>>Although I suppose someone could make an argument for it based on his work on TeX.
You certainly could....
TeX is the only decent typesetting program for the PC I know. I don't know any wordprocessors that can format math equations and paragraphs as well as TeX. Its the defacto standard for many scientists that need to publish their work. TeX does it's job with elegance and simplicity. It's designed to allow newcomers to get something out of it quickly with a shallow learning curve while allowing seasoned users to go deep into the language. This is one of the hallmarks of a good software application.
Easy, we pump another 10% of the Iraq budget into energy conservation and developing alternatives. We kill two birds with one stone, we get less reliance on unstable oil resources and we end up developing new technology which we sell to the rest of thw world.
It's amazing what we can do when we try, would it be great if we could spend just 10% of what we spend in Iraq (50 billion) on more unmanned space probes! There is so much out there to discover and so inspiring for our young people to get in to science and technology = and Maintain our technological lead in the world
"Not everything depends on being 'economically viable' to exist."
You're right, but where do we draw the line? Having once living in the UK, I can remember the bad old days in the early 80s, late 70s, when economic viability was less important that simple production. In those days the UK generated as much coal and steel as possible no matter what the cost. British steel was costing tax payers 1 million pounds per day, money that could instead have been used to fund education, health etc. I think some things such as Coal and Steel should be in the private industry and funede out of tax money. Other things such as education and basic health should I thing have some contribution from tax. Personally I do not thing that basic software utilities such as work processors, spreadsheets etc, or even operating systems, should be paid for out of tax money (other than perhaps as part of a research project). This doens't of course stop individuals or groups of individuals from building these things themselves, eg Linux and handing them out, what you do in your spare time is your business.
If you think economic viability is no important then we can always use the method used by the old Soviet Union which was to pass 5 year plans where a commitee would determine what would be produced or not in the next five years.
As for your examples, I think Music (and even art) is not a good example since if you want to make a living out of writing and playing music then yes it has to be viable, obviously one can write and play music in your spare time (as I used to) but you still have to have a day job. Every thing ultimately costs something, the old adage, there is no such thing as a free lunch is true. Even watching your fireflies or racoons does cost time and you are chosing to use your time rather than say use the time to sell a widget which will generate income. Personally I would rather watch fireflies but is does means I am not doing something else, such as earning money to buy food.
My work is partly federally funded and any code we generate is automatically open source as it should be. The work we do is basic research which industry does not like to fund, which is fair enough. However providing operating systems and basic applications such as word processing etc is not basic research (other than perhaps projects that aim to investigate new ways to do these tasks, but it has to be really novel) and is the ideal work for private industry which could be for non-profit or profit.
As for being able to start a business in a corporate aristocracy, it depends in what area. You find a niche that has not yet been populated and you base a business there which is something I have done in the past. In any case most of the businesses we deal with today in high tech did not exist 10 or 20 years ago so it is possible to change the status quo if you do it right.
No *you* don't need it, but I may, I would like the freedom to chose. In a free market you can choose what to buy, Windows, Mac or Linux. At work you may not be able to choose, but then you chose the job. At home you can choose what you want. We live in a capitalistic system (thankfully), Europe could have created a Microsoft but they didn't, so now they buy from the US. In any case I suspect Europe has a trade surplus with the US. As for tax dollars|Euros subsidising software development, that sounds like the old Sovient Union approach, next thing is, we'll ban all OSSs' other than Linux and have 5 year plans for roll outs. I would rather see tax money be spend on R&D and physical infrastructure, items industry does not generatlly fund. I can choose, and wish to choose to pay for what OS I would like from private organizations, be it closed or open code. If OSS products can only survive by welfare handouts then it's implies that OSS is not economically viable.
>What Harvard really concluded was there was a better chance of getting an endowment >and new Comp Sci building from MSFT than the open source community.
Also missed out is the Nascom and MK14, both computers helped start the personal computer revolution in the UK. Maybe we should have UK list and a separate US list. Also what happened to the Atari ST? I can't believe they missed out teh Next Computer.
I think he is basically right. The greatest terrorist threat we have today is from the muslim community and it would be utterly stupid to ignore that fact. The people they arrested today in the UK were all muslim, one was a white convert so browness isn't always a certain indicator. Muslim however, in today's troubles, is a dead giveaway. I would recommend the following, fix the middle east, ensure no ones rights are trampled on by either israel or anyone else; 2) until the troubles subside do not allow any more muslims into the US (or the UK). For those who are currently living in the US, just as they currently do in the UK, keep a watch over them, particulary the mosques.
I might be wrong about US residents US trusting their government but I am certainly not wrong about UK residents. Ever heard of the phrase, an english man's home is his castle? This reflects the mistrust we had/have for authority. I believe 40 to 43 % of the GDP is under government control which is quite a bit (less than 33% in the US?). Recall that the UK has no constitution, decisions are based on case law, the courts have tended to be the intitution that checks the power of government. I feel that UK people live in one of the freest societies in the western world (Except maybe the Netherlands). I've only lived in the US for 7 years but my impression is that people in the US do seem to trust their government a bit more which is understandable given their origins.
I should say that I was orginally from the UK but I'm now in the US. I have noticed a difference in the way each country percieves it's government which probably stems from the way they were set up. In the UK we generally do not trust the government, until recently UK residents were classed as subjects not citizens. The UK government was also carved out of a monarchy which is naturally a system of subjection. The UK police in particular are not to be trusted. In the USA however, at least in theory, the government was formed by the people and I think generally US residents tend to trust their government whatever they do.
I pay taxes, lots of them. If the goverment is doing things beyond its remit than I fully approve of civil disobedience. If the government fights back with violence then we must too. I've seen police video footage of demonstations and what the police do is completely unreasonable, in such situations it is our responsibility to protect OUR democracy and freedoms.
"The sooner our executive agents throw the book at these asshats, the better."
How right you are!!
Long live the Fatherland! Long live the Fuhrer! Let our war with Oceana (oops, I mean Iraq) be victorous!
"Destruction of property is not a peaceful act of assembly, and as a crime, is a person's duty to report to the appropriate authority so that justice can be served."
So if the government turns against the people, you're going to roll over and let them do it?? Leave this country, you don't belong here, live in Cuba or N Kroean, you'll be much happier there.
Funcky? I'm not sure what you mean? Do you mean things like 'not', 'or', 'and', 'xor' etc, I'm not sure I would class them as funcky, they're pretty obvious to me.
Academic licences are still expensive for research groups and one has to pay out on them every year (for ever essentially if you want to support the application). I had the same problem as the previous poster, had to drop QT in the end, now we're (as someone said) using the crappy (I agree that the GUI API is still a bit immature), but free and relatively usable Windows API (using mono for portability).
No you didn't but you want to slow progress down to a crawl and that I cannot agree to. Stem Cell Research is still too early, companies are unlikely to put down millions of dollars at this stage in basic research which is why we need federal money. The federal government has done this for at least 70 years, probably more, as a result all of society (including the government's tax receipts, which is what you seem to be worried about) has greatly benefited from it.
Those who wish to ban stem cell research will I am sure be the first to clamour for the benefits once they arise. I would love to see how you would respond when one of your family members is dying from a disease that will be curable in the future as a result of stem cell research, what will you do then, let them die, or swallow your pride and help them?
>If it takes the federal government to do it, more than likely it should not be done. Good >rule in politics:
Except, if that were the case we wouldn't have most of the technology we have today. Where do you think the internet came from? The role of federal tax money is to fund research that industry cannot afford to do simply because it has such a long time line. As the research matures, industry picks up the tab and through taxes, pays back many times over the original cost to the tax payer. It has been said that the Appolo program was the best investment the US ever made as it underwrote the nacent chip industry (The minuteman program helped to) which we now all benefit from, including the tax payer.
For me, I will gladly contribute to basic research, for the rest of you, you can return to your caves.
I agree, programmers are not scientists. I think this explains why most if not all FOSS is copied from other areas, FOSS rarely if ever invents something new. This is probably why Google just generates me-too software (eg the latest spreadsheet that Google released is so 'Google').
Yes, I do tell my IT guys to f*ck off, they're the lowest form of life along with politicians and lawyers. Most of them act like born again fascists. If they showed a bit more humility it wouldn't be so bad.
If you generally get a 3% increase in a budget but then 'only' get 2%, it won't cover the other costs, such as salaries that have gone up by 3%, so you're short by 1%, what do you do? You fire someone. Reduced increases in budgets makes a real difference. You've probably never had to run a budget, but presumably one day you will and then you'll understand.
Slashdot Mirror
>>Although I suppose someone could make an argument for it based on his work on TeX.
You certainly could....
TeX is the only decent typesetting program for the PC I know. I don't know any wordprocessors that
can format math equations and paragraphs as well as TeX. Its the defacto standard for many scientists that need to publish their work. TeX does it's job with elegance and simplicity. It's designed to allow newcomers to get something out of it quickly with a shallow learning curve while allowing seasoned users to go deep into the language. This is one of the hallmarks of a good software application.
Easy, we pump another 10% of the Iraq budget into energy conservation and developing alternatives. We kill two birds with one stone, we get less reliance on unstable oil resources and we end up developing new technology which we sell to the rest of thw world.
It's amazing what we can do when we try, would it be great if we could spend just 10% of what we spend in Iraq (50 billion) on more unmanned space probes! There is so much out there to discover and so inspiring for our young people to get in to science and technology = and Maintain our technological lead in the world
"Not everything depends on being 'economically viable' to exist." You're right, but where do we draw the line? Having once living in the UK, I can remember the bad old days in the early 80s, late 70s, when economic viability was less important that simple production. In those days the UK generated as much coal and steel as possible no matter what the cost. British steel was costing tax payers 1 million pounds per day, money that could instead have been used to fund education, health etc. I think some things such as Coal and Steel should be in the private industry and funede out of tax money. Other things such as education and basic health should I thing have some contribution from tax. Personally I do not thing that basic software utilities such as work processors, spreadsheets etc, or even operating systems, should be paid for out of tax money (other than perhaps as part of a research project). This doens't of course stop individuals or groups of individuals from building these things themselves, eg Linux and handing them out, what you do in your spare time is your business. If you think economic viability is no important then we can always use the method used by the old Soviet Union which was to pass 5 year plans where a commitee would determine what would be produced or not in the next five years. As for your examples, I think Music (and even art) is not a good example since if you want to make a living out of writing and playing music then yes it has to be viable, obviously one can write and play music in your spare time (as I used to) but you still have to have a day job. Every thing ultimately costs something, the old adage, there is no such thing as a free lunch is true. Even watching your fireflies or racoons does cost time and you are chosing to use your time rather than say use the time to sell a widget which will generate income. Personally I would rather watch fireflies but is does means I am not doing something else, such as earning money to buy food.
My work is partly federally funded and any code we generate is automatically open source as it should be. The work we do is basic research which industry does not like to fund, which is fair enough. However providing operating systems and basic applications such as word processing etc is not basic research (other than perhaps projects that aim to investigate new ways to do these tasks, but it has to be really novel) and is the ideal work for private industry which could be for non-profit or profit. As for being able to start a business in a corporate aristocracy, it depends in what area. You find a niche that has not yet been populated and you base a business there which is something I have done in the past. In any case most of the businesses we deal with today in high tech did not exist 10 or 20 years ago so it is possible to change the status quo if you do it right.
No *you* don't need it, but I may, I would like the freedom to chose. In a free market you can choose what to buy, Windows, Mac or Linux. At work you may not be able to choose, but then you chose the job. At home you can choose what you want. We live in a capitalistic system (thankfully), Europe could have created a Microsoft but they didn't, so now they buy from the US. In any case I suspect Europe has a trade surplus with the US. As for tax dollars|Euros subsidising software development, that sounds like the old Sovient Union approach, next thing is, we'll ban all OSSs' other than Linux and have 5 year plans for roll outs. I would rather see tax money be spend on R&D and physical infrastructure, items industry does not generatlly fund. I can choose, and wish to choose to pay for what OS I would like from private organizations, be it closed or open code. If OSS products can only survive by welfare handouts then it's implies that OSS is not economically viable.
>What Harvard really concluded was there was a better chance of getting an endowment
>and new Comp Sci building from MSFT than the open source community.
Which is of course true.
There is no proof in science only disproof. One cant even prove that asprin helps with a headache let alone an AID vacine.
Also missed out is the Nascom and MK14, both computers helped start the personal computer revolution in the UK. Maybe we should have UK list and a separate US list. Also what happened to the Atari ST? I can't believe they missed out teh Next Computer.
I think he is basically right. The greatest terrorist threat we have today is from the muslim community and it would be utterly stupid to ignore that fact. The people they arrested today in the UK were all muslim, one was a white convert so browness isn't always a certain indicator. Muslim however, in today's troubles, is a dead giveaway. I would recommend the following, fix the middle east, ensure no ones rights are trampled on by either israel or anyone else; 2) until the troubles subside do not allow any more muslims into the US (or the UK). For those who are currently living in the US, just as they currently do in the UK, keep a watch over them, particulary the mosques.
I might be wrong about US residents US trusting their government but I am certainly not wrong about UK residents. Ever heard of the phrase, an english man's home is his castle? This reflects the mistrust we had/have for authority. I believe 40 to 43 % of the GDP is under government control which is quite a bit (less than 33% in the US?). Recall that the UK has no constitution, decisions are based on case law, the courts have tended to be the intitution that checks the power of government. I feel that UK people live in one of the freest societies in the western world (Except maybe the Netherlands). I've only lived in the US for 7 years but my impression is that people in the US do seem to trust their government a bit more which is understandable given their origins.
I should say that I was orginally from the UK but I'm now in the US. I have noticed a difference in the way each country percieves it's government which probably stems from the way they were set up. In the UK we generally do not trust the government, until recently UK residents were classed as subjects not citizens. The UK government was also carved out of a monarchy which is naturally a system of subjection. The UK police in particular are not to be trusted. In the USA however, at least in theory, the government was formed by the people and I think generally US residents tend to trust their government whatever they do.
I pay taxes, lots of them. If the goverment is doing things beyond its remit than I fully approve of civil disobedience. If the government fights back with violence then we must too. I've seen police video footage of demonstations and what the police do is completely unreasonable, in such situations it is our responsibility to protect OUR democracy and freedoms.
Is it possible to contribute annonymously? I wouldn't like the authorities to be able to trace it back to me.
"The sooner our executive agents throw the book at these asshats, the better." How right you are!! Long live the Fatherland! Long live the Fuhrer! Let our war with Oceana (oops, I mean Iraq) be victorous!
"Destruction of property is not a peaceful act of assembly, and as a crime, is a person's duty to report to the appropriate authority so that justice can be served."
So if the government turns against the people, you're going to roll over and let them do it?? Leave this country, you don't belong here, live in Cuba or N Kroean, you'll be much happier there.
Funcky? I'm not sure what you mean? Do you mean things like 'not', 'or', 'and', 'xor' etc, I'm not sure I would class them as funcky, they're pretty obvious to me.
I don't understand the vehemency that some people have towards Borland, what did they do to you?
Besides their products are good, they could be a bit leaner perhaps but otherwise they work well.
Academic licences are still expensive for research groups and one has to pay out on them every year (for ever essentially if you want to support the application). I had the same problem as the previous poster, had to drop QT in the end, now we're (as someone said) using the crappy (I agree that the GUI API is still a bit immature), but free and relatively usable Windows API (using mono for portability).
No you didn't but you want to slow progress down to a crawl and that I cannot agree to. Stem Cell Research is still too early, companies are unlikely to put down millions of dollars at this stage in basic research which is why we need federal money. The federal government has done this for at least 70 years, probably more, as a result all of society (including the government's tax receipts, which is what you seem to be worried about) has greatly benefited from it.
Those who wish to ban stem cell research will I am sure be the first to clamour for the benefits once they arise. I would love to see how you would respond when one of your family members is dying from a disease that will be curable in the future as a result of stem cell research, what will you do then, let them die, or swallow your pride and help them?
>If it takes the federal government to do it, more than likely it should not be done. Good >rule in politics:
Except, if that were the case we wouldn't have most of the technology we have today. Where do you think the internet came from? The role of federal tax money is to fund research that industry cannot afford to do simply because it has such a long time line. As the research matures, industry picks up the tab and through taxes, pays back many times over the original cost to the tax payer. It has been said that the Appolo program was the best investment the US ever made as it underwrote the nacent chip industry (The minuteman program helped to) which we now all benefit from, including the tax payer.
For me, I will gladly contribute to basic research, for the rest of you, you can return to your caves.
I agree, programmers are not scientists. I think this explains why most if not all FOSS is copied from other areas, FOSS rarely if ever invents something new. This is probably why Google just generates me-too software (eg the latest spreadsheet that Google released is so 'Google').
Yes, I do tell my IT guys to f*ck off, they're the lowest form of life along with politicians and lawyers. Most of them act like born again fascists. If they showed a bit more humility it wouldn't be so bad.
If you generally get a 3% increase in a budget but then 'only' get 2%, it won't cover the other costs, such as salaries that have gone up by 3%, so you're short by 1%, what do you do? You fire someone. Reduced increases in budgets makes a real difference. You've probably never had to run a budget, but presumably one day you will and then you'll understand.