Realistically, it's more like 1 minute of begging, then 1 minute to commit all my code changes so I don't lose them, and put my computer to sleep properly, then I'm ready to get down.
Can't be too careful when you step away from the computer for a few minutes.
And you might be surprised at how horny proper version control makes a lady. All she cares about is moaning "Oh god, just finish, please."
FTFY. You could say the same thing about Livejournal or Friendster...and yet, they're nearly dead now as well. Some new hotness will pop up to kill Facebook, too.
Actually, there *was* a legitimate contender to Myspace's supremacy: Facebook. And look how that went for the two of them.
Perhaps you'd like to, you know, *read* the comment I make before you assume it's baseless praise? You know, the qualifiers like:
"There simply isn't a legitimate contender... at this point."
"Something MAY come along to displace them someday."
"New features would have to be incredibly compelling, and there just isn't anything that compelling about any of its competitors at this point, or even on the horizon."
As I asked RapMasterT: Please name a company or service that exists today - of any size - which you feel is a *legitimate* threat to Facebook's dominance?
If you can't name one, then everything I wrote stands, in spite your clever attempt to "fix" it for me. Sarcasm and "people said that about Myspace" don't make your point more valid, it just makes you sound like somebody trying to be clever, and missing the point by a mile.
Okay, last try: Please quote for me where I said "Microsoft" could "change the license" on Mono?
I said they could withdraw their support for it, certainly.
I said they played a huge part in creating, releasing, and supporting it - and they have, if they wrote a large part of the standards (relevant ECMA standards) and products (.NET) it attempts to implement, they contributed code, and they published covenants not to sue, as well as entering into agreements with Novell;
I never said, or even implied, that Microsoft "owns" the code, or the license. In fact what I asked was how Microsoft could ever "kill" the project given that it was open-sourced under permissive GPL, MIT, and LGPL licenses. They can't retroactively change the license on code that's already been released that way, they can only change the license on *new versions* of that code.
So what you suggest simply underscores my question, which was: how would Microsoft kill an open-sourced product like all the chicken littles around here are claiming they will as soon as they get around to it?
The patent threat seems remarkably flimsy, given the probability of various estoppel & laches counter-claims. If Microsoft can't retroactively change the license, and lets Mono go on 'infringing' on its patents for years, and then suddenly decides "ZOMG THEY'RE INFRINGING SUE SUE SUE," Microsoft would then need to show WHY they took so long to sue (provided the Mono project & Novell had a lawyer who has spent more than 20 minutes in law school), and it would have to be a pretty solid reason to avoid a dismissal, since Microsoft has, one more time, encouraged, supported, and even contributed code to this project that it is now claiming "infringed" on its patents and which it is now suddenly seeking damages from.
Please name the services you foresee overtaking Facebook, rather than simply being bought out / incorporated into Facebook's platform?
Foursquare/Gowalla - with their location-based / mobile services, have been neatly sidestepped by Facebook Places;
Myspace? Well past its prime.
Orkut? Never been a serious contender outside of a few countries (Brazil, India, mostly I believe - and even there, I'd say that rumors of Facebook's demise are greatly exaggerated).
Diaspora, or Appleseed? It'll be the "Year of..." those services one year after we finally see the Year of the Linux Desktop (which as we all know, will take place 7-10 years after the release of Duke Nukem Forever).
There simply isn't a legitimate contender to Facebook's supremacy at this point. Something MAY come along to displace them someday, but your prediction that they'll be supplanted by the "next hot social thing of the moment" is pretty hard to swallow in any timeframe approximating "soon". As Facebook signs up more people (500+ million so far?), it'll be even harder to convince people to move away from "the place I've already got an account" to something new. The new features would have to be incredibly compelling, and there just isn't anything that compelling about any of its competitors at this point, or even on the horizon. You can only "connect to your friends" so many ways over the web.
even if FB added e-commerce features, they'd want a cut of the profits and it would still probably be cheaper, easier and allow more control for companies to run their own sites.
More control? Yes. easier, cheaper? Maybe not. If you don't have the sales volume to justify spending a whole lot of money building an ordering system, a service like paypal (or a similar service through facebook) could very well be popular with small/home business types. Lets you focus on your product, while the people with the big servers handle all the payment stuff for a (reasonable) fee.
But I'm sure those same legislatures will all be reading the karma-whoring comments on slashdot pointing out that they've overlooked what the authors have told them already...
I like to minimize the time spent doing awful things like sex, so I can spend more quality time on things like open source projects on github and submitting kernel patches.
You're free to do what you want with your time, just don't ask me to join you in your walled garden of sex and wasted time.
Clearly you thought Mono was released by Microsoft under open source licenses.
No, clearly, I thought "IT" (being Mono) was released under LGPL, GPL, and MIT licenses. Which, surprise surprise, it *is*. I never said "MICROSOFT" released it under those licenses.
The DLR is a late addition and only part of Mono.
So then, I was correct? The DLR, written by Microsoft, *is* in fact a part of Mono? Or is it not?
Your rambling is incoherent. You are trying to attack points I've never made, and I also never said that "using Mono was a good idea." I simply don't see how anybody could open themselves up to legal action by using it.
You could certainly face business and financial challenges if you invest heavily in using Mono and Microsoft decides to withdraw its support from the project and kill future development of Mono, but I fail to see how anybody could open themselves up to a patent lawsuit over use of Mono as it exists today. Perhaps some future, forked-after-MSFT-withdraws-support version could be an issue, but right now, the 'it's a trap' brigade is doing nothing but spreading FUD.
There may be a host of reasons not to use Mono. "ZOMG MICROSORFT WILL SUE U WIT DA PATENTZ!!11" is not one of them.
Correlation and causation are the same thing right? Hint: No.
Good thing nobody has suggested that they are, then, right? I mean, you DID read the article before you trotted out this mindless slashdot meme, right? Second paragraph starts with:
The study's authors aren't suggesting that "hyper-texting" leads to sex, drinking or drugs, but say it's startling to see an apparent link between excessive messaging and that kind of risky behavior.
In other words, they're quite clear about saying that it's a *correlation,* not a *causative* relationship.
Yeah, because sex is just the worst possible thing you could ever do with your time.
I know every time I finish, I remark to my lady, "Well there's 3 minutes we'll never get back. Think of the bugs we could have fixed in open source software instead of this shameful, disgusting, awful, nasty thing we just did."
may be using texting and Facebook as alternative (or additional) coping strategies.
Or maybe the kids that are more social are also more likely to: 1) Get invited to parties where drugs & alcohol are likely to be found; 2) Meet someone who wants to see them naked;
Really, so the puppet/troll company could sue people for 'infringing' on a patent before they owned it, and where the current owner specifically allowed it and encouraged it at the time?
If MSFT sells.NET to a puppet, that puppet cannot revise history and say "We own it now, so you were infringing all along while you worked with Microsoft."
They can withdraw their support, they can sue forks of the product after they withdraw their support, they can make life difficult for users & developers (and tarnish their own image in the process), but they cannot sue you for something you did with the then-owner's blessing 5 years before they became the owner of the product.
This doesn't work around Estoppel, this changes the agreement - Microsoft would still be unable to sue for infringement during the times & under the conditions which they specifically encouraged people to perform that infringing activity. They could ONLY sue for infringement *after* they withdrew their support.
I made several statements saying that they had a hand in creating it (they created the.NET platform, published the standards) and supporting it - which they have, through covenants not to sue, and, through collaboration with the mono project on implementation of silverlight, as well as publication of numerous open source components.
My understanding was that the code from Microsoft's DLR was included in mono, perhaps that's not the case - in which case, it's still quite clear that Microsoft has still supported & contributed to the Mono project, even if they haven't directly coded it. Part of the Silverlight agreement gave the Mono project access to the full Silverlight test suite & specification to ensure full compatibility with the MSFT version, in fact.
None of what you've said has made the case for how Microsoft could suddenly just change their mind and decide to sue Mono & its users out of existence.
Yes, and it implements the ECMA standards 334 and 335, both more or less written & submitted by Microsoft, defining the C# language specification and the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) specification.
The principle of estoppel would seem to apply here however:
Microsoft has promised not to sue, and stated so publicly, in writing. The Mono developers (and users) have proceeded under the assumption that commitment was made in good faith; Even if Microsoft reverses their decision, they cannot then sue for infringement of the *patents they already agreed not to sue* over. Estoppel would kick in, protecting the devs & users.
If the terms of the licensing arrangement change (at MSFT's decision, or because the project was spun off and sold to a patent troll), that might prevent me from *continuing to develop* the software and prevent me from using new releases because those new versions would not be covered by the patent covenant, but they'd have no legal basis for claiming damages on my 'infringement' on a patent which MSFT had publicly declared they would not sue over.
Such a change to licensing terms would likely kill Mono, and it would severely disrupt my business if I had strategic plans that included relying on Mono for the foreseeable future - i'm not arguing that reliance on Mono is a good thing, but I don't see how it approaches the level of "poisoning the well" of open source that the original poster suggested.
I understand how patents *work*, I'm having trouble seeing how Microsoft could release & bless source code implementing their patent, and then turn around and sue people for using that implementation.
Especially with the covenants not to sue that they've released in at least several of these instances where they're dabbling with open source.
It seems like this "OH NOES THEY'LL SUE" attitude is more based on fear & mistrust than any legal grounds that they could win a court case on. Not that fear & mistrust are necessarily misplaced, I just don't see how they could argue in court that some company using Mono would be infringing, when it's a project *they* had a huge part in creating, releasing, and supporting.
As I just pointed out... that's exactly what they're doing by suing Android - an OS they had no hand in creating - for infringement on patents. Reading comprehension fail?
I find it difficult to see what grounds MSFT could sue a Mono user on, considering they blessed, implemented, and *released* a great deal of the source code that goes into Mono. It would be like suing your past self - "Well, one time I thought it would be cool to let other people have this stuff, so I released it to them all. But then I changed my mind, and now this court needs to take money from those people and give it to me."
It would seem that Microsoft's damages would be self-inflicted. And I'm not certain I see much legal basis for them rescinding their covenant(s) not to sue, as well. I can't imagine that "well we changed our mind" would be enough for a court to declare someone guilty of infringement, when MSFT has made a public statement that they wouldn't sue.
I've got to be honest, I'm still not seeing how that would fly in court:
Ballmer: "Here developers, developers, developers, use this Mono thing, it's awesome! You can even use our code!"
Developers Developers Developers: "Gee, Mister, Thanks! This is great, and it's even open source!"
Ballmer: "BWAHAHAHA! SUCKERS SUCKERS SUCKERS!"
Judge: "Well, Microsoft released all this code, actively supported the open source implementation of this product, and then changed their minds. I'll have to aware billions of dollars in damages for infringement to Microsoft because..."
It's that "because..." I'm having trouble filling in here. MSFT is claiming infringement on something they had no hand in creating with Android; how could they turn around and sue somebody for using something which *they helped create,* and which *they supported,* and which *they contributed source code to*? If they closed-source future revisions, somebody was bored enough to fork the GPL-released version and attempt to keep it in sync, and that forked version somehow implemented a new feature for compatibility, I could then see *some* possibility they'd go after the competing implementation, but I think if they changed the licensing on Mono back to closed, it would die from neglect soon enough anyway.
I just have trouble seeing how MSFT could successfully sue for patent infringement when they released & blessed the source code in its original implementation, at least not without a convoluted chain of events whose likelihood would seem to strain credulity.
It's released under LGPL, GPL, and MIT licenses... how would Microsoft ever "kill" it? They may decide to no longer officially support it, certainly, and they could stop contributing future changes to the open source implementation... but serious question:
Once it's been released under GPL, how exactly could they sue someone for using it, or forking it and continuing to work on a parallel implementation? That seems like it wouldn't stand up for a single moment in a court.
Slashdot Mirror
Realistically, it's more like 1 minute of begging, then 1 minute to commit all my code changes so I don't lose them, and put my computer to sleep properly, then I'm ready to get down.
Can't be too careful when you step away from the computer for a few minutes.
And you might be surprised at how horny proper version control makes a lady. All she cares about is moaning "Oh god, just finish, please."
Actually, there *was* a legitimate contender to Myspace's supremacy: Facebook. And look how that went for the two of them.
Perhaps you'd like to, you know, *read* the comment I make before you assume it's baseless praise? You know, the qualifiers like:
As I asked RapMasterT: Please name a company or service that exists today - of any size - which you feel is a *legitimate* threat to Facebook's dominance?
If you can't name one, then everything I wrote stands, in spite your clever attempt to "fix" it for me. Sarcasm and "people said that about Myspace" don't make your point more valid, it just makes you sound like somebody trying to be clever, and missing the point by a mile.
Okay, last try: Please quote for me where I said "Microsoft" could "change the license" on Mono?
I said they could withdraw their support for it, certainly.
I said they played a huge part in creating, releasing, and supporting it - and they have, if they wrote a large part of the standards (relevant ECMA standards) and products (.NET) it attempts to implement, they contributed code, and they published covenants not to sue, as well as entering into agreements with Novell;
I never said, or even implied, that Microsoft "owns" the code, or the license. In fact what I asked was how Microsoft could ever "kill" the project given that it was open-sourced under permissive GPL, MIT, and LGPL licenses. They can't retroactively change the license on code that's already been released that way, they can only change the license on *new versions* of that code.
So what you suggest simply underscores my question, which was: how would Microsoft kill an open-sourced product like all the chicken littles around here are claiming they will as soon as they get around to it?
The patent threat seems remarkably flimsy, given the probability of various estoppel & laches counter-claims. If Microsoft can't retroactively change the license, and lets Mono go on 'infringing' on its patents for years, and then suddenly decides "ZOMG THEY'RE INFRINGING SUE SUE SUE," Microsoft would then need to show WHY they took so long to sue (provided the Mono project & Novell had a lawyer who has spent more than 20 minutes in law school), and it would have to be a pretty solid reason to avoid a dismissal, since Microsoft has, one more time, encouraged, supported, and even contributed code to this project that it is now claiming "infringed" on its patents and which it is now suddenly seeking damages from.
Yes, of course, you're right. Despite never saying that, you're contriving excerpts of what I've said to mean that I said Microsoft owns it.
You are clearly the person with more time to spend on this nonsensical and pointless discussion than I am. Congratulations.
Not if you look at the description the GP posted. He's all, "Oh let's share information for the enrichment of society."
And that does NOTHING to put videos of hot college girls going wild in my browser. :(
And watch for the results of that in an adult video section near you:
"DP Debutantes, Vol. 2: Google and Facebook give Your Privacy the double-teaming it's been dying for!"
Coming soon!
Please name the services you foresee overtaking Facebook, rather than simply being bought out / incorporated into Facebook's platform?
Foursquare/Gowalla - with their location-based / mobile services, have been neatly sidestepped by Facebook Places;
Myspace? Well past its prime.
Orkut? Never been a serious contender outside of a few countries (Brazil, India, mostly I believe - and even there, I'd say that rumors of Facebook's demise are greatly exaggerated).
Diaspora, or Appleseed? It'll be the "Year of..." those services one year after we finally see the Year of the Linux Desktop (which as we all know, will take place 7-10 years after the release of Duke Nukem Forever).
There simply isn't a legitimate contender to Facebook's supremacy at this point. Something MAY come along to displace them someday, but your prediction that they'll be supplanted by the "next hot social thing of the moment" is pretty hard to swallow in any timeframe approximating "soon". As Facebook signs up more people (500+ million so far?), it'll be even harder to convince people to move away from "the place I've already got an account" to something new. The new features would have to be incredibly compelling, and there just isn't anything that compelling about any of its competitors at this point, or even on the horizon. You can only "connect to your friends" so many ways over the web.
More control? Yes. easier, cheaper? Maybe not. If you don't have the sales volume to justify spending a whole lot of money building an ordering system, a service like paypal (or a similar service through facebook) could very well be popular with small/home business types. Lets you focus on your product, while the people with the big servers handle all the payment stuff for a (reasonable) fee.
Do we have to? I'd rather just read pithy tweets and surf for porn.
But I'm sure those same legislatures will all be reading the karma-whoring comments on slashdot pointing out that they've overlooked what the authors have told them already...
I like to minimize the time spent doing awful things like sex, so I can spend more quality time on things like open source projects on github and submitting kernel patches.
You're free to do what you want with your time, just don't ask me to join you in your walled garden of sex and wasted time.
Don't make it sound like you haven't done the exact same thing, Mr. AC.
No, clearly, I thought "IT" (being Mono) was released under LGPL, GPL, and MIT licenses. Which, surprise surprise, it *is*. I never said "MICROSOFT" released it under those licenses.
So then, I was correct? The DLR, written by Microsoft, *is* in fact a part of Mono? Or is it not?
Your rambling is incoherent. You are trying to attack points I've never made, and I also never said that "using Mono was a good idea." I simply don't see how anybody could open themselves up to legal action by using it.
You could certainly face business and financial challenges if you invest heavily in using Mono and Microsoft decides to withdraw its support from the project and kill future development of Mono, but I fail to see how anybody could open themselves up to a patent lawsuit over use of Mono as it exists today. Perhaps some future, forked-after-MSFT-withdraws-support version could be an issue, but right now, the 'it's a trap' brigade is doing nothing but spreading FUD.
There may be a host of reasons not to use Mono. "ZOMG MICROSORFT WILL SUE U WIT DA PATENTZ!!11" is not one of them.
Good thing nobody has suggested that they are, then, right? I mean, you DID read the article before you trotted out this mindless slashdot meme, right? Second paragraph starts with:
In other words, they're quite clear about saying that it's a *correlation,* not a *causative* relationship.
Yeah, because sex is just the worst possible thing you could ever do with your time.
I know every time I finish, I remark to my lady, "Well there's 3 minutes we'll never get back. Think of the bugs we could have fixed in open source software instead of this shameful, disgusting, awful, nasty thing we just did."
And don't forget the awkward texts.
"So how's it going? I know I never text, but I figured I'd say hello. And um... we should totally have sex."
Or maybe the kids that are more social are also more likely to:
1) Get invited to parties where drugs & alcohol are likely to be found;
2) Meet someone who wants to see them naked;
Sometimes it really is that simple.
Really, so the puppet/troll company could sue people for 'infringing' on a patent before they owned it, and where the current owner specifically allowed it and encouraged it at the time?
If MSFT sells .NET to a puppet, that puppet cannot revise history and say "We own it now, so you were infringing all along while you worked with Microsoft."
They can withdraw their support, they can sue forks of the product after they withdraw their support, they can make life difficult for users & developers (and tarnish their own image in the process), but they cannot sue you for something you did with the then-owner's blessing 5 years before they became the owner of the product.
This doesn't work around Estoppel, this changes the agreement - Microsoft would still be unable to sue for infringement during the times & under the conditions which they specifically encouraged people to perform that infringing activity. They could ONLY sue for infringement *after* they withdrew their support.
I made several statements saying that they had a hand in creating it (they created the .NET platform, published the standards) and supporting it - which they have, through covenants not to sue, and, through collaboration with the mono project on implementation of silverlight, as well as publication of numerous open source components.
My understanding was that the code from Microsoft's DLR was included in mono, perhaps that's not the case - in which case, it's still quite clear that Microsoft has still supported & contributed to the Mono project, even if they haven't directly coded it. Part of the Silverlight agreement gave the Mono project access to the full Silverlight test suite & specification to ensure full compatibility with the MSFT version, in fact.
None of what you've said has made the case for how Microsoft could suddenly just change their mind and decide to sue Mono & its users out of existence.
Yes, and it implements the ECMA standards 334 and 335, both more or less written & submitted by Microsoft, defining the C# language specification and the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) specification.
The principle of estoppel would seem to apply here however:
Microsoft has promised not to sue, and stated so publicly, in writing. The Mono developers (and users) have proceeded under the assumption that commitment was made in good faith; Even if Microsoft reverses their decision, they cannot then sue for infringement of the *patents they already agreed not to sue* over. Estoppel would kick in, protecting the devs & users.
If the terms of the licensing arrangement change (at MSFT's decision, or because the project was spun off and sold to a patent troll), that might prevent me from *continuing to develop* the software and prevent me from using new releases because those new versions would not be covered by the patent covenant, but they'd have no legal basis for claiming damages on my 'infringement' on a patent which MSFT had publicly declared they would not sue over.
Such a change to licensing terms would likely kill Mono, and it would severely disrupt my business if I had strategic plans that included relying on Mono for the foreseeable future - i'm not arguing that reliance on Mono is a good thing, but I don't see how it approaches the level of "poisoning the well" of open source that the original poster suggested.
I understand how patents *work*, I'm having trouble seeing how Microsoft could release & bless source code implementing their patent, and then turn around and sue people for using that implementation.
Especially with the covenants not to sue that they've released in at least several of these instances where they're dabbling with open source.
It seems like this "OH NOES THEY'LL SUE" attitude is more based on fear & mistrust than any legal grounds that they could win a court case on. Not that fear & mistrust are necessarily misplaced, I just don't see how they could argue in court that some company using Mono would be infringing, when it's a project *they* had a huge part in creating, releasing, and supporting.
As I just pointed out... that's exactly what they're doing by suing Android - an OS they had no hand in creating - for infringement on patents. Reading comprehension fail?
I find it difficult to see what grounds MSFT could sue a Mono user on, considering they blessed, implemented, and *released* a great deal of the source code that goes into Mono. It would be like suing your past self - "Well, one time I thought it would be cool to let other people have this stuff, so I released it to them all. But then I changed my mind, and now this court needs to take money from those people and give it to me."
It would seem that Microsoft's damages would be self-inflicted. And I'm not certain I see much legal basis for them rescinding their covenant(s) not to sue, as well. I can't imagine that "well we changed our mind" would be enough for a court to declare someone guilty of infringement, when MSFT has made a public statement that they wouldn't sue.
I've got to be honest, I'm still not seeing how that would fly in court:
Ballmer: "Here developers, developers, developers, use this Mono thing, it's awesome! You can even use our code!"
Developers Developers Developers: "Gee, Mister, Thanks! This is great, and it's even open source!"
Ballmer: "BWAHAHAHA! SUCKERS SUCKERS SUCKERS!"
Judge: "Well, Microsoft released all this code, actively supported the open source implementation of this product, and then changed their minds. I'll have to aware billions of dollars in damages for infringement to Microsoft because..."
It's that "because..." I'm having trouble filling in here. MSFT is claiming infringement on something they had no hand in creating with Android; how could they turn around and sue somebody for using something which *they helped create,* and which *they supported,* and which *they contributed source code to*? If they closed-source future revisions, somebody was bored enough to fork the GPL-released version and attempt to keep it in sync, and that forked version somehow implemented a new feature for compatibility, I could then see *some* possibility they'd go after the competing implementation, but I think if they changed the licensing on Mono back to closed, it would die from neglect soon enough anyway.
I just have trouble seeing how MSFT could successfully sue for patent infringement when they released & blessed the source code in its original implementation, at least not without a convoluted chain of events whose likelihood would seem to strain credulity.
It's released under LGPL, GPL, and MIT licenses... how would Microsoft ever "kill" it? They may decide to no longer officially support it, certainly, and they could stop contributing future changes to the open source implementation... but serious question:
Once it's been released under GPL, how exactly could they sue someone for using it, or forking it and continuing to work on a parallel implementation? That seems like it wouldn't stand up for a single moment in a court.