I really wonder what the point is, there are almost hundreds of OSS "content management" projects already... all with almost the exact same set of features...
Choice is good, but isn't this a bit too much? You know, like CMS are all the hype, so everyone wants to make their own Open Source CMS... all in all, aren't there better things to be doing?
would you pay a per cpu priced program and run it on a pc that cost the same as the software if the software wouldn't take use of the two cpu's you're paying for? hardly.
If that was this particular software licensing policy and you needed that software, then yes you would... that was the point I was trying to make. You're assuming that software license policies are always sensible, which obviously is not quite true.
Well, if at least the software in question clearly takes advantage of a multi-cpu computer (clever multithreading...), then ok, why not, you have a point here... (then we can argue that the increase in productivity justifies the more expensive license.) Buf if it doesn't, then it doesn't make any sense. If you have two kids, will the clothes shop charge you twice as much for just ONE pair of kid pants?
environments anyway, in my opinion. The problem is not just their keyboards either! Gee... Now I don't see a problem with them in hospital offices, those don't have to be sterile. As long as there is proper hygiene where needed... what's the big deal?
I don't agree with your first statement. There may not be a lot of choice in their products, but their prices are extremely low. More often than not, you can't even assemble a computer yourself at theses prices.
Unfortunately, companies of this size comprise the bulk of American business
Care to provide us with some figures regarding this assertion? I'd venture that small companies actually form the bulk of american business in terms of employment.
So, what's your point? Of course ad companies will respond, then Mozilla will in turn respond and so on... this is exactly what happens everywhere in the universe all the time. We call that "life".
Well, all in all, OSS means more jobs indeed. In most settings, it also means more qualified jobs too, especially when it comes to development and/or administration jobs (yup, using OSS tools usually requires more skills). Which, in turn, means higher salaries. So, less jobs. I'd just venture that it's hard to claim one way or the other, here.
For now, what I know for sure is that OSS allows many small businesses to make business. Simple as that. And that's already something big.
Yep, exactly. But, to play the devil's advocate, it's pretty much what DRM is all about: preventing unauthorized digital copies, or at least making the copies unusable. I don't believe in DRM, but if anything, that would be what could make the term "copyright" not completely obsolete.
Well, maybe you're forgetting one of the biggest possible pitfalls apart from the government being overly "nosey".
License plates don't pose a real privacy problem, because the underlying information (details about the car owner) is not accessible by just anyone. Now imagine some critical information is stored in the RFID tag (which is bound to happen, because chances are, the ones who will use them will want more information than they have now, and technology will allow this). Then imagine some clever joes figure out how to read the tags with homebuilt devices (which is obviously also bound to happen). Now we have a real security concern here.
Well, of course: the basic consumer is after "instant gratification". Which is well summed up in your "They want cheap, convenient, high-density storage.".
I think with this trend, we're going to run into huge issues in a relatively short-term future. We need ways to have reliable, long term storage, and this, more and more, even for the "average" user, as digital storing of almost any kind of information becomes as common as the paper was years ago. Clearly, people are going to wake up all of a sudden and be in demand of reliable storage (not to mention, of course, that many professional settings already need it). It needs to be addressed. That's what I'm saying. Consumers don't disagree, they just don't care until they have to face the problem. And they won't until the very last minute, as always.
I'm sorry, but I absolutely *don't want* to hear that the solution is "online" storing for everything. To me, it's not a solution, it's a huge mistake.
Very true. Of course, disrespect can come from professional issues you have (not being competent, being overly bossy, etc), but if you do your job right, there are still many reasons to get some form of disrespect from coworkers: mostly shallow reasons, such as how you dress, glasses, hair cut, etc. And yes, there you feel like a 5 year-old again...
I agree. May I add something? Most often than not, missed deadlines are also due to poor technical decisions in the first place. Some project managers may have a strong engineering background, but sometimes they overlook important points - and they won't listen to their engineers, who have to deal with the decisions even when they warned the manager that there will be a problem. The traditional distribution of "power" inside a corporation often leads to problems when it comes to IT, because IT inherently works in a very different way than most other fields.
Why would you assume digital media is necessarily going to last longer than older media?
Why? Are you really asking this question? Because this is one of the primary concerns when it comes to permanent storage! (I almost feel like saying "duh".)
Of course, if you only need to keep your data for a few days to a few weeks (or months), such as in digital cameras, MP3 players, and the like, longevity doesn't matter at all. But for all long-term purposes, it *does* matter, it's one of the top priorities along with ease of use and speed. And if it is not "the trend" as you say, well, maybe we have a problem here: because clearly, digital media will (and is already) replace all other kinds of media in a relatively near future...
As always, MS creates the problem (making people store personal information online) and comes as the big, clever and almighty savior after that (well, it's more secure if you keep your data to yourself). But I can't decide between laughing and crying...
Until every provider (or at least a significant number of them) starts using new standards, and particularly for e-mail. Spam via e-mail is one of the biggest problems today, and it is all because of an extremely inadequate e-mail standard. In my opinion, this where it should all begin. Is that one of the goals clearly stated by this "alliance"?
technologically-active and innovative country in today's world, that should say something... and give hope to all of us who think OSS in general is closely linked to technological innovation, freedom and actually more commercial activity overall.
A cheap desktop? What does it have to do with it? This is a very tiny device, and it's about time such devices became available for all kinds of applications. I think it's very cool actually, and not that expensive at all for various embedded projects, including robotics.
Corporations have no soul and no social responsibility.
I'm not sure what you mean by "soul", but as for social responsibility, I guess that could be said about most of us, unfortunately.
Ethics is what it takes. Corporations, and professional work in general, should be led with some kind of ethics. Some organizations strive to promote ethics, such as the IEEE. It's not the only one, of course, but I guess a good indicator of a corporation's sense of ethics is whether they have one or more managers that are members of the IEEE or another similar organization.
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Choice is good, but isn't this a bit too much? You know, like CMS are all the hype, so everyone wants to make their own Open Source CMS... all in all, aren't there better things to be doing?
If that was this particular software licensing policy and you needed that software, then yes you would... that was the point I was trying to make. You're assuming that software license policies are always sensible, which obviously is not quite true.
Well, if at least the software in question clearly takes advantage of a multi-cpu computer (clever multithreading...), then ok, why not, you have a point here... (then we can argue that the increase in productivity justifies the more expensive license.) Buf if it doesn't, then it doesn't make any sense. If you have two kids, will the clothes shop charge you twice as much for just ONE pair of kid pants?
environments anyway, in my opinion. The problem is not just their keyboards either! Gee... Now I don't see a problem with them in hospital offices, those don't have to be sterile. As long as there is proper hygiene where needed... what's the big deal?
I don't agree with your first statement. There may not be a lot of choice in their products, but their prices are extremely low. More often than not, you can't even assemble a computer yourself at theses prices.
Care to provide us with some figures regarding this assertion? I'd venture that small companies actually form the bulk of american business in terms of employment.
I'll never buy an Hitachi drive again. ;-)
So, what's your point? Of course ad companies will respond, then Mozilla will in turn respond and so on... this is exactly what happens everywhere in the universe all the time. We call that "life".
Well, all in all, OSS means more jobs indeed. In most settings, it also means more qualified jobs too, especially when it comes to development and/or administration jobs (yup, using OSS tools usually requires more skills). Which, in turn, means higher salaries. So, less jobs. I'd just venture that it's hard to claim one way or the other, here.
For now, what I know for sure is that OSS allows many small businesses to make business. Simple as that. And that's already something big.
Yep, exactly. But, to play the devil's advocate, it's pretty much what DRM is all about: preventing unauthorized digital copies, or at least making the copies unusable. I don't believe in DRM, but if anything, that would be what could make the term "copyright" not completely obsolete.
Well, maybe you're forgetting one of the biggest possible pitfalls apart from the government being overly "nosey".
License plates don't pose a real privacy problem, because the underlying information (details about the car owner) is not accessible by just anyone. Now imagine some critical information is stored in the RFID tag (which is bound to happen, because chances are, the ones who will use them will want more information than they have now, and technology will allow this). Then imagine some clever joes figure out how to read the tags with homebuilt devices (which is obviously also bound to happen). Now we have a real security concern here.
Right. But the thing is, we don't actually *need* an SQL server from Microsoft. They can mind their own business for all I know... ;-)
April 1st should be a day off for Slashdot.
Well, of course: the basic consumer is after "instant gratification". Which is well summed up in your "They want cheap, convenient, high-density storage.".
I think with this trend, we're going to run into huge issues in a relatively short-term future. We need ways to have reliable, long term storage, and this, more and more, even for the "average" user, as digital storing of almost any kind of information becomes as common as the paper was years ago. Clearly, people are going to wake up all of a sudden and be in demand of reliable storage (not to mention, of course, that many professional settings already need it). It needs to be addressed. That's what I'm saying. Consumers don't disagree, they just don't care until they have to face the problem. And they won't until the very last minute, as always.
I'm sorry, but I absolutely *don't want* to hear that the solution is "online" storing for everything. To me, it's not a solution, it's a huge mistake.
Very true. Of course, disrespect can come from professional issues you have (not being competent, being overly bossy, etc), but if you do your job right, there are still many reasons to get some form of disrespect from coworkers: mostly shallow reasons, such as how you dress, glasses, hair cut, etc. And yes, there you feel like a 5 year-old again...
No one said it should be assumed. I just said it should be a top priority, and clearly right now, it's not.
Don't be too impatient, the time will come. 8)
I agree. May I add something? Most often than not, missed deadlines are also due to poor technical decisions in the first place. Some project managers may have a strong engineering background, but sometimes they overlook important points - and they won't listen to their engineers, who have to deal with the decisions even when they warned the manager that there will be a problem. The traditional distribution of "power" inside a corporation often leads to problems when it comes to IT, because IT inherently works in a very different way than most other fields.
Why? Are you really asking this question? Because this is one of the primary concerns when it comes to permanent storage! (I almost feel like saying "duh".)
Of course, if you only need to keep your data for a few days to a few weeks (or months), such as in digital cameras, MP3 players, and the like, longevity doesn't matter at all. But for all long-term purposes, it *does* matter, it's one of the top priorities along with ease of use and speed. And if it is not "the trend" as you say, well, maybe we have a problem here: because clearly, digital media will (and is already) replace all other kinds of media in a relatively near future...
I can't stop laughing reading that...
As always, MS creates the problem (making people store personal information online) and comes as the big, clever and almighty savior after that (well, it's more secure if you keep your data to yourself). But I can't decide between laughing and crying...
Until every provider (or at least a significant number of them) starts using new standards, and particularly for e-mail. Spam via e-mail is one of the biggest problems today, and it is all because of an extremely inadequate e-mail standard. In my opinion, this where it should all begin. Is that one of the goals clearly stated by this "alliance"?
technologically-active and innovative country in today's world, that should say something... and give hope to all of us who think OSS in general is closely linked to technological innovation, freedom and actually more commercial activity overall.
They will if it's sold pre-installed on computers. That's how they have been selling most Windows licenses anyway... :D
A cheap desktop? What does it have to do with it? This is a very tiny device, and it's about time such devices became available for all kinds of applications. I think it's very cool actually, and not that expensive at all for various embedded projects, including robotics.
I'm not sure what you mean by "soul", but as for social responsibility, I guess that could be said about most of us, unfortunately.
Ethics is what it takes. Corporations, and professional work in general, should be led with some kind of ethics. Some organizations strive to promote ethics, such as the IEEE. It's not the only one, of course, but I guess a good indicator of a corporation's sense of ethics is whether they have one or more managers that are members of the IEEE or another similar organization.