we call them---this thread's confusing me) and called them 'Ballander,' derived from 'Hollander.'
Along with a lot of other Indonesian words, it somehow found its way into the Aboriginal languages up north, and spread around a bit---having never seen white people the Aborigines incorporated into some of the myths, which had white ghost type people in them.
As far as I know, the word 'Ballander' is still used to refer to white people in a lot of Aboriginal communities today, especially in the north.
A lot of companies do this---most notably Linux distributors. IBM does it, Sun does it, and so do a whole raft of other companies.
The idea is that the gain they get from improvements is greater than the loss they potentially take due to making the code available to the competition. If it's a GPL type licence, there's also the added extra that if the competition use those improvements and modify them, the original company can make use of those modifications too.
In other words, the software becomes common infrastructure. Contributing to a common code base is a bit like the way my business pays taxes which improve the roads our competition uses.
IIRC, Emacs was around in it's ancestral form long before RMS started the GNU project. It was a collection of macros that fit on top of a particular editor, which was, as I recall, collated by RMS and others. There were commercial versions of this, or at least free-as-in-beer-you-pay-for.
When RMS decided to start GNU, the first thing he did was a complete rewrite of Emacs based on the earlier versions. This was licensed under the predecessor of the GPL, the Emacs Public License (or something like that.)
Again, this is working from memory, so don't trust the details, but I think this might explain where Emacs fits into the Free Software scheme of things. Please, anyone, feel free to correct me!
Umm, I think the grandparent was referring to the reasons why FOSS is taking off, not the reslts of its taking off (ie, describing cause, not effect.)
What?
I want your job!
.au earns around $15 to $20 per hour. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (the last book I remember buying) cost me $25 hardback, a few weeks after release.
Seriously, and realising that this is taking the topic elsewhere, a typical office job here in
You do the maths.
Hey! He just broke the first two rules of the shadow inter.!%*&*)uggh **^............?
When I was 13 I still wasn't even allowed to use the phone without asking. Didn't matter, my ZX81 wouldn't even talk to the Dataset, let alone a telephone.
Since when have commercial corporations and OSS programmers been mutually exclusive?
Me too!
In fact, in Australia it's illegal to simply rip a CD (without appropriate licence) on to your own hard drive for your own private listening pleasure.
In a magazine article I read recently, a recording industry official, when asked if they intended to pursue people who did such a dastardly thing, answered, `Well, we haven't done it yet, have we?'
I'd pay ten dollars, but for once I'd prefer the Government to get it.
Not in the US. Everytime 'Steamboat Willie' comes up for grabs Congress adds another twenty years to copyright lifetimes.
I got a mobile phone about four years ago, and learning to control it has been fantastic. I only call out when I need to, but if I don't want to be contacted, I've learnt to just turn it off.
It's there for my convenience, not everyone else's.
My mum has complained about this---`What's the point of having it if you done answer it...' yada yada yada.
My reply? `How did grandma contact you when you were my age? Contact me the same way.'
Now that she has her own mobie, she's learnt that lesson too.
Yep, and to miy amazement, I got all the way to the end!
Funny though, my stress levels went throught the roof because it's been about ten minutes since my last interruption, and I was enjoying the article. I was getting more and more paranoid as I went, and every little sound outside my office raised my blood pressure a couple of notches. So I had to speed read it so I could get to the end.
I guess it's a bit like driving at twice the speed limit so you can get home before you have an accident.
The whole time-between-ad-breaks thing is quite true, according to my experience. My fiance and I both lived with our folks until we got married, and we were too poor to afford a TV. So we had to do other things that lasted more than 6 1/2 minutes between ad breaks (make of that what you will...!)
It was incredible how much better our attention spans grew in just a month.
When we did get a TV, we couldn't stand watching commercial television, and we could only stomach the ABC (.au Government funded station, high quality programming, no ads).
Ten years on though, commercial TV reigns supreme, and I feel uncomfortable at the ten minute mark in any DVD I might pop in.
Since when has MS had a monopoly with the XBox? Unless they've released a Monopoly game, never.
In one word, PlayStation.