"You must download and install something else or fix it yourself then." "Sure, we will. But that takes time and costs millions. Until then..." "Good luck." [...] "We'll pay you lots of money!" "Uhm... Well... No, sorry."
That is very unrealistic. If you pay for it, someone WILL fix it. Maybe not the same people or company that originally made the software, but who cares. It gets fixed. And if you choose some software with a bug that costs millions to fix, you probably didn't do your research and chose the wrong software.
Even after RTFA, I still feel that by choosing GPL I am giving up my freedoms as a developer.
What is it you want to do, that GPL prevents you from doing?
This type of freedom goes in one direction towards the end user (which is a good thing) but the developer gets screwed, by forcing his software to follow a strict set of rules.
When I make software based on some GPL software, I consider myself a user in this context. Of course my software is also GPL then, but I don't see any problem with that.
Incorporating GPL sections of GNU Code could put you in violation.
Accepting a license and then not following it will put you in violation. That holds for any license.
In theory even if you do not plan to widely distribute your application you still need to follow the rules.
What's your point? Even if I don't drive very far, I still have to drive by the law.
At least with software patents I can normally buy the right to use the software the way I want to use it.
If you'd rather buy some rights from a patent holder than use GPL software, why don't you?
If you want unrestricted freedom you want public domain, not just free. There are some great public domain software, but I can only remember one project right now.
The perspective of those of us in the Free Software community is that all software should be Free Software.
Wrong. That is only the extremists who thinks that. (And the really extreme is trying to enforce it. Lucky for us, they don't use bombs.)
There are may kind of software that works best when it is not FOSS. Some software simply won't exist as such.
Personally I'm totally into FOSS. At home I use as much of my software as possible is FOSS, except if there is some non-FOSS that is better (all things considered, and from my point of view) . But I spend my whole day (dayjob) creating non-FOSS software. It's not even costless. And I can't imagine it work in any other way.
By the way, we have the same FOSS policy at work as I have at home, except most departments doesn't value the freedom-part quite as high as I do. But we do have a long list of FOSS software that is approved for use, and I guess an occasional bug-report or even a patch is returned, but most of our changes in the FOSS is just for adapting it to our systems.
ANY choice made in IT means some kind of lock-in. If I go all OSS I lock myself into something else.
Let me explain the difference with an example (If it's too long just skip to the last two lines):
"Hi, we bought your product X but we have a serious problem with it..." "Sorry, that product is discontinued." "But it is mission critical to us!" "You must exchange it with something else then." "Sure, we will. But that takes time and costs millions. Until then..." "Good luck." "No, I mean, can't you help us with the problem?" "No, that product is discontinued. We don't touch it anymore." "We'll pay you lots of money!" "Uhm... Well... No, sorry." "You really don't care about it?" "No. Please buy our new product or go away." "Can we have the source and get someone else to fix it?" "No."
With open source you're not locked to the vendor. It's just a bit of scotch tape holding the door, not a lock.
[You avoid subconscious infringement of copyright] Exactly the same way as any other kind of distribution.
And what way might that be?
A completely different discussion. Go somewhere else.:)
This it what I would do: Think hard about it, then stop worrying. I guess that's what the pros do. Most music sounds like everything else in the genre, the same with most movies. I don't think this is something people worry much about.
So if I write and record a song, and I want to distribute it over BitTorrent to promote my album, how should I verify that the song I wrote doesn't violate the copyright in something I heard 10 years ago on the radio?
Exactly the same way as any other kind of distribution.
Believe me or not, sometimes, some people are actually interested in downloading legal stuff, and some times they do it over P2P, and sometimes that P2P is bittorrent. I CANNOT say that sharing files in general is illegal, it's not.
Bull. There is nothing wrong or illegal with sharing some files. (Unless there are special circumstances that makes it illegal, such as copyrights or some kind of legal agreement.)
Pictures in maps... I'm sorry, am I supposed to be impressed?
Here's my take on it: I really don't care if other services has had it for a year, since I'm using Flickr. But if it's only news for Flicr-users, I don't know why it's on Slashdot. Maybe because they have such a large userbase, and the others doesn't?
My girlfriend was listening to one of her brand new DRM'ed tracks and said "I like this one, but I miss a bass-line. It could go something like..." and then she started humming. And I though it would sound great, so I opened a tracker to create the bassline. First step however was to import the track without the bassline. I spend hours trying to do that, but the DRM stopped the project. I gave up.
We paid for the stupid track, we have a right to play around with it. It would have been fun and creative. It was fun back when we bought our music on CD, but today that is expensive and inconvenient.
"FairUse4WM, according to engadget, "can be used to strip Windows Media DRM 10 and 11". What does the slashdot community think of this development
First thought: "Great, maybe now I can listen to all that music my girlfriend bought".
This has happened several times: I hear a great track in the radio. I start searching online for a place to buy it. Every single place I find it uses DRM in a way so I can listen to the music. I give up. A few days later my girlfriend is playing it on her computer - she bought a DRM-infected copy of the track. Great, now I can hear it on hear flimsy speakers while I'm in the office and don't really want to listen to music, but still not in my car or whatever when I do want to.
Sometimes I'll try to find a pirated copy of the track. If I succeed I usually pay, but I this very weird feeling, when I'm buying something I know I won't be able to use, supporting a DRM'ed shop. I can be really hard to convince myself to pay.
As a motorcyclist, I will never apologize for being too visible.
Fair enough. But would you apologize for having so annoying lights that I can't judge the distance to you? Would I feel bad if something happened because I was disturbed by your flashing chistmas tree? Here in Denmark people has been stopped by the police because they were "too visible", and told not to drive the vehicle until the superfluous lights were removed.
Do you have a link to the statistics on the world usage of Excel? Is that 10% based on your own observations?
I knew I'd get that.;-)
It's a rule of thumb that 80% of the users only uses 20% of the functions. I think that for Excel it's much more extreme, because so many people uses it, and there really isn't very many powerusers out there.
It really depends where you work at.
I wasn't talking about the place I work, I really don't think that company matters much to the world market of spreadsheets.;-)
If course there are large groups of powerusers here and there, but I doubt that it's even 10% of the users. And I'd say you're a poweruser if you use just 10% of Excel.
It's kind of like a car. There's a lot of users, but not very many know more than what you need to know to drive them. And even that is often lacking. (Peoplo not checking for oil, not checking the lights, have fog lights on when there's not fog...) I guess most people use far less than 10% of the thingies you could do something with in your car. Ask around, how many people has operated their fuelpump manually? Read errorcodes from the enginecomputer? Upgraded firmware in it?
There is a goodly number of cardrivers that just dont see cyclists unless you have an extraordinary amount of light coming off of you.
Adding more light won't help, at least not in the long run. There is a few possibilities: 1. They still don't see you 2. You will have a disproportionate amount of light 3. Most likely: Both
Broad daylight and I have been run off the road by some people.
Exactly. Once you have your reflectors and blinking leds, adding more light won't help. You need blue blinking light and a siren to be noticed by the rest, and even that won't get all of them.
As a cardriver, I will WANT to hit you, if you are wearing a bright flashing jacket. Blinking LED's are annoying enough. It's not a safety issue. If blinking stuff is safer, LED-lamps is enough. Bicycles are not supposed to blink, you are not an ambulance.
I would have been very surprised if they had released Google Spreadsheet for business use as it just isn't anywhere near Excell's functionality yet.
It doesn't need to be. Most people use far less than 10% of the functionality. I've seen people using Excel on daily basis, but don't know how to even use formulas.
There is so many users out there that doesn't need functionality, only ease of use. They would love a spreadsheet that only has the very few features they actually use.
Personally I find Excel a bit limited in functionality. I use a lot of formulas, but I probably still don't use even 2% of the functionality. But the ones I need is often missing. I don't care about the 98% I don't use, I care about the 5 I need that is not there. Have those, and the 2% I use, in an easily accessible web-application, I'll probably use it daily, with ads and all.
No, it's just "bed => sex | sleep", not the other way arround. "(sex | sleep => bed) = false", we are making no statements about !bed. (Is that syntax geeky enough? Notice I'm using math here, not pseoudo-code.)
You are welcome to do both on the kitchen table. One of them could be good for your relationship, the other could be good for your chiropractor.;-)
I use the laptop a lot in bed [...] Anyone have tips or recommendations for helping one's back/neck?
It's obvious: Don't do that. Really. I only do it when I'm sick, and even then only when my back hurts from the couch, and I'm alone in bed. And I'm geeky enough to look on the internet to see the weather, in stead of looking out of a window.
Slashdot Mirror
I always thought spam is mostly for the thick - and maybe they won't notice anything.
Yeah, throw your laptop out on the street through the wall. It won't make any startup sounds again.
That is very unrealistic. If you pay for it, someone WILL fix it. Maybe not the same people or company that originally made the software, but who cares. It gets fixed.
And if you choose some software with a bug that costs millions to fix, you probably didn't do your research and chose the wrong software.
If you want unrestricted freedom you want public domain, not just free. There are some great public domain software, but I can only remember one project right now.
Wrong. That is only the extremists who thinks that. (And the really extreme is trying to enforce it. Lucky for us, they don't use bombs.)
There are may kind of software that works best when it is not FOSS. Some software simply won't exist as such.
Personally I'm totally into FOSS. At home I use as much of my software as possible is FOSS, except if there is some non-FOSS that is better (all things considered, and from my point of view) .
But I spend my whole day (dayjob) creating non-FOSS software. It's not even costless. And I can't imagine it work in any other way.
By the way, we have the same FOSS policy at work as I have at home, except most departments doesn't value the freedom-part quite as high as I do. But we do have a long list of FOSS software that is approved for use, and I guess an occasional bug-report or even a patch is returned, but most of our changes in the FOSS is just for adapting it to our systems.
Let me explain the difference with an example (If it's too long just skip to the last two lines):
"Hi, we bought your product X but we have a serious problem with it..."
"Sorry, that product is discontinued."
"But it is mission critical to us!"
"You must exchange it with something else then."
"Sure, we will. But that takes time and costs millions. Until then..."
"Good luck."
"No, I mean, can't you help us with the problem?"
"No, that product is discontinued. We don't touch it anymore."
"We'll pay you lots of money!"
"Uhm... Well... No, sorry."
"You really don't care about it?"
"No. Please buy our new product or go away."
"Can we have the source and get someone else to fix it?"
"No."
With open source you're not locked to the vendor. It's just a bit of scotch tape holding the door, not a lock.
A completely different discussion. Go somewhere else.
This it what I would do: Think hard about it, then stop worrying. I guess that's what the pros do. Most music sounds like everything else in the genre, the same with most movies. I don't think this is something people worry much about.
It uses 25 W/h every 15 minutes.
Exactly the same way as any other kind of distribution.
Believe me or not, sometimes, some people are actually interested in downloading legal stuff, and some times they do it over P2P, and sometimes that P2P is bittorrent.
I CANNOT say that sharing files in general is illegal, it's not.
Bull. There is nothing wrong or illegal with sharing some files. (Unless there are special circumstances that makes it illegal, such as copyrights or some kind of legal agreement.)
Here's my take on it: I really don't care if other services has had it for a year, since I'm using Flickr. But if it's only news for Flicr-users, I don't know why it's on Slashdot. Maybe because they have such a large userbase, and the others doesn't?
Replying to myself to add a side-note:
My girlfriend was listening to one of her brand new DRM'ed tracks and said "I like this one, but I miss a bass-line. It could go something like..." and then she started humming. And I though it would sound great, so I opened a tracker to create the bassline. First step however was to import the track without the bassline. I spend hours trying to do that, but the DRM stopped the project. I gave up.
We paid for the stupid track, we have a right to play around with it. It would have been fun and creative. It was fun back when we bought our music on CD, but today that is expensive and inconvenient.
First thought: "Great, maybe now I can listen to all that music my girlfriend bought".
This has happened several times: I hear a great track in the radio. I start searching online for a place to buy it. Every single place I find it uses DRM in a way so I can listen to the music. I give up. A few days later my girlfriend is playing it on her computer - she bought a DRM-infected copy of the track. Great, now I can hear it on hear flimsy speakers while I'm in the office and don't really want to listen to music, but still not in my car or whatever when I do want to.
Sometimes I'll try to find a pirated copy of the track. If I succeed I usually pay, but I this very weird feeling, when I'm buying something I know I won't be able to use, supporting a DRM'ed shop. I can be really hard to convince myself to pay.
Haha, I have easier ways. For some of us, for some tasks anyway, shellscripts are easier.
I'd guess the average users uses less than 10%. One user may use 1%. Almost all advanced features is problably used by very few, maybe 10-20%.
Incredibly many people uses Excel in a way a table or some tabs in Word could do just as good. "It's like Word with another kind of tabs."
Fair enough. But would you apologize for having so annoying lights that I can't judge the distance to you? Would I feel bad if something happened because I was disturbed by your flashing chistmas tree?
Here in Denmark people has been stopped by the police because they were "too visible", and told not to drive the vehicle until the superfluous lights were removed.
I knew I'd get that.
It's a rule of thumb that 80% of the users only uses 20% of the functions. I think that for Excel it's much more extreme, because so many people uses it, and there really isn't very many powerusers out there.
I wasn't talking about the place I work, I really don't think that company matters much to the world market of spreadsheets.
If course there are large groups of powerusers here and there, but I doubt that it's even 10% of the users. And I'd say you're a poweruser if you use just 10% of Excel.
It's kind of like a car. There's a lot of users, but not very many know more than what you need to know to drive them. And even that is often lacking. (Peoplo not checking for oil, not checking the lights, have fog lights on when there's not fog...)
I guess most people use far less than 10% of the thingies you could do something with in your car. Ask around, how many people has operated their fuelpump manually? Read errorcodes from the enginecomputer? Upgraded firmware in it?
Adding more light won't help, at least not in the long run. There is a few possibilities:
1. They still don't see you
2. You will have a disproportionate amount of light
3. Most likely: Both
Exactly. Once you have your reflectors and blinking leds, adding more light won't help. You need blue blinking light and a siren to be noticed by the rest, and even that won't get all of them.
As a cardriver, I will WANT to hit you, if you are wearing a bright flashing jacket. Blinking LED's are annoying enough. It's not a safety issue. If blinking stuff is safer, LED-lamps is enough. Bicycles are not supposed to blink, you are not an ambulance.
It doesn't need to be. Most people use far less than 10% of the functionality. I've seen people using Excel on daily basis, but don't know how to even use formulas.
There is so many users out there that doesn't need functionality, only ease of use. They would love a spreadsheet that only has the very few features they actually use.
Personally I find Excel a bit limited in functionality. I use a lot of formulas, but I probably still don't use even 2% of the functionality. But the ones I need is often missing. I don't care about the 98% I don't use, I care about the 5 I need that is not there. Have those, and the 2% I use, in an easily accessible web-application, I'll probably use it daily, with ads and all.
No, it's just "bed => sex | sleep", not the other way arround. "(sex | sleep => bed) = false", we are making no statements about !bed. (Is that syntax geeky enough? Notice I'm using math here, not pseoudo-code.)
;-)
You are welcome to do both on the kitchen table. One of them could be good for your relationship, the other could be good for your chiropractor.
It's obvious: Don't do that. Really. I only do it when I'm sick, and even then only when my back hurts from the couch, and I'm alone in bed.
And I'm geeky enough to look on the internet to see the weather, in stead of looking out of a window.