"dark ages" aren't necessarily "the middle ages".
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Transparent Aluminium
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"namespan" writes:
MY comment was meant to refute [...]
2) this was done in the middle ages
But actually, the poster you responded to said, "the dark ages" [emphasis added]. Now, sure, that's *generally* used to mean "the middle ages", but I don't think the correspondence is absolute.
At least AFAICS, the age of Genesis -- which depicts a barbaric semi-neolithic nomadic tribe roaming the deserts of the Middle East, making up stories about how their God requires them to bash in the heads of all the *other* barbaric semi-neolithic tribes, nomadic or not, that they meet (ironically, one of the earliest parallels to the Master Race teachings of the Nazis; OK, so call Godwin on me if you want) -- I'd say that age qualifies pretty damn well to be called "dark".
ELL-Nine-Nine-Six? WTF is that supposed to mean?!?
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Disinformation.com
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It was launched in l996 by Richard Metzger [...]
The year nine-hundred-and-ninety-six of Our Lord Long Dong Silver, or what?
Get a keyboard where the "One" (1) key isn't broken, or... FUCKING LEARN TO TYPE, you bloody moron!
OK, luser, you got a job?
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Peek-a-Boo(ty)
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Then you're obviously an employee, and thus a luser.
Or are you unemployed? Well, then you're obviously a luser who can't even get a job.
Either way, your ridiculously high uid marks you as a luser.
The point is this. I like pleasant people. Pleasant people don't have to compromise their principles, or sell out.
And the point you're missing is this: The way to *become* regarded as "pleasant" _I_S_ often to compromise one's principles, or to "sell out".
In practice, this happens so often that when you encounter someone who feels *too* "pleasant", you can't help but wonder if -- heck, you petty much gotta assume that! -- he's compromised his principles, or sold out.
And that doesn't just mean source portability - it means the ability to hook into the infrastructure, to share remote objects, execute mobile IL code and participate in.NET-based networks. If you can do that, open source has the potential to break into MS dominated areas.
The infrastructure you'd be hooking into would be based on Hailstorm/Passport; the.NET-based networks you'd be increasing the user count of would possibly -- quite probably, rather -- be running at Microsoft HQ in Redmond.
Open source wouldn't so much be "breaking into" MS dominated areas, as *expanding* them, helping prop up the monopoly.
The fact is that software isn't free. Just because Richard gives his software away it doesn't mean it didn't cost *him* anything.
Sheesh, how much more clearly could you have proven that you haven't got even the most basic understanding necessary to participate in any debate like this?!?
It "isn't free" because it "cost him" something? Aha, OK, to you "free" means only "doesn't cost anything".
I wonder if you think you're a free man? Do you live in a free country?
Capitalism teaches that growth=good, and this is rarely questioned.
Considering the many parallels between economy and biology -- financial news and texts are so often couched in terms of "organic systems" and "evolution"/"natural selection"/"survival of the fittest"; the root of the words "economy" and "ecology" is the same "eco-" in both -- considering all that, and disregarding for the moment the probability (OK, near-certainty) that all kinds of "leftists" and "socialists" and assorted "eco-weenies" in general are already over-using over-using the point I am about to make...
...it is perhaps, nevertheless, appropriate to remind us here that there is a term in biology for this, too: Unlimited, uncontrolled, growth is called "cancer".
...the graphite he [Bothe] used contained minute traces of boron; second, it was this contamination that made the graphite ineffective as a moderator.
So it was the element "boron"[*], in other languages (Swedish for sure; probably German too) known as just "bor", that foiled the German attempt at an A-bomb... And whom would that element happen to be named after, you think?
Yes, in a way, it *was* Niels Bohr who stopped the Nazi Bomb project!:-)
[*]: Hmm -- wouldn't that make a good new name to call someone you want to say is both _boring_ and a _moron_?
Privacy is being allowed to go about your business without having your rights infringed upon by the state.
What *is* it with this weird assumption that some people (mostly Americans -- actually, in my experience probably *only* Americans) make, that anything evil must come from the state?!? We saw the same in the Microsoft anti-trust debates, where many posters (apparently over-dosed on Ayn Rand...) claimed that "there are no real monopolies except those granted and maintained by the state!" (And thus, in their logic, Microsoft was never a monopoly.) Where do you get this idiocy from???
In the current example (thank you for making it even more blatant!:-) one only has to ask: Are you saying a private-citizen stalker or non-government Peeping Tom wouldn't intrude on your privacy?
Eventually, every (smart) company that grows to serve more than a handful of people has to treat those customers as statistics, even though they may claim to be providing incredibly "personal" service.
Some companies are more sophisticated at using the information at their disposal, and employ teams of data miners to sift through for patterns that'll benefit their business.
Yeah, well, the problem seems to be the other way around, here: They're *saying* they treat their customers as statistics, but there is a potential for the "service" they're providing to become a little *too* personal for many people's comfort...
If you are, as you seem to be from other posts, convinced they only want to sift through *de-personalised* data for patterns, like they claim (Sorry if I'm mixing you up with some other poster here)... Then can you at least agree that it would be better if they changed their log-upload protocol so it wouldn't include any individual identification at all?
This would remove both potential "threats": Not only that they could change their minds and start selling *individual* consumption-pattern data to advertisers -- but hey, they're saying they'd never do that anyway, so that won't harm them! -- but also the (cumbersome, but apparently technically feasible today) possibility for the RIAA or MPAA or such, to track down someone who "watched that darn SlashDot movie one time too many" through their [uploaded TiVo log - ftp upload log - IP address - ISP's DHCP log].
But in either case, why expect both anonymity *and* privacy? There is no constitutional right to either.
First, I'm not so sure about that... Doesn't the Bill of Rights say something about "the right to be secure in his person" or something (or am I mixing it up with the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights?), which could be construed to mean privacy or anonymity (or even both)?
Second, why do you Merkins always assume your Constitution is the be-all and end-all of rights and morality? For one thing, as a member of the U.N, your country has (AFAIK) signed a treaty to support the above-mentioned Declaration of Human Rights; that may on some issues give you more rights than Bill and Constitution. For another, they're all just pieces of paper; laws like any other, that *can be changed*. And, if and when they are found lacking -- such as, for instance, not guaranteeing an individual's right to privacy and anonymity -- then AFAICS, they *should* be changed. Isn't that what you have the whole Constitutional Amendment process *for*? If you say, "no", implying that the Constitution should be frozen at some particular instant in time... then as of *when*? Before, or after, it was amended to make slavery illegal? (AFAIK that was legal in the original, non-amended version.) Before, or after, Prohibition was *repealed*...?:-)
If it is not clear when to use what and the usage opinions overlap, then it makes more sense to stick with *one* paradigm for consistency and training's sake.
So what you're saying is pretty much "If you're too dumb to figure out when to use a hammer and when to use a wrench or a screwdriver, then it makes more sense to stick with *only* a hammer for consistency and training's sake.", right?
Remind me not to hire you to do any carpentry for me, Bryce...
BTW, I notice another post I responded to earlier was also by you -- not "stalking", I assure you, but sheer coincidence.
Or if you absolutely want to find causation, probably something about the pattern of A: the timing of your posts, B: your Karma, C: the time I read the fora, and D: my browsing threshold -- in all, your posts showed up as "low-hanging fruit", interesting enough to "be worth" respond to, "wrong" enough (though in this case not really) to be easily corrected, and standing out by each being the last post in its browser window. That's all, really.
There is nothing inherent in information that causes it to 'want' to be free.
Actually, there is.
First, let's dispense with the anthropification inherent in using the word "wants" -- "information", being an abstract, cannot of course have any real desires -- by realizing that it's a metaphor or simplification like "the immune system 'wants' to get rid of the bacteria" or "water 'wants' to flow downhill". OK, we all on the same page now? Good!
Then what is "want" a metaphor for, or a simplification of, in this case? Well, in the case of the immune system and the bacteria, it was the biological integrity of the creature; in the case of the water flowing downhill, it was the equalization of energies, the reduction of total potential energy, in the location (and graviity field) where the water is. In both cases, it seems to be a matter of equilibrium in the system of which something (bacteria, water, "information") is part.
So what "systems" is "information" part of? Well, since the discussion began in terms of economic impacts of more or less free dissemination of information, it's clearly part of the economy, and thus that is the system whose equilibrium or equilibria (many systems, including as a prime example the economy, can have many points of equilibrium) we are concerned with here.
But then, given the above, which equilibrium is it that we should see as "desirable" or as the "goal"? Well, since the economy doesn't have any "God-given" or Natural laws that clearly describe which states it tends towards (like biology - survival and water - minimize potential energy), we have to go outside the system to examine that:
The economy being just the theory of how we, as a society, organize our activities so as to achieve the maximum possible benefit, one obvious "goal" would be "maximum benefit to society as a whole". Note that this is not advocating any particular "societally beneficial" model of economy, like Socialism or Communism -- on the contrary, the classical defense of the "Capitalist" (=Market-based) model is that it is the most efficient at achieving this goal.
So why not just apply Adam Smith's classical "Invisible Hand" model, you ask? Well, because "information" considered as goods-for-sale has one property that doesn't appear in canonical examples of the Classical model (at least not many from the era of its birth): The cost of reproduction is zero. This is where "information" differs from tangible goods, where producing pins and needles has an "opportunity cost" that means, in the end, producing more of them means the economy as a whole has to rpoduce less of something else.
Thus, as long as there is any benefit (as percieved by the recipient in spe) of producing an additional copy, the total benefit to society would increase from that copy being produced. Another way of looking at it is that it does follow the classical model exactly: Smith and his followers deduced that the "correct" price for any commodity would be equal to the marginal cost, the cost of producing one more unit -- it's just that they probably didn't consider "information" as a commodity, or any other example where that cost was zero.
So yes, in an economy tending to equilibrium, the cost of information "ought", even in Classical market-economy terms, to be zero -- and that can very well be colloquially expressed as "Information wants to be free".
If only there had been similiar rebuttals presented against MADD before they single handed criminalized alcohol consumption for every adult in America between the ages of 18 and 21.[2]
[2]Excluding military personnel, who can drink on base after enlistment
Sadly, no. On base Federal Law rules, and Federal Law states that the drinking age is 18.
Which would be why "military personnel, who can drink on base after enlistment", are Excluded from the rest of "every adult in America between the ages of 18 and 21", for whom alcohol consumption was criminalized.
...and WHAM! 132K with borland's free C++ compiler (which, as best as I can tell after searching for hours and hours for an explanation, force links the runtime whether or not you explicitely call runtime functions because they embedded the entries in the runtime)
Naah, that can't be -- *you* must be including it somehow, without noticing. I know Delphi doesn't do that: I've compiled and run a "pure-API" do-nothing "Hello World" demo[*], and that came to something like 12 KB in Delphi 3 and 16 KB in Delphi 5. (Or maybe it was 15 and 18 KB, respectively -- something like that, I can't remember.) And the compiler back-end behind Delphi and Borland C++ is the same one, so it can't be worse in C++ than in Object Pascal.
Were you using the C++ Builder IDE to do this? If so, and if the IDE behaves like Delphi's (which I think it does), then maybe you haven't checked out the "View Project Source" menu option? (Under the 'View' or 'Project' menu; in Delphi, it's been moved around between them.) If you use *that* file, and not the "Main" one, then it'll work, I think.
Hope this helps! If not, mail me -- the address is slightly munged, but I'm sure you can figure it out.
[*]: From a Charlie Calvert book, IIRC; should also be available on his Web site. Basically, it was a straight translation into (Object-, but without using any OO) Pascal syntax of Petzold's / Schildt's C "Hello World" programs, with winMain and message loop and resource file and whatnot. (And you work that way all the time? VOLUNTARILY??? Well, it takes all sorts, I guess...:-)
Also, almost all of this individual's "articles" are taken from the Bugzilla entries and Mozilla mainsite postings. They have little foundation in actual fact.
Did you READ that after you wrote, but before you posted, it?!?
Because what you're saying seems to be that... Bugzilla entries and Mozilla mainsite postings have little to do with actual fact!
"MxTxl" is apparently being -- or at least trying to be -- sarcastic when s/he/it writes:
Isn't that just SO like a lawyer, to want to get paid for his work, i mean sheesh, what arrogance.
To want to get paid for his work by someone who didn't order said work, yes, that seems like a freaking lawyer-only thing to do. "Hullo, I'm from Joe's Landscaping. We saw your garden when we were driving by, and didn't like the design, so we've remodeled it for you. Here's the bill!" Would you find that reasonable, and start spouting your sarcastic "wit" at those who were outraged by it?
These lawyer scum were even worse, BTW: "Joe's Landscaping" may be wrong, but at least they thought they were doing something good for you. These fuckwits, OTOH, were working against the person(s) they were trying to charge for their work.
You have to be pretty damn blind, not to see that in this case, any and all "lawyer-bashing" is damn well justified.
Christian R. Conrad
My ISP is the Saunalahti company, of Finland.
Just wondering, because Delphi hasn't stood still since version 3 (or 2?) or whatever your "friends who used to be Delphi programmers" [emphasis added] last used it, either.
Christian R. Conrad
My ISP is the Saunalahti company, of Finland.
If you're a member of the Borland Community (free, sign up at http://www.community.borland.com), you'll get that discount. Dunno if that's only pre-existing Community members, or if you can still get it if you sign up now... Maybe before the official start of sales, which I dunno either if you've already had in the US. (Here in.fi, I've got until the 13th of February to order at a beta-testers discount [probably the same rate?] -- and you bet I will!)
What's "missing" from the "Open" version, compared to the "Desktop Developer" one, seems to be only the ability to deploy your apps under licenses other than the GPL. And come on, now... The morons posting at -1 are screaming about how even that "suxx", they want that too for free -- but if you aren't going to play by Free Software rules yourself, shouldn't you *expect* to pay *something* for your tools too?!?
That's all they have left to sell, seeing as they are giving away practically everything (well OK, not the extra components in the high-end "Server Developer" edition) else -- and, hey, they're a commercial company, so they *have* to earn *some* revenue, somehow!
All in all, it seems like a damn fair deal to me.
(With one possible caveat: Will they dual-license the high-end server components too? So I could release an app under the GPL even if I use my bought-and-paid-for [soon!:-]) Server edition, without having to refrain from using the "upper half" of it? The GPL probably wouldn't work -- that would be the same as giving it away for free to everyone who bought the Desktop edition -- but perhaps LGPL? This bears thinking about some more... Which Borland probably already has done. And, you know what? Given how they've bent over backwards to be "Open" in the rest of this, I actually *trust* them to have come up with a fair and as-Free-as-possible solution!)
Christian R. Conrad
My ISP is the Saunalahti company, of Finland.
Ignoring your blatent insult, I will respond. I'll guess that you disagree with my reasoning and were thus incensed.
Yup, your "reasoning" looked like Jerry-bashing to me, so I flew off my handle. Sorry about that. (I guess I am too easily "incensed", at that...)
I could buy a car and see what was in it, most definitely, but if I really wanted to compete on a technological level, then buying the company, getting all their current research and data and being able to see the direction of their plans, and then applying that to their own car is miles better.
Naah, that's not the way it works, not really.
Not when it comes to off-road cars -- heck, there just aren't that many "secrets" to be discovered in that area, from scrutinizing the competition's "plans".
And I'm sure BMW knew, even six years ago, that they would take their own development on that front in quite a different direction than Land/Range Rover; the X5 is much more of a "Softie-SUV"-style vehicle (like the Merc M-Class) than a "real" off-roader like the Rovers.
No, they had quite another reason to buy the company.
They didn't buy it a decade ago, it was six years ago, and the TENS OF BILLIONS OF DEUTSCHE MARK was heavily subsidised by the UK government.
OK, OK, I guess it's just that it feels as if they've been pumping money into it since forever...
Because they have, really -- the UK government's subsidies were partly a direct rebate on the buying price, and partly contributions to refurbishing old (and opening new?) factories, like Western European governments always do when the Press starts yelling about "X THOUSAND JOBS AT RISK!!!" (and the big Western European corporations are always so quick to accept, in marked contrast to their moaning about those same governments when it comes to taxation... But I digress).
But apart from that, they really did lose (yes, let's keep the capitals:-) TENS OF BILLIONS OF DEUTSCHE MARK -- after they'd bought the company, and put some of their own and some of the British tax-payers' money into its factories, it went on making substantial losses, year after year. And those losses were directly borne by the mother company, BMW.
BMW originally posited that they bought Rover to give them an entry into the midrange car market, and historically Rover had been good, but as you point out, it was a money-hemorrhaging corporation when they bought it: a sound investment
Yeah, well, AFAICR they originally "posited" that A) they wanted an entry into the midrange- and smaller car market, B) they thought Mercedes' way of doing it, expanding the same marque's model range downward, would dilute the status value of the brand so they wanted to expand specifically by buying other brands, and C) the British automobile industry was just generally "worth saving". What they didn't say, but which was pretty much an "open secret" the whole time, was that the last point there was possibly just for sentimental reasons on the part of the (now ex-)MD, Bernd Pischetsrieder.
Be that as it may, but the main point is that their strategists and bean-counters, quite simply, made an honest mistake: They thought they were going to be able to stop the money-hemorrhaging, but they couldn't.
I don't think so, so you have to look at the other reasons why it was bought, and perhaps read between the lines a little. To me I can see the distinct advantage of paying what they have done, so they can create their own off-roader, which will make them money hand over fist.
Naah, you're veering into Invisible Black Helicopter territory there. Trust me, designing a car like the BMW X5 -- or the Landie Disco, for that matter -- isn't exactly "rocket science" (or rather, it is, for as Isaac Asimov [or was it Robert Heinlein?] once pointed out, the popular usage of that expression is silly, because rocket science is actually rather simple).
In fact, it's pretty insulting of you to persist in this not-so-implied claim that all the Herr Ingenieurs at the Bayerische Motoren-Werke wouldn't be able to come up with something like that on their own, without help from Solihull.
Look at the share of the market that Chrysler had in Europe before they started importing the Jeep and Wrangler to Europe.. And before you say that the market is becoming saturated, it isn't with BMW SUVs.
Huh? No, of course not -- the X5 isn't even on sale outside of the USA yet, is it? But the Jeep brand (of which I thought Wrangler was just one model [basically, the old classic, CJ5/7], so what's with the "and"?), which has always been present in some rather rarefied numbers and isn't much more frequent now -- that certainly isn't what turned them around in Europe.
(Not outside Britain, at least; maybe you have peculiar conditions there? [Of course you do; you can't even drive on the right side of the road! >:]) The Cirrus and Stratus, and above all the Neon, that's what's stopped Chrysler from total extinction this side of the Pond. (Heck, even the PT Cruiser is represented here in Helsinki, already!:-)
My point was that it had nothing to do with Betcour's implication that if a Japanese car firm stays in Britain it will end up like Rover. It depends on the CARS being produced and where they aim in the market not whether they are being produced in Britain.
Sorry, but I'm inclined to think maybe he did have a point after all...
Want me to dig up a Usenet post I saw recently about the British (specifically, Rover) automobile worker's wonderful "work ethics"?Hope this works. (Yes, there was a pretty "incensed" reply by yours truly then, too.)
Christian R. Conrad
My ISP is the Saunalahti company, of Finland.
...they'll go off and start their own [revolution]. That's precisely what the XEmacs people did, and that's precisely what the KDE people did... and that's what Eric Raymond did. And that's what a lot of people are doing.
And that's why a lot of people are going to be wrong; just as wrong as the KDE bunch and, for that matter, Eric Raymond.
They're going their own way because the Old Guard won't give an inch.
But some things are black-and-white, Chris.
As Captain Sheridan said, "No compromise with the Shadow -- not on my watch!" (Sorry, quoting from memory there.)
RMS is bloody well right here; it's too bad so many see that as just a "minor detail" to be glossed over and forgotten.
Christian R. Conrad
My ISP is the Saunalahti company, of Finland.
If I recall, BMW bought that [Rover] to get hold of the technology to build it's own version of the Range Rover, not caring whether it actually survived or not and once it had the information, discarded it.
No, that certainly wasn't it.
Wouldn't it have been cheaper and smarter for them to buy *a* Range Rover -- or a hundred! -- in stead of the whole company, if that was what they wanted?
Compared to taking over a whole money-hemmorhaging giant corporation, I mean, and pumping in TENS OF BILLIONS OF DEUTSCHE MARK over a decade or so, to subsidise its losses...!
That doesn't look like "not caring whether it actually survived or not" to me.
And as for "it's own version of the Range Rover", the BMW X5 has pretty much *nothing* in common with the Rangie, so you're wrong as Hell there, too.
(The only thing BMW *did* hold on to, AFAIK, was the Mini brand-name. Hell knows how much good that'll do 'em, though...)
Christian R. Conrad
My ISP is the Saunalahti company, of Finland.
Slashdot Mirror
At least AFAICS, the age of Genesis -- which depicts a barbaric semi-neolithic nomadic tribe roaming the deserts of the Middle East, making up stories about how their God requires them to bash in the heads of all the *other* barbaric semi-neolithic tribes, nomadic or not, that they meet (ironically, one of the earliest parallels to the Master Race teachings of the Nazis; OK, so call Godwin on me if you want) -- I'd say that age qualifies pretty damn well to be called "dark".
Get a keyboard where the "One" (1) key isn't broken, or... FUCKING LEARN TO TYPE, you bloody moron!
Then you're obviously an employee, and thus a luser.
Or are you unemployed? Well, then you're obviously a luser who can't even get a job.
Either way, your ridiculously high uid marks you as a luser.
In practice, this happens so often that when you encounter someone who feels *too* "pleasant", you can't help but wonder if -- heck, you petty much gotta assume that! -- he's compromised his principles, or sold out.
Open source wouldn't so much be "breaking into" MS dominated areas, as *expanding* them, helping prop up the monopoly.
Don't do it.
It "isn't free" because it "cost him" something? Aha, OK, to you "free" means only "doesn't cost anything".
I wonder if you think you're a free man? Do you live in a free country?
Do you have ANY fucking clue?
Yes, in a way, it *was* Niels Bohr who stopped the Nazi Bomb project!
[*]: Hmm -- wouldn't that make a good new name to call someone you want to say is both _boring_ and a _moron_?
In the current example (thank you for making it even more blatant!
Yeah, well, the problem seems to be the other way around, here: They're *saying* they treat their customers as statistics, but there is a potential for the "service" they're providing to become a little *too* personal for many people's comfort...
If you are, as you seem to be from other posts, convinced they only want to sift through *de-personalised* data for patterns, like they claim (Sorry if I'm mixing you up with some other poster here)... Then can you at least agree that it would be better if they changed their log-upload protocol so it wouldn't include any individual identification at all?
This would remove both potential "threats": Not only that they could change their minds and start selling *individual* consumption-pattern data to advertisers -- but hey, they're saying they'd never do that anyway, so that won't harm them! -- but also the (cumbersome, but apparently technically feasible today) possibility for the RIAA or MPAA or such, to track down someone who "watched that darn SlashDot movie one time too many" through their [uploaded TiVo log - ftp upload log - IP address - ISP's DHCP log].
First, I'm not so sure about that... Doesn't the Bill of Rights say something about "the right to be secure in his person" or something (or am I mixing it up with the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights?), which could be construed to mean privacy or anonymity (or even both)?
Second, why do you Merkins always assume your Constitution is the be-all and end-all of rights and morality? For one thing, as a member of the U.N, your country has (AFAIK) signed a treaty to support the above-mentioned Declaration of Human Rights; that may on some issues give you more rights than Bill and Constitution. For another, they're all just pieces of paper; laws like any other, that *can be changed*. And, if and when they are found lacking -- such as, for instance, not guaranteeing an individual's right to privacy and anonymity -- then AFAICS, they *should* be changed. Isn't that what you have the whole Constitutional Amendment process *for*? If you say, "no", implying that the Constitution should be frozen at some particular instant in time... then as of *when*? Before, or after, it was amended to make slavery illegal? (AFAIK that was legal in the original, non-amended version.) Before, or after, Prohibition was *repealed*...?
Remind me not to hire you to do any carpentry for me, Bryce...
BTW, I notice another post I responded to earlier was also by you -- not "stalking", I assure you, but sheer coincidence.
Or if you absolutely want to find causation, probably something about the pattern of A: the timing of your posts, B: your Karma, C: the time I read the fora, and D: my browsing threshold -- in all, your posts showed up as "low-hanging fruit", interesting enough to "be worth" respond to, "wrong" enough (though in this case not really) to be easily corrected, and standing out by each being the last post in its browser window. That's all, really.
First, let's dispense with the anthropification inherent in using the word "wants" -- "information", being an abstract, cannot of course have any real desires -- by realizing that it's a metaphor or simplification like "the immune system 'wants' to get rid of the bacteria" or "water 'wants' to flow downhill". OK, we all on the same page now? Good!
Then what is "want" a metaphor for, or a simplification of, in this case? Well, in the case of the immune system and the bacteria, it was the biological integrity of the creature; in the case of the water flowing downhill, it was the equalization of energies, the reduction of total potential energy, in the location (and graviity field) where the water is. In both cases, it seems to be a matter of equilibrium in the system of which something (bacteria, water, "information") is part.
So what "systems" is "information" part of? Well, since the discussion began in terms of economic impacts of more or less free dissemination of information, it's clearly part of the economy, and thus that is the system whose equilibrium or equilibria (many systems, including as a prime example the economy, can have many points of equilibrium) we are concerned with here.
But then, given the above, which equilibrium is it that we should see as "desirable" or as the "goal"? Well, since the economy doesn't have any "God-given" or Natural laws that clearly describe which states it tends towards (like biology - survival and water - minimize potential energy), we have to go outside the system to examine that:
The economy being just the theory of how we, as a society, organize our activities so as to achieve the maximum possible benefit, one obvious "goal" would be "maximum benefit to society as a whole". Note that this is not advocating any particular "societally beneficial" model of economy, like Socialism or Communism -- on the contrary, the classical defense of the "Capitalist" (=Market-based) model is that it is the most efficient at achieving this goal.
So why not just apply Adam Smith's classical "Invisible Hand" model, you ask? Well, because "information" considered as goods-for-sale has one property that doesn't appear in canonical examples of the Classical model (at least not many from the era of its birth): The cost of reproduction is zero. This is where "information" differs from tangible goods, where producing pins and needles has an "opportunity cost" that means, in the end, producing more of them means the economy as a whole has to rpoduce less of something else.
Thus, as long as there is any benefit (as percieved by the recipient in spe) of producing an additional copy, the total benefit to society would increase from that copy being produced. Another way of looking at it is that it does follow the classical model exactly: Smith and his followers deduced that the "correct" price for any commodity would be equal to the marginal cost, the cost of producing one more unit -- it's just that they probably didn't consider "information" as a commodity, or any other example where that cost was zero.
So yes, in an economy tending to equilibrium, the cost of information "ought", even in Classical market-economy terms, to be zero -- and that can very well be colloquially expressed as "Information wants to be free".
Were you using the C++ Builder IDE to do this? If so, and if the IDE behaves like Delphi's (which I think it does), then maybe you haven't checked out the "View Project Source" menu option? (Under the 'View' or 'Project' menu; in Delphi, it's been moved around between them.) If you use *that* file, and not the "Main" one, then it'll work, I think.
Hope this helps! If not, mail me -- the address is slightly munged, but I'm sure you can figure it out.
[*]: From a Charlie Calvert book, IIRC; should also be available on his Web site. Basically, it was a straight translation into (Object-, but without using any OO) Pascal syntax of Petzold's / Schildt's C "Hello World" programs, with winMain and message loop and resource file and whatnot. (And you work that way all the time? VOLUNTARILY??? Well, it takes all sorts, I guess...
Christian R. Conrad
My ISP is the Saunalahti company, of Finland.
...of Delphi had your friends been using?
Just wondering, because Delphi hasn't stood still since version 3 (or 2?) or whatever your "friends who used to be Delphi programmers" [emphasis added] last used it, either.
Christian R. Conrad
My ISP is the Saunalahti company, of Finland.
If you're a member of the Borland Community (free, sign up at http://www.community.borland.com), you'll get that discount. Dunno if that's only pre-existing Community members, or if you can still get it if you sign up now... Maybe before the official start of sales, which I dunno either if you've already had in the US. (Here in .fi, I've got until the 13th of February to order at a beta-testers discount [probably the same rate?] -- and you bet I will!)
:-]) Server edition, without having to refrain from using the "upper half" of it? The GPL probably wouldn't work -- that would be the same as giving it away for free to everyone who bought the Desktop edition -- but perhaps LGPL? This bears thinking about some more... Which Borland probably already has done. And, you know what? Given how they've bent over backwards to be "Open" in the rest of this, I actually *trust* them to have come up with a fair and as-Free-as-possible solution!)
What's "missing" from the "Open" version, compared to the "Desktop Developer" one, seems to be only the ability to deploy your apps under licenses other than the GPL. And come on, now... The morons posting at -1 are screaming about how even that "suxx", they want that too for free -- but if you aren't going to play by Free Software rules yourself, shouldn't you *expect* to pay *something* for your tools too?!?
That's all they have left to sell, seeing as they are giving away practically everything (well OK, not the extra components in the high-end "Server Developer" edition) else -- and, hey, they're a commercial company, so they *have* to earn *some* revenue, somehow!
All in all, it seems like a damn fair deal to me.
(With one possible caveat: Will they dual-license the high-end server components too? So I could release an app under the GPL even if I use my bought-and-paid-for [soon!
Christian R. Conrad
My ISP is the Saunalahti company, of Finland.
Yup, your "reasoning" looked like Jerry-bashing to me, so I flew off my handle. Sorry about that. (I guess I am too easily "incensed", at that...)
Naah, that's not the way it works, not really.
Not when it comes to off-road cars -- heck, there just aren't that many "secrets" to be discovered in that area, from scrutinizing the competition's "plans".
And I'm sure BMW knew, even six years ago, that they would take their own development on that front in quite a different direction than Land/Range Rover; the X5 is much more of a "Softie-SUV"-style vehicle (like the Merc M-Class) than a "real" off-roader like the Rovers.
No, they had quite another reason to buy the company.
OK, OK, I guess it's just that it feels as if they've been pumping money into it since forever...
Because they have, really -- the UK government's subsidies were partly a direct rebate on the buying price, and partly contributions to refurbishing old (and opening new?) factories, like Western European governments always do when the Press starts yelling about "X THOUSAND JOBS AT RISK!!!" (and the big Western European corporations are always so quick to accept, in marked contrast to their moaning about those same governments when it comes to taxation... But I digress).
But apart from that, they really did lose (yes, let's keep the capitals :-) TENS OF BILLIONS OF DEUTSCHE MARK -- after they'd bought the company, and put some of their own and some of the British tax-payers' money into its factories, it went on making substantial losses, year after year. And those losses were directly borne by the mother company, BMW.
Yeah, well, AFAICR they originally "posited" that A) they wanted an entry into the midrange- and smaller car market, B) they thought Mercedes' way of doing it, expanding the same marque's model range downward, would dilute the status value of the brand so they wanted to expand specifically by buying other brands, and C) the British automobile industry was just generally "worth saving". What they didn't say, but which was pretty much an "open secret" the whole time, was that the last point there was possibly just for sentimental reasons on the part of the (now ex-)MD, Bernd Pischetsrieder.
Be that as it may, but the main point is that their strategists and bean-counters, quite simply, made an honest mistake: They thought they were going to be able to stop the money-hemorrhaging, but they couldn't.
Naah, you're veering into Invisible Black Helicopter territory there. Trust me, designing a car like the BMW X5 -- or the Landie Disco, for that matter -- isn't exactly "rocket science" (or rather, it is, for as Isaac Asimov [or was it Robert Heinlein?] once pointed out, the popular usage of that expression is silly, because rocket science is actually rather simple).
In fact, it's pretty insulting of you to persist in this not-so-implied claim that all the Herr Ingenieurs at the Bayerische Motoren-Werke wouldn't be able to come up with something like that on their own, without help from Solihull.
Huh? No, of course not -- the X5 isn't even on sale outside of the USA yet, is it? But the Jeep brand (of which I thought Wrangler was just one model [basically, the old classic, CJ5/7], so what's with the "and"?), which has always been present in some rather rarefied numbers and isn't much more frequent now -- that certainly isn't what turned them around in Europe.
(Not outside Britain, at least; maybe you have peculiar conditions there? [Of course you do; you can't even drive on the right side of the road! >:]) The Cirrus and Stratus, and above all the Neon, that's what's stopped Chrysler from total extinction this side of the Pond. (Heck, even the PT Cruiser is represented here in Helsinki, already! :-)
Sorry, but I'm inclined to think maybe he did have a point after all...
Want me to dig up a Usenet post I saw recently about the British (specifically, Rover) automobile worker's wonderful "work ethics"? Hope this works. (Yes, there was a pretty "incensed" reply by yours truly then, too.)
Christian R. Conrad
My ISP is the Saunalahti company, of Finland.
And that's why a lot of people are going to be wrong; just as wrong as the KDE bunch and, for that matter, Eric Raymond.
But some things are black-and-white, Chris.
As Captain Sheridan said, "No compromise with the Shadow -- not on my watch!" (Sorry, quoting from memory there.)
RMS is bloody well right here; it's too bad so many see that as just a "minor detail" to be glossed over and forgotten.
Christian R. Conrad
My ISP is the Saunalahti company, of Finland.
Christian R. Conrad
My ISP is the Saunalahti company, of Finland.
På inglisch, inte "and I who thought...".
Nå, tur du läser dina svar, så ser du det här.
Christian R. Conrad
My ISP is the Saunalahti company, of Finland.
Christian R. Conrad
My ISP is the Saunalahti company, of Finland.
Christian R. Conrad
My ISP is the Saunalahti company, of Finland.