i can't see this working. unless they somehow manage to increase the wavelength of the light while it traverses the material, the wavefronts will quite clearly show that there was an object there, because the paths will be of different lengths.
i thought the 'foss mantra' was about the most possible freedom without taking freedom away from others. in other words, i can, through my actions, put others into a position where they can perceive a gain by relinquishing their freedom (for example, if i develop closed-source drivers for products). the result is dependency.
another point. as far as i see it, this debate is not about if nvidia should open-source their drivers. we know that this is a legal impossibility. it would be just as helpful if nvidia explained how the hardware worked (how the address room of the graphics cards worked). this would enable a driver to be written by someone other than nvidia without painful and difficult reverse engineering.
you know, i thought that 'one license' meant that you could have one installation at any one time. what computer it is on is not important. now the world seems to be telling me that i pay for the installation on a particular computer. so if i have a laptop and it gets run over by a bus, i may not be able to install the software on a replacement computer, if i have understood that correctly. and if i have understood that correctly, this is an untenable state of affairs.
if probably costs them more to generate a corporate key for windows xp, than it costs microsoft to supply a copy for an oem. microsoft doesn't need to make money off 90% of windows installations. the important thing is that >90% of the world uses windows for their desktop computers.
well, charity begins at home, my dear, so start coding.
though i personally have been able to accomplish everything i need with audacity and jack.
strangely, an acquaintance of mine bought a cheap external usb soundcard recently (about 200 dollars) and found that the windows drivers which came with it crashed his system, if he started the system with the card plugged in. linux recognised it great. Now he just plugs in the card whenever he needs it, and unplugs it before he switches the computer off.
if the manufacturer will not release specifications for the hardware it produces then these things will happen. you should write to the manufacturer and demand that they update their driver or stop saying that their product is linux compatible.
i don't see how i was interpreting anything. i was just objecting to the attributing of qualities to 'the french' as a group. if you want to say 'a tendency in the french government or certain government departments' than say it, don't say 'the french', it's impolite and wrong. and you also ascribed some negative qualities to 'the french' (maybe i should conduct a poll of 'the french' to see how accurate your picture is). the problem is, the world consists of individuals.
if you herd people into boxes, you will always find one or two to justify the etikettenschwindel you're perpetrating.
the trouble is, if it is critical, support isn't actually worth anything.
you want to land that rocket on the moon? you have a one second window and your windows server 2003 decides to go belly-up? well don't worry, you've got support! well hoorah!
it's the same for all small businesses as well. you need to get the project done by 1600 and at 1400 word decides to turn all your tables black and make them unadjustable (which happened to us in the company last week). but don't worry, you've got support! it will be fixed with the next release.
in my working experience (which admittedly is pretty limited) i haven't yet found a single case where support has been worth anything apart from helping you to pass the blame. it appears to be one of the great fallacies of modern society, much like the man hour, the hourly wage, and employment being necessary.
i trust when you say 'state' you mean 'government'.
well, state services have monopolies in a lot of areas, and with good reason. state services are the only people that are allowed to print money, raise or lower taxes, employ police, judges, create laws, permit patents, declare infrastructure to fulfil legal requirements, create an army, etc.
so what do you mean when you say that the french state is a recognised monopoly in a lot of areas? isn't that true of all states? are you referring to nationalised services (water, gas, electricity, roads and motorways)?
i don't think i can sue someone for being rich. i can however sue them, if they quote from a book my grandfather wrote.
anybody can have share certificates and bonds, you just have to buy them. this gives them an innate value (how much is the bond worth? ans: how much someone's prepared to pay for it). the value of a bond goes down if it is copied and freely distributed; a bond only has a monetary value, that's all it is.
a piece of music, a book, or similar has an intrinsic value. Is beethoven's fifth symphony less worth, because i have a copy of the music? should i be allowed to withhold a piece of music i've written from other people?
howie
and they'd be wrong with their assertion. how could a license written in 198? be responsible for widespread adoption because of webpage application and hardware locking loopholes, when webpage application and locking hardware didn't exist until the 21st century?
newsflash for you. terrorists are *shock* people with their own thoughts and rationales. they're not like another race or something. the mulims i know do not want to see america destroyed. they are however understandably angered by america's foreign policy, just like every sane human being would be.
the word terrorist seems to mean a soldier in a war where he is technologically totally outclassed by the enemy.
the fragmentation gives linux its vigour. think of it as a boat being pulled by thousands of people. They can't all pull in exactly the same direction, but they get there a lot faster than a boot being pulled by one.
when windows xp came out, the linux desktops looked like windows 95. Now, when windows vista is coming out, it looks primitive compared with a modern opengl desktop on linux. The linux development model is running rings around apple and windows.
and btw, you only need stable apis if you want to develop closed source drivers for the kernel. if you want your code to run on someone else's linux box, send it to them as source and they can compile and install it themselves.
you can't run an economy by charging for work. you let the economy dictate the value of the goods produced compared with the starting products and then say that the difference is the labor cost. if it takes you 5 minutes to produce the end goods or 5 hours is totally unimportant.
the idea of an hourly wage would have been considered rediculous for a long part of human history, and, looking at it financially, for good reason.
fixing hourly wages is also a mechanism which (coincidentally, i hope) works to increase the class divide. It works like this. In a factory, product A is converted into product B. the factory owners buy product A in bulk for a certain price and sell product B for a (hopefully) higher price. Then they decide, who gets which part of the difference. Just to make it seem fair, they introduce the concept of an hourly wage. now along comes technical progress. suddenly product A can be turned into product B much faster. The same company can now make many more examples of product B. If they are careful not to saturate the market, the price will not noticeably suffer. The result? the workforce gets the same wage (maybe with a small bonus) and management still gets to decide how the money is divided.
okay, really slowly now, so that everyone can take notes.
the purpose of money is as a trade for goods. The amount of money in the economy should equal the value of the amount of goods in the economy. If too much money enters the economy, goods get more expensive (inflation).
If you take ingredients which on average cost 10 dollars to make cookies which you then can sell per batch for an average of 150 dollars, you are entitled to charge 140 dollars for your labor per batch. To pay your labor, the treasury should print 140 dollars for each batch of cookies you make. If the treasury doesn't do this, the value of goods in the economy is greater than the amount of money and the average price will have to go down to reflect this.
of course, this is greatly complicated by the fact that cookies get eaten. you can work out the consequences for the treasury yourself.
If microsoft introduced a new, additional product and could convince the market (not difficult for microsoft to do) that this product is worth 150 dollars, the treasury would have to print 150 dollars per copy of the product so that microsoft could pay their workers and hoard more money. this is however not the case. microsoft has already produced so many million copies of windows. these copies will now leave the economy, their value will depreciate. Will the total value of goods in the economy increase because of windows vista?
in some ways yes, but not the ways you may think.
there are some things you have to consider
windows xp has been out for ages. nevertheless, an original copy of windows xp costs just as much now as it did in 2002.
software for windows xp has been out for xp. nevertheless, the average piece of software for xp costs just as much as it did in 2002.
how much is the value of software dependent upon the price of replacing it with new software, and how much depends on the money you would get if you sold it on ebay?
when vista is launched, the ebay price for xp software will start to fall. vista will also create a market for new versions of software and new hardware. the value of new hardware and software will be artificially high for a while. money will be printed to take account of this fact (this is what we usually call a bubble). of course, afterwards, the value will fall to what it always should have been. by which point, microsoft may have skimmed the surplus from the economy, so prohibiting inflation.
you may be wondering how this money enters the economy. well, it enters the economy just like all money enters the economy: through the government. that is the only institution which is allowed to print money. everybody else just pushes it around.
mon dieu, you've totally missed the point of foss. if you're looking for something that fits the job just as well, you can also get proprietary software B.
foss is about taking responsibility for ones actions in the global world. i know it's very fashionable in a capitalist society to just look at the bottom line in this dog-eat-dog world, but you can also choose to regard the consequences your actions have on other people. society is made up of individuals. if i choose to be nice to other people, i increase the total amount of 'niceness' in the world. just as if i act to increase the power of proprietary data formats, then i am working to enslave people. okay, it is (at the moment) a very weak form of slavery, but slavery it is.
at some stage you've got to stop thinking about your bottom line as an individual and start seeing the whole of the world. if no one does this, humanity is most assuredly doomed.
this little totally over-the-top rant was brought to you by howie.
no, no, no. money is a token which should amount to the sum of the value of goods in the economy. by increasing the value of goods in the economy, i make it possible for the treasury to issue more notes without risking devaluation of the currency. this balance must be maintained, otherwise you get inflation.
Slashdot Mirror
i can't see this working. unless they somehow manage to increase the wavelength of the light while it traverses the material, the wavefronts will quite clearly show that there was an object there, because the paths will be of different lengths.
i thought the 'foss mantra' was about the most possible freedom without taking freedom away from others. in other words, i can, through my actions, put others into a position where they can perceive a gain by relinquishing their freedom (for example, if i develop closed-source drivers for products). the result is dependency.
another point. as far as i see it, this debate is not about if nvidia should open-source their drivers. we know that this is a legal impossibility. it would be just as helpful if nvidia explained how the hardware worked (how the address room of the graphics cards worked). this would enable a driver to be written by someone other than nvidia without painful and difficult reverse engineering.
howie
you know, i thought that 'one license' meant that you could have one installation at any one time. what computer it is on is not important. now the world seems to be telling me that i pay for the installation on a particular computer. so if i have a laptop and it gets run over by a bus, i may not be able to install the software on a replacement computer, if i have understood that correctly. and if i have understood that correctly, this is an untenable state of affairs.
howie
if probably costs them more to generate a corporate key for windows xp, than it costs microsoft to supply a copy for an oem. microsoft doesn't need to make money off 90% of windows installations. the important thing is that >90% of the world uses windows for their desktop computers.
howie
well, charity begins at home, my dear, so start coding.
though i personally have been able to accomplish everything i need with audacity and jack.
strangely, an acquaintance of mine bought a cheap external usb soundcard recently (about 200 dollars) and found that the windows drivers which came with it crashed his system, if he started the system with the card plugged in. linux recognised it great. Now he just plugs in the card whenever he needs it, and unplugs it before he switches the computer off.
howie
and that's all you have to do. this gives you access to thousands of programs. let's look at the same procedure on windows:
- navigate to the webpage in question, search for 'download' follow any links to the download server.
- if necessary, install a download manager to get the download in one piece
- find the download. click on it. if necessary, select where you want it to be saved
- accept any license agreement and fill in any forms which need to be filled in.
- if necessary, restart the computer
- goto 1 for every piece of software you want installed.
you can see how installing software on ubuntu is easier.you've forgotten CheneyFS
if the manufacturer will not release specifications for the hardware it produces then these things will happen. you should write to the manufacturer and demand that they update their driver or stop saying that their product is linux compatible.
well, all the more reason to start now then.
i can just hear rms saying 'i told you so'
howie
i don't see how i was interpreting anything. i was just objecting to the attributing of qualities to 'the french' as a group. if you want to say 'a tendency in the french government or certain government departments' than say it, don't say 'the french', it's impolite and wrong. and you also ascribed some negative qualities to 'the french' (maybe i should conduct a poll of 'the french' to see how accurate your picture is). the problem is, the world consists of individuals.
if you herd people into boxes, you will always find one or two to justify the etikettenschwindel you're perpetrating.
the trouble is, if it is critical, support isn't actually worth anything.
you want to land that rocket on the moon? you have a one second window and your windows server 2003 decides to go belly-up? well don't worry, you've got support! well hoorah!
it's the same for all small businesses as well. you need to get the project done by 1600 and at 1400 word decides to turn all your tables black and make them unadjustable (which happened to us in the company last week). but don't worry, you've got support! it will be fixed with the next release.
in my working experience (which admittedly is pretty limited) i haven't yet found a single case where support has been worth anything apart from helping you to pass the blame. it appears to be one of the great fallacies of modern society, much like the man hour, the hourly wage, and employment being necessary.
howie
good god, can we please stop talking about 'the french' or any other nation as if it were some sort of collective? this reeks of xenophobia.
i trust when you say 'state' you mean 'government'.
well, state services have monopolies in a lot of areas, and with good reason. state services are the only people that are allowed to print money, raise or lower taxes, employ police, judges, create laws, permit patents, declare infrastructure to fulfil legal requirements, create an army, etc.
so what do you mean when you say that the french state is a recognised monopoly in a lot of areas? isn't that true of all states? are you referring to nationalised services (water, gas, electricity, roads and motorways)?
i don't think i can sue someone for being rich. i can however sue them, if they quote from a book my grandfather wrote. anybody can have share certificates and bonds, you just have to buy them. this gives them an innate value (how much is the bond worth? ans: how much someone's prepared to pay for it). the value of a bond goes down if it is copied and freely distributed; a bond only has a monetary value, that's all it is. a piece of music, a book, or similar has an intrinsic value. Is beethoven's fifth symphony less worth, because i have a copy of the music? should i be allowed to withhold a piece of music i've written from other people? howie
how about a competitor to ebay :)
and they'd be wrong with their assertion. how could a license written in 198? be responsible for widespread adoption because of webpage application and hardware locking loopholes, when webpage application and locking hardware didn't exist until the 21st century?
newsflash for you. terrorists are *shock* people with their own thoughts and rationales. they're not like another race or something. the mulims i know do not want to see america destroyed. they are however understandably angered by america's foreign policy, just like every sane human being would be.
the word terrorist seems to mean a soldier in a war where he is technologically totally outclassed by the enemy.
ever since singing mephistopholes in la damnation de faust i've had a soft sport for france.
:)
howie
(thinking of getting a c6)
and the large citroens are wonderful cars
the fragmentation gives linux its vigour. think of it as a boat being pulled by thousands of people. They can't all pull in exactly the same direction, but they get there a lot faster than a boot being pulled by one.
when windows xp came out, the linux desktops looked like windows 95. Now, when windows vista is coming out, it looks primitive compared with a modern opengl desktop on linux. The linux development model is running rings around apple and windows.
and btw, you only need stable apis if you want to develop closed source drivers for the kernel. if you want your code to run on someone else's linux box, send it to them as source and they can compile and install it themselves.
if you're installing something with proprietary closed-source drivers you can expect it to not work on most linux kernels.
you can't run an economy by charging for work. you let the economy dictate the value of the goods produced compared with the starting products and then say that the difference is the labor cost. if it takes you 5 minutes to produce the end goods or 5 hours is totally unimportant.
the idea of an hourly wage would have been considered rediculous for a long part of human history, and, looking at it financially, for good reason.
fixing hourly wages is also a mechanism which (coincidentally, i hope) works to increase the class divide. It works like this. In a factory, product A is converted into product B. the factory owners buy product A in bulk for a certain price and sell product B for a (hopefully) higher price. Then they decide, who gets which part of the difference. Just to make it seem fair, they introduce the concept of an hourly wage. now along comes technical progress. suddenly product A can be turned into product B much faster. The same company can now make many more examples of product B. If they are careful not to saturate the market, the price will not noticeably suffer. The result? the workforce gets the same wage (maybe with a small bonus) and management still gets to decide how the money is divided.
okay, really slowly now, so that everyone can take notes.
the purpose of money is as a trade for goods. The amount of money in the economy should equal the value of the amount of goods in the economy. If too much money enters the economy, goods get more expensive (inflation).
If you take ingredients which on average cost 10 dollars to make cookies which you then can sell per batch for an average of 150 dollars, you are entitled to charge 140 dollars for your labor per batch. To pay your labor, the treasury should print 140 dollars for each batch of cookies you make. If the treasury doesn't do this, the value of goods in the economy is greater than the amount of money and the average price will have to go down to reflect this.
of course, this is greatly complicated by the fact that cookies get eaten. you can work out the consequences for the treasury yourself.
If microsoft introduced a new, additional product and could convince the market (not difficult for microsoft to do) that this product is worth 150 dollars, the treasury would have to print 150 dollars per copy of the product so that microsoft could pay their workers and hoard more money. this is however not the case. microsoft has already produced so many million copies of windows. these copies will now leave the economy, their value will depreciate. Will the total value of goods in the economy increase because of windows vista?
in some ways yes, but not the ways you may think.
there are some things you have to consider
windows xp has been out for ages. nevertheless, an original copy of windows xp costs just as much now as it did in 2002.
software for windows xp has been out for xp. nevertheless, the average piece of software for xp costs just as much as it did in 2002.
how much is the value of software dependent upon the price of replacing it with new software, and how much depends on the money you would get if you sold it on ebay?
when vista is launched, the ebay price for xp software will start to fall. vista will also create a market for new versions of software and new hardware. the value of new hardware and software will be artificially high for a while. money will be printed to take account of this fact (this is what we usually call a bubble). of course, afterwards, the value will fall to what it always should have been. by which point, microsoft may have skimmed the surplus from the economy, so prohibiting inflation.
you may be wondering how this money enters the economy. well, it enters the economy just like all money enters the economy: through the government. that is the only institution which is allowed to print money. everybody else just pushes it around.
mon dieu, you've totally missed the point of foss. if you're looking for something that fits the job just as well, you can also get proprietary software B. foss is about taking responsibility for ones actions in the global world. i know it's very fashionable in a capitalist society to just look at the bottom line in this dog-eat-dog world, but you can also choose to regard the consequences your actions have on other people. society is made up of individuals. if i choose to be nice to other people, i increase the total amount of 'niceness' in the world. just as if i act to increase the power of proprietary data formats, then i am working to enslave people. okay, it is (at the moment) a very weak form of slavery, but slavery it is. at some stage you've got to stop thinking about your bottom line as an individual and start seeing the whole of the world. if no one does this, humanity is most assuredly doomed. this little totally over-the-top rant was brought to you by howie.
no, no, no. money is a token which should amount to the sum of the value of goods in the economy. by increasing the value of goods in the economy, i make it possible for the treasury to issue more notes without risking devaluation of the currency. this balance must be maintained, otherwise you get inflation.
nah, it was a zip drive.