at the firm where i work all the programmers where recently asked to help write a tender for a software contract. because we're a small firm, the boss is used to writing these himself. the result was that we had to use word. within short time it became clear that we had to implement a mutex for access to the document. for example, the boss told us not to open the document, then he'd write some stuff, then he'd email us all his newest copy (email was in his mind necessary because we have offices at three different locations). as well as this, the document was being edited in three different versions of microsoft office and also openoffice.org. you can imagine how much fun that was...
doubtless there are more classical methods of collaboration, but googledocs would have helped my boss here.
The only bickering i see is the comment from someone who says "linux will always be a hobby os because it doesn't support every wlan adapter out of the box" and then blaming the kernel developers for this, without realising that linux already has more than 80% of the supercomputer market, for example, and without mentioning that it would in many cases be illegal and punishable with jail time if someone developed a driver for linux for these wlan adapters.
you can find a lot of good lists out there for hardware that has worked under linux. the lists are problematic because hardware manufacturers have this habit of altering devices (some say in order to stop the device being supported under linux).
you mean because hardware manufacturers are going out of their way to keep linux off the desktop while letting it remain the number one operating system on systems such as super computers, web servers through routers and flatscreen tvs right down to embedded controllers?
one thing i find when talking to mathematicians is that they often have little knowledge of maths for physicists, though they can acquire this knowledge very quickly. for this reason, i'd recommend you have a look at something like "mathematical methods in the physical sciences" by Mary L. Boas. she also covers a great deal of physics from a mathematical perspective.
it's even worse that that. flash works on linux running on i386. and, according to the chief developer of gnash, the license for the documentation is written so that if you have ever used adobe flash in your life, you are not allowed to work on another implementation. at the moment, if i want to see flash content, i download the video using a firefox plugin and play it with mplayer.
and that's the reason why you should support free software.
i'm typing this on a G4 powermac from the year 2001. i also have at home an hp c3750 (2002), an sgi indy (1995) and a sun ultra 10 (1999). i use all of these computers regularly and they are all capable of doing everything i want to do with a computer. all of these computers have the same operating system from the year 2008 on them, offering me a much better user experience than i would have with the original operating systems.
if you have an old alpha computer, or a non-ultrasparc III sun or any sgi box, the only operating system in town is a gnu/linux distribution. and this operating system just gets better and better.
now i admit that my tastes are not the same as those of most people when it comes to computers. i'm just trying to give you an idea of what free software can do.
apart from the false duality between freedom and pragmatism (it is blindingly obvious that free software is in the long-term much more pragmatic than closed-source software), i don't think free software (in the sense of copyleft and not public domain) is about choice. it's about creating a system of rules to discourage people from behaving badly.
much as prison discourages people from committing crimes, the redistribution right in copyleft software discourages people from subjugating others in this small area.
free software (as in copyleft software) is about creating the freest possible software world. that happens to be where we have all freedoms apart from the freedom to remove freedoms from the system (much like the freest society is a society where we are free to do whatever we want apart from remover the freedoms from others).
document standards have an impact. up till now the first world has exported proprietary file formats to the third world, so making a modern infrastructure another method of subjugation. now people are questioning the wisdom of proprietary file formats for purely practical reasons. so microsoft bribes itself a document standard so the first world can continue exporting proprietary file formats to the third world.
the result? one more chain keeping the banana republics enslaved.
i would say that microsoft spending millions corrupting an international standards body so they can keep the third world ignorant and subjugated is pretty high on the scale. we're talking about imperialism here.
if you want to share your code, you can use a bsd-style license. if you however want your code to be shared, you should use a copyleft license like the GPL.
yeah, you're sort of right. basically the publishers bring a new edition out to satisfy some new elitist craze (like urtext) and then pay the music journals to say how good the new edition is.
my favourite edition of the wtk for example is the orlando morgen edition from 1922(?). he does a great job of collecting all the existing manuscripts for the wtk and producing a really good annotated edition. i have not seen any decent work done on the wtk since then (and in my job as concert pianist and teacher i've seen a number of editions).
your argument about writing out the figured bass is also bogus. this has been commonly done since at least the novello editions of the late 19th century. your definition of "modern edition" is here strange. Musical notation has remained fairly static since leopold invented the double dot. or can you name one important change in notation for printing baroque, classical or romantic music since 1910? i can't.
in general i would say the main advantage of new notes over old is that they are new. much work has been done in quality of binding and printing and you can see this. but this advantage is not important for music stored on the net in lilypond format.
do you know the expression "there but for the grace of god go i"?
we do not have the right to take fundamental human rights away from others, no matter what they have done or intend to do. if we did so, we would cheapen ourselves and all we stand for.
i can imagine the oems really grasping this opportunity to get away from microsoft. if one considers that ibm even sold off their notebook business to get out of their contract with microsoft, the emergence of a new market must be a god-send to the oem of today.
maybe i should have been more clear and talked about stallman's four freedoms for a while. then it becomes clear that derivatives of a software inherit the same freedoms as the parent software.
this is actually the only license type which allows this. with any other license type, the users of software derivatives can have fewer freedoms than the users of the parent software.
free as in freedom. gpl-licensed code is free to be used by anybody except those who seek to remove the freedoms of others. it really isn't a difficult concept. it forms the basis of all ethical systems in the world, so i really can't understand why you find it difficult to understand.
All I'm saying is that if you have time on your hands and your goal is to develop and test free software in a "pure" environment, there are more efficient ways of doing that than replicating an entire distribution. quite apart from the fact that replicating an entire distribution does not take very long, it has always been the aim of the fsf to make a truly free operating system, not to offer a few free packages to replace the non-free ones in another distribution
this isn't about openoffice.org, this is about people having access to their own information. This is about governments being able to read all the documents they are making now in the future. This is about unfettered, exact communication between countries.
in short, this is remarkably important. I can't think of anything more important in communication than open standards.
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at the firm where i work all the programmers where recently asked to help write a tender for a software contract. because we're a small firm, the boss is used to writing these himself. the result was that we had to use word. within short time it became clear that we had to implement a mutex for access to the document. for example, the boss told us not to open the document, then he'd write some stuff, then he'd email us all his newest copy (email was in his mind necessary because we have offices at three different locations). as well as this, the document was being edited in three different versions of microsoft office and also openoffice.org. you can imagine how much fun that was...
doubtless there are more classical methods of collaboration, but googledocs would have helped my boss here.
The only bickering i see is the comment from someone who says "linux will always be a hobby os because it doesn't support every wlan adapter out of the box" and then blaming the kernel developers for this, without realising that linux already has more than 80% of the supercomputer market, for example, and without mentioning that it would in many cases be illegal and punishable with jail time if someone developed a driver for linux for these wlan adapters.
you can find a lot of good lists out there for hardware that has worked under linux. the lists are problematic because hardware manufacturers have this habit of altering devices (some say in order to stop the device being supported under linux).
you mean because hardware manufacturers are going out of their way to keep linux off the desktop while letting it remain the number one operating system on systems such as super computers, web servers through routers and flatscreen tvs right down to embedded controllers?
one thing i find when talking to mathematicians is that they often have little knowledge of maths for physicists, though they can acquire this knowledge very quickly. for this reason, i'd recommend you have a look at something like "mathematical methods in the physical sciences" by Mary L. Boas. she also covers a great deal of physics from a mathematical perspective.
it's even worse that that. flash works on linux running on i386. and, according to the chief developer of gnash, the license for the documentation is written so that if you have ever used adobe flash in your life, you are not allowed to work on another implementation. at the moment, if i want to see flash content, i download the video using a firefox plugin and play it with mplayer.
you mean to say you personally like to use hardware which requires that you use closed-source drivers. okay.
and that's the reason why you should support free software.
i'm typing this on a G4 powermac from the year 2001. i also have at home an hp c3750 (2002), an sgi indy (1995) and a sun ultra 10 (1999). i use all of these computers regularly and they are all capable of doing everything i want to do with a computer. all of these computers have the same operating system from the year 2008 on them, offering me a much better user experience than i would have with the original operating systems.
if you have an old alpha computer, or a non-ultrasparc III sun or any sgi box, the only operating system in town is a gnu/linux distribution. and this operating system just gets better and better.
now i admit that my tastes are not the same as those of most people when it comes to computers. i'm just trying to give you an idea of what free software can do.
freedom of information is a necessary requirement for a democracy and self-determination, not the other way round.
apart from the false duality between freedom and pragmatism (it is blindingly obvious that free software is in the long-term much more pragmatic than closed-source software), i don't think free software (in the sense of copyleft and not public domain) is about choice. it's about creating a system of rules to discourage people from behaving badly.
much as prison discourages people from committing crimes, the redistribution right in copyleft software discourages people from subjugating others in this small area.
free software (as in copyleft software) is about creating the freest possible software world. that happens to be where we have all freedoms apart from the freedom to remove freedoms from the system (much like the freest society is a society where we are free to do whatever we want apart from remover the freedoms from others).
no it isn't just as likely, and you're kidding yourself if you think it is.
document standards have an impact. up till now the first world has exported proprietary file formats to the third world, so making a modern infrastructure another method of subjugation. now people are questioning the wisdom of proprietary file formats for purely practical reasons. so microsoft bribes itself a document standard so the first world can continue exporting proprietary file formats to the third world.
the result? one more chain keeping the banana republics enslaved.
i would say that microsoft spending millions corrupting an international standards body so they can keep the third world ignorant and subjugated is pretty high on the scale. we're talking about imperialism here.
if anybody wants a real-time list, they can go here:
http://boese-ban.de/~anton/downloadsPerCapita.php
if you want to share your code, you can use a bsd-style license. if you however want your code to be shared, you should use a copyleft license like the GPL.
yeah, you're sort of right. basically the publishers bring a new edition out to satisfy some new elitist craze (like urtext) and then pay the music journals to say how good the new edition is.
my favourite edition of the wtk for example is the orlando morgen edition from 1922(?). he does a great job of collecting all the existing manuscripts for the wtk and producing a really good annotated edition. i have not seen any decent work done on the wtk since then (and in my job as concert pianist and teacher i've seen a number of editions).
your argument about writing out the figured bass is also bogus. this has been commonly done since at least the novello editions of the late 19th century. your definition of "modern edition" is here strange. Musical notation has remained fairly static since leopold invented the double dot. or can you name one important change in notation for printing baroque, classical or romantic music since 1910? i can't.
in general i would say the main advantage of new notes over old is that they are new. much work has been done in quality of binding and printing and you can see this. but this advantage is not important for music stored on the net in lilypond format.
the x windowing system as found on most gnu/linux distributions has always supported multiple workspaces.
do you know the expression "there but for the grace of god go i"?
we do not have the right to take fundamental human rights away from others, no matter what they have done or intend to do. if we did so, we would cheapen ourselves and all we stand for.
i can imagine the oems really grasping this opportunity to get away from microsoft. if one considers that ibm even sold off their notebook business to get out of their contract with microsoft, the emergence of a new market must be a god-send to the oem of today.
maybe i should have been more clear and talked about stallman's four freedoms for a while. then it becomes clear that derivatives of a software inherit the same freedoms as the parent software.
this is actually the only license type which allows this. with any other license type, the users of software derivatives can have fewer freedoms than the users of the parent software.
exactly
free as in freedom. gpl-licensed code is free to be used by anybody except those who seek to remove the freedoms of others. it really isn't a difficult concept. it forms the basis of all ethical systems in the world, so i really can't understand why you find it difficult to understand.
i repeat my reply from above: the main reason gnewsense exists is that gobuntu and debian both have kernels with binary blobs in them.
who modded this insightful?
this isn't about openoffice.org, this is about people having access to their own information. This is about governments being able to read all the documents they are making now in the future. This is about unfettered, exact communication between countries.
in short, this is remarkably important. I can't think of anything more important in communication than open standards.
the fsf guys split with debian because debian includes huge binary blobs in the kernel.