Right (sic) now I'm watching Toronto's gay pride parade on TV. This is a city sanctioned parade. Currently seeing the city police and OPP (provincial police) floats and participants going by. This is our 29th annual Pride parade. Although I didn't make it this year, I have ( as a staight person ) enjoyed the joie de vivre of this parade and will definitely attend again. I think this parade exemplifies life in southern Ontario. I love it here. Check us out.
Watching NASA TV at MON 13:46 EST Discovery apologizes for delay in sending data, presumably from shuttle robo-scan, due to BSOD/reboot. Wouldn't it be nice if LINUX was onboard, esp. in this downturn, assuming of course the BSOD was a Windows BSOD?
I stand corrected. My history had Brit roots of democracy seeded in 1066. Perhaps some of these 'ideals' prompted the founding fathers - my guess. No doubt the USA is the bastion of freedom and democracy now.
As a former Brit, now Canadian, I have developed some theories as to the wheres and whys of the British psyche. Being an Island has led to an isolation not found elsewhere in Europe. Historically this allowed the 'subjection' of the 'unwashed' masses by the entitled elites to evolve apace without too much interference from abroad. As luck would have it, even world domination as the British Empire. All sorts of nastiness was developed by us Brits - piracy, slavery, banking, to name a few. However us members of the untouchable class in England gradually picked up a thing or two over several thousands of years of killing, war and banking (as employees) and now have these royal PITA types under some form of control. Keep them in castles and luxury, let them run banks and insurance. We even have the Royals. One of the good things we untouchables started was the end to slavery (real - not todays corporate slavery). However one of the supposed 'great' things we exported was Democracy, as in the 'free' world, esp. the good ole US of A, which is a kind of democracy gone wild. My Canada is sort of a 'sleepy' democracy, less volatile. Note the similarity in Brit/American banking system problems today - a little out of hand. Canadian banks are boringly regulated and quite stable, thank you.
This theory may be a lot of bunk, but it suits me just fine. Understanding the Zen of the entitled elites, one sees that they are again restless over in old Blighty, what with the banking/political crisis. It appears that Net neutrality may be tipping the balance of socio/economic power to the restless masses. Oh well. Now that we have them by the yoibles, its time for every free man woman and child to grab a hold and squeeze.
It is with great joy that I watch those who feel entitled to withhold knowledge in order to benefit their own avaricious needs by controlling the dissemination of popular art and science (starting with the Church to todays corporate greedy) - lose their hold on said resources faster than you can say Wall Street Meltdown. Kudos to the Internet and all those who espouse the FREE exchange of ideas.
If I want to make an item for my own personal use and not sell it I should be able to do so, even if it is patented, without having to acknowledge or submit to any patent holder. If I want to share said item or build said item for whosoever, I should ( can and will) be able to do so without concern of threat from any patent holder. Its really all about money. Patents are a means of extracting money from users. To me, giving any software away, say to FOSS, on a non-remunerative basis, is a right. Writing software is a mathematical or closely related mathematical process. I certainly don't concern myself with mathematical patents. If YOU want to make money on this software, then you can worry about money-grubbing leeches and hangers on ( for profit Corporations, and tax collecting or interest collecting entities). This is why the Patent systems in most countries is broken. It has been co-opted by the greedy.
But the reality is that it means that I get to pay for them again.
Suppose instead that you were the sole owner of the patents, but for some reason (you choose) you didn't want to spend money to develop and market products based upon the patents, even though you might personally be interested in buying whatever products are ultimately produced using the patents. Would you not be happy with a cash settlement from the sale of your patents? Presumably you could still purchase whatever products came out of the patents and enjoy them while paying a small share of what the patent buyer paid you (in the form of a higher product price) in exchange for a product that you want. How is this not a good deal?
Now, in theory it would be better if all of us taxpayers saw some "return" on our investment in the form of lower taxes going forward based upon the proceeds of a successful sale of patents generated from publicly funded research. However, in practice any proceeds will probably go to NASA and not be returned to the US Treasury so in that sense the US taxpayer is getting a bit of the shaft. On the other hand, maybe some useful products, which wouldn't otherwise be available to the public, will come of this so it may not all be bad.
If the patents were made freely available then other countries and foreign companies could free-ride and enjoy the fruits of our research efforts without reimbursing us for any of the costs that we have already paid for the research. How would that make you feel? Perhaps you prefer that nobody earns any profit, even though your tax dollars are already a sunk cost either way, just to spite the winning bidders? Either way you still paid for the research and got no direct return.
Agreed. Any (saleable) commodity, whether oil, gas, fish, bananas, wheat, whale oil, wood,...,patents,....,airwaves,....,the sun,...., belongs to the people (in the country of origin). How the wealth derived is, in theory, distributed is determined by the politics (power elites) of said country. In Russia, China, eg., government control everything (One party system?). In good ole US of A, eg. which is a wide open Capitalist democracy (co-opted laissez-faire society??) most of wealth goes to elites(Two or one or the other party system??). In remaining democracies where taxpaying voters can vote in MINORITY governments (as we are about to do again in Canada - hopefully) that gum up the works for the politicians so we the taxpaying voters can get more 'trickle down' from the elites in the form of more social benefits then we'll vote you a majority so you can ransack the country some more, - more of the benefits of said patents would probably accrue to taxpaying voters ( a three or more party liberal democracy??). Hmmm...
Remind me how well that's going for you again? Oh yeah, that's right - Vista has 4 times the desktop market share even though it's only been out a ninth of the time Linux has.
As long as mom and pop can go do their online banking, get their email and the kids can use iTunes, they don't give a flying fuck about anything you're on about.
Wrong. Vista is the latest iteration of MicroCrud. I can't think of any M$ product from inception in '70s that was anything but below sub-par, frought with bugs, hard to use and way overpriced. Initially I had great hopes for M$, but in the '90s I weaned myself off. I thought Borland would be better. Not so. Same old same old. Fortunately FOSS/LINUX saved the day. Does anyone seriously believe M$ (and apple) would even exist today if IBM had adopted a FOSS o/s for the PC? I think not. Yes mom and pop/joe sixpack dont give a FF about which OS is on their computers. MicroCrud will disappear from the world o' desktop because they've pissed everybody off on this planet. The sooner they're gone the better.
W@e've been brewing real ales since '96. Its $26.000 per SKU just for one label for BEER Store distribution so just one label right now - the Signature. We do custom bottling - ie C'est What's Hemp ale. Our main business is craft brewing for pubs/restaurants in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), for example C'est Whats Als Cask, coffee porters, oyster ales... keeps us busy. Craft brewing, not unlike FOSS/GNU/Linux, was born out of a desire to produce a quality product, unlike the - Errr. - competition who seem to be in the business of making money ONLY and being a cartel for market control. There is a definite synergy between the FOSS crowd and real ales. So go Google 'CAMRA'. 'real ale', 'cask conditioned ales', 'microbreweries' for info on what we(micros) do and where to find good ales in 'your area'. 'CAMRA', or 'CAMpaign for Real Ale', is a movement/organization that started this and is worldwide. As one customer of C'est Whats replied when asked why he kept coming back for his daily pint of Al's, he said "C'est owns my soul".
If this is OK with/. - we're a small brewery in Pickering Ontario. For anyone in Toronto try Al's Cask Ale at C'est What on Front St. We also sell Durham Signature Ale in Bottles @ The Beer Store(s).
Well I live in Canada. And yes, 'joe sixpack' or the common man here in NA doesn't really care about 'Linux' or 'Windows'. I am a part owner in a family run brewery here in Ontario. We brew and sell craft beer or 'real ales'. Recently I was at local watering hole that sells Big Name Swill. One customer was amazed at how our brew tasted fantastic, reminded him of how good his beer had tasted back in ole Blighty. After finishing the real ale, he ordered up his regular - Bud Light. (We price ours the same as regular beers). As A Linux fanboy for many a year, I have also tamed my enthusiasm for converting Win users to Linux. Most people don't want to know what an OS is. Like a PVR - switch it on - and it works. Linux will succeed when the big boys start marketing it, just like the 'swill beers' that now dominate the world markets. Me - I'm happy with our small base of real ale fanatics.
M$ has lotsa loot. The lifeblood of open source is the development community. Paying them to NOT develop for open source might be a start...
Just a thought....
You have completely missed the point. I'm guessing you just read the title, not even the summary! This is not Bill Gates speaking on behalf of Microshaft, this is Bill Gates speaking on behalf of good conscience, one of the greatest foundations in existence, and a complete understanding of the corporate world.
We'd all love to give money to help the world, but we all also happen to want/need it as well. It's hard for businesses to give money away because their job, their entire purpose, is to make it for themselves.
Take the example of the RED campaign, as given up-top. They managed to sell something (absurd, imho) that people buy, thereby making more money (and, presumably, problems) for them and their stockholders, but meanwhile a portion of all the profits goes to AIDS work.
That is Creative Capitalism.
Gates understands that you can't just throw money at a problem, you need to create a project that is beneficial for all parties involved. He's suggesting we do more for ourselves by helping others.
- Oh I get it now! Develop markets for completely useless products by setting up sweat shops in 3rd world countries so they can make just above starvation level wages. Aha! - then sell the useless products to over-sated developed populations. - And charge them mind-numbingly high prices - ala Apple Computer - yea - with a proviso that some of the err - PRICE!! - is really a donation to help the undernourished. Great PR!! The 3rd world will worship!! BIG RED, Capitalism, and - best of all - we GET rich. Ain't Capitalism great???
Slashdot Mirror
...besides I 'ear these pirate ships get thousands of miles to the galleon...
...so this project is run by a bunch of wiseguys? ...sorry - had to do it
So its us v. the future. And we ARE gonna win. Spent too much on the LHC. Too big to fail. Failure is not an option. Damn!
Right (sic) now I'm watching Toronto's gay pride parade on TV. This is a city sanctioned parade. Currently seeing the city police and OPP (provincial police) floats and participants going by. This is our 29th annual Pride parade. Although I didn't make it this year, I have ( as a staight person ) enjoyed the joie de vivre of this parade and will definitely attend again. I think this parade exemplifies life in southern Ontario. I love it here. Check us out.
Watching NASA TV at MON 13:46 EST Discovery apologizes for delay in sending data, presumably from shuttle robo-scan, due to BSOD/reboot. Wouldn't it be nice if LINUX was onboard, esp. in this downturn, assuming of course the BSOD was a Windows BSOD?
I stand corrected. My history had Brit roots of democracy seeded in 1066. Perhaps some of these 'ideals' prompted the founding fathers - my guess. No doubt the USA is the bastion of freedom and democracy now.
As a former Brit, now Canadian, I have developed some theories as to the wheres and whys of the British psyche. Being an Island has led to an isolation not found elsewhere in Europe. Historically this allowed the 'subjection' of the 'unwashed' masses by the entitled elites to evolve apace without too much interference from abroad. As luck would have it, even world domination as the British Empire. All sorts of nastiness was developed by us Brits - piracy, slavery, banking, to name a few. However us members of the untouchable class in England gradually picked up a thing or two over several thousands of years of killing, war and banking (as employees) and now have these royal PITA types under some form of control. Keep them in castles and luxury, let them run banks and insurance. We even have the Royals. One of the good things we untouchables started was the end to slavery (real - not todays corporate slavery). However one of the supposed 'great' things we exported was Democracy, as in the 'free' world, esp. the good ole US of A, which is a kind of democracy gone wild. My Canada is sort of a 'sleepy' democracy, less volatile. Note the similarity in Brit/American banking system problems today - a little out of hand. Canadian banks are boringly regulated and quite stable, thank you. This theory may be a lot of bunk, but it suits me just fine. Understanding the Zen of the entitled elites, one sees that they are again restless over in old Blighty, what with the banking/political crisis. It appears that Net neutrality may be tipping the balance of socio/economic power to the restless masses. Oh well. Now that we have them by the yoibles, its time for every free man woman and child to grab a hold and squeeze.
...they ARE sponges after all....
...and hopefully Hewlett-Packard will be happy selling it after getting burnt by Wintel 'Vista Capable' scam...
disko ducks. so 70's. Quack.
thanx for the CNN url. I'm getting CNN news - watching now. I have it on KMplayer running on PClinuxOS.
Yes this in fact a plausible structure. My mother in law served one up for dinner last Xmas.
It is with great joy that I watch those who feel entitled to withhold knowledge in order to benefit their own avaricious needs by controlling the dissemination of popular art and science (starting with the Church to todays corporate greedy) - lose their hold on said resources faster than you can say Wall Street Meltdown. Kudos to the Internet and all those who espouse the FREE exchange of ideas.
I wonder if Microsoft or the mobile 7 software recognizes the gestures currently being submitted by the developers.
If I want to make an item for my own personal use and not sell it I should be able to do so, even if it is patented, without having to acknowledge or submit to any patent holder. If I want to share said item or build said item for whosoever, I should ( can and will) be able to do so without concern of threat from any patent holder. Its really all about money. Patents are a means of extracting money from users. To me, giving any software away, say to FOSS, on a non-remunerative basis, is a right. Writing software is a mathematical or closely related mathematical process. I certainly don't concern myself with mathematical patents. If YOU want to make money on this software, then you can worry about money-grubbing leeches and hangers on ( for profit Corporations, and tax collecting or interest collecting entities). This is why the Patent systems in most countries is broken. It has been co-opted by the greedy.
But the reality is that it means that I get to pay for them again.
Suppose instead that you were the sole owner of the patents, but for some reason (you choose) you didn't want to spend money to develop and market products based upon the patents, even though you might personally be interested in buying whatever products are ultimately produced using the patents. Would you not be happy with a cash settlement from the sale of your patents? Presumably you could still purchase whatever products came out of the patents and enjoy them while paying a small share of what the patent buyer paid you (in the form of a higher product price) in exchange for a product that you want. How is this not a good deal?
Now, in theory it would be better if all of us taxpayers saw some "return" on our investment in the form of lower taxes going forward based upon the proceeds of a successful sale of patents generated from publicly funded research. However, in practice any proceeds will probably go to NASA and not be returned to the US Treasury so in that sense the US taxpayer is getting a bit of the shaft. On the other hand, maybe some useful products, which wouldn't otherwise be available to the public, will come of this so it may not all be bad.
If the patents were made freely available then other countries and foreign companies could free-ride and enjoy the fruits of our research efforts without reimbursing us for any of the costs that we have already paid for the research. How would that make you feel? Perhaps you prefer that nobody earns any profit, even though your tax dollars are already a sunk cost either way, just to spite the winning bidders? Either way you still paid for the research and got no direct return.
Agreed. Any (saleable) commodity, whether oil, gas, fish, bananas, wheat, whale oil, wood,...,patents,....,airwaves,....,the sun,...., belongs to the people (in the country of origin). How the wealth derived is, in theory, distributed is determined by the politics (power elites) of said country. In Russia, China, eg., government control everything (One party system?). In good ole US of A, eg. which is a wide open Capitalist democracy (co-opted laissez-faire society??) most of wealth goes to elites(Two or one or the other party system??). In remaining democracies where taxpaying voters can vote in MINORITY governments (as we are about to do again in Canada - hopefully) that gum up the works for the politicians so we the taxpaying voters can get more 'trickle down' from the elites in the form of more social benefits then we'll vote you a majority so you can ransack the country some more, - more of the benefits of said patents would probably accrue to taxpaying voters ( a three or more party liberal democracy??). Hmmm...
I'm trying to imagine a Beowolf cluster of these mirrors...
Remind me how well that's going for you again? Oh yeah, that's right - Vista has 4 times the desktop market share even though it's only been out a ninth of the time Linux has.
As long as mom and pop can go do their online banking, get their email and the kids can use iTunes, they don't give a flying fuck about anything you're on about.
Wrong. Vista is the latest iteration of MicroCrud. I can't think of any M$ product from inception in '70s that was anything but below sub-par, frought with bugs, hard to use and way overpriced. Initially I had great hopes for M$, but in the '90s I weaned myself off. I thought Borland would be better. Not so. Same old same old. Fortunately FOSS/LINUX saved the day. Does anyone seriously believe M$ (and apple) would even exist today if IBM had adopted a FOSS o/s for the PC? I think not. Yes mom and pop/joe sixpack dont give a FF about which OS is on their computers. MicroCrud will disappear from the world o' desktop because they've pissed everybody off on this planet. The sooner they're gone the better.
I'm not sure if we're currently on tap there, but the Winking Judge is a big supporter of micros.
W@e've been brewing real ales since '96. Its $26.000 per SKU just for one label for BEER Store distribution so just one label right now - the Signature. We do custom bottling - ie C'est What's Hemp ale. Our main business is craft brewing for pubs/restaurants in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), for example C'est Whats Als Cask, coffee porters, oyster ales... keeps us busy. Craft brewing, not unlike FOSS/GNU/Linux, was born out of a desire to produce a quality product, unlike the - Errr. - competition who seem to be in the business of making money ONLY and being a cartel for market control. There is a definite synergy between the FOSS crowd and real ales. So go Google 'CAMRA'. 'real ale', 'cask conditioned ales', 'microbreweries' for info on what we(micros) do and where to find good ales in 'your area'. 'CAMRA', or 'CAMpaign for Real Ale', is a movement/organization that started this and is worldwide. As one customer of C'est Whats replied when asked why he kept coming back for his daily pint of Al's, he said "C'est owns my soul".
If this is OK with /. - we're a small brewery in Pickering Ontario. For anyone in Toronto try Al's Cask Ale at C'est What on Front St. We also sell Durham Signature Ale in Bottles @ The Beer Store(s).
I didn't understand the beer analogy. Can I have a slashdotish car analogy please?
Oh goody!! My first troll!! Well - OK - being 'trolled' is like having - I dunno - Oh yes - a flat tire!.
Well I live in Canada. And yes, 'joe sixpack' or the common man here in NA doesn't really care about 'Linux' or 'Windows'. I am a part owner in a family run brewery here in Ontario. We brew and sell craft beer or 'real ales'. Recently I was at local watering hole that sells Big Name Swill. One customer was amazed at how our brew tasted fantastic, reminded him of how good his beer had tasted back in ole Blighty. After finishing the real ale, he ordered up his regular - Bud Light. (We price ours the same as regular beers). As A Linux fanboy for many a year, I have also tamed my enthusiasm for converting Win users to Linux. Most people don't want to know what an OS is. Like a PVR - switch it on - and it works. Linux will succeed when the big boys start marketing it, just like the 'swill beers' that now dominate the world markets. Me - I'm happy with our small base of real ale fanatics.
M$ has lotsa loot. The lifeblood of open source is the development community. Paying them to NOT develop for open source might be a start... Just a thought....
You have completely missed the point. I'm guessing you just read the title, not even the summary! This is not Bill Gates speaking on behalf of Microshaft, this is Bill Gates speaking on behalf of good conscience, one of the greatest foundations in existence, and a complete understanding of the corporate world.
We'd all love to give money to help the world, but we all also happen to want/need it as well. It's hard for businesses to give money away because their job, their entire purpose, is to make it for themselves.
Take the example of the RED campaign, as given up-top. They managed to sell something (absurd, imho) that people buy, thereby making more money (and, presumably, problems) for them and their stockholders, but meanwhile a portion of all the profits goes to AIDS work.
That is Creative Capitalism.
Gates understands that you can't just throw money at a problem, you need to create a project that is beneficial for all parties involved. He's suggesting we do more for ourselves by helping others.
- Oh I get it now! Develop markets for completely useless products by setting up sweat shops in 3rd world countries so they can make just above starvation level wages. Aha! - then sell the useless products to over-sated developed populations. - And charge them mind-numbingly high prices - ala Apple Computer - yea - with a proviso that some of the err - PRICE!! - is really a donation to help the undernourished. Great PR!! The 3rd world will worship!! BIG RED, Capitalism, and - best of all - we GET rich. Ain't Capitalism great???