I think that OSS doesn't make money as software for an individual, but it allows him or her to increase his or her visibility. Ok, I don't think that you are looking at a sure fire solution here. I agree with the parent but he beat me to it so I'll post this as a reply.
For whatever reason, people often assume a false dichotomy between open sourcing code and making money. This isn't the case. A simple example of this is the ability to donate to any project on sourceforge. So a simple effortless option is to sign on to SourceForge, register your project and make yourself the sole dev. Then you just need to sit back and wait for all those donations to roll in!
Likely source of income? Not really.
So let me tell you something that happened to me. I had, in one of my classes, built an interface to GOCR (not Jack Black's band but the Gnu Optical Character Recognition project). This was a while ago. It was in C and it was shitty. I mean really shitty. I didn't even open source it. The teacher liked it though, maybe she still uses it, I don't know. Whoop de doo, right? I made a GUI to a command line tool.
Fast forward 2 years. I'm out of college and it's a bad market for developers. I show up for an interview with a company I had no idea was even into software. I show up in khakis and a button down shirt. Everyone else is in double breasted suits. I figure I'm screwed. But when I get into the interview, we started talking about open source and--wouldn't you know it--GOCR! The woman who interviewed me had used it on a project and started complaining about the command line. So I told her what I had done and talked about the algorithms and how it recognizes characters. I told her why my interface was so crappy. I got the job and I've been working there three years--they even allow me to do crazy research stuff at work!
Did I directly make money working on open source? No. But I think I got the job just on that conversation. I kinda wished I had checked in that interface as I'm sure it's lost somewhere on the university network now. What if she had actually used it?
I suggest you open source it, work with others to make it better, give it time to propagate. Then submit your resume to any place you want and list it on there. If you've made the Firefox of financial apps or prove you really understand how to design financial software, there's a lot of places you could go.
Get out of your basement and do some traveling. Well, I know I'm not supposed to feed the trolls but... I have been to the boundary waters canoe area twice. For two weeks, we went about 50 miles in towards Canada from Minnesota. Beautiful. Just unbelievably beautiful. Northern Minnesota soil used to have a higher moisture content than the everglades. Yeah, hard to believe, huh? Well, the settlers came along and cut drainage ditches into it so they could farm it. Used to just be switch grass and sorghum and the like, now they were growing beans and corn. Well, erosion slowly set in and now all that peat and top soil is being whipped around by the wind. Some places look pretty barren compared to the lush slough it used to be. So who cares, right?
Well, at the boundary waters, I drank out of the lakes, ate the fish, it was paradise. Later I went to college at the University of Minnesota and thank god that you can't get into the BWCA except with a canoe or helicopter. You can't swim or fish in the lakes/rivers of Minneapolis. So what's my point? Well, everywhere man has touched that I've seen, things have just gone down hill. Those trees and resources that once covered North America? Gone. We bitch at Brazil to stop deforestation when we did the same damn thing when we settled this land.
When I was 15 or so (ten years ago), I read Carl Sagan's Billions & Billions which was a book more about his thoughts than science... or maybe I'm repeating myself.
But anyway, at some point in that book, he talks about ordering this novel device that is a world in a globe. It's a nutrient mix in water with some sort of tiny aquatic animals. But the globe is sealed. The instructions are to leave it where sunlight can hit it and let nature do the rest. So Sagan puts it on his desk.
The next day, the water is foggy. Soon after it is teaming with microscopic life.
But after a short amount of time, the globe goes silent and there is a dark residue on the glass with nothing else in the water. Sagan pondered if the earth had a similar "maximum capacity." Now, there are differences, we can cite different natural processes that replace what we take making them a replenishable resource. But our numbers and pollution threaten them. He also discusses population control and ends up with the general conclusion that war, diseases, natural disasters and the like will cap us out somewhere around 2010. I, unfortunately, don't see our growth slowing as much as he projected.
In fact, it made so much sense to me that, at the age of fifteen, I wrote a letter to my Minnesota senators urging them to push for more spending to NASA & even subsidizing the private sector--after all, how many billions go into defense? Surely some of that could be better spent to begin the lengthy process of insuring that we will not have a glass covering over the earth. My words fell on deaf ears as I received no response. I don't believe I've written a letter to a politician higher than the county level since then although I have received a letter from the vice president for completing the Eagle Scout Award... but I digress.
The point is that if we continue down the path we are taking with pollution, don't invest in space travel and continue to procreate, we are sitting in a glass casing. It's only a matter of time before we put ourselves in a near suicide contention with constrained resources. If we don't have peaceful space exploration and means of growing outwards, our only solutions are war, mass genocide, famine, disease and many horrible ugly scenarios.
I still see the need for making extraterrestrial planets sustainable to human growth and development.
We have a problem with obesity--increasingly with children.
Disappointment Level One: Someone, somewhere decided that it is one single factor contributing to this, not a combination. Blame is absolute and illogically must be placed on one thing.
Disappointment Level Two: The media reinforces Lvl 1 idea and is on a witch hunt.
Disappointment Level Three: Each alleged witch further exacerbates by shifting blame to another witch, none of them ever admitting to being part of the problem. Once a new target is acquired, they escape the public eye.
Disappointment Level Four: Lvls 1-3 act as a free pass to parents. There are so many witches to point at, surely nothing they have done resulted in this. Again, no responsibility is taken.
And all the while, we're setting ourselves up for a diabetes explosion. Although many have claimed it's been on the horizon for a long time, the numbers are starting to creep. Enjoy eating through all four layers of that cake!
Yeah, and just think what this is going to do to counterfeiting!
Man in Black Coat in Alley: "Would you like a real fake ID or a fake Real ID?" Citizen: "Well, I'm only 18 so I need both." Man in Black Coat in Alley: "Very good, sir. Now, remember when you're buying alcohol, you're a 22 year old student named James Huffington from Rhode Island. When you're boarding a plane, you are Agnes Krakaour, age 51... you winter vacation in Florida and enjoy shuffle boarding and watching Matlock." Citizen: "Thank you so much!"
There's a story right after this on on the KPC which is $200. You could swap out the HDD for a half terabyte $100 cheapy from Microcenter or rebated somewhere. I believe the motherboard has gigabit ethernet. Although I can't say for sure. I think this is as cheap as you can go without a used/DIY idea and on top of that, it will take up hardly any space.
If you're concerned about heat around the HDD, I would simply suggest a DIY project that moves the HDD to its own enclosure with heat sinks and fans. But one of those would look cute underneath your router or even in your living room.
She and that cryptologist lady. Elonka Dunn? It never ceases to amaze me when someone says "Oh yeah, I like whats-her-face a lot." You could bother to find out what her name is or admit that you don't think enough of her to remember her name.
Love the smell of Vapor in the morning. Ok, well, I guess to be fair, we should give her a little more credit than that. Mary Lou Jepsondoes have a PhD in opitcs and a BS in EE. She seems to be quite competent and is credited with some key design and inventions for the OLPC and also working politics with companies to design these displays specifically for the laptop, defined by the laptop. Not an easy thing to do.
So I'm guessing she was upset from the cost and believes that she can cut cost by doing again what she did for the OLPC, designing a better, cheaper display. This time, she can probably negotiate better deals as I'm sure the # of XOs in development causes display manufacturers to salivate.
So, before you accuse this of being vaporware, I would caution you that she has held up her end once for the OLPC... and she seems to be highly motivated. She's got street cred.
Now, what makes me salivate is the site's promise to keep everything open. The software's a given at this point but open hardware would be revolutionary and present yet another learning possibility for users.
The love of money. Source of all things evil throughout the world (that's in the Bible somewhere). And if you're in corporate America, it's also the source of all motivation.
How much is your own privacy worth to you? Can't put a price on it, can you? But it's amazing how fast some people can come up with a dollar amount when it's someone else's privacy. I guess the same can be said about a human life--unfortunately.
Here's something (that is hopefully) a bit enraging to think about. You may be paying taxes to your government that fund an agency to spy on you. Hell, with the NSA wiretapping, the odds are high. How do you like that business model? You're paying for someone to watch you and press charges against you if you do something wrong. What an investment!
And this is all very patriotic of the Telcos, serving their government up until they are past due on payments. All in the name of justice and freedom, indeed! This is genuinely amazing, you just can't even make this stuff up, people.
It's a brand new development for the XO laptops, as the low-cost notebooks are known, and came about because of Microsoft's friendlier attitude toward open-source software. Dear Dan Nystedt of ComputerWorld, the English language lacks the proper words that I need to express how wrong you are. I only wish I knew German so I could scream the rest of this post at you.
What caused you to write that sentence, I will never know. Was Stevie B. holding a firearm to your head when you wrote this article? Or simply placing a sack with a large green $ on your desk?
Seriously, this is an all out attack on open source software. They are vying for the young minds of every single child in developing countries. What is so special about this that GRUB or LILO cannot be used for the dual booting? Is Microsoft developing the code to dual boot? I would be shocked if they were.
If you claim Microsoft just wants to make sure the kids get the best operating system for learning, why weren't they handing out free copies of Windows and Office to 3rd world children/schools before the OLPC project started? Because they'd rather give away their product than let a competitor fall into the hearts and minds of these children. Linux has always been free to everybody. Think about it.
Microsoft has embraced the open-source community over the past few years in a very different way than before, Negroponte said. "And that really helps, because it's become a little bit less religious than it was a few years ago and that's really good. In the end, I think, the more people that have software and hardware out there, the better." Has the whole world gone mad? I'm all for getting the children any operating system they want, in fact I'm glad they will have that choice. But to say that Microsoft has embraced the open-source community is... strange at best. They may have created their own pseudo-open source community within their company but little more.
It may have become a little less religious recently but only so far as the ends justify Microsoft's means. They are interested in profit, nothing more. I would love to applaud them for coming around and realizing that open source software is a viable solution for making money--and even improving a product! But I cannot say that today. They only actively threaten it in underhanded ways.
First, how often does that really happen? The problem is that (and any legal department knows
this) it only has to happen once for you to pay out millions of dollars. So it only has to happen once to be scary and set precedence.
Second, why is this a problem with CC? It would be a problem with anyone placing a copyrighted work under any license, or even claiming copyright on a work copyrighted by someone else. It's more a problem with copyright and the legal system. Well, with any other copyright, I think there's very stringent usage rights set and signed for and everyone's aware of who's using who's material. Not so in the CC world, or at least they don't want it that way. So it's a bigger problem there because people are 'free' to use everything and I'm sure there's sites out there hosting CC sound clips and images and the like. This kind of orgy of use is what makes CC particularly vulnerable to these scam artists.
Well, I'm familiar with criticism of the creative commons license from people like Dvorak or Debian but there's something here that is confusing to me. The idea that you can un-creative commons something is... not right.
Finally, in the third article, he states that people can 'game the CC license' for profit, by suing people who use your CC'd work which you have subsequently revoked from the CC license. I haven't read the article, but sounds just wrong to me.
You know, I thought that if you license it as creative commons then all derivative works and the like from that work must also be CC... although I think I am wrong about that last part, I am so used to and in love with the GPL that it's just how I think.
Creative Commons licenses are non-revocable. This means that you cannot stop someone, who has obtained your work under a Creative Commons license, from using the work according to that license. You can stop distributing your work under a Creative Commons license at any time you wish; but this will not withdraw any copies of your work that already exist under a Creative Commons license from circulation, be they verbatim copies, copies included in collective works and/or adaptations of your work. So you need to think carefully when choosing a Creative Commons license to make sure that you are happy for people to be using your work consistent with the terms of the license, even if you later stop distributing your work. So seriously, you may well be right with the first two issues but this third concept is foreign to me and I'm sure many lawyers would be interested in how you 'revoked?' a license. What the?
I think a lot of these issues would be resolved by making it "no backsies, all derivatives must be CC, tough if you want to use them no lawsuits plz k thanx bye." And that's the best legalese I know.
Christ, for a moment there I thought EA's
Battlefield, Medal of Honor & Crysis games were
going to have to step it up a notch to compete with
these new... oh wait, nevermind, competition's been
purchased. Whew! That was close. Ok, everybody
resume average game ideas, and above all nothing
risky or extraordinary! Remember, your ideas
have to be approved through like seventy levels of
command so don't even start with any out of the
ordinary stuff we aren't sure will be an instant
mediocre game netting us an average profit.
WoW, I can't wait for Mass Effect 2 through 5 and
Mass Effect 2010, 2011, 2012 & 2013. Just imagine
the rosters!
Gates plans to market the XBox 360 as an alternative to the OLPC. While the price is not $188 yet, his CEO voodoo math has predicted that by 2010 it will be $188. It will have two straps added to it so that it can be worn like a backpack and come with heads-up display helmets which he bought at reduced cost from Lucas after all of his scenes with clones in Star Wars. Freakish looking shock troopers will poor forth from 3rd world countries and create waves of ultra intelligent Xbox live users chanting for more NASCAR and looking to 'kick some ass.'
No longer concerned with rice and potable water, they will demand badges and strive to be atop a point ranking system. Several dictators will realize that equipping the outfits with actual weapons and removing the heads up helmets make them perfect mindless warriors with twitch movements that would put Ali to shame.
All hippie wii players will be destroyed in the great cleansing while PS3 players will live it out safely, unknowingly in their basements.
After that, the XBox 360 will be useless. Used and marketed in more ways than a Singapore whore, the XBox 360 will shave its head in a desperate cry for attention. Then it will start dropping babies all over the place and release an album with the title track ripping into Gates.
The XBox 360 will then spend the rest of eternity in the old consoles home with the NeoGeo, TurboGrafix 16 and Jaguar 32 playing pong and solitaire. Visiting hours will be from noon to 5pm Monday-Friday.
Short intro, I read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi. Play a lot of computer games. Enjoy reading up on lore and the like.
But I never got into D&D. I had friends that played it but I was never into it. I tried playing it a few times and had some fun experiences. But there's always been a sort of negative stigma associated with it among... well, the general populace. What are you doing to break free of this? Or do you embrace it? What are your thoughts & opinions on this strange negative publicity that popular movies push onto D&D players? Do you ever try to break free of that?
Gates knows he can't win. Vista is a huge flop and could spell the end of Microsoft's dominance. You're right, it could. Hell anything could happen with the software market like it is these days. Truth is that Vista's first year adoption rate are pretty much better than XP's. So why didn't he step down when XP was coming out?
I hate Microsoft too but it's the natural succession of leadership, Gates is past his prime. His company is not (has it ever had 'a prime'?). I don't think he's stepping down from lack of success, I think he's stepping down because maybe he realized what horrid things a leader with that much power (inadvertently) has to do.
And that's fine with me because Ballmer is one easy man to hate. Just redirect everything to him. Gates is rich but that doesn't make him any more despicable than Rockefeller, Hughes or Warren Buffett. At least he's trying to help other countries in the world. I think Gates has generally had good intentions with bad consequences for many members of the tech community. Whether it's for family, boredom or health reasons, he's certainly not stepping down because Microsoft is losing this game.
Before you spend the time reading this, let me point out that this isn't really technically oriented. I was hoping for some massive teardown of Ruby/Rails performance or load handling capabilities but... yeah, didn't take away much from this other than this 'Zed' character can be quite abrasive.
Only a fucking tool bag piece of shit would:
* spend 10-20 minutes calling me names over IRC,
* not have the balls to say any of that to my face,
* say I'm a dick for wanting to use a different (established) publish/review model,
* and then demolish such an important file for a project,
* keeping everyone stumped and pissed for an hour,
* therefore proving me right.
This is exactly what makes Rails a ghetto. A bunch of half-trained former PHP morons who never bother to sit down and really learn the computer science they were too good to study in college. BTW, this is true about Kevin as he's an English major or something stupid (and it shows).
Hats off to you Kevin, you fucking prick. I'm enjoying my vacation too. Ok, this is the summation of his first point. He got into a verbal argument with someone on his team about how patches should be handled. Kevin thought people should be able to submit patches to his workspace while Zed vehemently did not.
People commonly have disagreements, work them out.
The fact that this (largely nontechnical) issue is his first point disheartens me and makes me wary of ever working with Zed no matter how brilliant he is. Perhaps this is another example of how non-personal communication (forums/IRC/IMs/e-mail) leads to heated debates over absolutely nothing. I would start to point out that Zed did call Kevin a 'mofo' first before Kevin called him a 'dick' but I would hesitate as name calling and the like is for children.
It's a wonder Zed gets anything done other than by himself to me.
As for his complaints about companies, I have to warn him that bad companies are everywhere... just like bad people. What does any of this have to do with Ruby or Rails? Why are you so certain this is going to die? Because there are some idiots here and there trying to use it?
I hate to say this but after reading this first part of the rant, I think Zed is just as big (if not half) of the problem of the community being in shambles as any of his targets are.
I've been wondering this myself given the huge coverage in the media of this thing. Well, you posted an article about the source for it violating the GPL (a fixed shortly thereafter). You might have learned something about it then. Or you could do a quick search on your site for it and you'd turn up the first review you posted and we discussed.
Believe it or not, the "huge media coverage" that I've noticed of this thing has only been on Slashdot. Other than that, it's a big name manufacturer, in our world it's huge news.
It has a 4Gb hard drive and no optical drive. Its screen is 7" and runs at the odd resolution of 800x480 and the operating system looks like something Fisher Price might have designed. Why would you buy it? What on earth can you do with this? That's not solid logic when you're speaking to a crowd that busts its ass trying to get Linux running on their microwave. I didn't see the reviewer giving any real specific applications of the laptop. Back in college, I used to work with pioneer robots in my classes. The damned things had a 15 lb. Dell notebook mounted on top of them. Ridiculous. Try hauling the robot and the laptop to a demonstration or presentation.
They mention conceptual artist Ralph McQuarrie in these a lot--well, he's done many illustrations and paintings for collectible card sets. If you like these Christmas cards, I heavily recommend you collect the three Star Wars Galaxies Collectible Card sets put out by Topps in the early 1990s. I still have those three sets and still enjoy pulling them out every now and then and reading through the backs of the cards.
Most of the images on those cards are beautifully illustrated.
Wikipedia is getting something of a reputation for being elitist... You got that right, remember them purging webcomics?
Knol claims to be open to all knowledge of entertainment so it's possible it could be seen as a safe haven for these fans & anyone who's been struck by the notability hammer. I could see them hopping on the wayback machine and just putting their words back into digital print... I would if I were in their shoes.
I never did see anything mentioned about the horror case of me writing my own autobiography as a knol. That wasn't addressed but I guess they'll flesh that stuff out. It'll be interesting to see where they draw the line and, like you said, who moves to the other model.
Is this a better model for free information gathering? How is this in any way 'free'?
You see that thing on the right of the screenshot? That's an "Ads by Google" box. When I view a page and that guy is there, it isn't free anymore. Do you think the TV you watch with an antenna is free? Do you think those 'news' papers that you can pick up without paying anything are free? No, they're all laden with advertisements. Somebody somewhere down the line paid money to get that data in front of my eyes.
I noticed the VP of Engineering liked to use that word a lot to. I do not think it means what he thinks it means.
This is not free. This is ad based & ad driven information gathering. I don't know if it will be more effective but once that enters into it, you suddenly have the entire world looking to profit off this. That spells for some very bad possibilities--from violating copywrite and just inserting an encyclopedia in for cash to making stuff up and faking credentials to earn money.
Right, I think you should really step back and consider what you are saying.
Every author has a right to express situations to the point they see fit. If you want to pull a Hemingway and tell things how they are, go ahead. "The night was dark." But I'm going to paraphrase something I remember from the intro to Stephen King's unabridged version of The Stand:
You can tell the story of Hansel & Gretel in about three sentences. Hansel & Gretel got lost in the forest. They happened upon a house wtih an old witch who offered them candy. She really wanted to eat them and they figured it out and dumped her in the oven.
Ok, so that was quick, but you know, it also is interesting to mention that they weren't so much as 'lost' as their bitch of a mother threw them in the woods because she loved their father but not them. Or that they left breadcrumbs certain they could find their way back. And also they kind of faced with a bit of a moral dilemma when they were faced with killing the witch. Oh, and when I talk about the forest, if I put some details into it to make it a little darker and scarier, it works better. Before you know it, I'm painting a novel. Yes, it's going to be long. Oh but all these things make the plot long and loopy and without everything being answered! Yes, it's going to have an overload of details but that's how I want to tell it. If you don't like, either don't read it or buy the Cliff's notes and get back to me on it.
Jordan went to the Citadel. He spares no expense on details. He also is an expert at explaining battles. If you don't like it that he answers questions with more questions, don't read it. I'm sorry but you went through book seven and I implore to keep going, some of the later ones get much better. It's the same thing that drew me to the X-Files & even some newer books, I'm sorry that it discourages you but that's what I love about Jordan. Not your average run of the mill fantasy series!
Probably the biggest hassle from a security perspective [with past technologies] is that users tended to run as administrators. In Vista, that's not the default anymore. Ok, yeah, he's probably talking about XP. I mean, when he says [with past technologies] they can't be talking about older operating systems like Unix, Solaris or Linux because root is simply not the default. I don't know a lot about arcane operating systems but I think that in the beginning a careful security scheme was thought out that defined a protected 'kernel space' that the operating system needed to run that the daily user simply could not touch or needed credentials to do so.
Now, this is funny, but I want to caution you that this is something they need to change. If you criticize them for attacking their own vulnerabilities, you're not giving them a chance to change. Microsoft isn't going to self destruct so let's hope they stop giving botnets & trojans a home in this world. Better security is better for the community and the users. Don't attack someone when they recognize their wrong doings and attempt to correct them. If you don't allow that, then how can anyone improve? Personally I examine my mistakes, acknowledge them and fix them. I certainly hope that Microsoft does this because it's evident that they'll still sell well despite them.
Slashdot Mirror
For whatever reason, people often assume a false dichotomy between open sourcing code and making money. This isn't the case. A simple example of this is the ability to donate to any project on sourceforge. So a simple effortless option is to sign on to SourceForge, register your project and make yourself the sole dev. Then you just need to sit back and wait for all those donations to roll in!
Likely source of income? Not really.
So let me tell you something that happened to me. I had, in one of my classes, built an interface to GOCR (not Jack Black's band but the Gnu Optical Character Recognition project). This was a while ago. It was in C and it was shitty. I mean really shitty. I didn't even open source it. The teacher liked it though, maybe she still uses it, I don't know. Whoop de doo, right? I made a GUI to a command line tool.
Fast forward 2 years. I'm out of college and it's a bad market for developers. I show up for an interview with a company I had no idea was even into software. I show up in khakis and a button down shirt. Everyone else is in double breasted suits. I figure I'm screwed. But when I get into the interview, we started talking about open source and--wouldn't you know it--GOCR! The woman who interviewed me had used it on a project and started complaining about the command line. So I told her what I had done and talked about the algorithms and how it recognizes characters. I told her why my interface was so crappy. I got the job and I've been working there three years--they even allow me to do crazy research stuff at work!
Did I directly make money working on open source? No. But I think I got the job just on that conversation. I kinda wished I had checked in that interface as I'm sure it's lost somewhere on the university network now. What if she had actually used it?
I suggest you open source it, work with others to make it better, give it time to propagate. Then submit your resume to any place you want and list it on there. If you've made the Firefox of financial apps or prove you really understand how to design financial software, there's a lot of places you could go.
Well, at the boundary waters, I drank out of the lakes, ate the fish, it was paradise. Later I went to college at the University of Minnesota and thank god that you can't get into the BWCA except with a canoe or helicopter. You can't swim or fish in the lakes/rivers of Minneapolis. So what's my point? Well, everywhere man has touched that I've seen, things have just gone down hill. Those trees and resources that once covered North America? Gone. We bitch at Brazil to stop deforestation when we did the same damn thing when we settled this land.
Go see the world? Go see Manilla? Go see West Virginia? Go see Brooklyn? The super stack nickel refinery in Canada?
For every single place you tell me to go see, I'll show you a spot ravaged to hell by the human race.
When I was 15 or so (ten years ago), I read Carl Sagan's Billions & Billions which was a book more about his thoughts than science ... or maybe I'm repeating myself.
... but I digress.
But anyway, at some point in that book, he talks about ordering this novel device that is a world in a globe. It's a nutrient mix in water with some sort of tiny aquatic animals. But the globe is sealed. The instructions are to leave it where sunlight can hit it and let nature do the rest. So Sagan puts it on his desk.
The next day, the water is foggy. Soon after it is teaming with microscopic life.
But after a short amount of time, the globe goes silent and there is a dark residue on the glass with nothing else in the water. Sagan pondered if the earth had a similar "maximum capacity." Now, there are differences, we can cite different natural processes that replace what we take making them a replenishable resource. But our numbers and pollution threaten them. He also discusses population control and ends up with the general conclusion that war, diseases, natural disasters and the like will cap us out somewhere around 2010. I, unfortunately, don't see our growth slowing as much as he projected.
In fact, it made so much sense to me that, at the age of fifteen, I wrote a letter to my Minnesota senators urging them to push for more spending to NASA & even subsidizing the private sector--after all, how many billions go into defense? Surely some of that could be better spent to begin the lengthy process of insuring that we will not have a glass covering over the earth. My words fell on deaf ears as I received no response. I don't believe I've written a letter to a politician higher than the county level since then although I have received a letter from the vice president for completing the Eagle Scout Award
The point is that if we continue down the path we are taking with pollution, don't invest in space travel and continue to procreate, we are sitting in a glass casing. It's only a matter of time before we put ourselves in a near suicide contention with constrained resources. If we don't have peaceful space exploration and means of growing outwards, our only solutions are war, mass genocide, famine, disease and many horrible ugly scenarios.
I still see the need for making extraterrestrial planets sustainable to human growth and development.
We have a problem with obesity--increasingly with children.
Disappointment Level One: Someone, somewhere decided that it is one single factor contributing to this, not a combination. Blame is absolute and illogically must be placed on one thing.
Disappointment Level Two: The media reinforces Lvl 1 idea and is on a witch hunt.
Disappointment Level Three: Each alleged witch further exacerbates by shifting blame to another witch, none of them ever admitting to being part of the problem. Once a new target is acquired, they escape the public eye.
Disappointment Level Four: Lvls 1-3 act as a free pass to parents. There are so many witches to point at, surely nothing they have done resulted in this. Again, no responsibility is taken.
And all the while, we're setting ourselves up for a diabetes explosion. Although many have claimed it's been on the horizon for a long time, the numbers are starting to creep. Enjoy eating through all four layers of that cake!
Yeah, and just think what this is going to do to counterfeiting!
... you winter vacation in Florida and enjoy shuffle boarding and watching Matlock."
Man in Black Coat in Alley: "Would you like a real fake ID or a fake Real ID?"
Citizen: "Well, I'm only 18 so I need both."
Man in Black Coat in Alley: "Very good, sir. Now, remember when you're buying alcohol, you're a 22 year old student named James Huffington from Rhode Island. When you're boarding a plane, you are Agnes Krakaour, age 51
Citizen: "Thank you so much!"
Yeah, I heard that Congress was concerned the FCC wasn't corrupt enough.
Or perhaps this is just a remedial course on how to milk your cash cows.
Every so often congress has to look like it's investigating something when a source of income is threatened. Is anything ever done about it? Not really.
But magically, without fail, the citizen is screwed in the end. Congress just wants to make sure some of that money ends up back at the top.
There's a story right after this on on the KPC which is $200. You could swap out the HDD for a half terabyte $100 cheapy from Microcenter or rebated somewhere. I believe the motherboard has gigabit ethernet. Although I can't say for sure. I think this is as cheap as you can go without a used/DIY idea and on top of that, it will take up hardly any space.
If you're concerned about heat around the HDD, I would simply suggest a DIY project that moves the HDD to its own enclosure with heat sinks and fans. But one of those would look cute underneath your router or even in your living room.
So I'm guessing she was upset from the cost and believes that she can cut cost by doing again what she did for the OLPC, designing a better, cheaper display. This time, she can probably negotiate better deals as I'm sure the # of XOs in development causes display manufacturers to salivate.
So, before you accuse this of being vaporware, I would caution you that she has held up her end once for the OLPC
Now, what makes me salivate is the site's promise to keep everything open. The software's a given at this point but open hardware would be revolutionary and present yet another learning possibility for users.
The love of money. Source of all things evil throughout the world (that's in the Bible somewhere). And if you're in corporate America, it's also the source of all motivation.
How much is your own privacy worth to you? Can't put a price on it, can you? But it's amazing how fast some people can come up with a dollar amount when it's someone else's privacy. I guess the same can be said about a human life--unfortunately.
Here's something (that is hopefully) a bit enraging to think about. You may be paying taxes to your government that fund an agency to spy on you. Hell, with the NSA wiretapping, the odds are high. How do you like that business model? You're paying for someone to watch you and press charges against you if you do something wrong. What an investment!
And this is all very patriotic of the Telcos, serving their government up until they are past due on payments. All in the name of justice and freedom, indeed! This is genuinely amazing, you just can't even make this stuff up, people.
What caused you to write that sentence, I will never know. Was Stevie B. holding a firearm to your head when you wrote this article? Or simply placing a sack with a large green $ on your desk?
Seriously, this is an all out attack on open source software. They are vying for the young minds of every single child in developing countries. What is so special about this that GRUB or LILO cannot be used for the dual booting? Is Microsoft developing the code to dual boot? I would be shocked if they were.
If you claim Microsoft just wants to make sure the kids get the best operating system for learning, why weren't they handing out free copies of Windows and Office to 3rd world children/schools before the OLPC project started? Because they'd rather give away their product than let a competitor fall into the hearts and minds of these children. Linux has always been free to everybody. Think about it. Microsoft has embraced the open-source community over the past few years in a very different way than before, Negroponte said. "And that really helps, because it's become a little bit less religious than it was a few years ago and that's really good. In the end, I think, the more people that have software and hardware out there, the better." Has the whole world gone mad? I'm all for getting the children any operating system they want, in fact I'm glad they will have that choice. But to say that Microsoft has embraced the open-source community is
Those 419 patent violation accusations
It may have become a little less religious recently but only so far as the ends justify Microsoft's means. They are interested in profit, nothing more. I would love to applaud them for coming around and realizing that open source software is a viable solution for making money--and even improving a product! But I cannot say that today. They only actively threaten it in underhanded ways.
You know, I thought that if you license it as creative commons then all derivative works and the like from that work must also be CC
Well, from the faq: What if I change my mind?
Creative Commons licenses are non-revocable. This means that you cannot stop someone, who has obtained your work under a Creative Commons license, from using the work according to that license. You can stop distributing your work under a Creative Commons license at any time you wish; but this will not withdraw any copies of your work that already exist under a Creative Commons license from circulation, be they verbatim copies, copies included in collective works and/or adaptations of your work. So you need to think carefully when choosing a Creative Commons license to make sure that you are happy for people to be using your work consistent with the terms of the license, even if you later stop distributing your work. So seriously, you may well be right with the first two issues but this third concept is foreign to me and I'm sure many lawyers would be interested in how you 'revoked?' a license. What the?
I think a lot of these issues would be resolved by making it "no backsies, all derivatives must be CC, tough if you want to use them no lawsuits plz k thanx bye." And that's the best legalese I know.
Following this announcement, all BioWare and Pandemic developers were ordered to repor t to headquarters for a 10 digit tattoo on their arms and re-EAification. Prepare to learn how to saturate the market with your titles differing by only one digit!
... oh wait, nevermind, competition's been
purchased. Whew! That was close. Ok, everybody
resume average game ideas, and above all nothing
risky or extraordinary! Remember, your ideas
have to be approved through like seventy levels of
command so don't even start with any out of the
ordinary stuff we aren't sure will be an instant
mediocre game netting us an average profit.
Christ, for a moment there I thought EA's Battlefield, Medal of Honor & Crysis games were going to have to step it up a notch to compete with these new
WoW, I can't wait for Mass Effect 2 through 5 and Mass Effect 2010, 2011, 2012 & 2013. Just imagine the rosters!
Gates plans to market the XBox 360 as an alternative to the OLPC. While the price is not $188 yet, his CEO voodoo math has predicted that by 2010 it will be $188. It will have two straps added to it so that it can be worn like a backpack and come with heads-up display helmets which he bought at reduced cost from Lucas after all of his scenes with clones in Star Wars. Freakish looking shock troopers will poor forth from 3rd world countries and create waves of ultra intelligent Xbox live users chanting for more NASCAR and looking to 'kick some ass.'
No longer concerned with rice and potable water, they will demand badges and strive to be atop a point ranking system. Several dictators will realize that equipping the outfits with actual weapons and removing the heads up helmets make them perfect mindless warriors with twitch movements that would put Ali to shame.
All hippie wii players will be destroyed in the great cleansing while PS3 players will live it out safely, unknowingly in their basements.
After that, the XBox 360 will be useless. Used and marketed in more ways than a Singapore whore, the XBox 360 will shave its head in a desperate cry for attention. Then it will start dropping babies all over the place and release an album with the title track ripping into Gates.
The XBox 360 will then spend the rest of eternity in the old consoles home with the NeoGeo, TurboGrafix 16 and Jaguar 32 playing pong and solitaire. Visiting hours will be from noon to 5pm Monday-Friday.
Short intro, I read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi. Play a lot of computer games. Enjoy reading up on lore and the like.
... well, the general populace. What are you doing to break free of this? Or do you embrace it? What are your thoughts & opinions on this strange negative publicity that popular movies push onto D&D players? Do you ever try to break free of that?
But I never got into D&D. I had friends that played it but I was never into it. I tried playing it a few times and had some fun experiences. But there's always been a sort of negative stigma associated with it among
I hate Microsoft too but it's the natural succession of leadership, Gates is past his prime. His company is not (has it ever had 'a prime'?). I don't think he's stepping down from lack of success, I think he's stepping down because maybe he realized what horrid things a leader with that much power (inadvertently) has to do.
And that's fine with me because Ballmer is one easy man to hate. Just redirect everything to him. Gates is rich but that doesn't make him any more despicable than Rockefeller, Hughes or Warren Buffett. At least he's trying to help other countries in the world. I think Gates has generally had good intentions with bad consequences for many members of the tech community. Whether it's for family, boredom or health reasons, he's certainly not stepping down because Microsoft is losing this game.
Only a fucking tool bag piece of shit would:
* spend 10-20 minutes calling me names over IRC,
* not have the balls to say any of that to my face,
* say I'm a dick for wanting to use a different (established) publish/review model,
* and then demolish such an important file for a project,
* keeping everyone stumped and pissed for an hour,
* therefore proving me right.
This is exactly what makes Rails a ghetto. A bunch of half-trained former PHP morons who never bother to sit down and really learn the computer science they were too good to study in college. BTW, this is true about Kevin as he's an English major or something stupid (and it shows).
Hats off to you Kevin, you fucking prick. I'm enjoying my vacation too. Ok, this is the summation of his first point. He got into a verbal argument with someone on his team about how patches should be handled. Kevin thought people should be able to submit patches to his workspace while Zed vehemently did not.
People commonly have disagreements, work them out.
The fact that this (largely nontechnical) issue is his first point disheartens me and makes me wary of ever working with Zed no matter how brilliant he is. Perhaps this is another example of how non-personal communication (forums/IRC/IMs/e-mail) leads to heated debates over absolutely nothing. I would start to point out that Zed did call Kevin a 'mofo' first before Kevin called him a 'dick' but I would hesitate as name calling and the like is for children.
It's a wonder Zed gets anything done other than by himself to me.
As for his complaints about companies, I have to warn him that bad companies are everywhere
I hate to say this but after reading this first part of the rant, I think Zed is just as big (if not half) of the problem of the community being in shambles as any of his targets are.
Mr. President, we must not allow a gravitationally slingshotted asteroid cave society gap!
I've been wondering this myself given the huge coverage in the media of this thing. Well, you posted an article about the source for it violating the GPL (a fixed shortly thereafter). You might have learned something about it then. Or you could do a quick search on your site for it and you'd turn up the first review you posted and we discussed.
Believe it or not, the "huge media coverage" that I've noticed of this thing has only been on Slashdot. Other than that, it's a big name manufacturer, in our world it's huge news. It has a 4Gb hard drive and no optical drive. Its screen is 7" and runs at the odd resolution of 800x480 and the operating system looks like something Fisher Price might have designed. Why would you buy it? What on earth can you do with this? That's not solid logic when you're speaking to a crowd that busts its ass trying to get Linux running on their microwave. I didn't see the reviewer giving any real specific applications of the laptop. Back in college, I used to work with pioneer robots in my classes. The damned things had a 15 lb. Dell notebook mounted on top of them. Ridiculous. Try hauling the robot and the laptop to a demonstration or presentation.
They mention conceptual artist Ralph McQuarrie in these a lot--well, he's done many illustrations and paintings for collectible card sets. If you like these Christmas cards, I heavily recommend you collect the three Star Wars Galaxies Collectible Card sets put out by Topps in the early 1990s. I still have those three sets and still enjoy pulling them out every now and then and reading through the backs of the cards.
Most of the images on those cards are beautifully illustrated.
Knol claims to be open to all knowledge of entertainment so it's possible it could be seen as a safe haven for these fans & anyone who's been struck by the notability hammer. I could see them hopping on the wayback machine and just putting their words back into digital print
I never did see anything mentioned about the horror case of me writing my own autobiography as a knol. That wasn't addressed but I guess they'll flesh that stuff out. It'll be interesting to see where they draw the line and, like you said, who moves to the other model.
You see that thing on the right of the screenshot? That's an "Ads by Google" box. When I view a page and that guy is there, it isn't free anymore. Do you think the TV you watch with an antenna is free? Do you think those 'news' papers that you can pick up without paying anything are free? No, they're all laden with advertisements. Somebody somewhere down the line paid money to get that data in front of my eyes.
I noticed the VP of Engineering liked to use that word a lot to. I do not think it means what he thinks it means.
This is not free. This is ad based & ad driven information gathering. I don't know if it will be more effective but once that enters into it, you suddenly have the entire world looking to profit off this. That spells for some very bad possibilities--from violating copywrite and just inserting an encyclopedia in for cash to making stuff up and faking credentials to earn money.
Right, I think you should really step back and consider what you are saying.
Every author has a right to express situations to the point they see fit. If you want to pull a Hemingway and tell things how they are, go ahead. "The night was dark." But I'm going to paraphrase something I remember from the intro to Stephen King's unabridged version of The Stand:
You can tell the story of Hansel & Gretel in about three sentences. Hansel & Gretel got lost in the forest. They happened upon a house wtih an old witch who offered them candy. She really wanted to eat them and they figured it out and dumped her in the oven.
Ok, so that was quick, but you know, it also is interesting to mention that they weren't so much as 'lost' as their bitch of a mother threw them in the woods because she loved their father but not them. Or that they left breadcrumbs certain they could find their way back. And also they kind of faced with a bit of a moral dilemma when they were faced with killing the witch. Oh, and when I talk about the forest, if I put some details into it to make it a little darker and scarier, it works better. Before you know it, I'm painting a novel. Yes, it's going to be long. Oh but all these things make the plot long and loopy and without everything being answered! Yes, it's going to have an overload of details but that's how I want to tell it. If you don't like, either don't read it or buy the Cliff's notes and get back to me on it.
Jordan went to the Citadel. He spares no expense on details. He also is an expert at explaining battles. If you don't like it that he answers questions with more questions, don't read it. I'm sorry but you went through book seven and I implore to keep going, some of the later ones get much better. It's the same thing that drew me to the X-Files & even some newer books, I'm sorry that it discourages you but that's what I love about Jordan. Not your average run of the mill fantasy series!
Now, this is funny, but I want to caution you that this is something they need to change. If you criticize them for attacking their own vulnerabilities, you're not giving them a chance to change. Microsoft isn't going to self destruct so let's hope they stop giving botnets & trojans a home in this world. Better security is better for the community and the users. Don't attack someone when they recognize their wrong doings and attempt to correct them. If you don't allow that, then how can anyone improve? Personally I examine my mistakes, acknowledge them and fix them. I certainly hope that Microsoft does this because it's evident that they'll still sell well despite them.