Calling someone a loser because of what O/S they are running automatically *makes the caller* the loser.
No, you're the loser times infinity and no returns.
Everybody I've ever met runs whatever O/S they need to do the job, whether it's Linux, Windows, BSD, or whatever.
Not in most cases, they run Windows because they haven't made the effort to try any other options. Whenever someone comes whinging to me about having caught a virus, first question I ask is "Do you use Outlook?". Upon inevitable positive response I tell them it's their fault and they should be using a decent email client (eg The Bat!). Eventually they (sometimes) make the change.
That kind of shit is what makes Linux advocates all look insane and results in me having to explain that, no, not all Linux users are short-sighted, socially-inept zealots every time I bring Linux up at work.
But we don't care what you or your friends think of us... Would you rather we venture out after dark, and even then only to LUG meetings?
It's a lot easier to sell Linux to people without the idiotic pomposity.
You want to sell Linux, we want to have fun. Winblows users are an easy target.
On person mentioned using a C struct that you can whack directly into memory, and several others suggested using caching the DOM somehow. Of course these combine perfectly together. Get the sender to put a unique id or md5 in the header. If you don't have a file with that name in the cache dir then parse and dump the parsed structure to disc. If the file exists then pull file into memory and send the rest of the incoming byte stream to/dev/null. Of course caching won't help you if all your incoming XML files are unique.
I've just emerge the latest Abiword 1.99.1, and I am going to switch completely from OO to Abiword. It is lightening fast (takes well under 1 second to open, often is instantaneous), handles Word fine. OO is too slow and too sensitive to changes in JVM every time I upgrade. procman tells me Abiword is taking 13.7MB with empty document, and 20.4MB with a 2.5 page CV open. Perfect for my lightweight WP needs.
How many big contracts have to be won by Linux companies before the papers realize that it's been around for a dozen years? Or that not everybody working on OSS is a volunteer?
I've heard about these "code labour camps" *shiver*. I can imagine RMS in the role of kapo...
So you want them to give the contract to the most _highest_ bidder? The brother-in-law of the contract officer?
They give the contract to the lowest _qualified_ bidder. Doing otherwise would be stupid.
You give the contract to the person who is going to give you the most value for money. I have clients that always use me even though they could get cheaper elsewhere. That's because they *know* the project will be done well and done on time, which means they won't have to have the project redone later.
> It's like they say, you get what you pay for.
Bullshit.
It's not bullshit. I pitch my prices higher because I know I can do a better job and it will work out cheaper for the client in the long run. And it has proven to be the fact to date.
Ouch! Mod this up as "insightful", not funny! I mean, wait until they try to tie the first killing spree to AA!
Doesn't it happen all the time? I'm not picking on the AA in particular, but I remember even before the Iraq war started some guy went crazy and started rolling grenades into his friends tents. If you push someone hard enough they will crack. Who knows, maybe the video game was a release and if it wasn't for the video game it would have happened even earlier?
Why should the RIAA get to demand proof that you've paid them whenever they desire, but the clothing store not be granted the same right?
Designer labels have similar problems with copies being made of their clothes. With RIAA style powers, we could see "Gucci police" pulling over young women in the high street and asking to prove where they got their handbag from. Armani tracing the IP (Imbellis Perambulum) of young 20 somethings back to their home and being granted a warrant to search their wardrobe. The RIAA really are no longer in the real world.
Freenet may eventually contain a political treatise from the oppressed citizens of a dictatorship, but it will probably contain copyrighted songs, movies, porn, etc. by a factor of a hundred thousand to one. Supporting anonymous political speech is more good than illegal copying is bad, but by a factor of 100,000?
Yes. Take the death penalty. We might get it right 99.99% of the time, but are those few innocents executed worth abolishing the death penalty for? In Europe we decided yes. What if during a future conflict (ala Iraq) the only inside source as to what was really happening was able to escape via Freenet? Wouldn't that be of value, even if Freenet had umpteen copies of Britney Spears? Also, you cannot go simply on volume. Hell the web is 100,000x more crap than information but we still use it.
Why would I actually go into a bookshop if all the books are shrinkwrapped? The only advantage a bookshop has over Amazon.com is that I can randomly browse through books as the whim takes me. The goal of the book retailer is to increase their overall sales, and turning the store into basically a warehouse would lose more customers than rudimentary digital counterfeiting.
I just have to type "emerge gnomemeeting". Sometimes, people just want shit to work. Right on, that's why I use Gentoo. People also don't want to have to worry about keeping software up to date, another plus point over Windows. From what I remember, installing software in Mandrake was point and click, no harder than Windows. I personally would have been very interested to have seen how Gnomemeeting compared.
You write: Refusing to buy is the only legitimate course of action.
Then write: Right now, they have a very good excuse for their actions--people are stealing music.
Don't you think the RIAA will deliberately attribute the latter to the former, citing their sales as being down obviously over theft rather than their customers boycotting overpriced goods?
P2P will happen pretty much the same way, but for different reasons. All they're going to do is drive the trade underground again. 5 years ago it was one guy who was technologically adept charging his buddies $2 a pop to burn CDs. Now he can do it again, charging say, $5 a pop. They'll start forming private IRC release groups, buying, ripping and sharing MP3s between private groups of people. The RIAA will have a hard time infiltrating these groups. And the RIAA still doesn't see a rise in profits.
Driving the trade underground makes it less accessible, ergo filetrading will be minimal and the RIAA can go back to charging $20 a CD with only one decent song on it. The battle is now firmly between the corporation and the people. Everyone will have to make a fundamental choice that decides the society we want to live in: do we (a) break the cartel and reshape a society in which we are free to listen to what we want, when we want, and let the music industry take the hit in trying to adapt to the new world or (b) give up the new technology and regress back to the 80s/90s which is bad for society but is the status quo we are familiar with. At this point in time I wouldn't be confident to bet on either.
Doesn't seem a very good analogy to me, since the children still have to save up their pocket money and buy the cigarettes full price. It's more like dealers hanging around the school gates, handing out 'free' samples to get the kids dependent.
I don't like the parent poster tone ' I shudder whenever he opens his mouth. He really does make us in the free software community look bad.'. We're not a political party that has to toe an official line. Any of us can say whatever we want in the manner we want.
What RMS has fame envy. He feels that poor GNU has been forgoten. We like our GNU tools but this whole stamping of feet and chanting "GNU/LINUX" makes RMS look silly. His chance to do something positive was wasted by his little lecture on GNU/LINUX.
Even philosophies need marketing, which involves consistent public exposure. If it was a case of "Ok, we wrote a load of old no-longer used tools in the past but now our job is done we might as well pack up and go home" then I would agree with you. However GNU have their continuing active agenda and would like to use it to make this world a better place. RMS is a self-appointed GNU PR man, and is doing an excellent (in terms of coverage, you can't please all tastes though) job in steadily providing that stream of exposure. The fact he is intelligent, insightful, talented and stubborn has pushed GNU to where it is and kept it somewhat in the limelight. He has his agenda, you don't have to agree with it, but don't expect him to shut up because you've heard the story before. Others many not have. Look on his 'rantings' as the safety announcements that the cabin crew give before the plane takes off, ie if you think you already know it off by heart then switch off the moment they open their mouths.
You can't patent business methods in the EU AFAIK.
You are right, you cannot patent business methods in the EU. Even the new directive being pushed through (EU residents, contact your MEP!) that may allow software patents excludes business methods.
Someone please explain how programmers will make a wage they can live off of in the future...[]...I think its time for us to start working in each other's interest. It seems that programmers are the new exploited class, and perhaps it is time to organize for better labor conditions and stop screwing ourselves over...[]...I like open source, but sometimes I secretly hope for it to fail. Otherwise, I fear, I will be working at MacDonalds, coming home to do my real work for free.
I really wouldn't worry about it so much. People have been writing/distributing free Open Source software since the 1970s and demand for programmers has done nothing but increase. The majority of programming jobs aren't in writing shrink-wrapped software but in writing bespoke systems from companies. The GPL is great if writing in-house software as you can then you can pinch as much GPL software as you like to make yourself more productive, leaving you to tackle the interesting challenges instead of reinventing the wheel all the time. If you ignore the dot-com boom, and the inflated ideas of salary that gave, if you are a good programmer then you shouldn't find it any harder to find a reasonable well paid job than before. Just make sure you get good careers advice (pick right skills for future, start off with big name companies if possible to look good on CV, etc).
The UK government carried out an extensive consultation and came to the conclusion it was best not to allow software patents. This is effectively a continuation of current legislation, where software has been adequately protected by copyright for the past few decades.
The other reason that the caps were implemented were that the ISPs discovered that 90% of their users were under them, and the other 10% were over them by some ridiculous amount.
That's no different from the situation in any other country that offers uncapped broadband. NTL in the UK has threatened caps for excessive users citing exactly the same statistic, though it backed down from actually doing it. However, the solution in the UK has been to offer 'premium' services which offer twice the speed for slightly more money rather than gouging consumers with excessive penalties.
I know there are legitimate uses for it, but by and large the only thing it restricts are the warez and movie/music distributors.
Please. It's pathetic how you tar everyone with the same brush. It may affect a number of pirates but there are plenty of people doing real work that will also be affected. Hell, even downloading Redhat 9.1 will blow over 2/3 of your monthly bandwidth in one evening! I don't think you realise how little 3GB really is (think online gaming, installing Gentoo, trying out Java + various IDEs, etc).
Can you expand on the lesson a bit. Isn't cost B (maintaining WindowsXP) proportional to some extent to cost C? The more you sell, the greater range of hardware you have to support, the more customer calls you are going to get, etc. The obvious wide margin they are making (dropping the price by 75% and still expecting to make back A+B+(n*C)) clearly demonstrates the reason they are a convicted monopoly, but wouldn't the RRP set the "home market price (normal value)"? Therefore they are 'dumping' at below 'home market price' into a restricted market "Lindows users" to drive competition out of business?
Dumping - Export price that is "unfairly low," defined as either below the home market price (normal value) (hence price discrimination) or below cost. With the rare exception of successful predatory dumping, dumping is economically beneficial to the importing country as a whole (though harmful to competing producers) and often represents normal business practice.
meanwhile, i perform consulting services - and, i simply refuse to budge from my standard rate for employment. they pay a little more - but, they will get what they pay for. i have had many clients do development in india, then, come to me - and, for a little bit more they get the product faster, of higher quality - and, are very satisfied.
There is also the option, should you choose, of moving to one of these countries such as Czech. You will be able to lower your standard rate yet still be better off due to the far lower cost of living. Of course this is not a direct correlation to a better quality of life (other factors such as crime, closeness to family, etc, will determine if overall you are better off).
Slashdot Mirror
Please try to describe in instance where distributing copyrighted material without the copyright holder's permission is 'right'.
Off the top of my head:
* whistleblowing on a corrupt company or government
* publishing the internal working of dangerous cults, such as Scientology
I'm sure there are plenty more. Copyright is an economic mechanism, and nothing to do with morality.
Phillip.
Calling someone a loser because of what O/S they are running automatically *makes the caller* the loser.
No, you're the loser times infinity and no returns.
Everybody I've ever met runs whatever O/S they need to do the job, whether it's Linux, Windows, BSD, or whatever.
Not in most cases, they run Windows because they haven't made the effort to try any other options. Whenever someone comes whinging to me about having caught a virus, first question I ask is "Do you use Outlook?". Upon inevitable positive response I tell them it's their fault and they should be using a decent email client (eg The Bat!). Eventually they (sometimes) make the change.
That kind of shit is what makes Linux advocates all look insane and results in me having to explain that, no, not all Linux users are short-sighted, socially-inept zealots every time I bring Linux up at work.
But we don't care what you or your friends think of us... Would you rather we venture out after dark, and even then only to LUG meetings?
It's a lot easier to sell Linux to people without the idiotic pomposity.
You want to sell Linux, we want to have fun. Winblows users are an easy target.
Phillip.
PS post not for the humour impaired.
On person mentioned using a C struct that you can whack directly into memory, and several others suggested using caching the DOM somehow. Of course these combine perfectly together. Get the sender to put a unique id or md5 in the header. If you don't have a file with that name in the cache dir then parse and dump the parsed structure to disc. If the file exists then pull file into memory and send the rest of the incoming byte stream to /dev/null. Of course caching won't help you if all your incoming XML files are unique.
Phillip.
I've just emerge the latest Abiword 1.99.1, and I am going to switch completely from OO to Abiword. It is lightening fast (takes well under 1 second to open, often is instantaneous), handles Word fine. OO is too slow and too sensitive to changes in JVM every time I upgrade. procman tells me Abiword is taking 13.7MB with empty document, and 20.4MB with a 2.5 page CV open. Perfect for my lightweight WP needs.
Phillip.
How many big contracts have to be won by Linux companies before the papers realize that it's been around for a dozen years? Or that not everybody working on OSS is a volunteer?
I've heard about these "code labour camps" *shiver*. I can imagine RMS in the role of kapo...
Phillip.
So you want them to give the contract to the most _highest_ bidder? The brother-in-law of the contract officer?
They give the contract to the lowest _qualified_ bidder. Doing otherwise would be stupid.
You give the contract to the person who is going to give you the most value for money. I have clients that always use me even though they could get cheaper elsewhere. That's because they *know* the project will be done well and done on time, which means they won't have to have the project redone later.
> It's like they say, you get what you pay for.
Bullshit.
It's not bullshit. I pitch my prices higher because I know I can do a better job and it will work out cheaper for the client in the long run. And it has proven to be the fact to date.
Phillip.
Ouch! Mod this up as "insightful", not funny! I mean, wait until they try to tie the first killing spree to AA!
Doesn't it happen all the time? I'm not picking on the AA in particular, but I remember even before the Iraq war started some guy went crazy and started rolling grenades into his friends tents. If you push someone hard enough they will crack. Who knows, maybe the video game was a release and if it wasn't for the video game it would have happened even earlier?
Phillip.
Why should the RIAA get to demand proof that you've paid them whenever they desire, but the clothing store not be granted the same right?
Designer labels have similar problems with copies being made of their clothes. With RIAA style powers, we could see "Gucci police" pulling over young women in the high street and asking to prove where they got their handbag from. Armani tracing the IP (Imbellis Perambulum) of young 20 somethings back to their home and being granted a warrant to search their wardrobe. The RIAA really are no longer in the real world.
Phillip.
Freenet may eventually contain a political treatise from the oppressed citizens of a dictatorship, but it will probably contain copyrighted songs, movies, porn, etc. by a factor of a hundred thousand to one. Supporting anonymous political speech is more good than illegal copying is bad, but by a factor of 100,000?
Yes. Take the death penalty. We might get it right 99.99% of the time, but are those few innocents executed worth abolishing the death penalty for? In Europe we decided yes. What if during a future conflict (ala Iraq) the only inside source as to what was really happening was able to escape via Freenet? Wouldn't that be of value, even if Freenet had umpteen copies of Britney Spears? Also, you cannot go simply on volume. Hell the web is 100,000x more crap than information but we still use it.
Phillip.
Why would I actually go into a bookshop if all the books are shrinkwrapped? The only advantage a bookshop has over Amazon.com is that I can randomly browse through books as the whim takes me. The goal of the book retailer is to increase their overall sales, and turning the store into basically a warehouse would lose more customers than rudimentary digital counterfeiting.
Phillip.
I just have to type "emerge gnomemeeting". Sometimes, people just want shit to work. Right on, that's why I use Gentoo. People also don't want to have to worry about keeping software up to date, another plus point over Windows. From what I remember, installing software in Mandrake was point and click, no harder than Windows. I personally would have been very interested to have seen how Gnomemeeting compared.
Phillip.
There is one thing sure. If i pay 20-25 Euros for a CD where i can get the exactly same satisfaction downloading from Gnutella, i won't buy it.
Not only satisfaction but instant gratification.
Phillip,
You write: Refusing to buy is the only legitimate course of action.
Then write: Right now, they have a very good excuse for their actions--people are stealing music.
Don't you think the RIAA will deliberately attribute the latter to the former, citing their sales as being down obviously over theft rather than their customers boycotting overpriced goods?
Phillip.
P2P will happen pretty much the same way, but for different reasons. All they're going to do is drive the trade underground again. 5 years ago it was one guy who was technologically adept charging his buddies $2 a pop to burn CDs. Now he can do it again, charging say, $5 a pop. They'll start forming private IRC release groups, buying, ripping and sharing MP3s between private groups of people. The RIAA will have a hard time infiltrating these groups. And the RIAA still doesn't see a rise in profits.
Driving the trade underground makes it less accessible, ergo filetrading will be minimal and the RIAA can go back to charging $20 a CD with only one decent song on it. The battle is now firmly between the corporation and the people. Everyone will have to make a fundamental choice that decides the society we want to live in: do we (a) break the cartel and reshape a society in which we are free to listen to what we want, when we want, and let the music industry take the hit in trying to adapt to the new world or (b) give up the new technology and regress back to the 80s/90s which is bad for society but is the status quo we are familiar with. At this point in time I wouldn't be confident to bet on either.
Phillip.
It is a bit like selling cigarettes to children
Doesn't seem a very good analogy to me, since the children still have to save up their pocket money and buy the cigarettes full price. It's more like dealers hanging around the school gates, handing out 'free' samples to get the kids dependent.
I don't like the parent poster tone ' I shudder whenever he opens his mouth. He really does make us in the free software community look bad.'. We're not a political party that has to toe an official line. Any of us can say whatever we want in the manner we want.
Phillip.
What RMS has fame envy. He feels that poor GNU has been forgoten. We like our GNU tools but this whole stamping of feet and chanting "GNU/LINUX" makes RMS look silly. His chance to do something positive was wasted by his little lecture on GNU/LINUX.
Even philosophies need marketing, which involves consistent public exposure. If it was a case of "Ok, we wrote a load of old no-longer used tools in the past but now our job is done we might as well pack up and go home" then I would agree with you. However GNU have their continuing active agenda and would like to use it to make this world a better place. RMS is a self-appointed GNU PR man, and is doing an excellent (in terms of coverage, you can't please all tastes though) job in steadily providing that stream of exposure. The fact he is intelligent, insightful, talented and stubborn has pushed GNU to where it is and kept it somewhat in the limelight. He has his agenda, you don't have to agree with it, but don't expect him to shut up because you've heard the story before. Others many not have. Look on his 'rantings' as the safety announcements that the cabin crew give before the plane takes off, ie if you think you already know it off by heart then switch off the moment they open their mouths.
Phillip.
You can't patent business methods in the EU AFAIK.
You are right, you cannot patent business methods in the EU. Even the new directive being pushed through (EU residents, contact your MEP!) that may allow software patents excludes business methods.
Phillip.
Someone please explain how programmers will make a wage they can live off of in the future...[]...I think its time for us to start working in each other's interest. It seems that programmers are the new exploited class, and perhaps it is time to organize for better labor conditions and stop screwing ourselves over...[]...I like open source, but sometimes I secretly hope for it to fail. Otherwise, I fear, I will be working at MacDonalds, coming home to do my real work for free.
I really wouldn't worry about it so much. People have been writing/distributing free Open Source software since the 1970s and demand for programmers has done nothing but increase. The majority of programming jobs aren't in writing shrink-wrapped software but in writing bespoke systems from companies. The GPL is great if writing in-house software as you can then you can pinch as much GPL software as you like to make yourself more productive, leaving you to tackle the interesting challenges instead of reinventing the wheel all the time. If you ignore the dot-com boom, and the inflated ideas of salary that gave, if you are a good programmer then you shouldn't find it any harder to find a reasonable well paid job than before. Just make sure you get good careers advice (pick right skills for future, start off with big name companies if possible to look good on CV, etc).
Phillip.
Often the only difference between a professional programmer and an Open Source programmer is the hour of day they are at the computer.
Phillip.
The UK government carried out an extensive consultation and came to the conclusion it was best not to allow software patents. This is effectively a continuation of current legislation, where software has been adequately protected by copyright for the past few decades.
Phillip.
The other reason that the caps were implemented were that the ISPs discovered that 90% of their users were under them, and the other 10% were over them by some ridiculous amount.
That's no different from the situation in any other country that offers uncapped broadband. NTL in the UK has threatened caps for excessive users citing exactly the same statistic, though it backed down from actually doing it. However, the solution in the UK has been to offer 'premium' services which offer twice the speed for slightly more money rather than gouging consumers with excessive penalties.
I know there are legitimate uses for it, but by and large the only thing it restricts are the warez and movie/music distributors.
Please. It's pathetic how you tar everyone with the same brush. It may affect a number of pirates but there are plenty of people doing real work that will also be affected. Hell, even downloading Redhat 9.1 will blow over 2/3 of your monthly bandwidth in one evening! I don't think you realise how little 3GB really is (think online gaming, installing Gentoo, trying out Java + various IDEs, etc).
Phillip.
There is only one religion... and it's prophet is called Morpheus, it's Messiah Neo.
I thought you put 'Jedi' down during the last census? Anyway, wouldn't the prophet be the Oracle and Morpheus be the diciple?
Phillip.
Can you expand on the lesson a bit. Isn't cost B (maintaining WindowsXP) proportional to some extent to cost C? The more you sell, the greater range of hardware you have to support, the more customer calls you are going to get, etc. The obvious wide margin they are making (dropping the price by 75% and still expecting to make back A+B+(n*C)) clearly demonstrates the reason they are a convicted monopoly, but wouldn't the RRP set the "home market price (normal value)"? Therefore they are 'dumping' at below 'home market price' into a restricted market "Lindows users" to drive competition out of business?
Phillip.
Dumping - Export price that is "unfairly low," defined as either below the home market price (normal value) (hence price discrimination) or below cost. With the rare exception of successful predatory dumping, dumping is economically beneficial to the importing country as a whole (though harmful to competing producers) and often represents normal business practice.
Phillip.
meanwhile, i perform consulting services - and, i simply refuse to budge from my standard rate for employment. they pay a little more - but, they will get what they pay for. i have had many clients do development in india, then, come to me - and, for a little bit more they get the product faster, of higher quality - and, are very satisfied.
There is also the option, should you choose, of moving to one of these countries such as Czech. You will be able to lower your standard rate yet still be better off due to the far lower cost of living. Of course this is not a direct correlation to a better quality of life (other factors such as crime, closeness to family, etc, will determine if overall you are better off).
Phillip.