Commentators here make a big deal about using the right tool for the job.
Tell me. For what job is Microsoft Vista, the right tool?
I can't think of one.
It's wrong for office workers. It's wrong for gamers. It's wrong for developers... unless your job revolves around developing native client applications for Vista. Good luck with that.
But what does being a "Republican Conservative" have to do with "normally hating labor unions"?
Companies routinely participate in collective bargaining to reduce costs and overheard for their benefit.
Why shouldn't employees leverage the value of their labor on the free market in similar collective bargaining agreements for their benefit?
If you are a consistent fiscal conservative, what you should be opposed to is government regulation and protection of unions, not employees practicing collective bargaining on the free market.
This is the difference in how Apple thinks vs how Microsoft thinks.
Microsoft's solution to this problem - Microsoft Surface - is to say here's a huge, $10,000 table that customers can order from; replace all your diner's tables with Microsoft tables.
Apple says, hey, wait a second, you don't need some huge, stupid table that has the very best interior design aesthetic Microsoft can offer, no, since everyone already carries a cell phone, why don't we just let you order and pay from your cell phone too?
Now which company do you think is the wiser long term investment?
"Yah, people in a free market VOTED for the ARM mortgages. That sure has worked out well, didn't it?"
Yes, it worked EXACTLY as it should have. And now lenders who did not properly assess the credit of their borrowers are paying the price for their poor decisions. And those who got into mortgages that they could not possibly afford, are paying the price for their poor decisions.
And those who had the foresight all long to see these mistakes, are profiting from it.
The market punishes failure and rewards success.
Unlike government, which punishes success and rewards failure.
Which kind of society would you like to live in? I'll take the one that rewards success.
I'm "clinging" to incandescent bulbs because there are no fluorescent bulbs on the market that meet my simply needs to have good lighting when I work in my own garage. Why on earth should I even have to go into this? In school I was taught that the Constitution meant something. I was taught that it limited government. How do these fascist jerk offs get off telling me that I can't go and buy a nice 250 watt incandescent long neck bulb for my garage? It boggles the mind.
What does this mean for my garage lights? The hell if the government is going to tell me that I can't have a 150 watt or 250 watt bulb in my lights over my work bench, over my lift, and in my trouble lights.
Can one of these ass hats point out for me where in the Constitution it says that the government has the power to tell me what lights I can and can not use in my garage???
I've tried fluorescent 150 watt bulbs. They don't fit in the sockets because they have too short of a neck.
I shouldn't even have to go into that detail. What on earth? What is the Constitution I was taught about in school? Just a piece of old paper they take turns pissing on?
This is a perfect example of something that the federal government should just stay out of. Were it left to local jurisdictions, it would be much fairer.
Why should I, living out in a rural area in the middle of no where, pay more for may vehicle when it presents no environmental problem whatsoever in my region, just because the same vehicle is a problem for people on the other side of the country living in a city like sardines in a can?
Let those states or jurisdictions worry about how they want to keep their own air clean within their own jurisdictions, and stop putting artificial controls on the market in my jurisdiction that drive up the cost of transportation for me. If that means they won't let me take my car into their state, or want me to pay a toll at the border, so be it, I'm out here precisely because I don't want to be impacted by large urban center in the first place.
Just look what they did with the telcos. The administration knew that it couldn't just go and force the telcos to install their drag net hardware to sweep up each and every electronic communication of ordinary Americans.
So what did they do? Instead of ordering the telcos to do it, we now know that they paid them to do it.
Would it be at all surprising if we were to find that the Bush administration also plans to pay crypto hardware manufacturers to install backdoors to allow them to better snoop on ordinary Americans' encrypted information?
If anything, I'd be surprised if they hadn't thought of this.
Mark my words, this will be done right. We are coming full circle here. The only thing that could make it better for me personally would be if the episode started on the bridge of the enterprise D.
We have: - Nimoy's Spock - probably the most loved and respected character across every Trek series, and probably the last time we will see him on the big screen - City on the Edge of Forever tie in - one of the best Trek episodes ever - Good old fashioned time travel without a bunch of techno babble - the Guardian is more mystical than techy - Romulans! - The Kobayashi Maru test - a character defining event for the good old Kirk - No Shatner! He's chosen to become a parody of himself. His presence couldn't amount to more than comic relief.
And you know you can count on them to make the manner in which Spock must save Kirk a wonderful classic morality play as in Star Trek II.
I refused to even go see the last Trek movie, Voyager made me sick, and Enterprise made me give up. But somehow I am optimistic that the stars will align on this one. Here's hoping!
"disproved by scientific means, I remind those who are making statements to the effect that there is no God,"
What does belief in ghosts have to do with belief in God?
I can't comment on other traditions, but belief in ghosts haunting or roaming the earth is clearly excluded by mainline Protestant and Catholic doctrine, and has been for many centuries.
"Yes, the millions of people that get enormous amounts of enjoyment out of MP3s every single day don't exist. You pretentious twat."
It's no surprise that these suckers can't pick one out in a double blind listening test, and most wouldn't even know how to construct one if they were inclined to try.
The real giveaway is when they go about the superior "acoustics" of vinyl, when in reality vinyl introduces noise and distortion.
This is ridiculous. I'm as opposed to the overreaching police state activities we've been seeing as anyone, but wearing a device that looks like an IED, that you designed specifically to look like an IED, that serves no other purpose, and then wearing it to an airport knowing full well the reaction it would produce, is not remotely constitutionally protected speech.
This is screaming "Fire!" in a crowded theatre to the tenth power.
I can't believe people are defending this. Think for a moment if instead she decided to create a piece of "art" that happened to look just like an AK47 instead of an IED? Would you be defending her then too? Because the situation is the same, even worse.
If she walked into a airport with piece of art that looked like an AK47, held at ready, you can be sure that if she had even flinched, she would have been shot dead, and she would have had it coming.
Having what looks unambiguously like an IED in a crowded airport is even worse.
"No, don't talk - don't say anything. I'm filling my mind with a picture of beating their huge, misshapen heads to pulp!. Thoughts so primitive they block out everything else; I'm filling my mind with hate!"
"The Linux developers chose to release it under the GPL, as they had every right to do. The problem is that they did not include the BSD license with their released code. Theo says that's a violation - they can not change the license in any way but must retain it exactly as the author released it."
You are wrong. The copyright holder himself relicensed the work under the GPL while stripping the BSD. He alone is free to do so.
You are free to continue using code derived from the original BSD licensed works under the terms of the BSD license, but the newly released work, from the original author, both has no dependence on the BSD and grants none of the rights available under the BSD.
Web 2.0? Social networking??? Right, just as soon as we roll out the ping pong tables and arcade cabinets.
Listen, this isn't 1996 anymore, thank God. Unless you can make the case that we will recoup the implementation, training, and operating costs in productivity gains, it isn't going to happen. This is what is known as a BUSINESS CASE. Businesses exist to make money, not to coddle and pamper you. Did you mistake your cube farm for the Hilton?
You should be thankful you have Web 1.0. Because if it weren't for the fact that Java is most cost effective to maintain and operate, you would still be doing data entry and form processing on COBOL terminal screens.
And talk about insane, if you have so much free time at work that you think we should deploy a social networking system for you, you have got another thing coming. Which would you prefer? We can either cut you down to 20 hours and drop your benefits, or we can just reassign your job to an existing employee who is interested in working in exchange for monetary compensation?
NO WONDER the economy is in a slump. Do you think your counterparts over in India have the time to whine about lack of social networking software on the job? No, that's why they're taking your jobs.
"I'm glad to see SOME judges admire SOME parts of the Constitution, but I can only dream of a day when judges understand the non-breathing, non-adapting Constitutional limits on the Feds. When that happens, nothing Congress or a power-hungry President do would become law."
However, due to our common law system as well as the ability of the Supreme Court to refuse to hear cases - they refuse far more than they hear - the Constitution is indeed a living, breathing document, that changes over time without amendment, by the actions of a few, powerful, activist judges.
So long as we remain a common law, not civil law, system, the Constitution will never be the sure foundation it was meant to be.
If a strictly unconstitutional law is desired, the process to implement it and the system of checks and balances that regulate it, require that it be done my amendment, not be judicial fiat.
It's frankly despicable that any political party would ally itself with judicial fiat against the Constitution, against the republic. Not only is it despicable, it is also short sighted. For as soon as another party in disagreement with you gains control and changes the makeups of our courts, suddenly they will wish they had sided with the Constitution from the beginning.
"Maybe this explains why religion persists in the face of logic, it was here before science."
Religion, for the most part, does not persist in the face of logic.
Logic, you would know had you studied it, has nothing to do with empirical evidence, and nothing to do with any metaphysical or epistemological theory.
We can, quite correctly, reason logically about an event in the D&D universe whether or not it exists in the same way our universe exists. We can reason logically about events within the Star Wars universe whether or not it exists in the same way our universe exists.
There is nothing logically inconsistent about a person believing that the Star Wars universe exists in the same way that you and I believe our universe exists.
Logic depends on your view of soundness, and many disagreements about soundness are not questions of logic. Whether you view a premise as sound, there therefore a conclusion as potentially true, depends entirely on your worldview.
"Well, the reason why apologies and admissions of fault never happen is because of the tort system. See game theory/MAD."
These are public employees sworn uphold our nation's laws and protect our citizens.
It is their sworn duty, on their honor as a person, to do what is right regardless of the consequences.
If the department or officer fights this in court, despite now seeing the clear and unambiguous letter of the law he is sworn to uphold, he should be terminated immediately and barred from future employment as a law enforcement officer.
If short of court compulsion our law enforcement officers will not obey and honor the laws they are sworn to uphold, then they are the criminals.
If this had happened to me, not only would I pursue criminal charges and all civil recourses available to me, I would further call this officer's home and children and tell them that their father is a dishonorable, despicable human being whose word is worth no more than that of the lowliest criminal.
"I happen to agree with him on this particular matter (ie, tax havening is often immoral), but I fail to see why his opinion should carry any more weight than mine."
Because, you, Mr. Mad.Frog, have an audience of perhaps 10, whereas the Pope has a committed audience of several hundred million, a distribution channel that extends into neighborhoods in every corner of the Earth, and a - if not so committed - at least tentative audience of a billion+.
I suspect we could agree upon a fairly precise causal account of why his opinion matters more than yours, Mr. Mad.Frog.
"does god levy 'taxes' ? taxes are an earthly thing and have no place in religion. or is the pope trying to appease some circles that have done 'charity' for the church ?"
I suspect you're not interested in knowing, but in fact the God of the Bible has a long history of taxation.
Citizens were required to pay a flat tax of 10% of all earnings.
Citizens were also assessed additional fixed taxes as civic needs arose, and were required to turn over some numbers of livestock on a regular schedule.
These taxes went to the religious state, whose responsibility it was to provide judicial, executive, and legislative services, as well as to provide for the common needs of society, including various primitive safety nets for those who had fallen on hard times.
Further on, according to the Bible, in Christian communities this developed into an entirely socialist system, where resources were jointly held and distributed by a central authority. Failure to comply was punishable by death.
The copyright holder of the code himself has given his authorization, which he alone can give, to relicense the copyrighted work under the GPL exclusively.
Had he not done this, it would have been required to retain the BSD blurb and state "Some portions licensed under the BSD license."
But because the copyright holder himself authorized the relicensing, there is no such requirement. The copyright holder could have relicensed it under the CPL, the MPL, or even licensed it under the Public Domain.
Innovation and entering or even creating new markets can lead to a company becoming defocused and stretched too thin when those new markets do not compliment its core competencies. Your software company would never consider entering the coal mining drilling rig market even if you came to your CEO with a proposal for the most safe and efficient coal mining drilling rig ever conceived, not even if he or she believed it.
Innovation within an existing market that your company dominates in marketshare can lead to market segmentation. If your company has 60% marketshare in the XYZ consumer software market, and no one else individually has more than 15%, coming out with radically innovative improvements (changes) to your product line may cause your customers to jump ship to your smaller competitors. Customers want steady, incremental improvement. This incremental improvement should be targeted at winning new sales to expand your marketshare, and take the wind out of the sales of your competitors. In many cases it may be cheaper to simply acquire your small competition outright and thereby add their marketshare to your own.
It may also be a poor business decision to innovate faster than the market demands, thereby playing your cards too soon. If you dominate your market, you would think long and hard about developing and releasing a product that improves on the state of the art by 10 years, when the market only demands a 1 year improvement. Dramatically increasing the state of the art in an established market you dominate likely will not produce revenue growth proportional to the cost of development, marketing, and release, compared to the 1 year advancement.
I'm sick and tired of the maintainers of the Star Trek franchise trying to recapture the Original Series style and universe. That series failed for a reason. It had such a good movie run due to Shatner, Nimoy, and DeForest Kelly, as well as the epic nature of the stories. In the latter respect, the movies were successful because in style and substance they were the opposite of the failed series.
Star Trek: TNG was by far the most expansive and interesting universe, and has always been far and away the fan favorite. I don't mean by self-styled critics who ramble on about emotional dynamics and relationships. Star Trek: TNG was popular because first and foremost because of Patrick Stewart, but second because it, like the Original Series movies, cast the ordinary in the extraordinary.
Teenage boys and middle aged men and women did not watch Star Trek: TNG for character development and intricate relationships. They watched it because it rose above the trash on the rest of television, because it had ethics and virtue and told us what was right and what was wrong, and set things right by the end of every hour. Star Trek: TNG was a Greek morality play in a fantastically imaginative, yet intimately believable universe.
It was NOT Dawson's Creek or Buffy the Vampire Slayer in space. It NOT not a campy western in space.
Until the caretakers of the franchise look back and understand this, they will continue to fail to recapture that success.
Slashdot Mirror
Commentators here make a big deal about using the right tool for the job.
Tell me. For what job is Microsoft Vista, the right tool?
I can't think of one.
It's wrong for office workers.
It's wrong for gamers.
It's wrong for developers... unless your job revolves around developing native client applications for Vista. Good luck with that.
But what does being a "Republican Conservative" have to do with "normally hating labor unions"?
Companies routinely participate in collective bargaining to reduce costs and overheard for their benefit.
Why shouldn't employees leverage the value of their labor on the free market in similar collective bargaining agreements for their benefit?
If you are a consistent fiscal conservative, what you should be opposed to is government regulation and protection of unions, not employees practicing collective bargaining on the free market.
Something to think about.
This is the difference in how Apple thinks vs how Microsoft thinks.
Microsoft's solution to this problem - Microsoft Surface - is to say here's a huge, $10,000 table that customers can order from; replace all your diner's tables with Microsoft tables.
Apple says, hey, wait a second, you don't need some huge, stupid table that has the very best interior design aesthetic Microsoft can offer, no, since everyone already carries a cell phone, why don't we just let you order and pay from your cell phone too?
Now which company do you think is the wiser long term investment?
"Yah, people in a free market VOTED for the ARM mortgages. That sure has worked out well, didn't it?"
Yes, it worked EXACTLY as it should have. And now lenders who did not properly assess the credit of their borrowers are paying the price for their poor decisions. And those who got into mortgages that they could not possibly afford, are paying the price for their poor decisions.
And those who had the foresight all long to see these mistakes, are profiting from it.
The market punishes failure and rewards success.
Unlike government, which punishes success and rewards failure.
Which kind of society would you like to live in? I'll take the one that rewards success.
I'm "clinging" to incandescent bulbs because there are no fluorescent bulbs on the market that meet my simply needs to have good lighting when I work in my own garage. Why on earth should I even have to go into this? In school I was taught that the Constitution meant something. I was taught that it limited government. How do these fascist jerk offs get off telling me that I can't go and buy a nice 250 watt incandescent long neck bulb for my garage? It boggles the mind.
What does this mean for my garage lights? The hell if the government is going to tell me that I can't have a 150 watt or 250 watt bulb in my lights over my work bench, over my lift, and in my trouble lights.
Can one of these ass hats point out for me where in the Constitution it says that the government has the power to tell me what lights I can and can not use in my garage???
I've tried fluorescent 150 watt bulbs. They don't fit in the sockets because they have too short of a neck.
I shouldn't even have to go into that detail. What on earth? What is the Constitution I was taught about in school? Just a piece of old paper they take turns pissing on?
And what about photographers? Enough is enough!
This is a perfect example of something that the federal government should just stay out of. Were it left to local jurisdictions, it would be much fairer.
Why should I, living out in a rural area in the middle of no where, pay more for may vehicle when it presents no environmental problem whatsoever in my region, just because the same vehicle is a problem for people on the other side of the country living in a city like sardines in a can?
Let those states or jurisdictions worry about how they want to keep their own air clean within their own jurisdictions, and stop putting artificial controls on the market in my jurisdiction that drive up the cost of transportation for me. If that means they won't let me take my car into their state, or want me to pay a toll at the border, so be it, I'm out here precisely because I don't want to be impacted by large urban center in the first place.
I don't get it.
The law makes it clear to an average guy reading it that there is not even the pretense of making the fine proportionate to the actual damages.
That's why it is so unethical. Proportionality is a core concept of justice, maybe even hardwired.
Punishment that does not fit the crime is not justice at all.
Just look what they did with the telcos. The administration knew that it couldn't just go and force the telcos to install their drag net hardware to sweep up each and every electronic communication of ordinary Americans.
So what did they do? Instead of ordering the telcos to do it, we now know that they paid them to do it.
Would it be at all surprising if we were to find that the Bush administration also plans to pay crypto hardware manufacturers to install backdoors to allow them to better snoop on ordinary Americans' encrypted information?
If anything, I'd be surprised if they hadn't thought of this.
Mark my words, this will be done right. We are coming full circle here. The only thing that could make it better for me personally would be if the episode started on the bridge of the enterprise D.
We have:
- Nimoy's Spock - probably the most loved and respected character across every Trek series, and probably the last time we will see him on the big screen
- City on the Edge of Forever tie in - one of the best Trek episodes ever
- Good old fashioned time travel without a bunch of techno babble - the Guardian is more mystical than techy
- Romulans!
- The Kobayashi Maru test - a character defining event for the good old Kirk
- No Shatner! He's chosen to become a parody of himself. His presence couldn't amount to more than comic relief.
And you know you can count on them to make the manner in which Spock must save Kirk a wonderful classic morality play as in Star Trek II.
I refused to even go see the last Trek movie, Voyager made me sick, and Enterprise made me give up. But somehow I am optimistic that the stars will align on this one. Here's hoping!
"disproved by scientific means, I remind those who are making statements to the effect that there is no God,"
What does belief in ghosts have to do with belief in God?
I can't comment on other traditions, but belief in ghosts haunting or roaming the earth is clearly excluded by mainline Protestant and Catholic doctrine, and has been for many centuries.
"Yes, the millions of people that get enormous amounts of enjoyment out of MP3s every single day don't exist. You pretentious twat."
It's no surprise that these suckers can't pick one out in a double blind listening test, and most wouldn't even know how to construct one if they were inclined to try.
The real giveaway is when they go about the superior "acoustics" of vinyl, when in reality vinyl introduces noise and distortion.
This is ridiculous. I'm as opposed to the overreaching police state activities we've been seeing as anyone, but wearing a device that looks like an IED, that you designed specifically to look like an IED, that serves no other purpose, and then wearing it to an airport knowing full well the reaction it would produce, is not remotely constitutionally protected speech.
This is screaming "Fire!" in a crowded theatre to the tenth power.
I can't believe people are defending this. Think for a moment if instead she decided to create a piece of "art" that happened to look just like an AK47 instead of an IED? Would you be defending her then too? Because the situation is the same, even worse.
If she walked into a airport with piece of art that looked like an AK47, held at ready, you can be sure that if she had even flinched, she would have been shot dead, and she would have had it coming.
Having what looks unambiguously like an IED in a crowded airport is even worse.
This is Darwin award territory.
"No, don't talk - don't say anything. I'm filling my mind with a picture of beating their huge, misshapen heads to pulp!. Thoughts so primitive they block out everything else; I'm filling my mind with hate!"
:)
Captain Pike salutes you
"The Linux developers chose to release it under the GPL, as they had every right to do. The problem is that they did not include the BSD license with their released code. Theo says that's a violation - they can not change the license in any way but must retain it exactly as the author released it."
You are wrong. The copyright holder himself relicensed the work under the GPL while stripping the BSD. He alone is free to do so.
You are free to continue using code derived from the original BSD licensed works under the terms of the BSD license, but the newly released work, from the original author, both has no dependence on the BSD and grants none of the rights available under the BSD.
"adroit and vigilant shepherding"
New words this month?
Web 2.0? Social networking??? Right, just as soon as we roll out the ping pong tables and arcade cabinets.
Listen, this isn't 1996 anymore, thank God. Unless you can make the case that we will recoup the implementation, training, and operating costs in productivity gains, it isn't going to happen. This is what is known as a BUSINESS CASE. Businesses exist to make money, not to coddle and pamper you. Did you mistake your cube farm for the Hilton?
You should be thankful you have Web 1.0. Because if it weren't for the fact that Java is most cost effective to maintain and operate, you would still be doing data entry and form processing on COBOL terminal screens.
And talk about insane, if you have so much free time at work that you think we should deploy a social networking system for you, you have got another thing coming. Which would you prefer? We can either cut you down to 20 hours and drop your benefits, or we can just reassign your job to an existing employee who is interested in working in exchange for monetary compensation?
NO WONDER the economy is in a slump. Do you think your counterparts over in India have the time to whine about lack of social networking software on the job? No, that's why they're taking your jobs.
"I'm glad to see SOME judges admire SOME parts of the Constitution, but I can only dream of a day when judges understand the non-breathing, non-adapting Constitutional limits on the Feds. When that happens, nothing Congress or a power-hungry President do would become law."
However, due to our common law system as well as the ability of the Supreme Court to refuse to hear cases - they refuse far more than they hear - the Constitution is indeed a living, breathing document, that changes over time without amendment, by the actions of a few, powerful, activist judges.
So long as we remain a common law, not civil law, system, the Constitution will never be the sure foundation it was meant to be.
If a strictly unconstitutional law is desired, the process to implement it and the system of checks and balances that regulate it, require that it be done my amendment, not be judicial fiat.
It's frankly despicable that any political party would ally itself with judicial fiat against the Constitution, against the republic. Not only is it despicable, it is also short sighted. For as soon as another party in disagreement with you gains control and changes the makeups of our courts, suddenly they will wish they had sided with the Constitution from the beginning.
"Maybe this explains why religion persists in the face of logic, it was here before science."
Religion, for the most part, does not persist in the face of logic.
Logic, you would know had you studied it, has nothing to do with empirical evidence, and nothing to do with any metaphysical or epistemological theory.
We can, quite correctly, reason logically about an event in the D&D universe whether or not it exists in the same way our universe exists. We can reason logically about events within the Star Wars universe whether or not it exists in the same way our universe exists.
There is nothing logically inconsistent about a person believing that the Star Wars universe exists in the same way that you and I believe our universe exists.
Logic depends on your view of soundness, and many disagreements about soundness are not questions of logic. Whether you view a premise as sound, there therefore a conclusion as potentially true, depends entirely on your worldview.
"Well, the reason why apologies and admissions of fault never happen is because of the tort system. See game theory/MAD."
These are public employees sworn uphold our nation's laws and protect our citizens.
It is their sworn duty, on their honor as a person, to do what is right regardless of the consequences.
If the department or officer fights this in court, despite now seeing the clear and unambiguous letter of the law he is sworn to uphold, he should be terminated immediately and barred from future employment as a law enforcement officer.
If short of court compulsion our law enforcement officers will not obey and honor the laws they are sworn to uphold, then they are the criminals.
If this had happened to me, not only would I pursue criminal charges and all civil recourses available to me, I would further call this officer's home and children and tell them that their father is a dishonorable, despicable human being whose word is worth no more than that of the lowliest criminal.
An oath used to mean something.
"I happen to agree with him on this particular matter (ie, tax havening is often immoral), but I fail to see why his opinion should carry any more weight than mine."
Because, you, Mr. Mad.Frog, have an audience of perhaps 10, whereas the Pope has a committed audience of several hundred million, a distribution channel that extends into neighborhoods in every corner of the Earth, and a - if not so committed - at least tentative audience of a billion+.
I suspect we could agree upon a fairly precise causal account of why his opinion matters more than yours, Mr. Mad.Frog.
But the simple fact is: it does.
"does god levy 'taxes' ? taxes are an earthly thing and have no place in religion. or is the pope trying to appease some circles that have done 'charity' for the church ?"
I suspect you're not interested in knowing, but in fact the God of the Bible has a long history of taxation.
Citizens were required to pay a flat tax of 10% of all earnings.
Citizens were also assessed additional fixed taxes as civic needs arose, and were required to turn over some numbers of livestock on a regular schedule.
These taxes went to the religious state, whose responsibility it was to provide judicial, executive, and legislative services, as well as to provide for the common needs of society, including various primitive safety nets for those who had fallen on hard times.
Further on, according to the Bible, in Christian communities this developed into an entirely socialist system, where resources were jointly held and distributed by a central authority. Failure to comply was punishable by death.
That isn't what has happened at all.
The copyright holder of the code himself has given his authorization, which he alone can give, to relicense the copyrighted work under the GPL exclusively.
Had he not done this, it would have been required to retain the BSD blurb and state "Some portions licensed under the BSD license."
But because the copyright holder himself authorized the relicensing, there is no such requirement. The copyright holder could have relicensed it under the CPL, the MPL, or even licensed it under the Public Domain.
Innovation and entering or even creating new markets can lead to a company becoming defocused and stretched too thin when those new markets do not compliment its core competencies. Your software company would never consider entering the coal mining drilling rig market even if you came to your CEO with a proposal for the most safe and efficient coal mining drilling rig ever conceived, not even if he or she believed it.
Innovation within an existing market that your company dominates in marketshare can lead to market segmentation. If your company has 60% marketshare in the XYZ consumer software market, and no one else individually has more than 15%, coming out with radically innovative improvements (changes) to your product line may cause your customers to jump ship to your smaller competitors. Customers want steady, incremental improvement. This incremental improvement should be targeted at winning new sales to expand your marketshare, and take the wind out of the sales of your competitors. In many cases it may be cheaper to simply acquire your small competition outright and thereby add their marketshare to your own.
It may also be a poor business decision to innovate faster than the market demands, thereby playing your cards too soon. If you dominate your market, you would think long and hard about developing and releasing a product that improves on the state of the art by 10 years, when the market only demands a 1 year improvement. Dramatically increasing the state of the art in an established market you dominate likely will not produce revenue growth proportional to the cost of development, marketing, and release, compared to the 1 year advancement.
I'm sick and tired of the maintainers of the Star Trek franchise trying to recapture the Original Series style and universe. That series failed for a reason. It had such a good movie run due to Shatner, Nimoy, and DeForest Kelly, as well as the epic nature of the stories. In the latter respect, the movies were successful because in style and substance they were the opposite of the failed series.
Star Trek: TNG was by far the most expansive and interesting universe, and has always been far and away the fan favorite. I don't mean by self-styled critics who ramble on about emotional dynamics and relationships. Star Trek: TNG was popular because first and foremost because of Patrick Stewart, but second because it, like the Original Series movies, cast the ordinary in the extraordinary.
Teenage boys and middle aged men and women did not watch Star Trek: TNG for character development and intricate relationships. They watched it because it rose above the trash on the rest of television, because it had ethics and virtue and told us what was right and what was wrong, and set things right by the end of every hour. Star Trek: TNG was a Greek morality play in a fantastically imaginative, yet intimately believable universe.
It was NOT Dawson's Creek or Buffy the Vampire Slayer in space. It NOT not a campy western in space.
Until the caretakers of the franchise look back and understand this, they will continue to fail to recapture that success.