Now that geeks have taken over, it seems the only thing left for non-geeks to do is to prophesy the end of geek power.
Economic theory, fortunately, serves only to undercut this line of thinking. It is not only the case that a programmer today is more valuable than a bank teller, but also that a programmer today is more valuable than a programmer was twenty years ago, becuase he is more productive.
Technology is like crack for capitalist economies. One hit is never enough. So long as there is a drip of additional productivity to be found (and there always is), there will be plenty of work for technology professionals.
Likewise, it is nearly axiomatic that there will never be enough people to do it all. That's because every productivity advance (better programming languages, cheaper hardware) only leads to wider adoption. The neighborhood McDonald's today has more computing power than much of NORAD. Chevys run on more silicon than the Space Shuttle. Slight hyperbole to be sure, but elucidatory nonetheless.
And even after the revolution subsides, tech workers will still fare better. After all, mechanical engineering has been around for centuries, and yet ME's still make better money than average.
-cwk.
When you have a hammer...
on
Laptop Exams?
·
· Score: 4
Everything looks like a nail.
A good education teaches you ways to think, and solve problems, not just to use tools. We "geeks" are often guilty of viewing technology as an end in itself, and not simply as a tool, which is what it is.
Colleges too often fall victim to academic fads, the most recent of which is this apply-technology-to-everything silliness. The real tragedy is that in the rush to embrace the latest Big Thing, money often gets redirected away from things like hiring more or better faculty.
Am I the only person here who does not think the NSA could really pull this off?
To wit, they would have to be copying and routing packets from all over the Net to machines that process this traffic. Or they would have to maintain a huge network of snooping machines all over. If they do it the first way, then there are suspicious piles of traffic flowing off into dark corners. Do it the second way, and they increase the odds that someone will locate one of their spy machines and blow the lid off.
A recent auditor's report found the NSA dangerously close to the edge in terms of their inability to keep up with the rising tide of Net traffic. The NSA might be the NSA, but it's still a gov't agency, and look at the mess that is the CIA. Talk about the gang who couldn't shoot straight.
How then to explain this EU report?
My theory is that this is just another brick in the wall of the rising tide of anti-American sentiment in Europe, a disappointing phenomenon for which the French seem largely responsible. Look also at their investigation of Microsoft, statements regarding which are often tinged with nationalist invective.
This sort of thing is disappointing development, because the free world faces real potential threats in the form of Russia and China. A strong strategic partnership between the US and Europe is essential for our security in this new century.
As for Echelon, I wish I could believe such a thing existed. Why? The world is a dark and dangerous place, populated with many characters who wish to harm our national interest, security, even plant bombs and bioweapons in our cities. Traditional SIGINT, which is what the NSA is good at, is no longer enough. Few people truly know how much this helped us in the past 50 years, and how many lives may have been saved because of it.
But I don't think it's true. I think many people are simply having fantasies driven by "The Matrix" and too many Tom Clancy books and X-files episodes.
What I really would like to know is why all the objectness?
Because Java was intended to be 100% object-oriented, with full encapsulation and data hiding.
Remember, right tool for the right job. You may be able to create any program with a few simple structures and nothing else, but I warrant the guy who comes after you will find it nigh impossible to maintain it. Good object-oriented design can enhance productivity.
Java, unlike C++, only has one paradigm- object-oriented. It forces you to follow certain rules which serve greater ends.
The separation of Faith and Reason is a development from the Enlightenment. Which was great at the time, but the world has come a long way, and we need to get rid of this legacy code. Just as economic/technological changes prompted a major shift then, so it is time now for us to find a new path.
These days, religion is either dismissed entirely or declared "irrelevant/unknowable." Yet no matter how much technology we develop, we still understand the core issues of life no better than our ancient ancestors.
1. The GPL was built with good intentions, but it is very difficult to use in the real world. It may have been one of the earliest OSS licenses, but the profusion of alternatives (MPL, IBM, QT, BSD, MIT, etc.) is a testament to the impracticality and undesirability of its use in many situations. Open source != GPL.
2. Software patents are okay in theory IMHO, but they've become a joke lately because many of them are more patents of business processes (Priceline, Amazon's 1-click shopping) than they are of software algorithms.
Where does that leave us? Patents are weapons, and their evilness or goodness are determined by usage. If the effect of a patent is to force companies to open up their source, then I say they are good. If the effect is to stifle innovation, then they are bad.
I say we let this guy try his strategy, and see what happens. If it means more OSS on the market, then God bless him.
When I was 14, my father told me, "If you want to be accepted, then conform. If you don't want to conform, then don't expect people to accept you. It's your choice. Nobody in this world owes you anything."
My question, then, is how do you react to this sort of thinking?
To wit, can an outisder be accepted and remain an outsider? What matters more to you: Being accepted by the majority, or being right?
(anyone taking bets on whether IBM swallows redhat?)
Sure, I'll take odds against you on that one. Red Hat does not own much in the way of proprietary technology. It does have a lot of developers, but IBM has more. Sure it would generate a lot of buzz, but most of it would probably be negative in the Linux community, and Wall Street would ask whether Red Hat's really worth the money.
Buying Red Hat is the way Microsoft deals with competition in a closed-source world. IBM can do everything Red Hat does in-house, and a whole lot more.
Yes, the data in them may be public. But collecting it and putting it all together takes a lot of work!
I work for a company whose #1 product is access to a database of events. We have over 20 people who spend all day on the phone gathering information. There is no other way to gather the information. Those people need to get paid somehow.
Not long ago, we had a competitor who'd managed to get access to our website somehow (it's poorly-protected by a simple password) that was crawling it and re-posting our info on their site. Before they started doing this, the level of information they had sucked compared to us. But all of a sudden, POOF! they were equal.
So we found the username/password they were using, and disabled it. Problem solved.
But seriously, do any of you think what they were doing was not wrong? My understanding is that these laws would merely enfranchise the notion of others not being able to republish data from my database in a similar form without my permission. If any of you think this is a problem then you should try building a large database yourself and see just how much work goes into all that data collection.
Now I wish I hadn't used my last point on some troll elsewhere.
But I wouldn't be so grim about it. Reality has always lagged standards, but it'll come around eventually. In another year or two we may actually be able to write off Netscape 4-series browsers...
What costs more? 1. Bandwidth to send a few dozen quote marks 2. Bandwidth to send a stupid background image 3. Hours of developer time spent building cross-browser code
XML will not just eat up bandwidth, it will enable new forms of data exchange and interaction, any of which will add far more dollar value than the scraps of bandwidth saved by tag stripping.
HTML is yesterday's Web. XML is the future, and it demands some adjustment.
Please Sig11, I thought you knew better than to fall down this trap!
Corporations foster a lot of change, too. I work for an evil, AOL-aligned company run by a bunch of hardnosed businessmen. They figured out that there's money to be made in helping companies spread information to investors. Now our mission is to encourage companies to share more info with small individual investors, rather than confining things like earnings calls to big-shot analysts. My company makes money, and the public gets more information. Capitalism works in strange ways...
Why should we fund planetary probes? What good does it do to people on the Earth? If the best reason you can state is, "Discovery is important, knowledge matters," you will lose the fight. Give solid reasons of how this benefits us and you may have a chance.
Besides, let's not forget how much good has been done by advances tied to consumer products. Computers would never have gotten so cheap and powerful if they hadn't moved into the consumer arena. Lots of people benefit because of it.
Pharmaceutical companies spend billions working on cures for cancer, AIDS, and Alzheimer's, too. You just don't advertise those on TV like Propecia, so you may not be as aware of them.
These corporate mergers don't worry me one whit, either. In fifteen years the heirs to Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts will be buying up and dismembering most of them, just like they did in the 80's with all the conglomerates built by 1960's management geniuses. We're just seeing one side of a cycle. Remember when we all thought Japan was going to own the USA? Funny, that didn't quite work out, did it.
I'm probably going to get murderd on this, but are you really familiar with the language? I studied it for four years in college and even lived in Beijing for a while.
That aside, I think there are definitely conceptual things which do not translate well. Subtle differences in the flow, and logic of a language, definitely influence its use and application. Mandarin for instance, never conjugates verbs. Think about the implications of that for a moment...
IBM, Solaris, Digital, SCO, SGI. They all used to crow about how their UNIX was better than everyone else's.
Bill Gates, meet everybody. Sorry guys, your UNIX is no longer needed.
Fast-forward to 1999. Microsoft is everywhere. While the UNIXes argued, the fox made off with the chickens. Everybody, meet Linus.
Most of the UNIX vendors decided to support, if grudgingly so, this tiny little OS we all built for the hell of it. Oh, shucks, it's kinda good, ain't it?
Scott McNealy, meet Linus. You tried to own the desktop, but that didn't work. You declared year X the year of the Network Computer. Sucks being ahead of your time by a year every twelve months, doesn't it. You tried to own JAVA, and you may yet. Ever heard of a "Pyrrhic Victory?"
It sucks taking Bill Gates' sloppy seconds, doesn't it Scott? You don't get no respect. Here's a stinking, good-for-nothing, operating system getting ten times the attention your precious darling ever could, and will.
But really, Scott, who's chasing who here? Free Solaris? Who'd a thunk it! So what, now you're going to just make the $ on hardware, right. That's what we've been trying to tell you along, if only you'd listen.
Fragmented UNIX is dying, and if you want to go down with the ship, don't expect us to come along. I don't want your operating system, not because it's expensive, but because you'd be just as bad as your Big Brother Bill, if ever given the chance.
So you'll give me Solaris. Thanks, but no thanks. Okay, it's more stable than Linux by a long shot. But the gap closes every day, old chap, and you're feeling the heat. So what, now you think we'll suddenly all switch, and wait for you to pull the rug out from under our lemonade stand like you're trying to do with Java? Fat @#$%ing chance.
We're not going to let you. Not now, not ever. IBM? Anybody remember how close to the brink they were, ten years back? I don't know about you, but they had a near-death experience, and they see the future.
Scott McNealy, meet the ghost of Computers Future. It doesn't include Solaris. Whether it includes Sun or not is up to you.
Market cap is the wrong number to look at. Try revenue, which paints a much different story.
Actually, if you read AOL's 10-Q for last September (most recent available), you'll see that they make 3 times as much from subscriptions as they do from ad revenue.
That being said, I agree with your conclusion that the high value assigned to AOL is due to its future potential as a marketing medium. But today, it turns a profit by selling access, not ads.
Stallman has probably written more code than any of the other windbags in OSS. But on the other hand, I see him as far too much of a radical. His statements and extremism do as much to scare people away fom the GPL as they do to stengthen and extend it.
Raymond? The Cathedral and the Bazaar is an interesting look at OSS development, but he too is too much of a firebrand.
I don't know Bruce Perens other than from his/. postings, which are often eloquent and on-target.
Linus? He is the yin to RMS's yang. He symbolizes the "don't say, do" theory of changing things, and I don't know anyone who finds him disagreeable as a personality. I've heard some people differ with him on the finer points of Linux development, but overall, little of the attention that OSS now enjoys would exist without Linux. The choice seems clear.
Consider that the Feingold-McCain bill (thankfully stillborn for the time being, IMHO), would probably regulate web-based speech in the same way it would TV ads et. al.
The logic is thus: buying an ad on TV that promotes a certain candidate, even if funded and operated *entirely* by a 3rd party, is a form of "soft money."
Now imagine a website, started by an individual (or organization) that costs $15/month to support, becomes wildly popular and brings lots of support for said candidate. Do you value this as a contribution for $15, or do you try to assess the $ value of the publicity. If the latter, it could very easily exceed the $5000 (I think that's the number) limit on such "soft money" donations, and also be required to censor its content in the days leading up to the actual vote. After all, McCain-Feingold says it's not nice to promote a specific candidate with "soft money" 60 days before the election. That could be unfair...
This is why campaign finance laws can never work if we place any value on the 1st Amendment. So long as money can buy speech and citizens are held to have the right to promote a particular candidate, no form of soft money restriction can be held Constitutional without some serious Doublespeak.
The 'Net just screws the arithmetic up further because it can buy a lot of press for very little money, as our Turkish friend Mahir proved so well.
This is one of the things that separates news from sitcoms and drama series
Well that line grows thinner every day.
I say let these guys stretch things as thin as they want. It encourages competition. Traditional news outlets refuse to print (broadcast) tons of not 100%-verified news (even though all the reporters talk about it), and so we have The Drudge Report.
Broadcasters like CBS/NBC have already lost tons of influence to cable, now thet are losing it to the Internet. The more they do to violate this "trust" the sooner their fall will come. I'm not sorry.
I'm always amused at how many people here decry the control Microsoft-Intel has over the x86 market while at the same time singing the praises of Apple, which maintains a draconian control of its realm. At least with Wintel, there are two masters to serve, making it twice as likely that your needs might be met...
Wintel stuff is not really elegant like Apple. It's a Chevrolet; Apple's a Jaguar. Why don't people who would pay for a Jag not pay more for Apple? 'Cause computers don't get you laid...
I could care less about people insulting me or mailbombing my crap hotmail account. I suggest you stand up and be counted.
The "Open Source == Socialist" relationship has lasted far too long, and I for one will do whatever I can to dissuade people of this mistaken notion. OSS is about your rights as a user of software, and not cost. And with software license terms growing more restrictive each day, I think it is only a matter of time before consumers of software begin turning to OSS. Those licenses are getting really insane; not only do they get to sell you a "license" to use buggy software, but then they write themselves out of any responsibility for the quality of their product. Nuts.
FWIW, I think that the vast range of personalities you see in the OSS community testify to how much of a need there is for it. How many other places do you know of where a Stallman and a Raymond could not just coexist, but find common ground?
Slashdot Mirror
Economic theory, fortunately, serves only to undercut this line of thinking. It is not only the case that a programmer today is more valuable than a bank teller, but also that a programmer today is more valuable than a programmer was twenty years ago, becuase he is more productive.
Technology is like crack for capitalist economies. One hit is never enough. So long as there is a drip of additional productivity to be found (and there always is), there will be plenty of work for technology professionals.
Likewise, it is nearly axiomatic that there will never be enough people to do it all. That's because every productivity advance (better programming languages, cheaper hardware) only leads to wider adoption. The neighborhood McDonald's today has more computing power than much of NORAD. Chevys run on more silicon than the Space Shuttle. Slight hyperbole to be sure, but elucidatory nonetheless.
And even after the revolution subsides, tech workers will still fare better. After all, mechanical engineering has been around for centuries, and yet ME's still make better money than average.
-cwk.
A good education teaches you ways to think, and solve problems, not just to use tools. We "geeks" are often guilty of viewing technology as an end in itself, and not simply as a tool, which is what it is.
Colleges too often fall victim to academic fads, the most recent of which is this apply-technology-to-everything silliness. The real tragedy is that in the rush to embrace the latest Big Thing, money often gets redirected away from things like hiring more or better faculty.
-cwk.
Not if you download software, books, music, or videos.
Where does the state contribute then?
-cwk.
To wit, they would have to be copying and routing packets from all over the Net to machines that process this traffic. Or they would have to maintain a huge network of snooping machines all over. If they do it the first way, then there are suspicious piles of traffic flowing off into dark corners. Do it the second way, and they increase the odds that someone will locate one of their spy machines and blow the lid off.
A recent auditor's report found the NSA dangerously close to the edge in terms of their inability to keep up with the rising tide of Net traffic. The NSA might be the NSA, but it's still a gov't agency, and look at the mess that is the CIA. Talk about the gang who couldn't shoot straight.
How then to explain this EU report?
My theory is that this is just another brick in the wall of the rising tide of anti-American sentiment in Europe, a disappointing phenomenon for which the French seem largely responsible. Look also at their investigation of Microsoft, statements regarding which are often tinged with nationalist invective.
This sort of thing is disappointing development, because the free world faces real potential threats in the form of Russia and China. A strong strategic partnership between the US and Europe is essential for our security in this new century.
As for Echelon, I wish I could believe such a thing existed. Why? The world is a dark and dangerous place, populated with many characters who wish to harm our national interest, security, even plant bombs and bioweapons in our cities. Traditional SIGINT, which is what the NSA is good at, is no longer enough. Few people truly know how much this helped us in the past 50 years, and how many lives may have been saved because of it.
But I don't think it's true. I think many people are simply having fantasies driven by "The Matrix" and too many Tom Clancy books and X-files episodes.
-cwk.
Because Java was intended to be 100% object-oriented, with full encapsulation and data hiding.
Remember, right tool for the right job. You may be able to create any program with a few simple structures and nothing else, but I warrant the guy who comes after you will find it nigh impossible to maintain it. Good object-oriented design can enhance productivity.
Java, unlike C++, only has one paradigm- object-oriented. It forces you to follow certain rules which serve greater ends.
-cwk.
These days, religion is either dismissed entirely or declared "irrelevant/unknowable." Yet no matter how much technology we develop, we still understand the core issues of life no better than our ancient ancestors.
-cwk.
2. Software patents are okay in theory IMHO, but they've become a joke lately because many of them are more patents of business processes (Priceline, Amazon's 1-click shopping) than they are of software algorithms.
Where does that leave us? Patents are weapons, and their evilness or goodness are determined by usage. If the effect of a patent is to force companies to open up their source, then I say they are good. If the effect is to stifle innovation, then they are bad.
I say we let this guy try his strategy, and see what happens. If it means more OSS on the market, then God bless him.
-cwk.
When I was 14, my father told me, "If you want to be accepted, then conform. If you don't want to conform, then don't expect people to accept you. It's your choice. Nobody in this world owes you anything."
My question, then, is how do you react to this sort of thinking?
To wit, can an outisder be accepted and remain an outsider?
What matters more to you: Being accepted by the majority, or being right?
-cwk.
Sure, I'll take odds against you on that one. Red Hat does not own much in the way of proprietary technology. It does have a lot of developers, but IBM has more. Sure it would generate a lot of buzz, but most of it would probably be negative in the Linux community, and Wall Street would ask whether Red Hat's really worth the money.
Buying Red Hat is the way Microsoft deals with competition in a closed-source world. IBM can do everything Red Hat does in-house, and a whole lot more.
-cwk.
How does data end up in a database?
Answer: Lots of data entry!
Yes, the data in them may be public. But collecting it and putting it all together takes a lot of work!
I work for a company whose #1 product is access to a database of events. We have over 20 people who spend all day on the phone gathering information. There is no other way to gather the information. Those people need to get paid somehow.
Not long ago, we had a competitor who'd managed to get access to our website somehow (it's poorly-protected by a simple password) that was crawling it and re-posting our info on their site. Before they started doing this, the level of information they had sucked compared to us. But all of a sudden, POOF! they were equal.
So we found the username/password they were using, and disabled it. Problem solved.
But seriously, do any of you think what they were doing was not wrong? My understanding is that these laws would merely enfranchise the notion of others not being able to republish data from my database in a similar form without my permission. If any of you think this is a problem then you should try building a large database yourself and see just how much work goes into all that data collection.
-cwk.
But I wouldn't be so grim about it. Reality has always lagged standards, but it'll come around eventually. In another year or two we may actually be able to write off Netscape 4-series browsers...
-cwk.
1. Bandwidth to send a few dozen quote marks
2. Bandwidth to send a stupid background image
3. Hours of developer time spent building cross-browser code
XML will not just eat up bandwidth, it will enable new forms of data exchange and interaction, any of which will add far more dollar value than the scraps of bandwidth saved by tag stripping.
HTML is yesterday's Web. XML is the future, and it demands some adjustment.
-cwk.
Corporations foster a lot of change, too. I work for an evil, AOL-aligned company run by a bunch of hardnosed businessmen. They figured out that there's money to be made in helping companies spread information to investors. Now our mission is to encourage companies to share more info with small individual investors, rather than confining things like earnings calls to big-shot analysts. My company makes money, and the public gets more information. Capitalism works in strange ways...
Why should we fund planetary probes? What good does it do to people on the Earth? If the best reason you can state is, "Discovery is important, knowledge matters," you will lose the fight. Give solid reasons of how this benefits us and you may have a chance.
Besides, let's not forget how much good has been done by advances tied to consumer products. Computers would never have gotten so cheap and powerful if they hadn't moved into the consumer arena. Lots of people benefit because of it.
Pharmaceutical companies spend billions working on cures for cancer, AIDS, and Alzheimer's, too. You just don't advertise those on TV like Propecia, so you may not be as aware of them.
These corporate mergers don't worry me one whit, either. In fifteen years the heirs to Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts will be buying up and dismembering most of them, just like they did in the 80's with all the conglomerates built by 1960's management geniuses. We're just seeing one side of a cycle. Remember when we all thought Japan was going to own the USA? Funny, that didn't quite work out, did it.
-cwk.
New Coke also did:
Not so bad when you look at it that way.
-cwk.
That aside, I think there are definitely conceptual things which do not translate well. Subtle differences in the flow, and logic of a language, definitely influence its use and application. Mandarin for instance, never conjugates verbs. Think about the implications of that for a moment...
-cwk.
IBM, Solaris, Digital, SCO, SGI. They all used to crow about how their UNIX was better than everyone else's.
Bill Gates, meet everybody. Sorry guys, your UNIX is no longer needed.
Fast-forward to 1999. Microsoft is everywhere. While the UNIXes argued, the fox made off with the chickens. Everybody, meet Linus.
Most of the UNIX vendors decided to support, if grudgingly so, this tiny little OS we all built for the hell of it. Oh, shucks, it's kinda good, ain't it?
Scott McNealy, meet Linus. You tried to own the desktop, but that didn't work. You declared year X the year of the Network Computer. Sucks being ahead of your time by a year every twelve months, doesn't it. You tried to own JAVA, and you may yet. Ever heard of a "Pyrrhic Victory?"
It sucks taking Bill Gates' sloppy seconds, doesn't it Scott? You don't get no respect. Here's a stinking, good-for-nothing, operating system getting ten times the attention your precious darling ever could, and will.
But really, Scott, who's chasing who here? Free Solaris? Who'd a thunk it! So what, now you're going to just make the $ on hardware, right. That's what we've been trying to tell you along, if only you'd listen.
Fragmented UNIX is dying, and if you want to go down with the ship, don't expect us to come along. I don't want your operating system, not because it's expensive, but because you'd be just as bad as your Big Brother Bill, if ever given the chance.
So you'll give me Solaris. Thanks, but no thanks. Okay, it's more stable than Linux by a long shot. But the gap closes every day, old chap, and you're feeling the heat. So what, now you think we'll suddenly all switch, and wait for you to pull the rug out from under our lemonade stand like you're trying to do with Java? Fat @#$%ing chance.
We're not going to let you. Not now, not ever. IBM? Anybody remember how close to the brink they were, ten years back? I don't know about you, but they had a near-death experience, and they see the future.
Scott McNealy, meet the ghost of Computers Future. It doesn't include Solaris. Whether it includes Sun or not is up to you.
-cwk.
Market cap is the wrong number to look at. Try revenue, which paints a much different story.
Actually, if you read AOL's 10-Q for last September (most recent available), you'll see that they make 3 times as much from subscriptions as they do from ad revenue.
Revenues: (millions) .... $350 ...... $122
Subscription services..... $995
Ads, commerce, etc.
Enterprise solutions
Total.......................... $1467
For details, look at the SEC filing.
That being said, I agree with your conclusion that the high value assigned to AOL is due to its future potential as a marketing medium. But today, it turns a profit by selling access, not ads.
-cwk.
Raymond? The Cathedral and the Bazaar is an interesting look at OSS development, but he too is too much of a firebrand.
I don't know Bruce Perens other than from his /. postings, which are often eloquent and on-target.
Linus? He is the yin to RMS's yang. He symbolizes the "don't say, do" theory of changing things, and I don't know anyone who finds him disagreeable as a personality. I've heard some people differ with him on the finer points of Linux development, but overall, little of the attention that OSS now enjoys would exist without Linux. The choice seems clear.
-cwk.
Consider that the Feingold-McCain bill (thankfully stillborn for the time being, IMHO), would probably regulate web-based speech in the same way it would TV ads et. al.
The logic is thus: buying an ad on TV that promotes a certain candidate, even if funded and operated *entirely* by a 3rd party, is a form of "soft money."
Now imagine a website, started by an individual (or organization) that costs $15/month to support, becomes wildly popular and brings lots of support for said candidate. Do you value this as a contribution for $15, or do you try to assess the $ value of the publicity. If the latter, it could very easily exceed the $5000 (I think that's the number) limit on such "soft money" donations, and also be required to censor its content in the days leading up to the actual vote. After all, McCain-Feingold says it's not nice to promote a specific candidate with "soft money" 60 days before the election. That could be unfair...
This is why campaign finance laws can never work if we place any value on the 1st Amendment. So long as money can buy speech and citizens are held to have the right to promote a particular candidate, no form of soft money restriction can be held Constitutional without some serious Doublespeak.
The 'Net just screws the arithmetic up further because it can buy a lot of press for very little money, as our Turkish friend Mahir proved so well.
-cwk.
Oh yeah, great idea. Does that mean that when I want to quit, I have to ask for a divorce?
-cwk.
And do not forget that everything Orwell's Big Brother was ostensibly for our own (or "the children's") protection.
-cwk.
Well that line grows thinner every day.
I say let these guys stretch things as thin as they want. It encourages competition. Traditional news outlets refuse to print (broadcast) tons of not 100%-verified news (even though all the reporters talk about it), and so we have The Drudge Report.
Broadcasters like CBS/NBC have already lost tons of influence to cable, now thet are losing it to the Internet. The more they do to violate this "trust" the sooner their fall will come. I'm not sorry.
-cwk.
Well, I'm not so inclined.
I'm always amused at how many people here decry the control Microsoft-Intel has over the x86 market while at the same time singing the praises of Apple, which maintains a draconian control of its realm. At least with Wintel, there are two masters to serve, making it twice as likely that your needs might be met...
Wintel stuff is not really elegant like Apple. It's a Chevrolet; Apple's a Jaguar. Why don't people who would pay for a Jag not pay more for Apple? 'Cause computers don't get you laid...
-cwk.
Which platform do you think is going to be more important in X years, Mac or Linux?
Sounds more like they're doing to themselves what they did to Symantec.
-cwk.
I could care less about people insulting me or mailbombing my crap hotmail account. I suggest you stand up and be counted.
The "Open Source == Socialist" relationship has lasted far too long, and I for one will do whatever I can to dissuade people of this mistaken notion. OSS is about your rights as a user of software, and not cost. And with software license terms growing more restrictive each day, I think it is only a matter of time before consumers of software begin turning to OSS. Those licenses are getting really insane; not only do they get to sell you a "license" to use buggy software, but then they write themselves out of any responsibility for the quality of their product. Nuts.
FWIW, I think that the vast range of personalities you see in the OSS community testify to how much of a need there is for it. How many other places do you know of where a Stallman and a Raymond could not just coexist, but find common ground?
-cwk.