Now, return to OSS. Companies who use OSS don't donate. They see it as throwing money away. People don't contribute to OSS respositories at nearly the rate they use it. And people hardly ever donate money either.
Thats a good point. The last company I worked at used OSS throughout the entire development cycle. From CVS repositories, to bugzilla for bug tracking, to eclipse for development, plus a host of other apps (of course Linux on servers and workstations). Do you know how much they contributed to any OS project? Yep - $0. (although since RH Linux came with our Dell servers and workstations, RH probably got some money).
They used to shell out thousands of dollars 15 years ago to proprietary vendors (Unix and MS) for the same applications they get for free now.
Your attempt to confuse this issue speaks volumes in its own right.
GuloGulo is using a very precise defintion for logical validity and Ad Hominem fallacy. It might not seem intuative but I encourage you to read the linked Wikipedia articles. He is right.
Who would you trust more : a NASA scientist who warned you about global warning, or an Exxon scientist who told you that global warming was a myth?
In a strictly logical sense you would have to evaluate each argument on its own merits. Given that not everyone has that capability, a safe choice is the NASA scientist (although the safe choice doesn't imply right choice). But this is moot anyway, the post is an op-ed which does not require any research or any great knowledge to evaluate. You can believe it to be valid or invalid, thats your choice. What you can't do is simply dismiss it (or try to cast doubt on it) because the editor might or might not be paid by Microsoft and then claim that you're not committing an Ad Hominem fallacy. You are.
I think the point of the $100 laptop was supposed to be making it affordable to charitable groups so that we could flood the poorest nations with them and give children access to technology that might help them find a way out of poverty.
I actually talked to a volunteer who works in Chad 6 months out of the year; focusing on setting up small scale IT infrastructure for schools, and newspapers. I asked her what she thought about the $100 MIT laptop. She says its ok but stressed that that lack of laptops is not a major roadblock to riding poverty from the areas. She was more worried about who will actually distribute these laptops, whether they would be seized by a local warlord or corrupt government and sold back to Europe or re-distrubted to party loyalists. She also said that providing and setting up vanilla PCs is not the big problem but maintaining them is. Literacy rate is low in most areas and they found that the infrastructure they set up would fail because of lack of knowledge (think printer ink is gone so nobody uses the printer until they come back). And then of course there are always software/hardware problems on the network (no matter how good it is). Whats worse, people with skills tend to leave.
Most industries run by explicit rules that you had better not cross if you know what's good for your company, without anyone ever having to explicitly lay them out, nudge nudge, wink wink, know what I mean?
OOP is a fundamental technique that can be used at even the smallest level efficiently.
A colleague of mine once remarked that there is currently a trend to dumb our kids down by teaching them that solutions to problems can be found by throwing design patterns at them until one fits, and if none do, to make one fit. OOP is not the answer to everything. Sometimes nothing beats a good Perl script.
One thing that should definitely be avoided is C - for goodness sake teach a safe language like Pascal instead. Beginners should not be dealing with pointers to memory (most developers never need to anyway).
If you're training a bunch of Arts students maybe, if you're training the next generation of developers, C is the way to go. Its so much easier to go from C to Java than Java to C. C forces good coding practices (not structure =)) while Java encourages sloppy coding with no regard for any optimization. OOP is important and has a place in the curriculum but what I've seen happen is schools focus solely on that, bypassing or not placing enough focus on C (which is great for understanding whats going on under the hood).
Slashdot Mirror
Awesome use of the touch screen. And of course..Zelda...
I think DSLite will be my first portable.
Now, return to OSS. Companies who use OSS don't donate. They see it as throwing money away. People don't contribute to OSS respositories at nearly the rate they use it. And people hardly ever donate money either.
Thats a good point. The last company I worked at used OSS throughout the entire development cycle. From CVS repositories, to bugzilla for bug tracking, to eclipse for development, plus a host of other apps (of course Linux on servers and workstations). Do you know how much they contributed to any OS project? Yep - $0. (although since RH Linux came with our Dell servers and workstations, RH probably got some money).
They used to shell out thousands of dollars 15 years ago to proprietary vendors (Unix and MS) for the same applications they get for free now.
Hopefully someone can pick up the slack and donate to this great project.
You?
class HelloWord{
public static void main(String[]args){
System.out.pritnln("My contribution to OSS");
}
}
I'releasing this code under GPL. Can I have my tax break?
For now. Soon you'll get a stack of those 50GB Blu-rays for $20.
If Microsoft gets two Christmases (with one Christmas having Halo3) its over for Sony in the US.
Come on...
Islamic or Arab and Persian?
Was Newton's formulation of Calculus a Christian invention?
Who says the don't? In fact, I can bet any amount of money that they do. Acid2 is an awesome testcase.
You've never played World War 2 Online or Anarchy Online after they launched.. have you?
So the answer is "We don't have to throw "Ad Hominem" arguments against him"
"Cui Bono" is a form of Ad Hominem. =)
Your attempt to confuse this issue speaks volumes in its own right.
GuloGulo is using a very precise defintion for logical validity and Ad Hominem fallacy. It might not seem intuative but I encourage you to read the linked Wikipedia articles. He is right.
Who would you trust more : a NASA scientist who warned you about global warning, or an Exxon scientist who told you that global warming was a myth?
In a strictly logical sense you would have to evaluate each argument on its own merits. Given that not everyone has that capability, a safe choice is the NASA scientist (although the safe choice doesn't imply right choice). But this is moot anyway, the post is an op-ed which does not require any research or any great knowledge to evaluate. You can believe it to be valid or invalid, thats your choice. What you can't do is simply dismiss it (or try to cast doubt on it) because the editor might or might not be paid by Microsoft and then claim that you're not committing an Ad Hominem fallacy. You are.
It's not ad hominem to point out that someone may have been paid to hold a certain opinion
Actually, thats exactly what it is.
Does it matter if he got paid for his opinion?
When reading any socio-political article, be sure you know who the author works for.
Why? Do his arguments not stand on their own? Or do we have to throw some "Ad Hominem" at him?
I think the point of the $100 laptop was supposed to be making it affordable to charitable groups so that we could flood the poorest nations with them and give children access to technology that might help them find a way out of poverty.
I actually talked to a volunteer who works in Chad 6 months out of the year; focusing on setting up small scale IT infrastructure for schools, and newspapers. I asked her what she thought about the $100 MIT laptop. She says its ok but stressed that that lack of laptops is not a major roadblock to riding poverty from the areas. She was more worried about who will actually distribute these laptops, whether they would be seized by a local warlord or corrupt government and sold back to Europe or re-distrubted to party loyalists. She also said that providing and setting up vanilla PCs is not the big problem but maintaining them is. Literacy rate is low in most areas and they found that the infrastructure they set up would fail because of lack of knowledge (think printer ink is gone so nobody uses the printer until they come back). And then of course there are always software/hardware problems on the network (no matter how good it is). Whats worse, people with skills tend to leave.
Most industries run by explicit rules that you had better not cross if you know what's good for your company, without anyone ever having to explicitly lay them out, nudge nudge, wink wink, know what I mean?
No. I have a feeling you don't either.
All I want from Dell is a commmittment to ship hardware for which open source drivers are available
All I want is drivers period. Proprietary is fine with me.
Or is that one of those its not a "method" its a "function" things?
You need to update your definitions.
n gn g
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programmi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_programmi
In fact, "functional" programming is just OOP without enforced objects.
You mean 'procedural' and no its not.
An important point to note here, is that most programmers nowadays don't need to be aware of this.
Yay for mediocrity?
OOP is a fundamental technique that can be used at even the smallest level efficiently.
A colleague of mine once remarked that there is currently a trend to dumb our kids down by teaching them that solutions to problems can be found by throwing design patterns at them until one fits, and if none do, to make one fit. OOP is not the answer to everything. Sometimes nothing beats a good Perl script.
One thing that should definitely be avoided is C - for goodness sake teach a safe language like Pascal instead. Beginners should not be dealing with pointers to memory (most developers never need to anyway).
If you're training a bunch of Arts students maybe, if you're training the next generation of developers, C is the way to go. Its so much easier to go from C to Java than Java to C. C forces good coding practices (not structure =)) while Java encourages sloppy coding with no regard for any optimization. OOP is important and has a place in the curriculum but what I've seen happen is schools focus solely on that, bypassing or not placing enough focus on C (which is great for understanding whats going on under the hood).
The R3 is a very well put together laptop. But expensive.