Over the long-term they do. However, in any set period of time, they commonly rise, due to various economic forces. Well, you did mention prices from 5 years ago, not last year.
Since the spec change is at least minimally related to the price increase, there's no way not to mention it simultaneously. So, is the price change inflation or a spec change? Why did they change the spec if it was going to raise prices? Which leads to the Microsoft question...
As for Microsoft's announcement, I don't see what control the OLPC guys have as to what Microsoft says and does. The original story had the announcement coming from Negroponte, not Microsoft:
"The founder of the ambitious "$100 laptop" project, which plans to give inexpensive computers to schoolchildren in developing countries, revealed Thursday that the machine for now costs $175, and it will be able to run Windows in addition to its homegrown, open-source interface."
The latest story doesn't detail why the specs were changed, nor does it even refute that the specs were changed to make the laptop compatible with Microsoft. It just states rather murkily that there's no agreement to put Windows on XO.
"The One Laptop Per Child's tiny XO computer got an added boost from its maker specifically to enable it to run Microsoft Windows, says the project's founder Nicholas Negroponte."
And if you quit your job, for ethical reasons or otherwise, I don't think you're eligible for unemployment. Then don't quit. Refuse the order and force them to fire you.
I could understand if somebody had no prospects and absolutely needed the job. Then again, there are lots of people in the IT industry who are not in this situation, yet will compromise themselves because they do not want to take any risk. This kind of thinking by people everywhere leads to a downward spiral in the system as a whole.
I once worked for a financial company where they decided they needed to institute a random drug-testing policy. Nobody was happy about it, yet nobody complained to management. I told the company it was unacceptable and that I would resign when the policy went into place. Lots of people said they respected what I was doing, and you could tell they felt some shame, because they made a point of telling me their excuses about "family to think about", etc. Complete bullshit, they just didn't want to be inconvienced and take any risk.
Funny thing is the company never followed through on the policy. Just having one employee make a stand made them rethink their position.
I'd have to say inflation. It's not the project's fault that it takes $175USD to buy something that cost $125 ~5 years ago... Computer hardware prices in general have always gone down, with better specs, in spite of inflation. Then again, I don't believe the price shot up to $175 purely out of a spec change. The $100 price was always a stated goal, but the organizers made it clear early on that they would probably not get there on day one.
Still, the spec change, the price increase, and the Microsoft announcement coming all at the same time is fishy. At best, it's awful public relations. At worst, it's a corruption of principles.
Unless you're sitting there watching the guy make it, how do you really know what's in it?
I knew somebody who used to do temp work for a "kosher" caterer, and not all that went on was kosher. Reading this thread just reminds me to buy meat that isn't preground. Doesn't mean it doesn't have other problems, but at least I know it isn't scrap meat mixed with spices.
So they say their work is free for anybody to use, without payment, and then they get all bitchy when they aren't paid for their work? And they resort to gimmicks like trying to copyright an ISO image?
The last driver I worked on had 3 embedded compilers, a full OS abstraction layer, garbage collector, and more than one look-up table. A good example of Greenspun's Tenth Rule
Thanks for your reply. In my particular case, the options were for a private company, so there were no SEC filings to look up on a website. I imagine any investor for a private company would want the same information I'm looking for -- that is, just what are they getting for their investment? An investor certainly has more clout when it comes to getting these answers, but a potential employee should be able to get these same answers.
I agree it's a bad law, and Google is one of the companies against it, but this little bit from the article is interesting:
All lawmakers want is for Google to protect other brands the way they shield their own, Eastman said.
If a company tries to buy the trigger rights to the word Google, the following message pops up: "Due to trademark reasons, we do not allow advertisers to use 'Google' in their Google AdWords ads. This term may be trademarked either for a certain product or service category and may apply only in certain countries."
MySQL makes more money by licensing it as GPL as well, but not because the license benefits them directly, but because it benefits customers who would otherwise not have paid them at all. Err, I really don't understand what you are getting at. By choosing the GPL, MySQL gained a lot of free press and mindshare, allowing them to sell to companies who otherwise would probably never have heard of them in an already crowded market. Choosing the GPL was a strategy to generate more sales. Period. Otherwise they would not have done it. How can you argue with $50 million in revenue for a GPL'd product? Do you really think they could have sold that much without the free GPL buzz?
[The threat of fork] is exactly why it is not long-term sustainable business model in a mature market. It works for emerging markets, but eventually it will fail. Software doesn't stand still. Even in something as age-old as databases, new features are constantly being added. There is always room for innovation. Red Hat, MySQL, Trolltech, etc. have been around for an awfully long time, selling GPD'd software. Sure, a fork could succeed, it's a risk, but there's no guarantee it will in the long run.
I think RedHat is going to be in serious trouble if Linux ever takes off It has taken off already, on the server-side backend. That's why Red Hat sells "Enterprise" versions of Linux. Supposedly you are buying support, but they use trademark poisoning to take away your GPL freedoms, relicensing the OS so that you cannot install the OS on as many boxes as you want, or copy the software freely. That's why distributions like CentOS have to spend a month disentangling the Red Hat trademark from the software. So Red Hat has moved beyond the vanilla support model, because they weren't selling enough.
Mozilla has a sustainable business plan. They do work on contract and make funds from ancillary sources like advertising via Google. They can be forked just like anybody else. What is Google really paying them for? Once the Google toolbar is part of Firefox, Mozilla doesn't have a monopoly. How is Mozilla's situation different than any other GPL-based company? They own what all the other GPL companies own -- a brand name, and (possibly) copyright ownership if they want to sell a non-GPL version. I say possibly because I'm not sure if Mozilla has maintained tight copyright ownership. I did a search but couldn't see if they required you to sign over the code when submitting patches.
Recently I was quite proud of the fellow who develops Torrent, weighing in at 173kb, while every other torrent client for Windows is at least 5-6 mb, or even 20mb+ for Azureus (filthy Java). And do the users care? How much longer did it take to get down to 173kb? Did the final product suffer in any way, as far as features, bugs, or maintainability? All these questions matter.
All you can see is wasted bytes and CPU cycles. You are an optimization addict. You never once in this thread mentioned any tradeoffs involved in optimization. I like small and fast stuff too, but I always try to keep in mind the costs involved in getting there. Anyways, I'm tired of going in circles. This is my last post.
I think the main thing about OSS licensing that people coming from a closed source sales model mistake is that OSS is not a way to get more money from software you develop. And later this day a story comes out that puts MySQL revenue at $50 million. I'm sure some of that money comes from companies who buy the product under a commercial license because they can't use GPL.
It is not a good business move to open source your code instead of selling it as closed source, unless the cash you get from selling it is not worth the trouble or using the software is more important to you than selling it or if you need a way to make your product better than a competitor and are willing to change to a less profitable model to do it. Trolltech seems to be doing ok with the dual-license model, too. What you are missing is that lots of companies will pay to get a non-GPL version of the code, while at the same time the developer gets open-source marketing and support for free. The only limitation is the threat of fork and that they can only take code submissions where the copyright is assigned to them.
Then there's Red Hat, who manages to sell GPL'd code they don't own, and Mozilla/Firefox, who makes $50 million a year from Google, but I digress.
I particularly like this quote from a DMCA discussion, in reference to the media industry: "[..]all data that can be shared will be shared: get used to it." That means your personal data, too. "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." -- Scott McNealy.
Now, what are your problems? My problem is that any way you slice it, you are by no means poor or low class, and whining that you are is insulting to those struggling to make ends meet. Your college loans won't last forever. Your salary will likely increase, if you are early in your career. You can afford to put away thousands of dollars a year into savings. You don't know what poor is. If you want to learn what poor is get a job making minimum wage, not $65k a year. Christ.
Yes, the gap between the richest people and everybody else is ever-widening, but guess what: You still aren't poor. Just because somebody that used to make a million more than you now makes 10 million more doesn't make you poor.
Good lord, you're making $65K a year and you dare to call yourself "low" class? That's upper-middle if there ever was. Low class people live in fear of their car breaking down. They get checks from the government to help pay for food. They can't put away tens of thousands of dollars a year into savings.
You're an overprivileged, whiny fuck. Sorry, appreciate what you have. It's better than lots of people.
I'm free to take questions! Ok, here's one for you. How do people know what stock options they are actually being granted? I remember during the dot-com boom I was offered X number of stock options when I took the job. I had no idea what percentage it was of the company, but whatever, it was a good salary and stock options were like winning the lottery. The company eventually folded but that's besides the point.
So some time after I started work the secretary called me over and asked me to sign the last page of like 30 fresh off the printer, acknowledging my options. At the time I didn't sit down and read all those pages, and I don't even remember if I got a copy. First of all, what does it mean to sign the last page of a 30 page document? It seems absolutely meaningless. Second, when a company offers you options as part of a job offer, are they required to state what percentage of the company is being offered?
Maybe I am be called brain washed,but when choose between A strong country & a free country,I will choose the first. The American attitude is that it is not an either or situation. You can be both. Statements like 'Development and administration of Internet culture must stick to the direction of socialist advanced culture, adhere to correct propaganda guidance' are pretty sickening. But maybe that was just a translation problem?
America has had similar problems in the past, in the McCarthy Era, when it was battling communism and free speech was attacked. The government also gets too involved with issues like pornography and gambling. And for sure the Iraq war was a fiasco. But still, the idea that people shouldn't be allowed to speak out against the government is a terrible one, and when news stories like this come out China will always be scorned.
His presentation has to be taken in context. Did he qualify his numbers as the absolute worst case, and give the odds? If not, why not? Not doing so is sensationalist and deceptive. Hence the "fast and loose" with the science.
Which is too bad. People shouldn't be lied to. They should be given the facts as best we know them. I'm even a pro-environment person -- I'd like to see a sustainable world, one where we aren't burning through our resources haphazardly, or dumping dangerous chemicals into the air and water. But I'm totally against any kind of spinning.
Ok, I can see now you're disagreeing to be disagreeable. No, I'm disagreeing because I find your position horrifying. I gave you a very concrete example of a conversation that would not have happened, because it was potentially libelous.
There is a mile of difference between libel and criticism. Rather simplisitic. Saying person X likes kiddie porn is clear cut. Saying product X is full of bugs is potentially libelous. I also gave you a concrete example of the kinds of conversations that happen all the time on Slashdot that would have been shot down as potentially libelous. And yet you ignored the argument completely, choosing to dismiss me as being disagreeable for the sake of being disagreeable.
And btw, for the most part discussions here are civilized. Trolls get modded to oblivion and with my setup I don't see their posts. "for the most part" is right. I can find in any story posts that are modded up where people are vicious when making their point -- and I still want to read it, if the guy has a point. I also don't want Slashdot personally liable for the thousands of comments that get posted on their site every day. They would be taking down useful information all the time.
But we're definitely going in circles, so this is my last post. Before I go, I'll say I sympathize with what happened to you. I also believe there should be some legal recourse to get libelous stuff removed in the same way copyrighted materials can be removed. However, I'm totally against requiring moderation in advance at the threat of lawsuit.
For the most part it's *trivial* to tell when content is libelous or at least inflammatory and uncivilized. Ah, so now it has to be "civlized" conversation too. Why are you reading Slashdot again?
It is often not trivial. Read any Slashdot thread about some company's product. Any signficant claim can potentially be libelous. If Slashdot were liable, then hardly anything of interest would be let through.
I'll also give you a concrete example where I was involved. In a story about YouTube censorship, one person made a comment that "Noted peace activist turned Mulsim, Cat 'Peace Train' Stevens, affirms that Rushdie should be killed." This can be construed as libelous. Would the moderators have let it through? Somebody followed up on it and pretty much called it libel: "That's an absolutely vile misrepresentation of what Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam) actually said." I then followed up to that post, backing up the original assertion.
This whole conversation would not have happened under your mantra of "All I'm saying is if you're going to broadcast something to thousands of people that you make sure it's legal first."
I strongly suggest you get some perspective. Gain some yourself. You got joe-jobbed and believe the whole internet should change it's modus operandi as a result.
And referring to 1984 is fairly low given that I'm an advocate of open source cryptography, open source software, open academia (manuals, books, research projects), and generally against governmental intrusion into civilized life. Yet a world where every message on a public forum must be approved sounds very 1984'ish to me, and it's sad that an "advocate" such as yourself is proposing this.
Slashdot Mirror
"The founder of the ambitious "$100 laptop" project, which plans to give inexpensive computers to schoolchildren in developing countries, revealed Thursday that the machine for now costs $175, and it will be able to run Windows in addition to its homegrown, open-source interface."
The latest story doesn't detail why the specs were changed, nor does it even refute that the specs were changed to make the laptop compatible with Microsoft. It just states rather murkily that there's no agreement to put Windows on XO.
You may find this story from Wired of interest:
"The One Laptop Per Child's tiny XO computer got an added boost from its maker specifically to enable it to run Microsoft Windows, says the project's founder Nicholas Negroponte."
I could understand if somebody had no prospects and absolutely needed the job. Then again, there are lots of people in the IT industry who are not in this situation, yet will compromise themselves because they do not want to take any risk. This kind of thinking by people everywhere leads to a downward spiral in the system as a whole.
I once worked for a financial company where they decided they needed to institute a random drug-testing policy. Nobody was happy about it, yet nobody complained to management. I told the company it was unacceptable and that I would resign when the policy went into place. Lots of people said they respected what I was doing, and you could tell they felt some shame, because they made a point of telling me their excuses about "family to think about", etc. Complete bullshit, they just didn't want to be inconvienced and take any risk.
Funny thing is the company never followed through on the policy. Just having one employee make a stand made them rethink their position.
Still, the spec change, the price increase, and the Microsoft announcement coming all at the same time is fishy. At best, it's awful public relations. At worst, it's a corruption of principles.
Unless you're sitting there watching the guy make it, how do you really know what's in it?
I knew somebody who used to do temp work for a "kosher" caterer, and not all that went on was kosher. Reading this thread just reminds me to buy meat that isn't preground. Doesn't mean it doesn't have other problems, but at least I know it isn't scrap meat mixed with spices.
So they say their work is free for anybody to use, without payment, and then they get all bitchy when they aren't paid for their work? And they resort to gimmicks like trying to copyright an ISO image?
Thanks for your reply. In my particular case, the options were for a private company, so there were no SEC filings to look up on a website. I imagine any investor for a private company would want the same information I'm looking for -- that is, just what are they getting for their investment? An investor certainly has more clout when it comes to getting these answers, but a potential employee should be able to get these same answers.
I agree it's a bad law, and Google is one of the companies against it, but this little bit from the article is interesting:
So, are you going to reply to the examples quoted by the modded up Anonymous Coward?
Trolling about Flash? So tell me, forget open sourcing the Flash plugin, how about just making the spec freely available?
All you can see is wasted bytes and CPU cycles. You are an optimization addict. You never once in this thread mentioned any tradeoffs involved in optimization. I like small and fast stuff too, but I always try to keep in mind the costs involved in getting there. Anyways, I'm tired of going in circles. This is my last post.
Funny how you got the price for the Wii right, but overstated the price for the PS3 by $200.
Then there's Red Hat, who manages to sell GPL'd code they don't own, and Mozilla/Firefox, who makes $50 million a year from Google, but I digress.
Do SCO lawyers always wear dark sunglasses in court? I gotta admit, that's a pretty badass tactic!
"[..]all data that can be shared will be shared: get used to it." That means your personal data, too. "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." -- Scott McNealy.
Yes, the gap between the richest people and everybody else is ever-widening, but guess what: You still aren't poor. Just because somebody that used to make a million more than you now makes 10 million more doesn't make you poor.
Good lord, you're making $65K a year and you dare to call yourself "low" class? That's upper-middle if there ever was. Low class people live in fear of their car breaking down. They get checks from the government to help pay for food. They can't put away tens of thousands of dollars a year into savings.
You're an overprivileged, whiny fuck. Sorry, appreciate what you have. It's better than lots of people.
So some time after I started work the secretary called me over and asked me to sign the last page of like 30 fresh off the printer, acknowledging my options. At the time I didn't sit down and read all those pages, and I don't even remember if I got a copy. First of all, what does it mean to sign the last page of a 30 page document? It seems absolutely meaningless. Second, when a company offers you options as part of a job offer, are they required to state what percentage of the company is being offered?
America has had similar problems in the past, in the McCarthy Era, when it was battling communism and free speech was attacked. The government also gets too involved with issues like pornography and gambling. And for sure the Iraq war was a fiasco. But still, the idea that people shouldn't be allowed to speak out against the government is a terrible one, and when news stories like this come out China will always be scorned.
I think The Core would be slightly more fitting, though Bruce Willis should definitely be involved.
His presentation has to be taken in context. Did he qualify his numbers as the absolute worst case, and give the odds? If not, why not? Not doing so is sensationalist and deceptive. Hence the "fast and loose" with the science.
Which is too bad. People shouldn't be lied to. They should be given the facts as best we know them. I'm even a pro-environment person -- I'd like to see a sustainable world, one where we aren't burning through our resources haphazardly, or dumping dangerous chemicals into the air and water. But I'm totally against any kind of spinning.
But we're definitely going in circles, so this is my last post. Before I go, I'll say I sympathize with what happened to you. I also believe there should be some legal recourse to get libelous stuff removed in the same way copyrighted materials can be removed. However, I'm totally against requiring moderation in advance at the threat of lawsuit.
It is often not trivial. Read any Slashdot thread about some company's product. Any signficant claim can potentially be libelous. If Slashdot were liable, then hardly anything of interest would be let through.
I'll also give you a concrete example where I was involved. In a story about YouTube censorship, one person made a comment that "Noted peace activist turned Mulsim, Cat 'Peace Train' Stevens, affirms that Rushdie should be killed." This can be construed as libelous. Would the moderators have let it through? Somebody followed up on it and pretty much called it libel: "That's an absolutely vile misrepresentation of what Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam) actually said." I then followed up to that post, backing up the original assertion.
This whole conversation would not have happened under your mantra of "All I'm saying is if you're going to broadcast something to thousands of people that you make sure it's legal first." I strongly suggest you get some perspective. Gain some yourself. You got joe-jobbed and believe the whole internet should change it's modus operandi as a result. And referring to 1984 is fairly low given that I'm an advocate of open source cryptography, open source software, open academia (manuals, books, research projects), and generally against governmental intrusion into civilized life. Yet a world where every message on a public forum must be approved sounds very 1984'ish to me, and it's sad that an "advocate" such as yourself is proposing this.