I think (and I have some biblical backing) on thinking the days of creation aren't a 24 hour period, but rather millions or billions of years long.
That depends on how you translate the Hebrew word transliterated as yom and its other uses throughout at least the Torah, if you're into historical criticism.
It's only "nearly free" if you ignore the high cost of producing the software in the first place.
That's irrelevant to the cost of duplication.
Why shouldn't we be able to make money by selling software?
I never said you shouldn't. I never said you should. I said that applying copyright to information introduces an artificial scarcity where none exists.
I don't see why "it can be copied for next to nothing" is relevant.
It's incredibly relevant if you want to have a conversation about the true value of software and which parts of the process of "selling" software actually produce value and consume resources.
True, and many times proprietary software requires lots of extra time for activation, licensing, patching, finding fixes for bugs, etc.
This is very bad way to compare licensing and distribution models of software. These criticisms are inspecific and vague and have direct similarities to criticisms of software distributed under the opposite model.
My point is that you have research and implementation time with both. Unless the problem is so well explored that there's one obvious proprietary solution, you'll probably have to evaluate several different products regardless of whether you choose proprietary or free software.
With OSS, you typically have to look online to find solutions to problems that you might be able to just pay someone to give you with a proprietary app.
With proprietary apps, you typically have to look to find someone to pay for a solution that you might just be able to find free online with OSS.
Yes, and if they'd been busy, on vacation, or sick, you wouldn't have got a minute of help.
Yes, and if the system had been a small customer who couldn't (or wouldn't) pay for top-tier support, or if your company determined that the problem wasn't a mission-critical failure, would you have provided your tip-top 24-hour bugfix support?
Value for money ? I'll leave that for someone else to discuss.
Want to discuss value for everyone, regardless of ability to pay?
If you want better art and a similar story "Stardust" also by Neil Gaiman (can't remember the artist) had a lot more effort put into it than could be done with a monthly comic.
What pieces of the Linux kernel are contained in hardware drivers?
That would be Linux-specific headers and all executable code in them that isn't strictly part of POSIX, Bobs.
Take an out of tree kernel driver. Compile it against Linux kernel headers. Then compile it against a clean-room reimplementation of the same headers. Now compare the resulting binaries.
If the binaries are bit-for-bit the same, then the binary is not a derivative work of the Linux kernel, and you can make the legal argument that you can redistribute it without any GPL concerns. If there's even a bit of difference, then the binary is a derivative work of at least the kernel headers, and their copyright terms apply to the binary.
The derivative work status of the driver source code is another matter -- but if companies distributed that source code, few people would complain.
... at least Microsoft didn't shaft driver developers simply because they disapprove of the way they license their own product(see the whole GPL export debacle a few years back).
Nit: the kernel developers disapprove of people changing the license on derivative works of the Linux kernel.
Re:So when do we get its successor?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
the network transparency layer (among other things) creates so much overhead it was a pain to use X11 until relatively recently.
Have you measured the cost of network transparency, and would you be willing to debate Jim Gettys and Keith Packard about that being one of the bottlenecks? (This is one of the persistent myths of X11.)
Lest we think this is due to any failing on the part of ESR, he informs us that he chose to remain out of the spotlight, in order to serve the greater good.
In fact, a large number of CS majors apparently believe that everything can be implemented in a virtual machine and that both memory and [CPU] cycles are infinite.
How would you expect a normal person to compile their own programs via command line input of a software they have to download at distribution sites?
No one does; this is why programs such as Synaptic exist.
Heck, I have a masters in CS from a Top 10 compsci university in the US, and sometimes I wonder if i have all the library files I need to make the gcc work flawlessly.
sudo aptitude install build-essential
Apple proved to us that given the right interface, people WILL embrace Unix. People are not anti-open source, but they're very much anti-command-line.
Which parts of Mac OS X have people embraced but are not command-line?
He really should be comparing the merits of ext3 against ZFS, the future, not the past.
It's difficult to discuss the merits of software that Apple hasn't shipped yet. Who knows how ZFS will interact with Darwin or the rest of their system?
Spam is not annoying any more.... So you say all this spam is clogging up bandwidth? Well I bet it's still nothing compared with the bandwidth consumed by file sharing and video web sites.
Actually, it's not. Have you written any Perl 6 code?
There are other silly changes like this, that don't add any new features, they just change it because they thought it would look less ugly that way.
The justification for every change is publicly available in the appropriate Synopsis. Having written the minutes for nearly every Perl 6 design meeting for the past five years, I can't name one "silly change" made arbitrarily. I suspect you can't either.
On the other side, they didn't change Perl's most ugly side, which is that every variable is global by default!
Complete nonsense. That was one of the first changes to Perl 6.
But the result is a language that still has the same shortcomings of Perl 5, and on the other hand, is completely different than Perl 5, in a way that you have to relearn everything you had learned before.
Either one of us knows very little about Perl 6, or your use of the words "completely" and "everything" is very different from my understanding of those words.
If you want my opinion, Perl 6 will fail (not trolling here, just what I really think).
You have one of the simplest and earliest changes to Perl 6 completely backwards! Why should anyone believe anything more complex that you say about the language?
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That depends on how you translate the Hebrew word transliterated as yom and its other uses throughout at least the Torah, if you're into historical criticism.
Yeah, like Zoroast... oh wait.
That's irrelevant to the cost of duplication.
I never said you shouldn't. I never said you should. I said that applying copyright to information introduces an artificial scarcity where none exists.
It's incredibly relevant if you want to have a conversation about the true value of software and which parts of the process of "selling" software actually produce value and consume resources.
True, and many times proprietary software requires lots of extra time for activation, licensing, patching, finding fixes for bugs, etc.
This is very bad way to compare licensing and distribution models of software. These criticisms are inspecific and vague and have direct similarities to criticisms of software distributed under the opposite model.
My point is that you have research and implementation time with both. Unless the problem is so well explored that there's one obvious proprietary solution, you'll probably have to evaluate several different products regardless of whether you choose proprietary or free software.
Artificial scarcity for infinite, nearly-free, bit-perfect copies, for example.
With proprietary apps, you typically have to look to find someone to pay for a solution that you might just be able to find free online with OSS.
I think you mean "milkshake".
Wait... how do you pronounce Eclipse?
Yes, and if the system had been a small customer who couldn't (or wouldn't) pay for top-tier support, or if your company determined that the problem wasn't a mission-critical failure, would you have provided your tip-top 24-hour bugfix support?
Want to discuss value for everyone, regardless of ability to pay?
Heat. Living things grow in the Columbia River.
AI has been 20 years away every year for the past 50 years. What makes this year any different?
Charles Vess.
That would be Linux-specific headers and all executable code in them that isn't strictly part of POSIX, Bobs.
Take an out of tree kernel driver. Compile it against Linux kernel headers. Then compile it against a clean-room reimplementation of the same headers. Now compare the resulting binaries.
If the binaries are bit-for-bit the same, then the binary is not a derivative work of the Linux kernel, and you can make the legal argument that you can redistribute it without any GPL concerns. If there's even a bit of difference, then the binary is a derivative work of at least the kernel headers, and their copyright terms apply to the binary.
The derivative work status of the driver source code is another matter -- but if companies distributed that source code, few people would complain.
Nit: the kernel developers disapprove of people changing the license on derivative works of the Linux kernel.
Have you measured the cost of network transparency, and would you be willing to debate Jim Gettys and Keith Packard about that being one of the bottlenecks? (This is one of the persistent myths of X11.)
Imagine if he'd actually sought the spotlight.
More properly, "The difference between an education heavy on theory and a vocational program."
Good for them; Alan Turing believed it too.
Mac OS X will never be ready for the desktop while it requires users to use the command-line to... oh, too easy?
Because it's a monumentally stupid idea.
No one does; this is why programs such as Synaptic exist.
sudo aptitude install build-essential
Which parts of Mac OS X have people embraced but are not command-line?
It's difficult to discuss the merits of software that Apple hasn't shipped yet. Who knows how ZFS will interact with Darwin or the rest of their system?
What are these boxes to the left of me without GUIs even installed running then?
I bet you've never run a mail server.
Actually, it's not. Have you written any Perl 6 code?
The justification for every change is publicly available in the appropriate Synopsis. Having written the minutes for nearly every Perl 6 design meeting for the past five years, I can't name one "silly change" made arbitrarily. I suspect you can't either.
Complete nonsense. That was one of the first changes to Perl 6.
Either one of us knows very little about Perl 6, or your use of the words "completely" and "everything" is very different from my understanding of those words.
You have one of the simplest and earliest changes to Perl 6 completely backwards! Why should anyone believe anything more complex that you say about the language?