Does that make the Chinese less valuable than my beloved Irish simply because there's more of them?
If I were in possession of the last mosquito on earth I would punch it into the ground until my fists were bloody. Something being more or less scarce does not make it inherently more valuable.
I like how you've created this slippery slope were, if you're not encouraging as many forks and new projects as humanly possible than you're creating a totalitarian linux police state.
I'm far more concerned with how I got modded flamebait for suggesting that there might be some logic in, if a developer wanted to help the progress and development, they would join a project that already suits their goals instead of spending their coding time reinventing the wheel (or in this case, say an mp3 player) 40 different times.
I'm not asking for any forcing, coercion, murder, mayhem, censorship or anything of the sort, just asking why it's such a heresy to encourage people to put their talent towards a 1% improvement on an 80% complete project instead of starting another project, only to get it to 20% and abandon it.
I would think the better solution would be asking the community to concentrate its efforts in some fields for the greater good of everyone, because if the projects are not noticeably different there is very little to be gained from having them compete.
Thankfully I'm pretty sure it's not their choice. When an ICBM is launched the time frame doesn't really allow for public opinion, debate, or protests. The only question is where Obama's heart lies. Does he alone have the gumption when the stafe member throws the football down on the podium in front of a bunch of elementary school kids or a foreign diplomat to respond to force with force.
Probably depends where it was going too. And how quickly Iran called and tried to claim it was a mistake.
I only caught the end of the Cold War, but I always felt much better about the Soviets than I do about a lot of our modern threats (Iran, North Korea) At least with the Soviets you looked across the table and saw a man who you could tell yourself woke up every morning and said "Man, I really hope I never have to use this damn red button" and it was echoed 50 years of politics where things were frequently pushed to the breaking point, but someone always backed down. Maybe they just spend a lot of time watching Wargames and had already figured out that the only way to win is not to play, I don't know.
I personally feel like China's got it figured out, that it's a step you can never go back from, and that once that bridge is crossed the parties over. Of course they don't have a culture that publicly worships martyrdom and might not be so against being wiped out to prove a point, or handing these weapons over to someone a little less stable than they are to get the job done.
consider the Linux crowd has the "free (as in beer) software mentality"....
Can we get past this already? It seems the only Linux folk who have that mentality are complete strawmen created by people who've never actually met a Linux user.
Or anyone who's spent more than ten minutes in any thread on this site involving Windows, Linux, Macs, the FSF, any FOSS announcement, and probably a hand full of other things.
You can't come here every day, or multiple times a day like people seem to do, and not notice that there are plenty of Linux users who are very eager to post about how all of their software is both free as in s speech AND free as in beer.
That said, I think most people are used to "free as in beer" by this point because Linux is free by choice and the high prices of a lot of proprietary programs has led to such massive rates of piracy that things like Windows, Office, and Photoshop may as well be free as far as anyone not professionally involved is concerned. Games don't exactly fit this model though, as developers actually care if their games get pirated much of the time, it's not an arena where gaining market share is worth the lost revenue because that marketshare doesn't continue forth the same way.
I digress though, my point was that that the idea of the fanatical free linux guy is far from a strawman, I'd just be interested to see how many there are compared to Windows and Mac users who just pirate everything but don't talk about it.
I didn't pass judgment on the system, I just realize it for what it is.
I think there's plenty of people that could make the argument you're looking for though, something involving higher standard of living, life expectancy, greater advances in science and technology from increased basic education.
You missed out on learning a very valuable skill, jumping through hoops and keeping your mouth shut.
Seriously. This my argument when the debate come up about whether you go to school primarily to learn or as a means to an ends (degrees, diplomas). I can read all of the same books I read in college on my own time, but I couldn't get a little piece of paper that tells people I'm of a menial smartness.
If you're so smart, you should have realized that all you're being asked to do is go through the motions, and as frustrating as it is it ends up working out pretty well in the long run. Once that last bell of the day rings you're free to grow and develop as you choose.
I'm pretty sure any discussion of more efficient methods has long been tabled because the people who make decisions "just use email" so it must work.
I love my job, but I'll say flat out that our over-arching IT strategy is like asking a man to build a house and then giving him 4 plastic spoons and an issue of Popular Science. Yes, he has tools, but they're not the right ones and he's not allowed to find new ones until the old ones are so obviously broken that it can't be ignored anymore.
This is why we're running an outdated version of Web Access, VNCing into an outdated version of our database (As opposed to VNCing into a newer version, becasue the newer version is still terrible at handling remote connections) etc etc.
Because "hard work" does not always mean "brutal manual labor" or are you implying that doctors, engineers, etc don't work very hard?
Hard work mean putting in the required effort to get the job done, whether that be mopping floors or writing install guides for KVM switches. If your kids can find a job where success is handed to them on a silver platter I curse my parents for not doing the same.
As in, instead of dragging 50 files at a time over from explorer or even from the attachment option itself you have to select a single file, hit attach, select a single file, hit attach, select a single file, hit attach. The obvious solution is just to zip them, and then wait for a stupid email about how Word can't open whatever crazy file you sent them.
It's absolutely god awful. No search function, (nice if you get 30 emails a day, none of which is relevant until three weeks later), only able to attach one file at a time, ugly, slow, lacking offline functionality.
Maybe some newer version has fixed all these things, we of of course will not be upgrading to it because the only thing keeping the Exchange server stable is the fact that we never so much as look at it wrong.
The reply you're going get is that A) "Books become outdated" and B) "Books cover limited subject matter"
I think they're both fairly weak though. Introductory levels of education haven't changed so radically in the past X (X being whatever the refresh cycle on XO laptops would be) years that buying books would leave them anymore out of date than buying them laptops would. I'm pretty sure there's enough math that hasn't changed in the last 70 years and wont change in the next 50 that it's pretty moot. We're all still reading "classic" literature and studying history that's by and large hundreds to thousands of years old.
As for subject matter, I know everyone here like the idea of thousands of little FOSS programmers running around the developed world, but how about we work on literacy, computation, and social service, establish a backbone of sustainable economy and expanding education, then worry about whether they're cracking their shit with homebrew distros.
It would be like changing the highway infrastructure, if of course, there were millions of miles of private roads that didn't switch, and offered many of the same things you'd get from the public ones(movies, TV shows, general entertainment), and the highways were not the only way to reach points of any real importance. (Emergency broadcast system) TVs at this point in history perform a lot more tasks than just receiving OTA analog broadcasts, that's the issue I take. OP keeps screaming that the government has "bricked" his TV and made all of equipment worthless.
If that's the case I'll gladly take whatever he's got for free. With the prevalence of cable, DVDs, VCRs, satellite, videogame consoles, I object, with absolute conviction anyone who wants to complain that their TV has somehow been rendered without value.
I can't really reply to you, because I did, and you didn't reply to it, so I don't know what to tell you.
You're not asking to use the roads, you're asking the government to build an infrastructure of gas stations that provide unrefined crude oil because you're too cheap to buy a modern automobile. You're not asking for the free air to provide a service to the "the people" you're demanding that they provide a service to YOU at the expense of everyone else.
They are OUR airwaves, and OUR roads, welcome to the future.
If you TV is on, you're watching ads, which pay for the TV you're watching. If it's not on, you're not paying for the programming, and also not watching it. If that isn't "essentially free" ie you "pay $0" to use it, and also "$0" to not use it, what is?
You seem to have it in your mind that this is equivalent to jack-booted stormtroopers raiding TV stations and smashing the transmitters of the poor hardworking telecoms who are just trying to provide a service. The FCC regulates our airwaves, and they just regulated those airwaves off the market, that's just how life goes sometimes. You can't get analog TV, I can't get a flamethrower, in 49 states you can't get prostitutes. That doesn't mean that OP's TV, my lawn, or anyone's genitals are broken.
If only, but you know, as much as people decry "pork" people continue to rate their elected officials at that the federal level by how much federal funding they feed back into the state. Ted Stevens was so incredibly popular because by that metric he was one of the leading Senators in the nation, and people like knowing that since the money is going to go somewhere, it may as well be going to them.
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As someone who travels constantly, I've never been unimpressed by the price, cleanliness, or quality, of hotels in the SLC/Provo area.
Does that make the Chinese less valuable than my beloved Irish simply because there's more of them?
If I were in possession of the last mosquito on earth I would punch it into the ground until my fists were bloody. Something being more or less scarce does not make it inherently more valuable.
All I claimed was that it isn't a strawman, the OP is a completely different person.
Considering most of my post was a question, you might want to make sure you're flaming the right people.
I like how you've created this slippery slope were, if you're not encouraging as many forks and new projects as humanly possible than you're creating a totalitarian linux police state.
I'm far more concerned with how I got modded flamebait for suggesting that there might be some logic in, if a developer wanted to help the progress and development, they would join a project that already suits their goals instead of spending their coding time reinventing the wheel (or in this case, say an mp3 player) 40 different times.
I'm not asking for any forcing, coercion, murder, mayhem, censorship or anything of the sort, just asking why it's such a heresy to encourage people to put their talent towards a 1% improvement on an 80% complete project instead of starting another project, only to get it to 20% and abandon it.
I would think the better solution would be asking the community to concentrate its efforts in some fields for the greater good of everyone, because if the projects are not noticeably different there is very little to be gained from having them compete.
Thankfully I'm pretty sure it's not their choice. When an ICBM is launched the time frame doesn't really allow for public opinion, debate, or protests. The only question is where Obama's heart lies. Does he alone have the gumption when the stafe member throws the football down on the podium in front of a bunch of elementary school kids or a foreign diplomat to respond to force with force.
Probably depends where it was going too. And how quickly Iran called and tried to claim it was a mistake.
I only caught the end of the Cold War, but I always felt much better about the Soviets than I do about a lot of our modern threats (Iran, North Korea) At least with the Soviets you looked across the table and saw a man who you could tell yourself woke up every morning and said "Man, I really hope I never have to use this damn red button" and it was echoed 50 years of politics where things were frequently pushed to the breaking point, but someone always backed down. Maybe they just spend a lot of time watching Wargames and had already figured out that the only way to win is not to play, I don't know.
I personally feel like China's got it figured out, that it's a step you can never go back from, and that once that bridge is crossed the parties over. Of course they don't have a culture that publicly worships martyrdom and might not be so against being wiped out to prove a point, or handing these weapons over to someone a little less stable than they are to get the job done.
consider the Linux crowd has the "free (as in beer) software mentality"....
Can we get past this already? It seems the only Linux folk who have that mentality are complete strawmen created by people who've never actually met a Linux user.
Or anyone who's spent more than ten minutes in any thread on this site involving Windows, Linux, Macs, the FSF, any FOSS announcement, and probably a hand full of other things.
You can't come here every day, or multiple times a day like people seem to do, and not notice that there are plenty of Linux users who are very eager to post about how all of their software is both free as in s speech AND free as in beer.
That said, I think most people are used to "free as in beer" by this point because Linux is free by choice and the high prices of a lot of proprietary programs has led to such massive rates of piracy that things like Windows, Office, and Photoshop may as well be free as far as anyone not professionally involved is concerned. Games don't exactly fit this model though, as developers actually care if their games get pirated much of the time, it's not an arena where gaining market share is worth the lost revenue because that marketshare doesn't continue forth the same way.
I digress though, my point was that that the idea of the fanatical free linux guy is far from a strawman, I'd just be interested to see how many there are compared to Windows and Mac users who just pirate everything but don't talk about it.
Ah, I misunderstood.
I didn't pass judgment on the system, I just realize it for what it is.
I think there's plenty of people that could make the argument you're looking for though, something involving higher standard of living, life expectancy, greater advances in science and technology from increased basic education.
Not to mention a case like my graduating class.
527 Students
43 4.0s
I was already down at #115 with a 3.3.
You missed out on learning a very valuable skill, jumping through hoops and keeping your mouth shut.
Seriously. This my argument when the debate come up about whether you go to school primarily to learn or as a means to an ends (degrees, diplomas). I can read all of the same books I read in college on my own time, but I couldn't get a little piece of paper that tells people I'm of a menial smartness.
If you're so smart, you should have realized that all you're being asked to do is go through the motions, and as frustrating as it is it ends up working out pretty well in the long run. Once that last bell of the day rings you're free to grow and develop as you choose.
I'm pretty sure any discussion of more efficient methods has long been tabled because the people who make decisions "just use email" so it must work.
I love my job, but I'll say flat out that our over-arching IT strategy is like asking a man to build a house and then giving him 4 plastic spoons and an issue of Popular Science. Yes, he has tools, but they're not the right ones and he's not allowed to find new ones until the old ones are so obviously broken that it can't be ignored anymore.
This is why we're running an outdated version of Web Access, VNCing into an outdated version of our database (As opposed to VNCing into a newer version, becasue the newer version is still terrible at handling remote connections) etc etc.
Next Gates Foundation project:
"Blast off and nuke them from low orbit"?
Because "hard work" does not always mean "brutal manual labor" or are you implying that doctors, engineers, etc don't work very hard?
Hard work mean putting in the required effort to get the job done, whether that be mopping floors or writing install guides for KVM switches. If your kids can find a job where success is handed to them on a silver platter I curse my parents for not doing the same.
"My experience, living in various countries"
I know what you were going for, "American TV sucks", but if you're not going to do it right leave the comment for someone else to make.
As in, instead of dragging 50 files at a time over from explorer or even from the attachment option itself you have to select a single file, hit attach, select a single file, hit attach, select a single file, hit attach. The obvious solution is just to zip them, and then wait for a stupid email about how Word can't open whatever crazy file you sent them.
Have you ever had to use Outlook Web Access?
It's absolutely god awful. No search function, (nice if you get 30 emails a day, none of which is relevant until three weeks later), only able to attach one file at a time, ugly, slow, lacking offline functionality.
Maybe some newer version has fixed all these things, we of of course will not be upgrading to it because the only thing keeping the Exchange server stable is the fact that we never so much as look at it wrong.
The reply you're going get is that A) "Books become outdated" and B) "Books cover limited subject matter"
I think they're both fairly weak though. Introductory levels of education haven't changed so radically in the past X (X being whatever the refresh cycle on XO laptops would be) years that buying books would leave them anymore out of date than buying them laptops would. I'm pretty sure there's enough math that hasn't changed in the last 70 years and wont change in the next 50 that it's pretty moot. We're all still reading "classic" literature and studying history that's by and large hundreds to thousands of years old.
As for subject matter, I know everyone here like the idea of thousands of little FOSS programmers running around the developed world, but how about we work on literacy, computation, and social service, establish a backbone of sustainable economy and expanding education, then worry about whether they're cracking their shit with homebrew distros.
It would be like changing the highway infrastructure, if of course, there were millions of miles of private roads that didn't switch, and offered many of the same things you'd get from the public ones(movies, TV shows, general entertainment), and the highways were not the only way to reach points of any real importance. (Emergency broadcast system) TVs at this point in history perform a lot more tasks than just receiving OTA analog broadcasts, that's the issue I take. OP keeps screaming that the government has "bricked" his TV and made all of equipment worthless.
If that's the case I'll gladly take whatever he's got for free. With the prevalence of cable, DVDs, VCRs, satellite, videogame consoles, I object, with absolute conviction anyone who wants to complain that their TV has somehow been rendered without value.
If everyone didn't insist on using bad car analogies posters wouldn't have to make even worse but technically more applicable ones in response.
I thought a good analogy would be "it's like if analog broadcasts stopped, but nothing else happened". No one understood...
I can't really reply to you, because I did, and you didn't reply to it, so I don't know what to tell you.
You're not asking to use the roads, you're asking the government to build an infrastructure of gas stations that provide unrefined crude oil because you're too cheap to buy a modern automobile. You're not asking for the free air to provide a service to the "the people" you're demanding that they provide a service to YOU at the expense of everyone else.
They are OUR airwaves, and OUR roads, welcome to the future.
If you TV is on, you're watching ads, which pay for the TV you're watching. If it's not on, you're not paying for the programming, and also not watching it. If that isn't "essentially free" ie you "pay $0" to use it, and also "$0" to not use it, what is?
You seem to have it in your mind that this is equivalent to jack-booted stormtroopers raiding TV stations and smashing the transmitters of the poor hardworking telecoms who are just trying to provide a service. The FCC regulates our airwaves, and they just regulated those airwaves off the market, that's just how life goes sometimes. You can't get analog TV, I can't get a flamethrower, in 49 states you can't get prostitutes. That doesn't mean that OP's TV, my lawn, or anyone's genitals are broken.
If only, but you know, as much as people decry "pork" people continue to rate their elected officials at that the federal level by how much federal funding they feed back into the state. Ted Stevens was so incredibly popular because by that metric he was one of the leading Senators in the nation, and people like knowing that since the money is going to go somewhere, it may as well be going to them.
True story.