We have to look at each offering individually and decide for ourselves whether it would help to further our cause or hurt us in the long run. For every piece of software that is released under a non-free license to run on our free software platform, the temptation to sacrifice a part of our freedom in order to use this new software grows
Very true.
But part of freedom is choice.
If I cannot get what I need as an OSS package, I will pay for it. And if there is such a need for widget X, then other programmers will be scratching that itch while I'm paying out my cash.
Look at OSS - it is mainly derivative of other closed source software. I am not denying there is a wealth of innovation in OSS; far from it. But a mail client is a mail client, closed or open source.
What must surely be troubling software companies right now is the fact that innovation is easily duplicated by OSS projects. Got a killer app? I give you a month before a workalike hits freshmeat.
The exception to this is where the closed source product is exceptional in complexity. Coming from a Win32 programming background, the one thing I hate about Linux is the lack of OSS professional quality IDES. I don't want to have to piss about with makefiles; I was doing that in DOS 10 years ago, and RHIDE feels like Borland C++ 1.0. Look at Kylix, I would pay money for that, and feel comfortable doing so. At the end of the day, I can produce much more with that in a smaller timescale than I ever will with gcc.
Finally, I choose utility over idealism. If I can use OSS I will, but if no OSS counterpart exists I'll shell out and not lose any sleep.
/. Vote:
And RMS is...
O a proto communist layabout who threatens our very way of life
O a visionary, bringing new social concepts to software, whilst sticking up his fingers to Da Man
O Hemos's alter ego
Actually, there was a party round my house last Friday night, but I didn't see an/.'ers there... You all missed an excellent party, naked chicks dancing, beer, cigars,
Is it just me or should/. acknowledge the fact that it's readership _is_ international, and either post a more internationally balanced list of diary dates, or quit posting news like this? I mean, the recent riots in London didn't seem to garner much attention...
OT - where have all the trolls gone? I don't miss Ecstacy guy, or that avian cock bloke, but where is OSM, OOG, and the genuinely funny, offtopic and daft trolls?
Posting +2 because I care no more for karma...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Re:Inaccuracies in the BBC article
on
Techno Jacket
·
· Score: 1
Surely, you mean Teh Grauniad?
(note to non - UK readers and moderators on crack - Teh Grauniad holds the Guinness record for the newspaper with most typos on one page or something like that...)
WHY has Compaq started selling domestic cleaning appliances? Don't Hoover and Dyson have this market sewn up, or is that why Compaq are dumping their VAX product?
There _have_ been OS innovations; it's not the software houses that are being slack.
BeOS, Next, all very innovative. Amoeba, Minix, and loads of dusty academic OS's exist.
But nobody really uses them. I've seen seasoned developers weep with joy once they've played with the BeOS API, system admins go green with envy when they see the security & file system of Amoeba. But there is no takeup by industry.
Why is that?
One word : interoperability
Look at all the grief that is required just to get WinXX talking to Linux. Allison, of Samba fame, goes as far as saying "SMB sucks!". Yet we're still tied into the same ways of doing things. It's the profit motive for the S/W companies that actually rewards them for stopping cooperation between OS's (MS Kerberous, anyone?)... So innovations aren't easy to migrate to, it's an all or nothing thing in a lot of cases. Add to that the cost of retraining _all_ staff, and the costs are horrendous.
The only way I can see out of this is to get some Standards police, and have a unilateral legislative agreement that STANDARDS MUST BE ADHERED TO.
Then you get the companies whining that they cannot "innovate" for competitive advantage, and xth Amendment agitators (in the US) saying how the Government is censoring/stifling free expression.
In short, hte companies have us by the short and curlies and they won't let go until they're smacked down _hard_. I don't see this happening.
I'm afraid of the Nazi ideals being combined with the unarguably superior military might of the USA.
I'm not.
Given a war between France and USA, who would win?
No one.
The French would see that the Americans have more troops, more munitions and toys of war. They can't compete with that, so they lob a few hundred nukes across the pond. America responds in kind, everybody loses.
Fortunately, this is one case where the rampant capitalism in the West actually works for the good. Seeing the potential collateral damage, the corporations would scramble to pour water on troubled waters...
I think that this is the reason why OSS has such a big takeup by the techies.
Because we can work on stuff without the whole time-to-market panic. I have been forced to release shit code I have written, and as someone whole takes a good deal of pride in the job, that was _hard_.
Compare and contrast that to OSS; it gets released when it's ready, and then undergoes a lengthy period of peer review - any mistakes I've made get fixed before it is deemed "good".
And I think if OSS started playing dirty tricks, it would lose it's appeal to the tech community. You don't feel like a dirty corporate whore writing OSS stuff.
Further evidence that the moderators have been smoking crack... Again
What is it lately? Are the drug cartels offloading a whole load of cheap crack at the minute?
Link, please?
I miss my C64 - it was where I learnt how to program assembly!!! By hand!!!
Anybody have links to the whereabouts of Shaun Southern, Andrew Braybrook or Archer Maclean?
And is it just me, or do Paradroid, Infiltrator and Raid Over Moscow (better rename it Raid over Baghdad) really deserve remaking?
*crosses fingers and hopes...*
Hmm, I seem to recall that the pr0n industry grossed more than the combined Rock and Country & Western music industries recently... If that's marginal, then I'm a Dutchman!
And I certainly wouldn't mind a return to the BBS days...:)
Nope, not useless. If I want to get on my soapbox, here's a way of doing it. Or, can you say "DeCSS source code"?
The trouble is, it cannot carry any warez, or MP3, and that puts it waaaay behind Freenet and similar efforts.
The totally distributed PTP type network model like Freenet will be the next Internet killer app. And watch entrenched institutions like RIAA, MPAA, FBI, MI5, MI6 etc turn blue as they try to regulate and control.
Once you get this sort of PTP nettech together, imagine wireless networks getting together, all communicating as mini routers, DNS etc, you basically have a network that is pretty hard to compromise... I think the Nomad Mobile Research Centre has something to say about this... Interesting reading...
Am I being trolled, or are you for real? Is this released into Slash at the minute, or is there a secret troll forum somewhere where Taco has the latest source code twists brutalised out of him?
In any case, I have karma in excess of 50, so I'll post this with a +2 and see if I lose a point after the moderators kill it...
when i'm mod'ed up it stays put and when i'm mod'ed down it stays put.:(
I should keep that quiet, unless you're looking to auction the account... Some of the slashtrolls would be _very_ interested in an account free of moderation...
[OT]Posted with M17 running on NT4.0 sp6 (the shame! - But I am at work...), stable for 3 hours so far!:)
I can see he tech New Age people having a field day... Instead of reading your aura with crystals, they'll hook you up to this machine!!!
Still, the responses gotta beat the "oooh, your aura is soooo greeeeen!!! You must have a lot of Gaia in your karma..."
We've seen this before (I'm sure some karma whore will post a link...)...
The scary thing is, where will it end?
Will employers scan me for whatever disease is the current scare? Will I get stopped at the airport because I just sat next to someone on a bus/train who had just smoked a joint?
In airports - it'll be heralded as a "great anti terrorism" device... But with extra capabilities which will not be disclosed... How do I know it's not sniffing me for say, cheating on my girlfriend?
And don't say "oh, it'll be fine it will be regulated..."... Because I trust Governments and corporations about as far as I can spit a large rat on things like this...
Black-Scholes option pricing PDE into a Hewlett-Packard Financial Analyst (and believe me, you won't get through an MBA if you can't) should be able to handle the comparatively trivial installation of Red Hat 6.0.
Hmm, I have programmed B-S option pricing models, equity & derivatives pricing from scratch, and I _still_ can't get RH 6.0 to like my OEM ARK2000 graphics card!!! Still running at a generous 800*600; I _know_ the card can do 1024*768...
And what better way to give them real life experience than to team them with their art school counterparts? Then they'd get used to being project managed by someone who can barely switch on the computer, far less use one... Make a point of keeping your art students tired, so they'll snap at the protonerds. Once a project spec has been decided, make it an integral part of the art students role to keep the objectives changing. And the art school project managers should never, ever thank the protonerds... Just like real life!!!
How about a system to model a library or a video rental shop?:) Seriously, though, I'd offer several choices to get your protonerds going: * A systems type project - something like process monitoring - who used what files/sockets/CPU time. Gets them right into the guts of an OS. * A database app. Something like a list of IP addresses, open ports and OS that runs... Actually, scrub that I can see where it's headed. Or maybe an MP3 database. Whatever, but make it relevant to the students.
As a general guide you'd want to include file access, socket access, some basic DB work, memory allocation (pointers/allocation) and user interface.
Slashdot Mirror
Very true.
But part of freedom is choice.
If I cannot get what I need as an OSS package, I will pay for it. And if there is such a need for widget X, then other programmers will be scratching that itch while I'm paying out my cash.
Look at OSS - it is mainly derivative of other closed source software. I am not denying there is a wealth of innovation in OSS; far from it. But a mail client is a mail client, closed or open source.
What must surely be troubling software companies right now is the fact that innovation is easily duplicated by OSS projects. Got a killer app? I give you a month before a workalike hits freshmeat.
The exception to this is where the closed source product is exceptional in complexity. Coming from a Win32 programming background, the one thing I hate about Linux is the lack of OSS professional quality IDES. I don't want to have to piss about with makefiles; I was doing that in DOS 10 years ago, and RHIDE feels like Borland C++ 1.0. Look at Kylix, I would pay money for that, and feel comfortable doing so. At the end of the day, I can produce much more with that in a smaller timescale than I ever will with gcc.
Finally, I choose utility over idealism. If I can use OSS I will, but if no OSS counterpart exists I'll shell out and not lose any sleep.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
And RMS is...
O a proto communist layabout who threatens our very way of life
O a visionary, bringing new social concepts to software, whilst sticking up his fingers to Da Man
O Hemos's alter ego
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Surely Katz can get an article out if this?
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Is it just me or should
OT - where have all the trolls gone? I don't miss Ecstacy guy, or that avian cock bloke, but where is OSM, OOG, and the genuinely funny, offtopic and daft trolls?
Posting +2 because I care no more for karma...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
(note to non - UK readers and moderators on crack - Teh Grauniad holds the Guinness record for the newspaper with most typos on one page or something like that...)
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
BeOS, Next, all very innovative. Amoeba, Minix, and loads of dusty academic OS's exist.
But nobody really uses them. I've seen seasoned developers weep with joy once they've played with the BeOS API, system admins go green with envy when they see the security & file system of Amoeba. But there is no takeup by industry.
Why is that?
One word : interoperability
Look at all the grief that is required just to get WinXX talking to Linux. Allison, of Samba fame, goes as far as saying "SMB sucks!". Yet we're still tied into the same ways of doing things. It's the profit motive for the S/W companies that actually rewards them for stopping cooperation between OS's (MS Kerberous, anyone?)... So innovations aren't easy to migrate to, it's an all or nothing thing in a lot of cases. Add to that the cost of retraining _all_ staff, and the costs are horrendous.
The only way I can see out of this is to get some Standards police, and have a unilateral legislative agreement that STANDARDS MUST BE ADHERED TO.
Then you get the companies whining that they cannot "innovate" for competitive advantage, and xth Amendment agitators (in the US) saying how the Government is censoring/stifling free expression.
In short, hte companies have us by the short and curlies and they won't let go until they're smacked down _hard_. I don't see this happening.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
I'm not.
Given a war between France and USA, who would win?
No one.
The French would see that the Americans have more troops, more munitions and toys of war. They can't compete with that, so they lob a few hundred nukes across the pond. America responds in kind, everybody loses.
Fortunately, this is one case where the rampant capitalism in the West actually works for the good. Seeing the potential collateral damage, the corporations would scramble to pour water on troubled waters...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Because we can work on stuff without the whole time-to-market panic. I have been forced to release shit code I have written, and as someone whole takes a good deal of pride in the job, that was _hard_.
Compare and contrast that to OSS; it gets released when it's ready, and then undergoes a lengthy period of peer review - any mistakes I've made get fixed before it is deemed "good".
And I think if OSS started playing dirty tricks, it would lose it's appeal to the tech community.
You don't feel like a dirty corporate whore writing OSS stuff.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Should be "Jesus saves, but Shearer tucks it away and scores on the rebound..."
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
What is it lately? Are the drug cartels offloading a whole load of cheap crack at the minute?
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
I miss my C64 - it was where I learnt how to program assembly!!! By hand!!!
Anybody have links to the whereabouts of Shaun Southern, Andrew Braybrook or Archer Maclean?
And is it just me, or do Paradroid, Infiltrator and Raid Over Moscow (better rename it Raid over Baghdad)
really deserve remaking?
*crosses fingers and hopes...*
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Hmm, I seem to recall that the pr0n industry grossed more than the combined Rock and Country & Western music industries recently... If that's marginal, then I'm a Dutchman!
And I certainly wouldn't mind a return to the BBS days...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
The trouble is, it cannot carry any warez, or MP3, and that puts it waaaay behind Freenet and similar efforts.
The totally distributed PTP type network model like Freenet will be the next Internet killer app. And watch entrenched institutions like RIAA, MPAA, FBI, MI5, MI6 etc turn blue as they try to regulate and control.
Once you get this sort of PTP nettech together, imagine wireless networks getting together, all communicating as mini routers, DNS etc, you basically have a network that is pretty hard to compromise... I think the Nomad Mobile Research Centre has something to say about this... Interesting reading...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
In any case, I have karma in excess of 50, so I'll post this with a +2 and see if I lose a point after the moderators kill it...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
I should keep that quiet, unless you're looking to auction the account... Some of the slashtrolls would be _very_ interested in an account free of moderation...
[OT]Posted with M17 running on NT4.0 sp6 (the shame! - But I am at work...), stable for 3 hours so far!
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Still, the responses gotta beat the "oooh, your aura is soooo greeeeen!!! You must have a lot of Gaia in your karma..."
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
The scary thing is, where will it end?
Will employers scan me for whatever disease is the current scare? Will I get stopped at the airport because I just sat next to someone on a bus/train who had just smoked a joint?
In airports - it'll be heralded as a "great anti terrorism" device... But with extra capabilities which will not be disclosed... How do I know it's not sniffing me for say, cheating on my girlfriend? And don't say "oh, it'll be fine it will be regulated..."... Because I trust Governments and corporations about as far as I can spit a large rat on things like this...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Hmm, I have programmed B-S option pricing models, equity & derivatives pricing from scratch, and I _still_ can't get RH 6.0 to like my OEM ARK2000 graphics card!!! Still running at a generous 800*600; I _know_ the card can do 1024*768...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Make a point of keeping your art students tired, so they'll snap at the protonerds. Once a project spec has been decided, make it an integral part of the art students role to keep the objectives changing.
And the art school project managers should never, ever thank the protonerds... Just like real life!!!
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Seriously, though, I'd offer several choices to get your protonerds going:
* A systems type project - something like process monitoring - who used what files/sockets/CPU time. Gets them right into the guts of an OS.
* A database app. Something like a list of IP addresses, open ports and OS that runs... Actually, scrub that I can see where it's headed. Or maybe an MP3 database. Whatever, but make it relevant to the students.
As a general guide you'd want to include file access, socket access, some basic DB work, memory allocation (pointers/allocation) and user interface.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.