Okay, I'm not reading this text right now, sorry.
But I don't blame the users or the teachers for this fact. As a teacher, I was often met by people being so intimidated that there was no way to get any fundamental concepts into their minds. Same as with teaching math really, only worse - people can avoid solving math problems a lot better than avoid using computers.
And I can understand their confusion. Many of the conventional UI concepts don't make sense, and if I didn't grow up with computers and those concepts I probably wouldn't get it either. What I feel is needed is not a better way to teach those (imho broken) concepts, but better user interfaces.
...I really don't see how people might might see it
as validating the open source tool
or even
indicate a subtle attempt to dismiss OpenOffice
(emphasize mine).
This video is the same what Microsoft has always done with anything that might, at some point, become a threat to its business - spread FUD as soon as possible, don't wait for them to become a real threat first.
In no way does that mean Microsoft views OpenOffice as real competition, at least not yet. Maybe it does indicate that they expect Oracle's takeover and it's database technology to make a OO Base a better Access, but still, it's just a preemptive strike.
Okay, there are extremes, and extremes are never any good.
What I experienced, more than once, was that someone had a bright idea on some solution, most of it being software, and had some MBA guys throw a few talented developers on the problem. Problem was, without some consensual short term goals, without defined milestones, in short without any kind of project management, the end result was broken software, a bunch of burnt out developers, and a huge amount of wasted energy.
You aren't seriously implying that developing Apache and Linux didn't take a huge amount of resources? What ginormous crack pipe have you been sucking on?
Sure, some markets have a small enough scope so that one developer can cater to it.
But even those projects can grow very quickly and often there just are more developers being thrown at it, while what is really needed is a more expensive project manager.
One person companies, maybe. There's more additional cost than you're listing, but overall, you may be right.
But most commercial software projects take more manpower than one or two or three developers can accomplish, and then you will need a project manager to coordinate them. That's where small companies often fail, just by not being willing to invest in one who actually has any clue about management.
[...]Any royalty above zero is inherently discriminatory against small companies and startups. The FSF correctly point out that the amount of capital needed to start a software company is very small[...]
Did they? My experience tells me it takes a lot more capital and resources to make good software than what most, especially small, companies invest. Not the point, I know, but I feel that's a grossly misleading claim.
See, social interaction on my terms is progress. Social interaction on your terms is the opposite. Progress means that more people get social interaction on their terms. Whatever serves the most people is progress. If less hours are spent looking for books and talking to people I don't want to talk to simply because I am forced to, then I can spend that time however I like. If I would like to spend it socializing then that's my prerogative. If not, then that is too. You want to force people to drive around talking to people they don't like, that is not progress no matter how you slice it. You sarcastically imply that you don't intend to force people to drive, but that is precisely what happens if people don't put the books on Amazon, so I'm not sure what you think will happen if these people can't buy books and resell them.
Actually, enabling people to stay within the confines of the social interaction of their own choosing also enables them to ignore other parts of society.
While that might be fine for the individual, I don't see how any good can come out of that for society. Maybe that is partly socialistic, though not the way that ideology was implemented in the past. It's not communism though.
If you really want to take your social, communist (not necessarily a bad thing, but honest) ideals about socializing with others to the logical extreme, we should ban all book stores because they are interfering with the exchange of used books. You are clearly anti-business because you do not want the books to be sold efficiently and for what the market will bear, so why not just cut the disingenuity and suggest that all business is evil because it reduces socializing? I should be forced to go trade my IT labor for eggs if I want eggs, because it's more social!!1!!1!!
I did say I don't have a problem with moving goods down the supply chain, only up. At no point did I go into the form of compensation. If you want to go reboot someone's computer because you're out of eggs, that's up to you, but don't blame me.
My entire point is that when you tap the resources of a market in order to resell those resources to another market, you should make sure you act responsibly, don't take away limited resources from one group of people to give them to another group that already has more resources at its disposal.
Yes, theoretically.
On the other hand, if it's correct that most new code in OpenOffice came from formerly Sun's, now Oracle's, employees, there isn't much chance that what those people can do with the code can just be replicated.
Yeah, I'm really looking forward to offices coming to a standstill while they wait for some essential addon to be ported to the new, autoupdated version of *Office.
Yeah, I was going to force people to drive in the name of social progress.
In what way can selectively excluding people from your social interaction be seen as social progress?
True.
I was aware of the fact, but I have no idea on how to correct for it. It does seem to match the phenomena of the - also perceived - large amount of people filling their huge harddrives with more filesharing content than they actual consume. Again, no citation. If you got any hard data to prove or disprove my observation, I'd like to hear about it.
I _think_ that's how it works in Germany too. Though I doubt the elected laymen have any say in church politics, just administration. I don't know about elected bishops, but it's not often that they go against the time proven dogmas of the church.
It doesn't really matter to the value I perceive which part of the money ends up with the author.
$0.99 music downloads seem more expensive than $2.99 for a whole book, but your point is valid - it's immaterial, there is almost no perceived value anyway.
Really? I know I'm more likely to appreciate something when I invested in it. Be it money or my own work. That is somewhat less the case when the thing I'm buying is immaterial, like ebooks, mp3s or download games, but it's still true. And that's the attitude the people around me have as well.
You have an even bigger chance than with music - studio quality equipment still is outside most individual's price range, a few hours or even days combating Sigil or whatever ebook making tool is only a few beer or other nerve calming substances.
Calling the Bible a fictional work is at least misleading. Maybe some of its authors didn't believe what they were writing, knowingly deceiving their audience to further their own agenda. But overall, I think it's safe to say that most contributors believed maybe not what they literally wrote down, but the messages they were trying to convey. As such it's outside of the definition of "fiction" and calling it thus is akin to the once popular misspelling "Micro$oft" - an act with the sole purpose of propagating ones believes and values.
Kind of like what makes so many religious people so annoying and sometimes even dangerous.
Not that I've read all of the article, but 2.99 seems too cheap. I mean, there is a correlation between price and perceived value, and selling a novel this cheap at release doesn't seem like a good idea.
Comparing copyright infringement to theft is something different entirely. What I'm doing could be be compared to how publishers want to get rid of the First Sale doctrine, only my problem isn't with people selling goods down, but with selling them up the supply chain. Yes, for someone who's in the position to use the market he's selling to, he performs a service. For others, he's doing a disservice, and I feel those are the people who don't need any more shit. Very anticapitalist of me, I know.
You are, essentially, dismissing my complaint about something that's partly a sideeffect of progress, but really is more due to people being antisocial, as being anti-progress. I'm not anti-progress, I would like to see more of it. Social progress especially seems to be somewhat behind..
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, I'm not reading this text right now, sorry.
But I don't blame the users or the teachers for this fact. As a teacher, I was often met by people being so intimidated that there was no way to get any fundamental concepts into their minds. Same as with teaching math really, only worse - people can avoid solving math problems a lot better than avoid using computers.
And I can understand their confusion. Many of the conventional UI concepts don't make sense, and if I didn't grow up with computers and those concepts I probably wouldn't get it either. What I feel is needed is not a better way to teach those (imho broken) concepts, but better user interfaces.
as validating the open source tool
or even
indicate a subtle attempt to dismiss OpenOffice
(emphasize mine). This video is the same what Microsoft has always done with anything that might, at some point, become a threat to its business - spread FUD as soon as possible, don't wait for them to become a real threat first.
In no way does that mean Microsoft views OpenOffice as real competition, at least not yet. Maybe it does indicate that they expect Oracle's takeover and it's database technology to make a OO Base a better Access, but still, it's just a preemptive strike.
Okay, there are extremes, and extremes are never any good.
What I experienced, more than once, was that someone had a bright idea on some solution, most of it being software, and had some MBA guys throw a few talented developers on the problem. Problem was, without some consensual short term goals, without defined milestones, in short without any kind of project management, the end result was broken software, a bunch of burnt out developers, and a huge amount of wasted energy.
That was no pretty sight.
Modpoints for ACs, that'll be the day...
You aren't seriously implying that developing Apache and Linux didn't take a huge amount of resources? What ginormous crack pipe have you been sucking on?
Sure, some markets have a small enough scope so that one developer can cater to it.
But even those projects can grow very quickly and often there just are more developers being thrown at it, while what is really needed is a more expensive project manager.
One person companies, maybe. There's more additional cost than you're listing, but overall, you may be right.
But most commercial software projects take more manpower than one or two or three developers can accomplish, and then you will need a project manager to coordinate them. That's where small companies often fail, just by not being willing to invest in one who actually has any clue about management.
[...]Any royalty above zero is inherently discriminatory against small companies and startups. The FSF correctly point out that the amount of capital needed to start a software company is very small[...]
Did they? My experience tells me it takes a lot more capital and resources to make good software than what most, especially small, companies invest. Not the point, I know, but I feel that's a grossly misleading claim.
Yeah, curse those cellphone makers and their weird plugs! They'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes!
Go ask a patent troll.
And Oracle has the people who actually know the code.
See, social interaction on my terms is progress. Social interaction on your terms is the opposite. Progress means that more people get social interaction on their terms. Whatever serves the most people is progress. If less hours are spent looking for books and talking to people I don't want to talk to simply because I am forced to, then I can spend that time however I like. If I would like to spend it socializing then that's my prerogative. If not, then that is too. You want to force people to drive around talking to people they don't like, that is not progress no matter how you slice it. You sarcastically imply that you don't intend to force people to drive, but that is precisely what happens if people don't put the books on Amazon, so I'm not sure what you think will happen if these people can't buy books and resell them.
Actually, enabling people to stay within the confines of the social interaction of their own choosing also enables them to ignore other parts of society.
While that might be fine for the individual, I don't see how any good can come out of that for society. Maybe that is partly socialistic, though not the way that ideology was implemented in the past. It's not communism though.
If you really want to take your social, communist (not necessarily a bad thing, but honest) ideals about socializing with others to the logical extreme, we should ban all book stores because they are interfering with the exchange of used books. You are clearly anti-business because you do not want the books to be sold efficiently and for what the market will bear, so why not just cut the disingenuity and suggest that all business is evil because it reduces socializing? I should be forced to go trade my IT labor for eggs if I want eggs, because it's more social!!1!!1!!
I did say I don't have a problem with moving goods down the supply chain, only up. At no point did I go into the form of compensation. If you want to go reboot someone's computer because you're out of eggs, that's up to you, but don't blame me.
My entire point is that when you tap the resources of a market in order to resell those resources to another market, you should make sure you act responsibly, don't take away limited resources from one group of people to give them to another group that already has more resources at its disposal.
Yes, theoretically.
On the other hand, if it's correct that most new code in OpenOffice came from formerly Sun's, now Oracle's, employees, there isn't much chance that what those people can do with the code can just be replicated.
Sisyphus?
Yeah, I'm really looking forward to offices coming to a standstill while they wait for some essential addon to be ported to the new, autoupdated version of *Office.
Yeah, I was going to force people to drive in the name of social progress.
In what way can selectively excluding people from your social interaction be seen as social progress?
True.
I was aware of the fact, but I have no idea on how to correct for it. It does seem to match the phenomena of the - also perceived - large amount of people filling their huge harddrives with more filesharing content than they actual consume. Again, no citation. If you got any hard data to prove or disprove my observation, I'd like to hear about it.
I _think_ that's how it works in Germany too. Though I doubt the elected laymen have any say in church politics, just administration. I don't know about elected bishops, but it's not often that they go against the time proven dogmas of the church.
It doesn't really matter to the value I perceive which part of the money ends up with the author.
$0.99 music downloads seem more expensive than $2.99 for a whole book, but your point is valid - it's immaterial, there is almost no perceived value anyway.
Really? I know I'm more likely to appreciate something when I invested in it. Be it money or my own work. That is somewhat less the case when the thing I'm buying is immaterial, like ebooks, mp3s or download games, but it's still true. And that's the attitude the people around me have as well.
You have an even bigger chance than with music - studio quality equipment still is outside most individual's price range, a few hours or even days combating Sigil or whatever ebook making tool is only a few beer or other nerve calming substances.
Calling the Bible a fictional work is at least misleading. Maybe some of its authors didn't believe what they were writing, knowingly deceiving their audience to further their own agenda. But overall, I think it's safe to say that most contributors believed maybe not what they literally wrote down, but the messages they were trying to convey. As such it's outside of the definition of "fiction" and calling it thus is akin to the once popular misspelling "Micro$oft" - an act with the sole purpose of propagating ones believes and values.
Kind of like what makes so many religious people so annoying and sometimes even dangerous.
Not that I've read all of the article, but 2.99 seems too cheap. I mean, there is a correlation between price and perceived value, and selling a novel this cheap at release doesn't seem like a good idea.
But then, how will people ever learn how to build UAVs and combat bots and whatever else research this enormous cash flow is sponsoring?
Comparing copyright infringement to theft is something different entirely. What I'm doing could be be compared to how publishers want to get rid of the First Sale doctrine, only my problem isn't with people selling goods down, but with selling them up the supply chain. Yes, for someone who's in the position to use the market he's selling to, he performs a service. For others, he's doing a disservice, and I feel those are the people who don't need any more shit. Very anticapitalist of me, I know.
You are, essentially, dismissing my complaint about something that's partly a sideeffect of progress, but really is more due to people being antisocial, as being anti-progress. I'm not anti-progress, I would like to see more of it. Social progress especially seems to be somewhat behind..