It's just so darn easy to do though. Microsoft practically writes the jokes themselves.
And on a more serious note a major application provider deciding that an MS Solution is too bloated and impractical to use is hardly small. As a developer and someone who has to carefully help choose software and the foundation for solutions for my company I'm interested in how major players like Verizon fare with MS software.
He said (paraphrased) "a quarter of our users are broken". Not "will be".
The part you forgot to pick up on was, we're working on it, patches welcome... IMHO not being able to support 1/4 of your users in a beta testing situation isn't that bad. The point being that if 75% of your users have the potential to give you feedback then you are going to get a lot of feedback.
And one last point, if IE7 finally gets with the program and complies with standards then maybe it's a good idea to take a wait and see approach toward supporting IE6.
Personally I for one welcome our new Firefox pushing overlords!:-)
As someone who uses Exchange I can say that setting spam filtering up is easy. You can use RBLs or not. You can set thresholds that let a lot in or block a lot with many false positives. If you're worried about losing business mail then you can configure it to be safe about that and never outright refuse or delete mail.
But I don't like it because once you check the boxes, set the sliders and press OK, that's it. Unless you then get into scripting or third party products or any other solutions I can't think of you don't get to customize it any further. In other words, at that point, if you want more, it's just like Unix. I've never worked with any but can't you buy Sendmail or OpenExchange and get a lot of the point and click stuff for free too? And for a lot less then the dragon's horde a small business spends on MS Exchange?
One last thing to mention, we feel the same way as you about losing a customer's mail. So our users don't get anywhere near the spam they used to but the IT Admin that works for me spends anywhere from an hour to two a day checking the spam filter to see what gets tagged. Whitelisting? So far we found a few half ass solutions in forums that for various reasons don't do exactly what we need.
All in all, like most Window's based solutions in my experience, Exchange is easy to set up, hard to customize. We're working on a OpenBSD solution as a front end in our spare time. Hopefully we can get it to get the worst of the spam and then set Exchange to be a lot more lax when it gets in... Anything that keeps us from checking the spam filter all day.
If you meant that a free software project/company gets more value on the dollar spent, then you are right.
That is pretty much what I was driving at, but granted I didn't really articulate it very well. Being the self admitted Free Software Fanboy that I am most of my posts for this article were "is it let's all bash RMS day or what?" type of replies.
If I came across as argumentative then my apologies. Your absolutely right that developing any *quality* software takes a lot of resources, but resources don't necessarily equal dollars. I encourage the company I work for now to buy Free Software, specifically Debian for our servers. It's tough because it's not like paying for Debian buys you any support like with other distros. But the price is small so I convince them to get a copy of the CD's for day to day use (and copying for those of us that want to take home a copy) and DVD's to just keep safe in case they are needed later down the road. My main selling point is that if we want good quality software like this to continue to be available and for such a low price then we should invest in it. Hopefully the small amount we spend each year helps a little and buys some machines, bandwidth, whatever... I am pretty sure though that the majority of money that pours into Debian doesn't get spent on paying programmers but is spent on the infrastructure they've created to support developers and distribute software.
The main point I was trying to make with this article in general is that I don't believe that RMS lives in a fantasy world where software is created out of thin air by automatons that don't need to eat. His remarks about whether or not programmers should be paid have been twisted all over the place and my replies were basically knee jerk reactions to that.
How do you get "0 investment" out of not spending a "ton of money"?
I never said it was created out of thin air. I said it didn't have to take the huge investment that a lot of corporations spend on their development models.
So pay your own bills until you track down two blokes as I don't qualify as one in the first place.
Could you give us a bit more history on how RMS made his money then? These VC backed businesses he ran into the ground? One concrete example? I was under the impression that RMS left a great position at MIT to go it alone and live up to his ideals by scratching an existence out of selling tapes of GNU software. Just because he became wildly popular doing it and now gets to make money doing what he loves, namely educating people on the benefits of Free Software and Freedom in general, doesn't make him an "asshole".
At the risk of sounding like a jerk myself; when I compare your personal attack against him to the RMS interview I just read you sound like the bigger "pretentious asshole".
That's just not true. He didn't say programmers shouldn't be paid. He said that some programmers don't do it for money but volunteer out of altruism or because they love programming and well crafted software.
I think he is sick of hearing the proprietary software shops of the world tell him, and any tech trade rag that will listen, that it's impoosible to create software unless you spend a ton of money. The GNU project, Linus's kernel, the BSD's and numerous other examples have proven that to be completely false.
Agreed. It's not a matter of RMS disliking capitalism or making money on Free Software. If that was the case the GNU project would not have gone out of it's way to state in their documents that it is perfectly OK, actually encouraged, to sell Free Software. IIRC RMS made his initial living after leaving MIT by selling tapes of GNU software for a nominal fee.
It's just not what's important to him at the moment. My guess is that had the interviewer pressed the issue he would have expounded on his philosophy further. It's not that making money is bad, it's that volunteering is good and GNU proves that you don't *have* to make money to create great software.
I understand what you mean in general and I've seen some blatant hero-worship in the Free Software Community over the years. But how did you get any of that out of either the TFS or TFA? I felt that that was a very down to earth chat with RMS and, although I didn't really learn anything new, felt refreshed after reading it.
I could see maybe the initial writer who introduced the article being slightly guilty of what you speak of but it seems to me you are taking the worst examples of people's, for lack of a better word, zealotry over the years and tying it into today's article and subsequent posting on/.
At the end of the day/. is basically a technology site with a nod toward Linux and Free Software in general so I guess it's always going to bring out the extremists on both sides of the argument for and against Free Software but I hardly think this article showed any signs of God worship.
Re:How about some more *durable* flash drives?
on
16GB Flash USB Dongle
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Seems like a case of "they don't make them like they used to" to me. The smaller ones you mention, I'm guessing, are early generation models where the company put some thought into the design.
As the price of flash goes down and competition increases the margins on selling these things get razor thin and suddenly everyone's out to reduce their cost by making cheaper, inferior housing for them and probably making sacrifices on the actual flash itself.
In this case it could be easier for me to buy a licence of program W which handles Z good enough and keep my program closed source, or non GNU
Then just do that. No one forces people to use the GPL. Unless you want to reap the benefits of other people's previous work. In that case then you have to follow the licensing terms, just as with any other license.
I'm sure there are many reasons for people to use this but my guess is that for a lot of people, human nature being what it is, they just like to pay for something, and not spend effort on it. I'm the "do-it-yourself-type" but a lot of people aren't. I'm not sure exactly how Linspire is distributed but if it's in stores, on a shelf and comes in a pretty box I think it's going to attract some people. And, again, I'm not sure where they are with this, but didn't Walmart sell off the shelf PCs a while ago preinstalled with Linspire? For a lot of people simply walking into a store and buying a computer with the software preinstalled is the only option. I would guess that a lot of folks aren't even concerned with what software, just price. And being what it is a Linspire PC is cheap.
If Linspire can get OEMs to preload it, make it available in stores and keep the prices down it's an attractive option to a lot of people. Paying for something, especially paying a low price, makes people feel good.
I remember back in the day I worked with some guys from another company on a joint project and they always bought off the shelf versions of RedHat*, keeping up with each release. We thought they were crazy at the time. Whenever a new release came out we downloaded ISO's and burned a few copies. They thought we were crazy. They liked the shiny disks, the book that came with it and the fact that they didn't spend a minute on burning or verifying ISO images. But that's what great about Free software, the choices. Me, I like Debian these days and recommend Ubuntu to friends, family and coworkers that ask about Linux. Ubuntu shipping free CDs certainly helps in that regard!
Internet is just telephone communications. No different.
Well you could also compare the internet to a stack of newspapers, novels and music that I bring to work everyday to keep me busy during my "boring" job.
Shooting a quick email/IM to someone is like making a personal call for a good reason. Sitting around and reading/. all day is more like reading a book all day except when a manager might be looking.
As a sysadmin I don't block, I just log. And logs are deleted every other day. The only reason we have to look at these logs is when a manager says "they aren't getting their work done! what the heck do they do all day?".
And yes I realize I am screwing off right now while I write this but I also spend a lot of my free time following up on work I didn't finish because I decided to surf the web for a while at work. Plus I handle the logs.:-)
Or it would be amusing if I didn't have to administer Windows systems.:P
And that is exactly why I like to see it on the front page of/.
Of course I don't rely on/. alone for security news but as an Admin supporting MS products news like this does matter to me. The more sources of info I can get on problems with software the better. And being the/. junkie I am it is likely I may just get info on new flaws here first!:-)
Flamebait? He was obviously joking! For that matter, Insightful?:-)
Come on people, I feel the same way. I'm a sci-fi/computer geek. I've spent inordinate amounts of time indoors. I'm also a father now so I don't nearly as much as my teens/twenties but haven't we all had one period in our life where we looked up, bleary eyed , from the screen (computer or TV) and said to ourselves: Maybe I should go outside... nah, one more game (or show)!
Anywho, I thought it was funny.:-)
Back on topic, I will miss SG-1. I've been a fan since the second or third season and DVR as many of the reruns as I can. Heck, having watched the series for years before I finally saw it, I even liked the movie. And, as has been pointed out in other posts, the 200th episode was gold. A perfect blend of sci-fi and humor.
I don't enjoy Atlantis as much but it's OK and I'll take the small consolation I get from knowing that it will continue for a while.
... but if you would release some of the songs as singles for play on the radio, why not make them available as downloads?
Concerning most music I totally see your point and I beleive most record comapnies and artists "holding out" are probably just looking to make more money...
But just one exampe I can think of; Frank Zappa's Joe's Garage. There are one or two songs on there that stand alone and make for an entertaining listen by themselves or at least give you a teaser of what to expect. But for the most part, especially if you've never heard it before, the album really should be listened to as a whole. When I was younger I made a few mixed tapes with Zappa tunes on them. Later in life I'd listen and when a song I expected to follow wasn't there I'd shake my head and think, what the heck was I doing recording this without that. I started to appreciate the need to buy whole albums to really "get" the artist and what they put into their music.
Then again that type of production doesn't seem to be the trend anymore. Most artists write tunes to sell as singles and get as much airplay as possible. But I don't think they're the one's holding out on iTunes.
It wasn't meant to be a scientific study of whose copyrighting what as who and releasing under what license these days. As your highly opinionated, "I'm a developer but I'm not going to say what I develop" post was short on details and long on subjective bullshit, mine was meant to express the opinion of someone who disagrees with you. At least I tried to show an example* instead of just spouting off the latest "commie, hippy, pinkos are bad for business" rant.
I do hope, for your sake, that your future development team mates do not find your posting. It clearly highlights your complete lack of understanding when it comes to Free Software.
So *who* do you work for, SCO or Microsoft?
*granted it was a flawed analysis
Posted by someone who doesn't need to hide behind AC to sell his astroturfing opinions.
Slashdot Mirror
It's just so darn easy to do though. Microsoft practically writes the jokes themselves.
And on a more serious note a major application provider deciding that an MS Solution is too
bloated and impractical to use is hardly small. As a developer and someone who has to carefully
help choose software and the foundation for solutions for my company I'm interested in how major
players like Verizon fare with MS software.
"designed to combat viewers using digital recorders to avoid commercials."
It's on biatch!
He said (paraphrased) "a quarter of our users are broken". Not "will be".
:-)
The part you forgot to pick up on was, we're working on it, patches welcome... IMHO not being able to support 1/4 of your users in
a beta testing situation isn't that bad. The point being that if 75% of your users have the potential to give you feedback then you
are going to get a lot of feedback.
And one last point, if IE7 finally gets with the program and complies with standards then maybe it's a good idea to take a wait and
see approach toward supporting IE6.
Personally I for one welcome our new Firefox pushing overlords!
As someone who uses Exchange I can say that setting spam filtering up is easy. You can use RBLs or not. You can set thresholds that let a lot in or block a lot with many false positives. If you're worried about losing business mail then you can configure it to be safe about that and never outright refuse or delete mail.
But I don't like it because once you check the boxes, set the sliders and press OK, that's it. Unless you then get into scripting or third party products or any other solutions I can't think of you don't get to customize it any further. In other words, at that point, if you want more, it's just like Unix. I've never worked with any but can't you buy Sendmail or OpenExchange and get a lot of the point and click stuff for free too? And for a lot less then the dragon's horde a small business spends on MS Exchange?
One last thing to mention, we feel the same way as you about losing a customer's mail. So our users don't get anywhere near the spam they used to but the IT Admin that works for me spends anywhere from an hour to two a day checking the spam filter to see what gets tagged. Whitelisting? So far we found a few half ass solutions in forums that for various reasons don't do exactly what we need.
All in all, like most Window's based solutions in my experience, Exchange is easy to set up, hard to customize. We're working on a OpenBSD solution as a front end in our spare time. Hopefully we can get it to get the worst of the spam and then set Exchange to be a lot more lax when it gets in... Anything that keeps us from checking the spam filter all day.
If you meant that a free software project/company gets more value on the dollar spent, then you are right.
That is pretty much what I was driving at, but granted I didn't really articulate it very well. Being the self admitted Free Software Fanboy that I am most of my posts for this article were "is it let's all bash RMS day or what?" type of replies.
If I came across as argumentative then my apologies. Your absolutely right that developing any *quality* software takes a lot of resources, but resources don't necessarily equal dollars. I encourage the company I work for now to buy Free Software, specifically Debian for our servers. It's tough because it's not like paying for Debian buys you any support like with other distros. But the price is small so I convince them to get a copy of the CD's for day to day use (and copying for those of us that want to take home a copy) and DVD's to just keep safe in case they are needed later down the road. My main selling point is that if we want good quality software like this to continue to be available and for such a low price then we should invest in it. Hopefully the small amount we spend each year helps a little and buys some machines, bandwidth, whatever... I am pretty sure though that the majority of money that pours into Debian doesn't get spent on paying programmers but is spent on the infrastructure they've created to support developers and distribute software.
The main point I was trying to make with this article in general is that I don't believe that RMS lives in a fantasy world where software is created out of thin air by automatons that don't need to eat. His remarks about whether or not programmers should be paid have been twisted all over the place and my replies were basically knee jerk reactions to that.
How do you get "0 investment" out of not spending a "ton of money"?
I never said it was created out of thin air. I said it didn't have to take the huge investment that a lot of corporations spend on their development models.
So pay your own bills until you track down two blokes as I don't qualify as one in the first place.
Could you give us a bit more history on how RMS made his money then? These VC backed businesses he ran into the ground? One concrete example? I was under the impression that RMS left a great position at MIT to go it alone and live up to his ideals by scratching an existence out of selling tapes of GNU software. Just because he became wildly popular doing it and now gets to make money doing what he loves, namely educating people on the benefits of Free Software and Freedom in general, doesn't make him an "asshole".
At the risk of sounding like a jerk myself; when I compare your personal attack against him to the RMS interview I just read you sound like the bigger "pretentious asshole".
That's just not true. He didn't say programmers shouldn't be paid. He said that some programmers don't do it for money but volunteer out of altruism or because they love programming and well crafted software.
I think he is sick of hearing the proprietary software shops of the world tell him, and any tech trade rag that will listen, that it's impoosible to create software unless you spend a ton of money. The GNU project, Linus's kernel, the BSD's and numerous other examples have proven that to be completely false.
Agreed. It's not a matter of RMS disliking capitalism or making money on Free Software. If that was the case the GNU project would not have gone out of it's way to state in their documents that it is perfectly OK, actually encouraged, to sell Free Software. IIRC RMS made his initial living after leaving MIT by selling tapes of GNU software for a nominal fee.
It's just not what's important to him at the moment. My guess is that had the interviewer pressed the issue he would have expounded on his philosophy further. It's not that making money is bad, it's that volunteering is good and GNU proves that you don't *have* to make money to create great software.
I understand what you mean in general and I've seen some blatant hero-worship in the Free Software Community over the years.
/.
/. is basically a technology site with a nod toward Linux and Free Software in general so I guess it's always going to bring out the extremists on both sides of the argument for and against Free Software but I hardly think this article showed any signs of God worship.
But how did you get any of that out of either the TFS or TFA? I felt that that was a very down to earth chat with RMS and, although I didn't really learn anything new, felt refreshed after reading it.
I could see maybe the initial writer who introduced the article being slightly guilty of what you speak of but it seems to me you are taking the worst examples of people's, for lack of a better word, zealotry over the years and tying it into today's article and subsequent posting on
At the end of the day
Seems like a case of "they don't make them like they used to" to me. The smaller ones you mention, I'm guessing, are early generation models where the company put some thought into the design.
As the price of flash goes down and competition increases the margins on selling these things get razor thin and suddenly everyone's out to reduce their cost by making cheaper, inferior housing for them and probably making sacrifices on the actual flash itself.
In this case it could be easier for me to buy a licence of program W which handles Z good enough and keep my program closed source, or non GNU
Then just do that. No one forces people to use the GPL. Unless you want to reap the benefits of other people's previous work. In that case then you have to follow the licensing terms, just as with any other license.
I'm sure there are many reasons for people to use this but my guess is that for a lot of people, human nature being what it is, they just like to pay for something, and not spend effort on it. I'm the "do-it-yourself-type" but a lot of people aren't. I'm not sure exactly how Linspire is distributed but if it's in stores, on a shelf and comes in a pretty box I think it's going to attract some people. And, again, I'm not sure where they are with this, but didn't Walmart sell off the shelf PCs a while ago preinstalled with Linspire? For a lot of people simply walking into a store and buying a computer with the software preinstalled is the only option. I would guess that a lot of folks aren't even concerned with what software, just price. And being what it is a Linspire PC is cheap.
If Linspire can get OEMs to preload it, make it available in stores and keep the prices down it's an attractive option to a lot of people. Paying for something, especially paying a low price, makes people feel good.
I remember back in the day I worked with some guys from another company on a joint project and they always bought off the shelf versions of RedHat*, keeping up with each release. We thought they were crazy at the time. Whenever a new release came out we downloaded ISO's and burned a few copies. They thought we were crazy. They liked the shiny disks, the book that came with it and the fact that they didn't spend a minute on burning or verifying ISO images. But that's what great about Free software, the choices. Me, I like Debian these days and recommend Ubuntu to friends, family and coworkers that ask about Linux. Ubuntu shipping free CDs certainly helps in that regard!
*RedHat - Pre RHEL
... subsequent commentary ...
No need to thank me.
gave a crap what this guy has to say.
Forget ESR, forget joe user if he doesn't care for Linux.
Long live Free software, long live RMS.
You know I really don't want to know what you're doing with one hand while on the internet. :-)
I think Snakes on a Plane won't win an Oscar.
So how long unitl Anonymous Cowards lose bandwidth on /.?
For that matter does this mean my karma might buy me more bandwidth?
Internet is just telephone communications. No different.
/. all day is more like reading a book all day except when a manager might be looking.
:-)
Well you could also compare the internet to a stack of newspapers, novels and music that I bring to work everyday to keep me busy during my "boring" job.
Shooting a quick email/IM to someone is like making a personal call for a good reason. Sitting around and reading
As a sysadmin I don't block, I just log. And logs are deleted every other day. The only reason we have to look at these logs is when a manager says "they aren't getting their work done! what the heck do they do all day?".
And yes I realize I am screwing off right now while I write this but I also spend a lot of my free time following up on work I didn't finish because I decided to surf the web for a while at work. Plus I handle the logs.
did watching the hamster dance make you want to buy a hamster?
Um, yeah, I fell for this one... His name is Jerry.
Or it would be amusing if I didn't have to administer Windows systems. :P
/.
/. alone for security news but as an Admin supporting MS products news like this does matter to me. The more sources of info I can get on problems with software the better. And being the /. junkie I am it is likely I may just get info on new flaws here first! :-)
And that is exactly why I like to see it on the front page of
Of course I don't rely on
Flamebait? He was obviously joking! For that matter, Insightful? :-)
:-)
Come on people, I feel the same way. I'm a sci-fi/computer geek. I've spent inordinate amounts of time indoors.
I'm also a father now so I don't nearly as much as my teens/twenties but haven't we all had one period in our life
where we looked up, bleary eyed , from the screen (computer or TV) and said to ourselves: Maybe I should go outside...
nah, one more game (or show)!
Anywho, I thought it was funny.
Back on topic, I will miss SG-1. I've been a fan since the second or third season and DVR as many of the reruns as I
can. Heck, having watched the series for years before I finally saw it, I even liked the movie. And, as has been pointed
out in other posts, the 200th episode was gold. A perfect blend of sci-fi and humor.
I don't enjoy Atlantis as much but it's OK and I'll take the small consolation I get from knowing that it will continue
for a while.
Long live Richard Dean Anderson!
... but if you would release some of the songs as singles for play on the radio, why not make them available as downloads?
Concerning most music I totally see your point and I beleive most record comapnies and artists "holding out" are probably just looking to make more money...
But just one exampe I can think of; Frank Zappa's Joe's Garage. There are one or two songs on there that stand alone and make for an entertaining listen by themselves or at least give you a teaser of what to expect. But for the most part, especially if you've never heard it before, the album really should be listened to as a whole. When I was younger I made a few mixed tapes with Zappa tunes on them. Later in life I'd listen and when a song I expected to follow wasn't there I'd shake my head and think, what the heck was I doing recording this without that. I started to appreciate the need to buy whole albums to really "get" the artist and what they put into their music.
Then again that type of production doesn't seem to be the trend anymore. Most artists write tunes to sell as singles and get as much airplay as possible. But I don't think they're the one's holding out on iTunes.
Agreed. The GP is obviously just a member of the anti-goldfish, dolphin domination conspiracy that's been plaguing our socie%#*@&$( NO CARRIER
I have karma to burn... You're an asshole.
It wasn't meant to be a scientific study of whose copyrighting what as who and releasing under what license these days. As your highly opinionated, "I'm a developer but I'm not going to say what I develop" post was short on details and long on subjective bullshit, mine was meant to express the opinion of someone who disagrees with you. At least I tried to show an example* instead of just spouting off the latest "commie, hippy, pinkos are bad for business" rant.
I do hope, for your sake, that your future development team mates do not find your posting. It clearly highlights your complete lack of understanding when it comes to Free Software.
So *who* do you work for, SCO or Microsoft?
*granted it was a flawed analysis
Posted by someone who doesn't need to hide behind AC to sell his astroturfing opinions.