Agree to some extent but it's still not a bad small-scale idea. I wonder how much you can scale it down? For instance, if you have a beach front property and built essentially a large swimming pool. Then eg 2/3 of high tide you put in-flow pipes, and then 1/3 of high tide put an array of hydro-generators behind 1-way valves, could you power the lighting to a decent size house? If the tide went out in the evening, and you coupled this with solar arrays for during the day, you can get a fair amount of energy independence. A niche market I know, only a handful of people have waterfront properties, but it would just be interesting to know feasibility.
And throwing around your front money makes you appear rich, making it easier to get unsecured loans from trusting people. How much cash did Michael Jackson leave behind again?
At least in France it is illegal to lock a handset to a carrier. Also, I pay €12.50/month for 20mb/s uncapped broadband, and bi-directional 100mb/s fibre is being rolled out all over town. In Britain a lot of broadband providers have monthly caps unlike France.
From not too long ago what-is-the-internet-is-it-anything-like-minitel France has come a long way. Though they catapulted back with the download-stuff-3-times-get-disconnected law, much like Britain. With the Digital Cripple the Economy Bill certainly Britain is now the uncool kid on the block.
On the other hand, I am very hopeful for the new government. Today they repealed police powers to stop and search without warranted suspicion. They appear committed to transforming Britain back into a place where you would want to live. This scrutiny over spending tax payers money trying to bolster Apple profits is another welcome thing.
There is no reading between the lines needed. The BBC isn't there to sell iPhones, so should not be padding out the Apple store with iPhone only apps to government related services. It's as ridiculous as their Microsoft only iPlayer. The BBC should be making content/accessibility equal to all license payers.
If the apps were produced by BBC employees in their spare time, and published with BBC prepared to put their name behind it in a gesture of support, that is one thing. There is no excuse for using tax payers money to promote a single manufacturer (not even a British one at that).
I have to say that I'm very happy with my E71. Full keyboard, nice screen, and Symbian so I can run whatever software I want. Opera Mini really improves it. Camera is not great, but has full GPS. Much slimmer than the Blackberry.
I've read that in Android Google can remotely install and remove apps at will, so that goes on my blacklist along with the iPhone. Hopefully HTC can port their Sense interface directly onto Linux. Now THAT is a phone I would buy.
It nearly never crashes for me, but after an hour it tends to use 25-99% of CPU. At the moment I have 4 tabs open and it is using nearly 500MB. Firefox 3.5.9 on Kubuntu Karmic. I have to "killall firefox" before trying to us another application, which isn't so bad as the session restore feature brings me instantly back to where I was. I prefer it overall to Chrome except for playing Flash videos, where Chrome plays back smoothly but Firefox judders to a halt.
Another vote for the Nokia (in my case E71). I wouldn't use the mobile Skype app as last time I checked they charged for pure VoIP calls. However you can use any SIP provider and there are numerous VoIP apps. Fring is worth checking out, does things like Skype, MSN Messenger, ICQ, Google Talk, SIP and Twitter all in one go. I used to use Gizmo5 until it was bought out by Google and they withdrew it from the public. Truphone is also not bad, but voice calls only.
This is the BBC that developed the open source DIRAC codec, talked about open source, then proceeded to create a Microsoft-only iPlayer restricted by country IP and based on h263? If somebody is judged on their actions rather than their words, the BBC are not to be trusted.
If you've watched any English match in the past decade, you will see there are a slew of stats. When a player is on screen, stats are displayed such as: number of passes, % of passes completed, assists, shots, shots on target, tackles, total km run, and more.
On the other hand, as we've already had these stats for a decade or two we know how irrelevant they are. There are plenty of players that run around waving for the ball and when they get it simply knock it back or sideways in a manner that contributes little. They have great stats and may touch it in the build up to a goal but are far from being the architects.
Using the same software to analyse companies and creative team, mentioned in the article, that is a joke. As is the original researcher trying to understand why his team isn't winning when it only has one decent player.
I played in a match between deaf people, they were the only people playing on the park and were kind enough to invite me, and it emphasised to me what a crucial element to the game it is. Not being able to warn a team-mate about someone coming or to be able to ask for a pass makes it so much more random. I know some great defenders that have poor ball handling but good communication skills (and a 'robust' tackle). Especially important when playing the offside trap. They are also able to motivate the team verbally.
If South Africa were to host the Olympics they could host the men's 100m on the beach. It would add more local colour, and nobody would be at a disadvantage as it would just be down to skill as to how each sprinter could handle being on sand. However we would not be seeing the pinnacle of athleticism being shown at its best.
Which is total bullshit when you see how well decent sides like Germany, Argentina and Brazil moved the ball around. Only the rubbish like Portugal with their one decent player are complaining.
Argentine footballer Lionel Messi was one of the players to complain about the vuvuzelas after Argentina's 1-0 victory over Nigeria on Saturday.
"It is impossible to communicate, it's like being deaf," Messi said. Widely quoted.
Not sure why Aceticon is +5 Informative, the parent is correct that you do not need to have your own company or have an accountant in the UK. You can simply declare yourself as self-employed (Sole Trader) to HMRC. Your earnings are then directly taxed as income.
As the_womble says, it is cheap to set up a limited company, you can have it done for around $50, and even then you still do not need an accountant. It is quite simple and straightforward to do everything yourself.
Aceticon may suspect what he wants, but I suspect he has never been to the Ukraine. Read some of the posts above about problems with corruption and shake-downs.
Mod parent up. I had a Ukrainian friend who wanted to visit France, and for the visa I needed to provide: (a) a written letter committing myself to supporting them for the duration of the visit rent free, including significant legal liabilities, (b) proof of ownership of my residence, (c) 6 months of pay slips, (d) contract of employment (must be open-ended, not fixed length, and not in trial period). On the other end they needed to show proof of significant funds as well as go through a lengthy interview process. And that was just for a holiday. When I visited the Ukraine, virtually none of the young people I spoke to had ever been allowed to leave the country. It was pretty shocking.
Corruption is pretty rife there, and avoiding taxes seems to be as much keeping you off the radar and being left in peace as saving money. People there get paid cash and in US dollars whenever possible. The local currency fluctuates significantly (changed up to 10% per day when I was there). There appeared to be a distrust of banks, and apparently they have sometimes shut for weeks on end with all accounts made inaccessible.
Another layer of bureaucracy is the last thing they need. Raising or lower taxes is going to make little difference, it is the system that needs fixing.
Silly question, but rather than throw out the whole computer why not just install Ubuntu on it? All the same benefits for free. And more environmentally friendly.
if the BBC and others are going to start filtering them, we get the best of both worlds
Except we don't. The players are unable to communicate on the pitch in any way, leading to the worst standard of play. As players cannot be warned when somebody is behind them, they just play safe and hoof the ball up the pitch just in case. The world's top players are being made to look like talentless hacks in dull low-scoring games. This may well go on to be the worst World Cup, and after this the Champions League finals may go on to eclipse the World Cup finals.
You can improve ARM code density using the Thumb extension, but it's the variable instruction cycle length that kills x86. Pipelining, branch prediction, etc, is much easier with RISC.
The ARM architecture is far superior to the x86 which is why one of the most competitive markets, mobile phones, has moved there. ARM has consolidated there as they do not have the marketing or R&D budget to take on Intel head to head. The margins have been much higher with desktop CPUs, with marketing and playing the GHz game driving sales more than processor efficiency.
Once ARM processors take over the netbook market, there will then be an incentive to increase their maximum raw performance. The server market would be the next target. However, they are unlikely to challenge the desktop market any time soon. Intel is cash-rich enough to dump processors onto the market at as loss if necessary to drive them out. Shame, as my ARM-based desktop machine was incredibly fast.
When Slashdot first started, I doubt they expected to snowball into such a popular online magazine. Their growing pains testify to this. The moderation system, then meta-moderation, weren't driven by customer demand but by wanting to try out cool new ideas.
I presume you are using Opera, but most of us are using browsers that are free of charge. HTML was developed by Tim Berners-Lee whilst at CERN (not government related), and HTTP was a standard developed by a volounteer organisation called the IETF (of which Tim was a contributor to the RFC). Even one of the most crucial parts of the Internet, DNS, used to be controlled by Jon Postel in his spare time whilst he was working at University of South California.
Your claim that Napster was small, and just a single author scratching an itch, is laughable. It was a revolution that has irreversibly changed the course of our society. It spawned eMule, BitTorrent, and many other variations, and now nearly all video and audio content created by western civilisation is available on some filesharing site. If having instant access to petabytes of cultural information globally isn't complex and innovative then you are setting the bar pretty high.
There are plenty of examples of teams moving products forward in Open Source. Linux, Gnome, KDE, Blender, Gimp, Firefox, Thunderbird, Pidgin, Inkscape.. in fact every single application on my computer. It may not be exactly what you want and when you want it, but then that's where capitalism plays its part.
Linus has been key to the development of Linux, and his vision has been key, but so has his delegation (eg Alan Cox). Successful commercial products share the same attributes.
Take your initial statement about how some of the successful OS projects were small teams (sometimes a single person). The same is often the case with commercial products. Look at Xara Xtreme, which blew the competition away until absorbed by Corel. Or the small games houses which do great work but then get absorbed by Blizzard or EA and suffer the same groupthink/design-by-committee problem. Look how IE got overtaken by Firefox/Opera/etc despite Microsoft having a huge budget. Look at Vista come to think of it.
Politics and egos exists just as much in commercial projects as OS ones. It is mistake to cherry-pick a few successful commercial projects and highlight some of the problematic OS ones. It gives a false picture.
I'm not denying that it isn't one of the many problems facing a large development team, just that from what I have seen I do not believe it applies especially to OS projects.
You might not like the whole concept of "profit" but without a profit motive and some semblance of even temporary exclusivity, no competent company will ever develop an innovative product.
That's a bit ironic posting on Slashdot (one of the first public blogs which gave its source away, not initially written for profit), read in a browser (not written for profit), all via the web using HTML over HTTP (again not written for profit). There are plenty of other innovative products not initially written for profit (Napster/Kazaa/BitTorrent spring to mind).
Hiring real talent requires money and despite what everyone says, most techie people will not produce the same kind of quality on an open source project as they would on a closed source one where they are getting paid a lot of money.
You are confusing quality with speed of development, and time with money. No matter how good the techie, he still has to put food on the table. If his OS project isn't paying the bills then he has less time he is able to devote to it. You can easily flip the argument around and say an OS project is always going to come up with the best possible product because he has no time limit whereas a commercial product has a deadline to get out of the door. Both arguments are false, as each has its own unique set of constraints.
One of the major downfalls of all of those "open" initiatives is that, once you go beyond basic things like a web browser with an well established UI paradigm or core services, the design by committee effect drags down not only innovation but quality of the end product.
I do not believe this to be true. A good leader with a clear vision and realistic project management will lead to a successful end product. Linus Torvalds has managed to create a superior operating system to Microsoft, who employ thousands and pay very well. There are plenty of examples where OS are clear winners and others where proprietary are clear winners (eg Photoshop).
Ultimately the problem is not about money but rather a herd mentality in open source.
Oh please, that is nothing to do with open source. Any time there is a successful proprietary product there are always clones. Most of them pretty bad. If you want to look at herd mentality, look at all the proprietary developers flocking to write for the iPhone despite the fact their product may get canned by Apple for absolutely no reason.
With a closed product, the employees have some incentive to come up with the best possible product because bonuses could hinge on good sales and because any team member could get rewarded even more if they came up with a brilliant innovation which set the product apart from the field.
I've worked as a programmer most of my life, and I've always had a fixed salary. Share options sometimes, but that's not the same as a bonus. Possibly myself and my colleagues are exceptions, but the biggest motivator for the people we see around us is the risk of getting fired.
I am not arguing against that money motivates some people, but do not agree with the supposed inherent flaws you see in open source vs closed source.
They can't substantially eliminate Windows if they want to develop software for Windows
They aren't writing games. There is no reason not to develop their software cross-platform, in which case they wouldn't mind if Windows disappears. It's not as though they are generating revenue through software sales.
they can't substantially replace Macs and Windows PC-s with Chrome OS if their designers want to run Photoshop and co.
Why can't Google help Adobe port Photoshop to Chrome OS? With Microsoft trying to kill Flash with Silverlight, and Apple trying to kill Flash by refusing it on the iPhone/iPad, it's not as though Adobe owe any loyalty to either.
It's putting the cost of policing onto the ISP's, and getting them to inspect and log every data transaction a citizen makes and tie it in a non-anonymous way to that individual. That is more than theatre. It is expensive, impractical, ripe for abuse, and reverses the burden of proof.
The job of a government department isn't to get somebody off their back, it is to look after the future best interests of the country. It is a complex balancing act, including freedoms, privacy, encouraging innovation, increasing economic output, building a solid legal framework for business, and facilitating trade. I cannot see how building a catalogue of media seen and heard by each voter can possibly be construed as protecting them.
Proportional representation and coalitions can also lead to weak governments and extremists getting in that would not normally be able to. There is no magic answer, each system has its trade-offs. Avoiding tyrants is more to do with a well educated population rather than any particular voting system. As for "somehow it works" that doesn't mean a system in a sparsely populated country of just over 5m with practically no immigrants will scale up to work in any other countries.
Moving to a country because you appreciate the finer points of its political system is a bit odd. The language is supposed to be quite difficult, and during the winter you get nearly no daylight, but on the flip side there is low crime and a good social welfare system. You should try the move. The great thing about being British is that in practically every single country in the world you will find a friendly expat community that will give you support. Worst comes to worst you can always move back, it's not like they take your passport away.
You are living in a socialist police state, but do not notice because you were born into it. For many of us it simply would not be the way we prefer to live. Though it may be perfectly reasonable if you fail to pay a speeding fine promptly that it should be directly deducted from your salary, many here in the west feel the burden of responsibility should like with the individual and not of the state. Though the people are known as awfully nice and polite, Finland is generally regarded as quite a boring place.
Finland has the second lowest immigration level in Europe (wikipedia tells me there are only 55,000 non-native Finnish speakers in the country). You also have a low population that is extremely spread out, lacking large urban centres. The large amount of natural resources, along with a few incredibly successful corporations such as Nokia that provide most of your employment and that you can generously tax, means you can generously spend your way out of many social problems. If you were to allow people from the rest of the world into your country, you may find more people objecting to the level of state control.
I need a random assortment of water bills, phone bills, as proof of address when opening a bank account in France, which does has ID cards. You need to somehow have somebody identify you to get a passport, but then you would to get an ID card too. Most other Europeans do not "make do with ID cards" to travel but are obliged by law to carry one on them at all times (whether traveling or not). You may not notice any border controls but you can be stopped at any time within those borders and asked for no reason to produce an identity card. I have American friends here in France that were thrown in jail for the night for not having their passport on them whilst walking in the street. Britain neither wants nor needs ID cards, and since we are traditionally rubbish at doing large IT projects it would have been an expensive flop anyway.
They are also going to stop storing the DNA of innocent people in their database and to introduce legislation restricting CCTV cameras. I'm starting to like these guys.
Slashdot Mirror
Agree to some extent but it's still not a bad small-scale idea. I wonder how much you can scale it down? For instance, if you have a beach front property and built essentially a large swimming pool. Then eg 2/3 of high tide you put in-flow pipes, and then 1/3 of high tide put an array of hydro-generators behind 1-way valves, could you power the lighting to a decent size house? If the tide went out in the evening, and you coupled this with solar arrays for during the day, you can get a fair amount of energy independence. A niche market I know, only a handful of people have waterfront properties, but it would just be interesting to know feasibility.
Phillip.
And throwing around your front money makes you appear rich, making it easier to get unsecured loans from trusting people. How much cash did Michael Jackson leave behind again?
Phillip.
At least in France it is illegal to lock a handset to a carrier. Also, I pay €12.50/month for 20mb/s uncapped broadband, and bi-directional 100mb/s fibre is being rolled out all over town. In Britain a lot of broadband providers have monthly caps unlike France.
From not too long ago what-is-the-internet-is-it-anything-like-minitel France has come a long way. Though they catapulted back with the download-stuff-3-times-get-disconnected law, much like Britain. With the Digital Cripple the Economy Bill certainly Britain is now the uncool kid on the block.
On the other hand, I am very hopeful for the new government. Today they repealed police powers to stop and search without warranted suspicion. They appear committed to transforming Britain back into a place where you would want to live. This scrutiny over spending tax payers money trying to bolster Apple profits is another welcome thing.
Philip.
There is no reading between the lines needed. The BBC isn't there to sell iPhones, so should not be padding out the Apple store with iPhone only apps to government related services. It's as ridiculous as their Microsoft only iPlayer. The BBC should be making content/accessibility equal to all license payers.
If the apps were produced by BBC employees in their spare time, and published with BBC prepared to put their name behind it in a gesture of support, that is one thing. There is no excuse for using tax payers money to promote a single manufacturer (not even a British one at that).
Phillip.
I have to say that I'm very happy with my E71. Full keyboard, nice screen, and Symbian so I can run whatever software I want. Opera Mini really improves it. Camera is not great, but has full GPS. Much slimmer than the Blackberry.
I've read that in Android Google can remotely install and remove apps at will, so that goes on my blacklist along with the iPhone. Hopefully HTC can port their Sense interface directly onto Linux. Now THAT is a phone I would buy.
Phillip.
It nearly never crashes for me, but after an hour it tends to use 25-99% of CPU. At the moment I have 4 tabs open and it is using nearly 500MB. Firefox 3.5.9 on Kubuntu Karmic. I have to "killall firefox" before trying to us another application, which isn't so bad as the session restore feature brings me instantly back to where I was. I prefer it overall to Chrome except for playing Flash videos, where Chrome plays back smoothly but Firefox judders to a halt.
Phillip.
Another vote for the Nokia (in my case E71). I wouldn't use the mobile Skype app as last time I checked they charged for pure VoIP calls. However you can use any SIP provider and there are numerous VoIP apps. Fring is worth checking out, does things like Skype, MSN Messenger, ICQ, Google Talk, SIP and Twitter all in one go. I used to use Gizmo5 until it was bought out by Google and they withdrew it from the public. Truphone is also not bad, but voice calls only.
Phillip.
This is the BBC that developed the open source DIRAC codec, talked about open source, then proceeded to create a Microsoft-only iPlayer restricted by country IP and based on h263? If somebody is judged on their actions rather than their words, the BBC are not to be trusted.
Phillip.
If you've watched any English match in the past decade, you will see there are a slew of stats. When a player is on screen, stats are displayed such as: number of passes, % of passes completed, assists, shots, shots on target, tackles, total km run, and more.
On the other hand, as we've already had these stats for a decade or two we know how irrelevant they are. There are plenty of players that run around waving for the ball and when they get it simply knock it back or sideways in a manner that contributes little. They have great stats and may touch it in the build up to a goal but are far from being the architects.
Using the same software to analyse companies and creative team, mentioned in the article, that is a joke. As is the original researcher trying to understand why his team isn't winning when it only has one decent player.
Phillip.
I played in a match between deaf people, they were the only people playing on the park and were kind enough to invite me, and it emphasised to me what a crucial element to the game it is. Not being able to warn a team-mate about someone coming or to be able to ask for a pass makes it so much more random. I know some great defenders that have poor ball handling but good communication skills (and a 'robust' tackle). Especially important when playing the offside trap. They are also able to motivate the team verbally.
If South Africa were to host the Olympics they could host the men's 100m on the beach. It would add more local colour, and nobody would be at a disadvantage as it would just be down to skill as to how each sprinter could handle being on sand. However we would not be seeing the pinnacle of athleticism being shown at its best.
Phillip.
Which is total bullshit when you see how well decent sides like Germany, Argentina and Brazil moved the ball around. Only the rubbish like Portugal with their one decent player are complaining.
Argentine footballer Lionel Messi was one of the players to complain about the vuvuzelas after Argentina's 1-0 victory over Nigeria on Saturday.
"It is impossible to communicate, it's like being deaf," Messi said. Widely quoted.
Phillip.
Not sure why Aceticon is +5 Informative, the parent is correct that you do not need to have your own company or have an accountant in the UK. You can simply declare yourself as self-employed (Sole Trader) to HMRC. Your earnings are then directly taxed as income.
As the_womble says, it is cheap to set up a limited company, you can have it done for around $50, and even then you still do not need an accountant. It is quite simple and straightforward to do everything yourself.
Aceticon may suspect what he wants, but I suspect he has never been to the Ukraine. Read some of the posts above about problems with corruption and shake-downs.
Phillip.
Mod parent up. I had a Ukrainian friend who wanted to visit France, and for the visa I needed to provide: (a) a written letter committing myself to supporting them for the duration of the visit rent free, including significant legal liabilities, (b) proof of ownership of my residence, (c) 6 months of pay slips, (d) contract of employment (must be open-ended, not fixed length, and not in trial period). On the other end they needed to show proof of significant funds as well as go through a lengthy interview process. And that was just for a holiday. When I visited the Ukraine, virtually none of the young people I spoke to had ever been allowed to leave the country. It was pretty shocking.
Corruption is pretty rife there, and avoiding taxes seems to be as much keeping you off the radar and being left in peace as saving money. People there get paid cash and in US dollars whenever possible. The local currency fluctuates significantly (changed up to 10% per day when I was there). There appeared to be a distrust of banks, and apparently they have sometimes shut for weeks on end with all accounts made inaccessible.
Another layer of bureaucracy is the last thing they need. Raising or lower taxes is going to make little difference, it is the system that needs fixing.
Phillip.
Silly question, but rather than throw out the whole computer why not just install Ubuntu on it? All the same benefits for free. And more environmentally friendly.
Phillip.
if the BBC and others are going to start filtering them, we get the best of both worlds
Except we don't. The players are unable to communicate on the pitch in any way, leading to the worst standard of play. As players cannot be warned when somebody is behind them, they just play safe and hoof the ball up the pitch just in case. The world's top players are being made to look like talentless hacks in dull low-scoring games. This may well go on to be the worst World Cup, and after this the Champions League finals may go on to eclipse the World Cup finals.
Phillip.
You can improve ARM code density using the Thumb extension, but it's the variable instruction cycle length that kills x86. Pipelining, branch prediction, etc, is much easier with RISC.
The ARM architecture is far superior to the x86 which is why one of the most competitive markets, mobile phones, has moved there. ARM has consolidated there as they do not have the marketing or R&D budget to take on Intel head to head. The margins have been much higher with desktop CPUs, with marketing and playing the GHz game driving sales more than processor efficiency.
Once ARM processors take over the netbook market, there will then be an incentive to increase their maximum raw performance. The server market would be the next target. However, they are unlikely to challenge the desktop market any time soon. Intel is cash-rich enough to dump processors onto the market at as loss if necessary to drive them out. Shame, as my ARM-based desktop machine was incredibly fast.
Phillip.
When Slashdot first started, I doubt they expected to snowball into such a popular online magazine. Their growing pains testify to this. The moderation system, then meta-moderation, weren't driven by customer demand but by wanting to try out cool new ideas.
I presume you are using Opera, but most of us are using browsers that are free of charge. HTML was developed by Tim Berners-Lee whilst at CERN (not government related), and HTTP was a standard developed by a volounteer organisation called the IETF (of which Tim was a contributor to the RFC). Even one of the most crucial parts of the Internet, DNS, used to be controlled by Jon Postel in his spare time whilst he was working at University of South California.
Your claim that Napster was small, and just a single author scratching an itch, is laughable. It was a revolution that has irreversibly changed the course of our society. It spawned eMule, BitTorrent, and many other variations, and now nearly all video and audio content created by western civilisation is available on some filesharing site. If having instant access to petabytes of cultural information globally isn't complex and innovative then you are setting the bar pretty high.
There are plenty of examples of teams moving products forward in Open Source. Linux, Gnome, KDE, Blender, Gimp, Firefox, Thunderbird, Pidgin, Inkscape.. in fact every single application on my computer. It may not be exactly what you want and when you want it, but then that's where capitalism plays its part.
Linus has been key to the development of Linux, and his vision has been key, but so has his delegation (eg Alan Cox). Successful commercial products share the same attributes.
Take your initial statement about how some of the successful OS projects were small teams (sometimes a single person). The same is often the case with commercial products. Look at Xara Xtreme, which blew the competition away until absorbed by Corel. Or the small games houses which do great work but then get absorbed by Blizzard or EA and suffer the same groupthink/design-by-committee problem. Look how IE got overtaken by Firefox/Opera/etc despite Microsoft having a huge budget. Look at Vista come to think of it.
Politics and egos exists just as much in commercial projects as OS ones. It is mistake to cherry-pick a few successful commercial projects and highlight some of the problematic OS ones. It gives a false picture.
I'm not denying that it isn't one of the many problems facing a large development team, just that from what I have seen I do not believe it applies especially to OS projects.
Phillip.
You might not like the whole concept of "profit" but without a profit motive and some semblance of even temporary exclusivity, no competent company will ever develop an innovative product.
That's a bit ironic posting on Slashdot (one of the first public blogs which gave its source away, not initially written for profit), read in a browser (not written for profit), all via the web using HTML over HTTP (again not written for profit). There are plenty of other innovative products not initially written for profit (Napster/Kazaa/BitTorrent spring to mind).
Hiring real talent requires money and despite what everyone says, most techie people will not produce the same kind of quality on an open source project as they would on a closed source one where they are getting paid a lot of money.
You are confusing quality with speed of development, and time with money. No matter how good the techie, he still has to put food on the table. If his OS project isn't paying the bills then he has less time he is able to devote to it. You can easily flip the argument around and say an OS project is always going to come up with the best possible product because he has no time limit whereas a commercial product has a deadline to get out of the door. Both arguments are false, as each has its own unique set of constraints.
One of the major downfalls of all of those "open" initiatives is that, once you go beyond basic things like a web browser with an well established UI paradigm or core services, the design by committee effect drags down not only innovation but quality of the end product.
I do not believe this to be true. A good leader with a clear vision and realistic project management will lead to a successful end product. Linus Torvalds has managed to create a superior operating system to Microsoft, who employ thousands and pay very well. There are plenty of examples where OS are clear winners and others where proprietary are clear winners (eg Photoshop).
Ultimately the problem is not about money but rather a herd mentality in open source.
Oh please, that is nothing to do with open source. Any time there is a successful proprietary product there are always clones. Most of them pretty bad. If you want to look at herd mentality, look at all the proprietary developers flocking to write for the iPhone despite the fact their product may get canned by Apple for absolutely no reason.
With a closed product, the employees have some incentive to come up with the best possible product because bonuses could hinge on good sales and because any team member could get rewarded even more if they came up with a brilliant innovation which set the product apart from the field.
I've worked as a programmer most of my life, and I've always had a fixed salary. Share options sometimes, but that's not the same as a bonus. Possibly myself and my colleagues are exceptions, but the biggest motivator for the people we see around us is the risk of getting fired.
I am not arguing against that money motivates some people, but do not agree with the supposed inherent flaws you see in open source vs closed source.
Phillip.
They can't substantially eliminate Windows if they want to develop software for Windows
They aren't writing games. There is no reason not to develop their software cross-platform, in which case they wouldn't mind if Windows disappears. It's not as though they are generating revenue through software sales.
they can't substantially replace Macs and Windows PC-s with Chrome OS if their designers want to run Photoshop and co.
Why can't Google help Adobe port Photoshop to Chrome OS? With Microsoft trying to kill Flash with Silverlight, and Apple trying to kill Flash by refusing it on the iPhone/iPad, it's not as though Adobe owe any loyalty to either.
Phillip.
It's putting the cost of policing onto the ISP's, and getting them to inspect and log every data transaction a citizen makes and tie it in a non-anonymous way to that individual. That is more than theatre. It is expensive, impractical, ripe for abuse, and reverses the burden of proof.
The job of a government department isn't to get somebody off their back, it is to look after the future best interests of the country. It is a complex balancing act, including freedoms, privacy, encouraging innovation, increasing economic output, building a solid legal framework for business, and facilitating trade. I cannot see how building a catalogue of media seen and heard by each voter can possibly be construed as protecting them.
Phillip.
Proportional representation and coalitions can also lead to weak governments and extremists getting in that would not normally be able to. There is no magic answer, each system has its trade-offs. Avoiding tyrants is more to do with a well educated population rather than any particular voting system. As for "somehow it works" that doesn't mean a system in a sparsely populated country of just over 5m with practically no immigrants will scale up to work in any other countries.
Moving to a country because you appreciate the finer points of its political system is a bit odd. The language is supposed to be quite difficult, and during the winter you get nearly no daylight, but on the flip side there is low crime and a good social welfare system. You should try the move. The great thing about being British is that in practically every single country in the world you will find a friendly expat community that will give you support. Worst comes to worst you can always move back, it's not like they take your passport away.
Phillip.
We all are forced to carry our bankcards
Really? Since when?
Phillip.
You are living in a socialist police state, but do not notice because you were born into it. For many of us it simply would not be the way we prefer to live. Though it may be perfectly reasonable if you fail to pay a speeding fine promptly that it should be directly deducted from your salary, many here in the west feel the burden of responsibility should like with the individual and not of the state. Though the people are known as awfully nice and polite, Finland is generally regarded as quite a boring place.
Finland has the second lowest immigration level in Europe (wikipedia tells me there are only 55,000 non-native Finnish speakers in the country). You also have a low population that is extremely spread out, lacking large urban centres. The large amount of natural resources, along with a few incredibly successful corporations such as Nokia that provide most of your employment and that you can generously tax, means you can generously spend your way out of many social problems. If you were to allow people from the rest of the world into your country, you may find more people objecting to the level of state control.
Phillip.
I need a random assortment of water bills, phone bills, as proof of address when opening a bank account in France, which does has ID cards. You need to somehow have somebody identify you to get a passport, but then you would to get an ID card too. Most other Europeans do not "make do with ID cards" to travel but are obliged by law to carry one on them at all times (whether traveling or not). You may not notice any border controls but you can be stopped at any time within those borders and asked for no reason to produce an identity card. I have American friends here in France that were thrown in jail for the night for not having their passport on them whilst walking in the street. Britain neither wants nor needs ID cards, and since we are traditionally rubbish at doing large IT projects it would have been an expensive flop anyway.
Phillip.
They are also going to stop storing the DNA of innocent people in their database and to introduce legislation restricting CCTV cameras. I'm starting to like these guys.
Phillip.