I don't think the fish analogy maps very well. Migrating to FOSS isn't necessarily like teaching someone to fish (teaching himher how to program). It's more like taking someone who has only ever seen fish in the supermarket, and showing them a harbor. Explain where fish come from, the fact that they reproduce on their own, etc.
At this point the person doesn't have to learn to fish. She could just buy from one of the many beachfront markets. She could hire one of the many fishing companies or individuals in the harbor there. Or buy/rent a pole and ride with one of them. And so on.
I'm not an expert, but what you describe sounds like a perfect example of public goods theory applied to taxation. Something (in this case mp3s) with zero marginal cost requires only that the cost of production be covered in order for it to be permissible (in fact, obligatory?) to provide the thing to everyone.
The normal way of doing this for other public goods (e.g. defense) is through taxation. How is music different?
You're limiting the word too much. The "method" we all learned about in middle school is not the sum total of science.
I use it to indicate the presence of what Feigl would call "scientific meaningfulness"... scientific statements are those that can be confirmed intersubjectively, or falsified. Discussions are scientific when the statements therein *could be experimentally tested, whether or not they actually are so tested.
"I imagine that most peoples' Hindi and Standard Mandarin is pretty rusty"
Define 'most'...
http://www.krysstal.com/spoken.html...seems to me that "most people's English is pretty rusty" would be *twice as correct as your statement about Mandarin, and about the same as Hindi.
This seems kinda like (warning: analogy) a filmmaker in the 90s wanting to get distribution and saying "I have to adhere to Blockbuster's way of doing things..." It's true for a time, but because that way of doing things is inefficient, it will get competed out of existence by a model that works better.
I think e.g. when China and/or India standardize on a Redmond-free set of office applications, they're going to be feeding amazing innovations into the FOSS pool.
As Microsoft's paid independent analysts pointed out, the software (licenses) part of the IT budget is not huge, so switching to FOSS because the software costs nothing will give you mixed TCO results.
The real payoff comes when you hire *french programmers to build and support the customized Mandriva. Their incomes get taxed by you, their purchases are generally from native businesses, etc.
FOSS for governments is such a big win that I'm astonished more haven't already switched.
Of course the BBSpot piece is a satire but did you know that this was basically the way they intended things to go when VCRs were first invented?
The story is retold in one of Lessig's books -- The Future of Ideas, IIRC. Someone invented a videotape with a lock, so that to watch it a second time you had to pay (someone) again and get them to rewind for you.
As I understand it, an MPAA exec rejected the design, because there was no way to tell how many people were present at a given viewing. They wanted a design that charged by the person as well as per-play.
Maybe I'm used to incremental-style development, but it seems like "literally the best Windows release to date" should have gone without saying.
Like, okay... I actually preferred Fedora Core 3 to 4. But there weren't five years between those two. If FC5 were not better than Red Hat 7.1 then I would suggest something had gone Really Damn Wrong.
It's little more than a gleam in my eye, but I picture a hybrid between a great browser and a great WM. You can right-click on the little icon that represents MyFriendsWebsite.com and (if permissions are sufficient) copy the whole site, or drag-n-drop it, to your hard drive, or to a site you can write to.
Of course, the target site could be an RDF rather than a "plain" html page, and you could do different things with it based on what it is. If an RSS reader, for example, expand its node in the tree to see the individual entries, multiclick 'em and send them to an icon representing your Inbox.
And on and on. I'll check out yr project.
incidentally I'm not doing a "wow, I'm so clever for dreaming this up." For all I know, someone (you?) has created the whole damn thing already.
"Without that liability, you stick in an override, and anybody who fancies him/herself a "computer expert" will disable it."
Seems like this is the reason the owner-override idea is superfluous. You can presently implement some voluntary "trusted computing" stuff on your machines if you want to. 'Cause you're the owner. If you don't do such a thing, it's the same as if you override one that came with the box.
Treacherous computing is about changing where the buck stops. Changing the owner of the machine.
In the next 5 years people who think computing productivity has maxed are in for a surprise. There will be at least one toolkit that treats the Internet the way Qt or GTK treats. What the window metaphor did for a single computer's filesystem, this thing will do for the web, which is a filesystem, as you know.
(Hint: I don't think it'll be Windows Genuine.NET.)
Don't get me wrong; that's a slick hack. But think about it... how much time do you spend looking at your keyboard. If you're over 12, the answer's not much.
After your first half hour playing quake, you know where the keys are and this thing's gimmick is superfluous.
not to mention expensive, and likely makes the thing easier-to-break.
Robert Scoble - ScobleShow What's the resolution on the screen?
Matt Jubelirer - Microsoft It's 320/240.
Robert Scoble - ScobleShow I believe higher than that?
Matt Jubelirer - Microsoft Got to double check on the exact spec for you I will get back to you on that but you do get crystal clear video quality on the full screen...
Dvorak has demonstrated that he is a blatant shill. His reporting is unbelievably amateurish (anyone notice that he only interviewed *critics of the OLPC program?) but he knows how to get slashdotted. So as long as we keep accidentally clicking on his articles he's going to keep getting paid.
Editors, we need to know when TFA is by Dvorak, so that we can ignore it. Even better: quit approving his articles.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes a "working solution" is one that meets your needs and this is a great strategy when you know for a fact your needs will never change.
I don't think the fish analogy maps very well. Migrating to FOSS isn't necessarily like teaching someone to fish (teaching himher how to program). It's more like taking someone who has only ever seen fish in the supermarket, and showing them a harbor. Explain where fish come from, the fact that they reproduce on their own, etc. At this point the person doesn't have to learn to fish. She could just buy from one of the many beachfront markets. She could hire one of the many fishing companies or individuals in the harbor there. Or buy/rent a pole and ride with one of them. And so on.
Doesn't matter how many have the expertise. With proprietary software the possibility outright *does *not *exist and with FOSS it does.
Other possibilities are:
-acquire the expertise
-hire someone who has it
Are you trying to paint possibilities as a drawback?
The point of FOSS is that it works better and can be customized if it still doesn't work well enough. EOF.
I'm not an expert, but what you describe sounds like a perfect example of public goods theory applied to taxation. Something (in this case mp3s) with zero marginal cost requires only that the cost of production be covered in order for it to be permissible (in fact, obligatory?) to provide the thing to everyone.
The normal way of doing this for other public goods (e.g. defense) is through taxation. How is music different?
Since when is paying for something *once enough to please the **AA?
You're limiting the word too much. The "method" we all learned about in middle school is not the sum total of science.
I use it to indicate the presence of what Feigl would call "scientific meaningfulness"... scientific statements are those that can be confirmed intersubjectively, or falsified. Discussions are scientific when the statements therein *could be experimentally tested, whether or not they actually are so tested.
"I imagine that most peoples' Hindi and Standard Mandarin is pretty rusty"
...seems to me that "most people's English is pretty rusty" would be *twice as correct as your statement about Mandarin, and about the same as Hindi.
Define 'most'...
http://www.krysstal.com/spoken.html
Get impartial engineers and technicians to analyze -- *scientifically (gasp!) -- the pros and cons of the various formats.
... that's pretty much what was done, and nearly everyone who didn't have a buck to make off of MS Office supported open standards.
Oh wait
n/t
..as per my above post, this idea that "everyone" uses (and will continue to use) Microsoft's standards-flouting technology is a little Americentric.
Here's hoping that WGA and other attempts to stop pirating of Windows succeeds! The result would be about a billion migrations to FOSS.
This seems kinda like (warning: analogy) a filmmaker in the 90s wanting to get distribution and saying "I have to adhere to Blockbuster's way of doing things..." It's true for a time, but because that way of doing things is inefficient, it will get competed out of existence by a model that works better.
I think e.g. when China and/or India standardize on a Redmond-free set of office applications, they're going to be feeding amazing innovations into the FOSS pool.
As Microsoft's paid independent analysts pointed out, the software (licenses) part of the IT budget is not huge, so switching to FOSS because the software costs nothing will give you mixed TCO results.
The real payoff comes when you hire *french programmers to build and support the customized Mandriva. Their incomes get taxed by you, their purchases are generally from native businesses, etc.
FOSS for governments is such a big win that I'm astonished more haven't already switched.
Of course the BBSpot piece is a satire but did you know that this was basically the way they intended things to go when VCRs were first invented?
The story is retold in one of Lessig's books -- The Future of Ideas, IIRC. Someone invented a videotape with a lock, so that to watch it a second time you had to pay (someone) again and get them to rewind for you.
As I understand it, an MPAA exec rejected the design, because there was no way to tell how many people were present at a given viewing. They wanted a design that charged by the person as well as per-play.
Maybe I'm used to incremental-style development, but it seems like "literally the best Windows release to date" should have gone without saying.
... I actually preferred Fedora Core 3 to 4. But there weren't five years between those two. If FC5 were not better than Red Hat 7.1 then I would suggest something had gone Really Damn Wrong.
Like, okay
It's little more than a gleam in my eye, but I picture a hybrid between a great browser and a great WM. You can right-click on the little icon that represents MyFriendsWebsite.com and (if permissions are sufficient) copy the whole site, or drag-n-drop it, to your hard drive, or to a site you can write to.
Of course, the target site could be an RDF rather than a "plain" html page, and you could do different things with it based on what it is. If an RSS reader, for example, expand its node in the tree to see the individual entries, multiclick 'em and send them to an icon representing your Inbox.
And on and on. I'll check out yr project.
incidentally I'm not doing a "wow, I'm so clever for dreaming this up." For all I know, someone (you?) has created the whole damn thing already.
"Without that liability, you stick in an override, and anybody who fancies him/herself a "computer expert" will disable it."
Seems like this is the reason the owner-override idea is superfluous. You can presently implement some voluntary "trusted computing" stuff on your machines if you want to. 'Cause you're the owner. If you don't do such a thing, it's the same as if you override one that came with the box.
Treacherous computing is about changing where the buck stops. Changing the owner of the machine.
In the next 5 years people who think computing productivity has maxed are in for a surprise. There will be at least one toolkit that treats the Internet the way Qt or GTK treats. What the window metaphor did for a single computer's filesystem, this thing will do for the web, which is a filesystem, as you know. (Hint: I don't think it'll be Windows Genuine .NET.)
http://btetc.blogspot.com/2006/10/windows-penguine -advantage.html
Don't get me wrong; that's a slick hack. But think about it... how much time do you spend looking at your keyboard. If you're over 12, the answer's not much.
After your first half hour playing quake, you know where the keys are and this thing's gimmick is superfluous.
not to mention expensive, and likely makes the thing easier-to-break.
Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
What's the resolution on the screen?
Matt Jubelirer - Microsoft
It's 320/240.
Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
I believe higher than that?
Matt Jubelirer - Microsoft
Got to double check on the exact spec for you I will get back to you on that but you do get crystal clear video quality on the full screen...
or is that *too clever?
"Rather, think of places with some schooling, but a lack of books. I would imagine tens of millions of people in America live in that economic band."
FYPDvorak has demonstrated that he is a blatant shill. His reporting is unbelievably amateurish (anyone notice that he only interviewed *critics of the OLPC program?) but he knows how to get slashdotted. So as long as we keep accidentally clicking on his articles he's going to keep getting paid.
Editors, we need to know when TFA is by Dvorak, so that we can ignore it. Even better: quit approving his articles.
I wonder if someone would compare how many resources are "wasted" on OLPC versus, say...Vista?