"Except for one special situation*, The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) has no requirements about how much you can charge for distributing a copy of free software. You can charge nothing, a penny, a dollar, or a billion dollars. It's up to you, and the marketplace, so don't complain to us if nobody wants to pay a billion dollars for a copy."
Yes, but the first person who buys it from me can turn around and sell it for N - 1 dollars (where N is what I charged for it), thus undercutting me.
I feed and clothe my family with the money I make writing commercial software. I write desktop software which ships in the millions of copies, and no, in general consumers are not willing to pay for consulting services, support, or documentation like they do in the corporate IT world.
Free software works best when the software itself is of secondary importance and tied in with something else (service/support, hardware, etc.) that people actually buy. When there is nothing to tie in with, then there is no way to make a living doing it. In other words, in RMS' opinion, software has zero value. Thanks, but I choose to believe that the time I and my co-authors invest in our software is worth compensation.
When Richard Stallman's screeds start acknowledging and accomodating my way of life, get back to me. Until then, he has no relevance to me.
The lockin, I guess, comes from the apps that you use. This was a really big deal in the old days, but I would say its a lot less of an issue now.
90% of what most people do with computers these days is cross-compatible: web, mail, chat, word-processing/spreadsheeting, personal finance, etc.
The rest is the equivalent I guess of the roof-mounted ski rack that I bought for my wife's Toyota that wouldn't fit on the Nissan we bought when the Toyota lease ended.
But it's hard to hunt (even bow hunt) where people are too close by, because a lot of city-folks seem to have a negative attitude towards hunting.
Well, this may have a lot to do with city-folks not wanting people firing weapons near them, in general. Especially camouflaged yahoos whom are occasionally inebriated.
My father in law in Missouri has chronic problems with the local red-necks trespassing on his property to hunt, even going so far as to knock his fence down in order to get their SUVs in and tear up the creek bed that runs through his land. The lazy bastards can't even be bothered to get out on foot to "hunt".
Its also not unheard of for stray bullets to strike residential structures.
These are probably some of the reasons that contribute to folks' unease about hunting near them.
And I would say that calling hunting the "best" way to control wildlife populations is at best a matter of personal opinion. I would much rather have a balanced ecosystem with wild predators rather than relying on extremely undependable human intervention.
Formac makes/made a 3D accelerator called the ProFormance 3, and they offered stereoscopic goggles as an optional accessory. This must've been 3 or more years ago so its probably been discontinued, and likely won't support OS X. You might check their website (Formac.com) or hit ebay.
These things have been coming and going as fads since the late '80s at least. To be honest, I've never seen an implementation of the idea that was compelling, which is why they never seem to catch on.
If your company writes the software, it doesn't necessarily have to document it. And, if you write the software, who else knows it as well as you do? You could make a fortune on writing extensions and ironing out bugs that existed in the original project.
Ahhh, I love it.. someone finally admitting that Open Source is a disincentive to writing well documented, easy to use programs.
Re:It's gonna be a corporate giveaway this session
on
HomeSec In the News
·
· Score: 2
Finally the Party system should go away. I don't believe the original framers wanted political parties. They wanted individuals chosen by the people. We need to get rid of this Dem/Republican crap once and for all./soapbox
I agree with you in principle, but pragmatically speaking it ain't gonna happen.. Instead we should promote plurality. Greens, Libertarians, Reform Party, etc. I dream of the day when no party has an outright majority!
Webcrawler is the first web search tool I remember using (true search as opposed to directory listing a la Yahoo)
At the time I think Webcrawler was still someone's research project, as it was hosted on a.edu. This would've been around '91 or '92.
Surprisingly Webcrawler.com is an active search page, 'powered by InfoSpace'...
I've never gotten into the whole sarch engine loyalty thing. The best thing to come along IMO were tools like Sherlock on Mac OS that could run queries on multiple search engines and return the results in a single list.
Please tell me you aren't this naive
on
Indecision 2002
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Some points:
The President submits a budget to congress (what exactly did you think Reagan was talking about when explaining his "trickle down economics" program? An Econ 101 paper he was writing?)
The President appoints the leaders of the departments of the executive branch (such as that Dept. of Defense, which accounts for 43% of federal spending)
The President gets to veto any law passed by Congress (like the ridiculous defense pork that the Republican congress kept trying to pass during the Clinton years -- despite the fact that our military is grossly over-prepared for any realistically plausible enemies)
Its interesting that the Republicans are the ones that spend money hand over fist (that little 43% number again) and then when caught with their hands in the cookie jar, grin and point at the Dems.
And I bet your Uni charges every student a few hundred bucks per year "computing resources fee" to pay for those computer labs, so there is no way to opt out of the system.
If you just don't get 'easy to use'.. try this mental exercise: whenever you read/hear 'easy to use' make a mental substitution: 'easy to use' = 'hassle free'.
I think the phrase 'hassle free' much more accurately describes the problem. If I have to install Linux distribution X, download package Y, deal with package dependencies A, B, and C, edit config file/etc/foo (first learning the byzantine format that it uses) just to perform a task that I can do 'out of the box' on Windows/Mac OS X, then the average user will take the path of least hassle.
This has nothing to do with intelligence, as so many Linux geeks mistakenly assume. Imagine a heart surgeon.. he/she is obviously intelligent enough to get a M.D. and practice medicine. Just because he/she can't edit X11 config files and get Crossover installed does not make him/her an idiot, just lacking in appropriate domain expertise; primarily due to lack of time/interest.
When Linux is as hassle free as more successful desktop OSes then Linux has a chance to make it on the desktop. That is what this SuSE thing is all about IMO, removing one of the hassles a user would have to deal with in order to use Linux as a desktop OS. Now start working on the next one, and then the next one, and then the one after that..:-)
..because there are so many people that seriously debate things like which comic book superhero would 'win' in a battle... And have been doing so over and over for 60 years... And never get tired of it or think that all the relavent points have already been hashed out.
Why don't you.. ya know.. download the source and *look*, instead of asking Slashdotters to do the work for you? That is, after all, the whole *point* of open source isn't it?
The Pro-choice Democrats she supports are likely to raise her taxes quite a bit more than the pro-life Republicans she is seeking to defeat.
I have to call bullsh*t on this particular myth. In the 22 years since Reagan was elected in 1980 the only time the budget was balanced was when a Dem was president.
The Republicans, despite vociferous claims to the contrary, are much more for big, intrusive, authoritarian government.
I think we can all agree that Republicans are morre likely to spend money on defense. Well, the military represents over 40% of the federal budget alone! (source: FCNL)
The Republicans have had things far too easy for far too long on the tax-n-spend issue. This is the party of corporate welfare, bloated military spending, and intrusive, unnecessary policing of its own citizens (e.g. the 'war' on drugs, which has inflated the prison populations to unprecedented levels in the industrialized world - yes, prisons do cost money).
1. Existing p2p networks are slow and unreliable. I hate getting half way through a download only for the guy at the other end to disconnect from the network
1. Its true that it would be better to say something like 85% of usable land or habitable land or something to that effect.
2. You've obviously never seen a levy, a channel dredger, a lock/dam system, or any of the other man-made alterations to even the largest rivers e.g. the Mississipi. Large stretches of the bottoms of the Mississipi/Missouri rivers have even been lined with concrete blocks to prevent the channels from shifting naturally. I think it would be difficult for anyone to say that any U.S. rivers still exist that are free from human activity all together.
3. Roads present a barrier for passage of wildlife, so according to their estimates the environmental impact will affect any animal populations that regularly travel up to 2km, which is a large number of species.
4. *shrug*
5. Most populations in developing countries supplement their agriculturual food sources with hunting and/or fishing. Like it or not this *does* impact the ecology of that area.
The point that you seem to be missing is that this was a study of what areas of the planent are under the influence of human activity and what areas of the planet are relatively free from human activity *IN ORDER TO HELP THEM PRIORITIZE THEIR EFFORTS*.
And note again becase it's free does not mean it costs anybody a job or is evil. After all not a single job should be just a occupational therapy.
Umm, are you implying that OS developers don't deserve jobs? What should they do in order to feed, shelter, and clothe their families?
What is worthy of being paid to do? Should everyone in the software industry become sysadmins, and write code in their spare time? As if we didn't spend too much time already in front of a computer screen! Why is making a living in the service sector somehow more noble?
This was billed as 'a contrarian viewpoint to open source' or whatever. If the guy just wanted to get up and rant for an hour then they should've billed it as such. If it had been 'Bruce Sterling rants on the state of the software industry' then more power to him (and them), even more so if it was entertaining.
Its like Microsoft offering a 'contrarian viewpoint to commercial software' and then putting Carrot Top on stage to rant for an hour or so instead of getting someone who could actually articulate the significance of open software.
(And I won't bother pointing out that it's not a "speach" either. Oops! Just did.)
Ahh well.. its hard to not have typos every now and then.. I did spell it correctly in the body of my post, you will note...
But thanks for pointing that out, it really added weight to your argument.
Go ahead and mod me to hell, it has to be said: that was the stupidest thing I've ever read.
It was the weirdest mish-mash of mixed up metaphors I've ever seen. Did it even have a point? Was this man high as a kite at the time he gave this speech?
If this is the best contrarian viewpoint on open source that the convention organizers could rustle up, then they're either myopic to the point of blindness or intentionally self deluded.
Why couldn't they get someone who was serious to provide the oh so important counterpoint? Someone who would actually, you know, talk about real stuff like open source economics and how I'm going to make a living if the world ever does move to 100% open source software?
You're right, no computer interface has ever been truly 'intuitive' according to the full definition of that word.
However, one of the most important aspects of UI design is consistency. Consistency means learning the UI conventions of the platform and then being able to apply that knowledge to every app you run, without learning a bunch of new conventions.
Good applications are consistent with the platform they are running on, bad applications are inconsistent. Mozilla is more inconsistent than other browsers.
As a UI designer yourself, I'm surprised that you need to be told this.
Slashdot Mirror
"Except for one special situation*, The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) has no requirements about how much you can charge for distributing a copy of free software. You can charge nothing, a penny, a dollar, or a billion dollars. It's up to you, and the marketplace, so don't complain to us if nobody wants to pay a billion dollars for a copy."
Yes, but the first person who buys it from me can turn around and sell it for N - 1 dollars (where N is what I charged for it), thus undercutting me.
I feed and clothe my family with the money I make writing commercial software. I write desktop software which ships in the millions of copies, and no, in general consumers are not willing to pay for consulting services, support, or documentation like they do in the corporate IT world.
Free software works best when the software itself is of secondary importance and tied in with something else (service/support, hardware, etc.) that people actually buy. When there is nothing to tie in with, then there is no way to make a living doing it. In other words, in RMS' opinion, software has zero value. Thanks, but I choose to believe that the time I and my co-authors invest in our software is worth compensation.
When Richard Stallman's screeds start acknowledging and accomodating my way of life, get back to me. Until then, he has no relevance to me.
The lockin, I guess, comes from the apps that you use. This was a really big deal in the old days, but I would say its a lot less of an issue now.
90% of what most people do with computers these days is cross-compatible: web, mail, chat, word-processing/spreadsheeting, personal finance, etc.
The rest is the equivalent I guess of the roof-mounted ski rack that I bought for my wife's Toyota that wouldn't fit on the Nissan we bought when the Toyota lease ended.
But it's hard to hunt (even bow hunt) where people are too close by, because a lot of city-folks seem to have a negative attitude towards hunting.
Well, this may have a lot to do with city-folks not wanting people firing weapons near them, in general. Especially camouflaged yahoos whom are occasionally inebriated.
My father in law in Missouri has chronic problems with the local red-necks trespassing on his property to hunt, even going so far as to knock his fence down in order to get their SUVs in and tear up the creek bed that runs through his land. The lazy bastards can't even be bothered to get out on foot to "hunt".
Its also not unheard of for stray bullets to strike residential structures.
These are probably some of the reasons that contribute to folks' unease about hunting near them.
And I would say that calling hunting the "best" way to control wildlife populations is at best a matter of personal opinion. I would much rather have a balanced ecosystem with wild predators rather than relying on extremely undependable human intervention.
The whole point of the article was adventure/RPGs that were never released.
:-)
Unlike an action game, when an adventure game gets canceled, any storylines that would've been resolved are left unfinished.
And to Donut: the X-Box is just a warmed over PC circa 1999. So nyah
Formac makes/made a 3D accelerator called the ProFormance 3, and they offered stereoscopic goggles as an optional accessory. This must've been 3 or more years ago so its probably been discontinued, and likely won't support OS X. You might check their website (Formac.com) or hit ebay.
These things have been coming and going as fads since the late '80s at least. To be honest, I've never seen an implementation of the idea that was compelling, which is why they never seem to catch on.
If your company writes the software, it doesn't necessarily have to document it. And, if you write the software, who else knows it as well as you do? You could make a fortune on writing extensions and ironing out bugs that existed in the original project.
Ahhh, I love it.. someone finally admitting that Open Source is a disincentive to writing well documented, easy to use programs.
Finally the Party system should go away. I don't believe the original framers wanted political parties. They wanted individuals chosen by the people. We need to get rid of this Dem/Republican crap once and for all. /soapbox
I agree with you in principle, but pragmatically speaking it ain't gonna happen.. Instead we should promote plurality. Greens, Libertarians, Reform Party, etc. I dream of the day when no party has an outright majority!
The House is controlled by the Republicans, and was even before the recent elections.
The Senate is 50-49-1 (the 1 is the independent that Jesse Ventura appointed in Paul Wellstone's place)
Webcrawler is the first web search tool I remember using (true search as opposed to directory listing a la Yahoo)
.edu. This would've been around '91 or '92.
At the time I think Webcrawler was still someone's research project, as it was hosted on a
Surprisingly Webcrawler.com is an active search page, 'powered by InfoSpace'...
I've never gotten into the whole sarch engine loyalty thing. The best thing to come along IMO were tools like Sherlock on Mac OS that could run queries on multiple search engines and return the results in a single list.
Some points:
The President submits a budget to congress (what exactly did you think Reagan was talking about when explaining his "trickle down economics" program? An Econ 101 paper he was writing?)
The President appoints the leaders of the departments of the executive branch (such as that Dept. of Defense, which accounts for 43% of federal spending)
The President gets to veto any law passed by Congress (like the ridiculous defense pork that the Republican congress kept trying to pass during the Clinton years -- despite the fact that our military is grossly over-prepared for any realistically plausible enemies)
Its interesting that the Republicans are the ones that spend money hand over fist (that little 43% number again) and then when caught with their hands in the cookie jar, grin and point at the Dems.
And I bet your Uni charges every student a few hundred bucks per year "computing resources fee" to pay for those computer labs, so there is no way to opt out of the system.
If you just don't get 'easy to use'.. try this mental exercise: whenever you read/hear 'easy to use' make a mental substitution: 'easy to use' = 'hassle free'.
/etc/foo (first learning the byzantine format that it uses) just to perform a task that I can do 'out of the box' on Windows/Mac OS X, then the average user will take the path of least hassle.
:-)
I think the phrase 'hassle free' much more accurately describes the problem. If I have to install Linux distribution X, download package Y, deal with package dependencies A, B, and C, edit config file
This has nothing to do with intelligence, as so many Linux geeks mistakenly assume. Imagine a heart surgeon.. he/she is obviously intelligent enough to get a M.D. and practice medicine. Just because he/she can't edit X11 config files and get Crossover installed does not make him/her an idiot, just lacking in appropriate domain expertise; primarily due to lack of time/interest.
When Linux is as hassle free as more successful desktop OSes then Linux has a chance to make it on the desktop. That is what this SuSE thing is all about IMO, removing one of the hassles a user would have to deal with in order to use Linux as a desktop OS. Now start working on the next one, and then the next one, and then the one after that..
..because there are so many people that seriously debate things like which comic book superhero would 'win' in a battle... And have been doing so over and over for 60 years... And never get tired of it or think that all the relavent points have already been hashed out.
You gotta parody that for all its worth.
Why don't you.. ya know.. download the source and *look*, instead of asking Slashdotters to do the work for you? That is, after all, the whole *point* of open source isn't it?
One flame deserves another..
I had no idea where Luton was, and curiosity got the better of me.. here it is:
b tw n/twn-map_results&zoom_level=4&uid=u1b58cv5rjkckbd a:2590ralzts&SNVData=3mad3-d.fy%2842g561_%29w25d.h qu%3b%28_NGMIW%3a%13%11%17BL_%3dGI_duyguf%28.qurs% 3d0,rb%3b7%3bb5m-r2qfj5m%3be10h%284&pcat=
http://www.mapquest.co.uk/cgi-bin/ia_find?link=
Now I know.
So why even bother with the pretense of a Democracy? Just let the mercantile class run things. Hey, it worked for 16th century Italy, right?
:-(
Here is a free clue for you: what "capitalist" society (as you put it) is a multi-national corporation a member of?
I honestly think the founding fathers would roll in their graves if they could hear their decendants
The Pro-choice Democrats she supports are likely to raise her taxes quite a bit more than the pro-life Republicans she is seeking to defeat.
I have to call bullsh*t on this particular myth. In the 22 years since Reagan was elected in 1980 the only time the budget was balanced was when a Dem was president.
The Republicans, despite vociferous claims to the contrary, are much more for big, intrusive, authoritarian government.
I think we can all agree that Republicans are morre likely to spend money on defense. Well, the military represents over 40% of the federal budget alone! (source: FCNL)
The Republicans have had things far too easy for far too long on the tax-n-spend issue. This is the party of corporate welfare, bloated military spending, and intrusive, unnecessary policing of its own citizens (e.g. the 'war' on drugs, which has inflated the prison populations to unprecedented levels in the industrialized world - yes, prisons do cost money).
I can think of 2 reasons:
1. Existing p2p networks are slow and unreliable. I hate getting half way through a download only for the guy at the other end to disconnect from the network
2. The quality of rips varies *wildly*
1. Its true that it would be better to say something like 85% of usable land or habitable land or something to that effect.
2. You've obviously never seen a levy, a channel dredger, a lock/dam system, or any of the other man-made alterations to even the largest rivers e.g. the Mississipi. Large stretches of the bottoms of the Mississipi/Missouri rivers have even been lined with concrete blocks to prevent the channels from shifting naturally. I think it would be difficult for anyone to say that any U.S. rivers still exist that are free from human activity all together.
3. Roads present a barrier for passage of wildlife, so according to their estimates the environmental impact will affect any animal populations that regularly travel up to 2km, which is a large number of species.
4. *shrug*
5. Most populations in developing countries supplement their agriculturual food sources with hunting and/or fishing. Like it or not this *does* impact the ecology of that area.
The point that you seem to be missing is that this was a study of what areas of the planent are under the influence of human activity and what areas of the planet are relatively free from human activity *IN ORDER TO HELP THEM PRIORITIZE THEIR EFFORTS*.
And note again becase it's free does not mean it costs anybody a job or is evil. After all not a single job should be just a occupational therapy.
Umm, are you implying that OS developers don't deserve jobs? What should they do in order to feed, shelter, and clothe their families?
What is worthy of being paid to do? Should everyone in the software industry become sysadmins, and write code in their spare time? As if we didn't spend too much time already in front of a computer screen! Why is making a living in the service sector somehow more noble?
This was billed as 'a contrarian viewpoint to open source' or whatever. If the guy just wanted to get up and rant for an hour then they should've billed it as such. If it had been 'Bruce Sterling rants on the state of the software industry' then more power to him (and them), even more so if it was entertaining.
Its like Microsoft offering a 'contrarian viewpoint to commercial software' and then putting Carrot Top on stage to rant for an hour or so instead of getting someone who could actually articulate the significance of open software.
(And I won't bother pointing out that it's not a "speach" either. Oops! Just did.)
Ahh well.. its hard to not have typos every now and then.. I did spell it correctly in the body of my post, you will note... But thanks for pointing that out, it really added weight to your argument.
Go ahead and mod me to hell, it has to be said: that was the stupidest thing I've ever read.
It was the weirdest mish-mash of mixed up metaphors I've ever seen. Did it even have a point? Was this man high as a kite at the time he gave this speech?
If this is the best contrarian viewpoint on open source that the convention organizers could rustle up, then they're either myopic to the point of blindness or intentionally self deluded.
Why couldn't they get someone who was serious to provide the oh so important counterpoint? Someone who would actually, you know, talk about real stuff like open source economics and how I'm going to make a living if the world ever does move to 100% open source software?
What a waste of (my) 15 minutes.
Is it just me or does everyone from MIT come off sounding like a braggart? No offense intended, of course...
You're right, no computer interface has ever been truly 'intuitive' according to the full definition of that word.
However, one of the most important aspects of UI design is consistency. Consistency means learning the UI conventions of the platform and then being able to apply that knowledge to every app you run, without learning a bunch of new conventions.
Good applications are consistent with the platform they are running on, bad applications are inconsistent. Mozilla is more inconsistent than other browsers.
As a UI designer yourself, I'm surprised that you need to be told this.