Basically what they say is they want to give us a printout from the (electronic) file. They don't want to give us the file itself. It doesn't enable us to get to the bottom of what we need to know
It seems to me that election software is pretty simple. It's basically a list of candidates and the number of votes each one got. Or you could have a log file of the candidate that people voted for. How on earth can you make a proprietary format out of this? It's just a simple list! I don't get it.
It's easy to say this, but how do we judge what's illegal and what's not? For instance if you install certain file-sharing software, you get adware. I think that the developer has the right to do this as long as they disclose what they're doing. I'd like to see labeling on this instead of making it illegal. Make a clear label saying this software what some might consider intrusive advertising included. I can't see anyone installing with that kind of label. Then, if they don't put the label, I wholehartedly agree with fines, etc.
In other words, your ideas are not intriguing to us and we do not wish to subscribe to your RSS feed.
I never asked you to subscribe to my RSS feed. In fact, my blog is really more of an experiment than an effort to promote anything. That's why I have no ads. Since some people moderated my post up, I can tell you that you do not speak for everyone as you've implied and that some people believe my posting was insightful and interesting. If you don't agree, good for you. I don't care. All I can do is react to what I see. Most traditional media outlets seem to slant against blogs. The only conclusion I can make based on that observation is that they feel threatened by blogs. Maybe you disagree with my analysis, which is fine, but I'm just making a point that I believe, nothing more, nothing less.
Well, yes TCO is important especially in a business setting. But, I was mainly talking about consumer products. Take Mozilla. People generally like Mozilla because it works well (probably even better than similar products) and is free. If it was not free, I seriously doubt a whole lot of people would use it, even if it was better than similar products. My point it that this is not a bad thing. People like free stuff. With regards to for profit entities, their strategy is different from the strategy of the Mozilla foundation or other non-profit opensource organizations that this article was discussing. For a for profit company, it makes sense to opensource parts of the package because you can make money on other items (e.g. hardware and support). So, if you opensource the software, you can gain the benefit of having an opensource community helping develop and do bug fixes while selling other products to go along with the free open source product. Companies like Redhat and Mysql have been successful using this model, but none of this changes my main point that people like free stuff. I would have never guessed that that would be such a controversial statement, but apparently it is.
Well, the reality is that this would not be the first fusion reation that ever occured. We are very good at making them occur in Nuclear bombs. The difference here is that we would want to control the reaction and thus produce usable energy so worrying about this is pointless since we are already very good at making "infinite energy". Also, it's not really infinite energy. There is enough deuterium in the Ocean to generate about 1 million times the annual energy usage. However, we only have about 1000 year supply of lithium. We could do a D-D reaction though that would be a little more difficult to contain, but we have 1000 years of energy before we have to figure that out.
Yeah right, the Europeans like free stuff too. People like free stuff. These articles make it sound like there's something bad about liking free stuff. It's reality. Get used to it and get over it.
Yep, it's a bunch of BS. The major newspapers see blogs as a threat because people read blogs. This is just an attack piece on blogs to say that the blogosphere is just filled with a bunch of idiots. What they don't know is that they do this to their own peril. Media outlets that allow participation will thrive and those that do not will go out of business. This is really inevitable.
Why is it sad? People like free stuff. It's not like big corporations are the only ones that like free stuff either. You listed some good benefits, but most non-programmers cannot do the things you listed. Why would you expect these to top the list of a survey that I assume was filled out by mostly non-programmers?
Well, the problem arises when you have more than one copy of a brain. Does each copy have all the rights of the original? What if one copy breaks a law? Is that copy "in jail" or do all copies need to be punished? What happens if you make a copy of a mind and change a few neurons around and it very closely resembles a human mind, does this mind still get all the rights of a human? What if we design a "mind" that is far superior to human minds? Should this "mind" not get human rights too? I think you've over simplified it a bit and using this principle we'll run into some problems.
Yes, this post is very true. One thing to keep in mind, when you give a proposal to a publishing company for a book like you described, they will undoubtably come back to you with something like: You don't want to write a book that attempts to solve world hunger. The point being, focus on more of a niche. For instance, the best selling book last year was XP For Dummies. Since you're on Slashdot, that's probably not your idea of "what most people need to know", but keep in mind this is something people do want information on. I'm not saying to write about XP persay, but you need to have at least some sort of niche. Maybe it's not tied to the OS, but tied to business computing, or blogging, or a browser, but I think it will be hard to write a book like, "Everything you need to know about computing". Unless you're attempting humor with your title.
Sure we can do it more efficiently. That's like saying that since Oil is currently the cheapest form of energy, we cannot possibly beat it because it's been around for billions of years or whatever. We're getting close with photovoltaics and in the next 50 years (maybe way less) photovoltaics will be the cheapest form of energy and used the most. Already, if you are not on the energy grid, it's cheaper to use photovoltaics than it is to extend the grid to your home.
I believe you are thinking of Biodisel. Yes, biodisel is solar power. So is coal and oil since they originally derived their energy from the Sun (just over a longer time frame). I should have refered to this as photovoltaics to be precise. The advantage of photovoltaics over biodisel is that we can improve on Biology by using technology.
are interesting, the real solution as I've pointed out in the past is cost effective Solar power. Solar power has been coming down in price exponentially for years and the latest breakthroughs in nanotech promise to make it cost effective when compared to even Oil and Coal. This company is one of the many companies that are working on this type of technology. And no, I do not have a financial interest in this company.
Sure, I'm not saying have no client. I'm just saying thinner client. Like a $399 laptop will probably do the trick. Most of my delays are due to network, like when posting on Slashdot.;)
Maybe it's just me, but a dual core notebook seems a little wierd. As internet connections speed up we do more and more on the server, the notbook (phone, trio, etc) becomes more of a slow single core type system IMO. Dual core notebooks will use a lot of batery too. I'd rather have a thinner client than that.
In an apparent reply to the low turnout for their fourth quarter fundraiser, Wikipedia
It looks like they've made $230,000 in 18 days according to the link. Given that last year, they spent $750,000, I don't think this is a bad fund raiser. They should just keep the thing at the top of the pages that says the amount raised. I donated when I saw that. If that's up year round, they should get well into the millions.
Instead of C#, I would reccomend learning C/C++ on Linux since you said you were a Linux fan. The main point of C# is to lock you into proprietary extras that Microsoft adds into the mix. I'd reccomend not getting hooked on any of those. Instead stick with free opensource libraries. This will not only make it so that you can avoid paying for high end server software, but you will probably get better quality software and more supported software as well.
This has been my experience as well. In fact, many large companies have raised there wages due to huge amounts of turn-over in India. The latest rate that I've seen is about $40,000 USD per year for a Java programmer. This is a fully loaded cost including management, hardware, etc. At this rate, it is actually cheaper to hire a contractor which we can get at about $60 - $80 per hour and we don't need to keep them on the payroll. The quality of American programmers and system admins is MUCH higher as well. I think we're really hitting an inflection point here. On top of the competitive nature here, outsourcing oversees is increadibly time consuming. If we weren't worried about outsourcing all the time, we could really focus on issues that are important like improving product quality. As it is, we mostly have to focus on managing people in complete opposite timezones and getting at least somewhat near the quality we had expected in the past.
Slashdot Mirror
Basically what they say is they want to give us a printout from the (electronic) file. They don't want to give us the file itself. It doesn't enable us to get to the bottom of what we need to know
It seems to me that election software is pretty simple. It's basically a list of candidates and the number of votes each one got. Or you could have a log file of the candidate that people voted for. How on earth can you make a proprietary format out of this? It's just a simple list! I don't get it.
nah, don't worry, in the corporate world, no one uses logic.
It's easy to say this, but how do we judge what's illegal and what's not? For instance if you install certain file-sharing software, you get adware. I think that the developer has the right to do this as long as they disclose what they're doing. I'd like to see labeling on this instead of making it illegal. Make a clear label saying this software what some might consider intrusive advertising included. I can't see anyone installing with that kind of label. Then, if they don't put the label, I wholehartedly agree with fines, etc.
In other words, your ideas are not intriguing to us and we do not wish to subscribe to your RSS feed.
I never asked you to subscribe to my RSS feed. In fact, my blog is really more of an experiment than an effort to promote anything. That's why I have no ads. Since some people moderated my post up, I can tell you that you do not speak for everyone as you've implied and that some people believe my posting was insightful and interesting. If you don't agree, good for you. I don't care. All I can do is react to what I see. Most traditional media outlets seem to slant against blogs. The only conclusion I can make based on that observation is that they feel threatened by blogs. Maybe you disagree with my analysis, which is fine, but I'm just making a point that I believe, nothing more, nothing less.
Well, yes TCO is important especially in a business setting. But, I was mainly talking about consumer products. Take Mozilla. People generally like Mozilla because it works well (probably even better than similar products) and is free. If it was not free, I seriously doubt a whole lot of people would use it, even if it was better than similar products. My point it that this is not a bad thing. People like free stuff. With regards to for profit entities, their strategy is different from the strategy of the Mozilla foundation or other non-profit opensource organizations that this article was discussing. For a for profit company, it makes sense to opensource parts of the package because you can make money on other items (e.g. hardware and support). So, if you opensource the software, you can gain the benefit of having an opensource community helping develop and do bug fixes while selling other products to go along with the free open source product. Companies like Redhat and Mysql have been successful using this model, but none of this changes my main point that people like free stuff. I would have never guessed that that would be such a controversial statement, but apparently it is.
Well, the reality is that this would not be the first fusion reation that ever occured. We are very good at making them occur in Nuclear bombs. The difference here is that we would want to control the reaction and thus produce usable energy so worrying about this is pointless since we are already very good at making "infinite energy". Also, it's not really infinite energy. There is enough deuterium in the Ocean to generate about 1 million times the annual energy usage. However, we only have about 1000 year supply of lithium. We could do a D-D reaction though that would be a little more difficult to contain, but we have 1000 years of energy before we have to figure that out.
Yeah right, the Europeans like free stuff too. People like free stuff. These articles make it sound like there's something bad about liking free stuff. It's reality. Get used to it and get over it.
Yep, it's a bunch of BS. The major newspapers see blogs as a threat because people read blogs. This is just an attack piece on blogs to say that the blogosphere is just filled with a bunch of idiots. What they don't know is that they do this to their own peril. Media outlets that allow participation will thrive and those that do not will go out of business. This is really inevitable.
Why is it sad? People like free stuff. It's not like big corporations are the only ones that like free stuff either. You listed some good benefits, but most non-programmers cannot do the things you listed. Why would you expect these to top the list of a survey that I assume was filled out by mostly non-programmers?
what motivates organizations to adopt open source software? According to Optaros, cost savings is one of the most significant factors.
You mean people like open source software because it's free? Duh! I could have told them that without the survey.
If you play mp3's, that should be good enough. The rest is just a bunch of confusion.
Well, the problem arises when you have more than one copy of a brain. Does each copy have all the rights of the original? What if one copy breaks a law? Is that copy "in jail" or do all copies need to be punished? What happens if you make a copy of a mind and change a few neurons around and it very closely resembles a human mind, does this mind still get all the rights of a human? What if we design a "mind" that is far superior to human minds? Should this "mind" not get human rights too? I think you've over simplified it a bit and using this principle we'll run into some problems.
Yes, this post is very true. One thing to keep in mind, when you give a proposal to a publishing company for a book like you described, they will undoubtably come back to you with something like: You don't want to write a book that attempts to solve world hunger. The point being, focus on more of a niche. For instance, the best selling book last year was XP For Dummies. Since you're on Slashdot, that's probably not your idea of "what most people need to know", but keep in mind this is something people do want information on. I'm not saying to write about XP persay, but you need to have at least some sort of niche. Maybe it's not tied to the OS, but tied to business computing, or blogging, or a browser, but I think it will be hard to write a book like, "Everything you need to know about computing". Unless you're attempting humor with your title.
Sure we can do it more efficiently. That's like saying that since Oil is currently the cheapest form of energy, we cannot possibly beat it because it's been around for billions of years or whatever. We're getting close with photovoltaics and in the next 50 years (maybe way less) photovoltaics will be the cheapest form of energy and used the most. Already, if you are not on the energy grid, it's cheaper to use photovoltaics than it is to extend the grid to your home.
I believe you are thinking of Biodisel. Yes, biodisel is solar power. So is coal and oil since they originally derived their energy from the Sun (just over a longer time frame). I should have refered to this as photovoltaics to be precise. The advantage of photovoltaics over biodisel is that we can improve on Biology by using technology.
are interesting, the real solution as I've pointed out in the past is cost effective Solar power. Solar power has been coming down in price exponentially for years and the latest breakthroughs in nanotech promise to make it cost effective when compared to even Oil and Coal. This company is one of the many companies that are working on this type of technology. And no, I do not have a financial interest in this company.
http://www.bittorent.com/
Well, I'm a web teir developer. I'm not going to claim to be top tier :). But, I have a laptop that runs windows that I use to telnet into a Linux box.
Sure, I'm not saying have no client. I'm just saying thinner client. Like a $399 laptop will probably do the trick. Most of my delays are due to network, like when posting on Slashdot. ;)
Maybe it's just me, but a dual core notebook seems a little wierd. As internet connections speed up we do more and more on the server, the notbook (phone, trio, etc) becomes more of a slow single core type system IMO. Dual core notebooks will use a lot of batery too. I'd rather have a thinner client than that.
What do you mean? They haven't screwed up email. They bought Hotmail more than 5 years ago and haven't changed it a bit. ;)
In an apparent reply to the low turnout for their fourth quarter fundraiser, Wikipedia
It looks like they've made $230,000 in 18 days according to the link. Given that last year, they spent $750,000, I don't think this is a bad fund raiser. They should just keep the thing at the top of the pages that says the amount raised. I donated when I saw that. If that's up year round, they should get well into the millions.
Instead of C#, I would reccomend learning C/C++ on Linux since you said you were a Linux fan. The main point of C# is to lock you into proprietary extras that Microsoft adds into the mix. I'd reccomend not getting hooked on any of those. Instead stick with free opensource libraries. This will not only make it so that you can avoid paying for high end server software, but you will probably get better quality software and more supported software as well.
I really hope they do this. Then Google will put them out of business.
This has been my experience as well. In fact, many large companies have raised there wages due to huge amounts of turn-over in India. The latest rate that I've seen is about $40,000 USD per year for a Java programmer. This is a fully loaded cost including management, hardware, etc. At this rate, it is actually cheaper to hire a contractor which we can get at about $60 - $80 per hour and we don't need to keep them on the payroll. The quality of American programmers and system admins is MUCH higher as well. I think we're really hitting an inflection point here. On top of the competitive nature here, outsourcing oversees is increadibly time consuming. If we weren't worried about outsourcing all the time, we could really focus on issues that are important like improving product quality. As it is, we mostly have to focus on managing people in complete opposite timezones and getting at least somewhat near the quality we had expected in the past.