Existing shares will not necessarily fall..... the issue of new shares can show that the company has confidence in it's future and is growing fast (and therefore needs the cash).
If the Market believes that Red Hat will use the cash wisely (good acquisitions, investment, recruitment etc.) then the presence of this war-chest will increase the percieved value of the entire company, and the shares of existing shareholders will rise.
Shares don't conform very well to standard analysis of supply and demand.... you're right that there is a known total supply but demand curves fluctuate a lot based on changing expectations and market conditions. Hence financial economists tend to worry more about estimating future cash flows than trying to fit a dodgy model of supply and demand.
I very much doubt that student who learn the skills needed to master Linux will be disadvantaged. If anything, learning how to handle a more sophisticated system will do wonders for their long term employability.
Remember, portable skills are far more important than specific ones in a fast-moving job market. Flexibility and adaptability add value. Learning to point and click may be easier at first, but in the long run solving problems yourself and doing things the hard way will take you much further.
People learn by being stretched, not by being pampered. And that's the main reason why I think a Linux system should be right at the top of the priority list for any serious educational establishment.
Believe it or not, there are some 99% of the world's popultation who don't actually know that you can download Linux and have a great, flexible, stable, high-powered OS for free. Publicity counts..... believe me. And this move is mostly about good publicity, getting the Red Hat name known. It's also doing a bit for cash-strapped schools. I like to think that even multi-billion corporations can have a little bit of altruism. Having said all that, it may well be the case that they are throwing in manuals or some free technical support as well, which you wouldn't get with the downloaded distro. In which case, Red Hat are genuinely giving away something for free that they would normally charge for.
I don't have a copy of the GPL to hand, but I think the wording and intent is that free licenses to use the patented technology must be distributed along with the GPL'd software and source code.
That is to say, if some patented technique is incorporated into YetAnotherLinux, then anyone who recieves a copy of YetAnotherLinux is automatically licensed to use the patented technology and redistribute it under the GPL.
Therefore I don't think this is a particularly great cause for concern - though some components may be patented, the company that incorporated them into the kernel in the first place has effectively given up the rights over the patent in the GPL domain.
Sorry, I just don't agree that anyone can "own" an abstract idea. No more than they can own the day Tuesday, the number 5, or gravity. Laws that regard ideas as property are simply a travesty.
Abstract ideas are things that always existed, nobody built them. A few gifted people may occasionally stumble across a new one. But they are explorers, not creators.
That's not to say I don't think people should be rewarded for discovering genuinely useful ideas. But there are far better ways to do this than the patent system, which have the added advantage of avoiding this absurd notion of "intellectual property".
If there's one freedom I value above all others, it is the freedom to think of whatever I choose. Nobody owns any of the ideas in my mind. Anything that I can imagine or comprehend, I believe I have as much right to utilise as anyone else on this planet.
Intellectual Property is an injustice which I think a lot of people intuitively dislike, even if they can't put their finger on the exact reason why. The reason is this: the non-proprietary nature of ideas is a fundamental truth, a fundamental right which should not be denied. The sooner that human society wakes up to this fact, the better.
Freedom is about youself, as an individual, and the rights that you enjoy. It is never about power over the lives and works of others. Always remember that.
Patents are currently justified becuase they are alleged to promote progress in the useful arts. I would like to argue that this is, to put it bluntly, complete hogswash.
Progress occurs spontaneously in the minds of individuals. This may happen in universities or research centres, but more often than not it is just a lateral thinking person who sees a good way to solve a problem. Businesses solve problems like this all the time, and I think it is no coincidence that some of the greatest progress we have seen in the twentieth century are due to fiercely competitive markets in various commodity technologies.
Patent monopolies are the antithesis of progress - they remove most incentives for further innovation and create unnaceptable barriers of entry to innovative competitors. They create a hugely costly system of IP law which is a pretty impassable obstacle for small players in any case. Additionally, the beaurocracy and royalties imposed on companies needing to use a patented idea inevitably means that the invention is never used as much as it should have been.
You see, all inventions will be discovered ultimately. Real science will be done by people who are eternally curious and love their subject. Practical innovations will arise naturally as people need them. Business ideas will be created by businessmen, that is their job after all.
So why are we still enslaved by this idea of patents? I'll admit that some inventions may occur slightly sooner because of financial incentives, and biotech may fall into this category. But even then, the benefits of these inventions are less than they would otherwise have been because the high price of patented products limits their usage.
Furthermore, it is not clear that mankind is fully ready to handle the implications of some discoveries. Patents tend to encourage an unquestioning headlong rush into ideas such as GM food, designer babies, cloning humans and growing body parts. Not that these are necessarily bad, but I for one can see the advantage of actually slowing down progress until some of the ethical issues are properly sorted out. Without patents, we wouldn't have the problem of a self-interested lobby pushing these ideas before mankind is mature enough to handle them.
Aside from the fact that I am morally offened at the thought that anyone could "own" an abstract idea, I think it is clear that patents of all kinds impose a huge burden on society. Without patents, products would be cheaper, the economy would be far more competitive and progress would *still* happen as companies fight to keep a step ahead. Any country that dumped patents right now would start to see the benefits of a *real* free market.
You couldn't get a stalemate (no available moves) this early in the game.... you could not have taken enough pieces. But 'mate' is conventionally used to mean checkmate by pretty much every chess player I've encountered. I've never seen an official definition though.
The big Linux IPOs are a good thing for small developers.
For one thing, it's a great motivational boost to know that what you are doing could make you mega-rich. Some people like that kind of incentive.
Secondly, it is clear that the open source movement as a whole will benefit from the injection of cash and corporate credibility that these kind success stories bring. It's a necessary step in maintaining the progress of free software. Small developers with their eye on the ball will do well in the open source consulting and bespoke development businesses.
But most importantly, it is clear that the business model of firms like Red Hat rely upon the goodwill of the open source community. Thus, Red Hat will have a big incentive to keep the small developers onside through sponsorships, awards, share handouts etc.
These kind of activities don't cost much for a multi-billion pound company. By cultivating small developer support for their systems, Red Hat et al. will probably get better press and actually increase their share price.
All in all, I don't think there is too much to worry about. Red Hat can't renege on open source principles precisely because the market won't look kindly on any company that chucks it's mindshare out of the window.....
This is getting daft. This is roughly equivalent to patenting the "process" of shopping. Patents were meant to encourage the development of gadgets during the industrial revolution. They were never intended for abstract ideas, and certainly not business models. Businesses are meant to compete in the marketplace, and not cushion themselves with artificial legal barriers.
It's clear that there are enough bullshit patents filed for slashdot to run one of these stories every day. It's also clear that patents are a pointless and costly system in an information-centric world.
But it would be nice to see some of the stupidity of the patent system be aired a little more frequently outside the relatively enlightened forum of Slashdot. A bit of grass-roots evangelization is needed. Consequently, I am planning to put up a webpage with a few pointed rants about the present system, and ideas about what it could be replaced with. If you have any views on this that you would like to see aired, mail me at:
Slashdot may be biased, but at least it's open about that... You have a right of reply, and the real meat of what I find interesting here is in the discussions anyway. If something in an article is clearly rubbish, this will be pointed out remarkably fast.
I don't think you can ever really escape bias. I haven't seen much truly objective journalism from *any* source. But if there is to be an element of bias, it might as well be in favour of a good cause such as the open source movement.
Even if the idea is obvious, somebody has to implement it first.
I don't see how that gives anyone ownership over the original idea. I don't believe that anyone should own an idea anyway, but that's beside the point.
This is Somewhat like the Russians claiming to be the only country with the "right" to put men in space.
I can't believe I just read that. I came up with an equivalent system over ten years ago when in my foolish youth I was dreaming how you would buy things in a futuristic world.
I was quite enamoured with my new Atari ST at the time, and I thought it would be quite neat if a shop came in a "window" with all the objects as "files". If you clicked on something it would appear on your doorstep the next day.
Clearly I'm kicking myself for not patenting the idea there and then. But the thing is, even as a twelve year old I though it was a tad obvious....
It's ideas like this that make me wince at the outright stupidity of most governments around the world.
It's a pretty universal economic law that if you impose a cost on a certain kind of activity, the amount of that activity undertaken will tend to decrease.
Now costs include the cost/inconvenience of making a transaction. Although ivory tower economists tend to assume this cost out of existence most of the time, it is seriously important in the real world. Reducing transaction costs is one of the big determinants of economic organisation, e.g. the economies of scale of large firms.
Still with me?
OK, now consider a government that imposes a system whereby every *transaction* is taxed. The actual rate of tax is irrelevant, since it is vastly outweighed by the huge incovenience of recording transactions and beaurocratic monstrosties to administer and police the whole scheme. Companies will be faced with burdensome legislation and will probably have to shell out vast sums for new automated systems. Worst of all, the cost of making transactions will be a discourage trade in general and the economy will slow down.
I for one would be very disappointed if the potential of the internet is squandered by a bunch of clueless politicians who don't understand basic economics and are utterly clueless with regards to technology.
It's a fair point that visual configuration tools are pretty non-existent for Linux. But given the relative youth of Linux as a desktop OS and the speed of development in most other areas I can't imagine this situation will exist for long.
But that's almost beside the point, which is that the Linux way of providing configurations as text files if you want them is inherently superior to the Windows way. Simplicity, in this case, is a good thing. In Linux it is possible for third party vendors to write sophisticated configuration tools without having to conform to Microsoft's API of the month.
Linux will evolve to contain all the visual config tools that you desire, and when it does Windows will have little left to recommend it to a novice. Then Windows will be left as your dinosaur OS. And when this happens, experienced sysadmins will still be able to dip into the raw config files and activate settings that nobody though to include in a pretty dialog box.
I'd have to disagree very strongly. There are *lots* of ways to reward innovation. If the patent system has survived this long, it's only because people aren't imaginative enough to think of something else. Nobody is suggesting that people should go unrewarded for their labours. The main problem is that the patent system is about the single worst solution to the problem.
Some pretty trivial economics will tell you that any resource that can be duplicated at zero cost (i.e. ideas) must have a zero market price if your economy is going to be efficient. Companies should be free to take any idea, and then make money by competing on its implementation. That is as close to a perfect market as you can get.
In this model, research itself benefits the public primarily, and should be paid for with public money. In practice this means a combination of funded university research and financial awards for people who create a product which is a proven commercial success. The costs of running this system would be trivial compared to the economic benefits of running a real free market in ideas. You can also save all the costs of running and enforcing the present patent nonsense.
Lets face it, the only people who benefit from the patent system are lawyers and would-be monopolists. Individual inventors don't benefit much for certain. The whole thing needs a change, and the sooner the better.
I don't see what your problem is with this situation. If programmer A wants to use the work of B, C, D etc. in a commercial product then of course he needs their permission. If he doesn't get it, then he has to make do without their help.
It's hardly a case of "pollution". If I were programmer B, I'd be highly ticked off if someone took my work on any GPL project and used it in their own proprietary project. I'd have every right to complain.
Basically, open source software should be seen as a donation to the community. Making it proprietary again is like stealing out of charity boxes. If you want to make money off distributing, consulting and support then that's just fine. But the software must stay free.
For goodness sake, this is the whole *point* of the GPL. Software for the good of all, payment for the work you do rather than as a royalty for some fictitious property right. If you don't like this idea, then don't use the GPL, but then don't go expecting freebies from the open source community either.
I'm a big fan of the GPL precisely because it doesn't allow proprietary forks. In fact, without the GPL I probably wouldn't be developing open source code at all.
If I write code and give it to the world, I'm doing it because I choose to, I think people might appreciate my work and maybe I'm feeling a little bit altruistic.
But I wouldn't do this if it were possible for somebody to take my work, make it into proprietary software and make a profit off my labour. I like the GPL because this is precisely the abuse it is designed to prevent. It's important to know that your code won't get ripped off.
As for open source forks, I actually think these are a good thing. Good ideas will flourish, unsucessful forks won't last long. This is the key to evolution, and as long as forks are guaranteed to stay free, I'm quite happy to see them happen.
Just one point: producer cartels are illegal. The baby bills would not be permitted to co-operate in a way that allowed them to wield combined monopoly power. I'm sure whoever engineered the breakup would do so in a way that guaranteed active competition.
IIRC, in the US competing suppliers are not even permitted to *talk* about pricing arrangements with a competitor. Maybe a lawyer could clarify that one a little.....
Given that baby bills with equal access to the source code would have identical products and target markets, I would anticipate that they would be very fierce competitors. Prices would drop rapidly, and there would be a huge incentive for the baby bills to improve their products to gain a competitive advantage.
I Quite agree. The goverment is definitely not the one to mess with software design.
But they could do us all a great favour by writing some simple legislation that requires all APIs to be open. In the name of fairness, I guess this should apply to all companies, and not just Microsoft.
I can't think of a single situation where having a secret API is beneficial to the industry as a whole. The only point of secret APIs that I can see is as a tool of unfair competition or as a way to lock in consumers. Neither of these is good.
One the government have done their job and set the framework for fair competition in place, they should get out and leave the invisible hand to do it's job.
If MS gets broken up, then the new companies won't have anywhere near the monopoly power that microsoft currently enjoys. Any breakup would have clauses preventing the companies merging back together again (e.g. via stock swaps), so there would be no danger of them becoming a monopoly again.
All the baby bills would have an economoic incentive to cut prices, increase quality and outpace the others. That's why we want the breakup in the first place. Adam Smith's invisible hand simply doesn't work unless markets behave competitively.
If the baby bills tried to fix artificially high prices by collusion, they would be utterly screwed by anti-cartel legislation. Price fixing is illegal in most economically developed countries. They wouldn't be able to individually break standards, because breaking compatibility would really make them look like a bad investment.
My guess is that the baby bills would, after some initial confusion, end up targetting slightly different market sectors. One might aim at home users/education sector. Another may go for corporate contracts. Another may position itself for government deals. I would also predict a fairly rapid drop in prices as the companies each try to promote their windows version early on.
Breakup is good for the consumer, good for the industry and maybe even good for Microsoft shareholders in the long run.
It also has the great advantage of requiring very little in terms of red tape and goverment regulation. Once the breakup is done, the goverment can simply get out and leave competition to do its thing.
Re:GUIs are killing good CLI and keyboard shortcut
on
Interface Zen
·
· Score: 1
I believe the Microsoft Approved solution is to write a small (100k-ish?) Visual Basic program that calls the SendKey command a few times.
This will emulate the necessary key presses to start your autocapture, and you can put a shortcut to this program in the startup folder.
Of course, this procedure won't work if anyone changes the menu layout, if any other application rudely decides to mess with the keyboard at the same time, or on alternate Tuesdays.
But hey, you can at least put a pretty icon on your new app and marvel at the beautifully integrated COM technology and laugh at all those dumb Linux geeks who would have to write a one line shell script to do the same thing.
Perhaps there should be a "global" opt-out list, i.e. if you put your name on it then *nobody* can hold marketing data on you.
For someone on this list, companies should only store the information needed to provide a direct service that has been specifically requested.
Individuals could then rescue themselves from endless junk mail. Companies could save the hassle and cost of having to deal with those individuals who take offence at their privacy being invaded. Those customers probably aren't very receptive to direct marketing anyway, so they don't lose much by wiping them off their databases.
This doesn't look like it would be very difficult to do providing it was well enough publicised and everyone played by the rules. Does anyone know if there is there anything like this already?
As soon as this little baby comes out, I'll be making a quick Linux port. And then I'll invest a few days hacking together a Head Up Display style window manager, complete with luminous green target sights and optical tracking systems.
And thus I will earn immortal fame for being the one to unleash upon the streets of the world a plague of geeks pretending to be The Terminator.
Slashdot Mirror
Existing shares will not necessarily fall..... the issue of new shares can show that the company has confidence in it's future and is growing fast (and therefore needs the cash).
If the Market believes that Red Hat will use the cash wisely (good acquisitions, investment, recruitment etc.) then the presence of this war-chest will increase the percieved value of the entire company, and the shares of existing shareholders will rise.
Shares don't conform very well to standard analysis of supply and demand.... you're right that there is a known total supply but demand curves fluctuate a lot based on changing expectations and market conditions. Hence financial economists tend to worry more about estimating future cash flows than trying to fit a dodgy model of supply and demand.
I very much doubt that student who learn the skills needed to master Linux will be disadvantaged. If anything, learning how to handle a more sophisticated system will do wonders for their long term employability.
Remember, portable skills are far more important than specific ones in a fast-moving job market. Flexibility and adaptability add value. Learning to point and click may be easier at first, but in the long run solving problems yourself and doing things the hard way will take you much further.
People learn by being stretched, not by being pampered. And that's the main reason why I think a Linux system should be right at the top of the priority list for any serious educational establishment.
Believe it or not, there are some 99% of the world's popultation who don't actually know that you can download Linux and have a great, flexible, stable, high-powered OS for free. Publicity counts..... believe me. And this move is mostly about good publicity, getting the Red Hat name known. It's also doing a bit for cash-strapped schools. I like to think that even multi-billion corporations can have a little bit of altruism. Having said all that, it may well be the case that they are throwing in manuals or some free technical support as well, which you wouldn't get with the downloaded distro. In which case, Red Hat are genuinely giving away something for free that they would normally charge for.
I don't have a copy of the GPL to hand, but I think the wording and intent is that free licenses to use the patented technology must be distributed along with the GPL'd software and source code.
That is to say, if some patented technique is incorporated into YetAnotherLinux, then anyone who recieves a copy of YetAnotherLinux is automatically licensed to use the patented technology and redistribute it under the GPL.
Therefore I don't think this is a particularly great cause for concern - though some components may be patented, the company that incorporated them into the kernel in the first place has effectively given up the rights over the patent in the GPL domain.
Pretty clever contract, that GPL.....
Sorry, I just don't agree that anyone can "own" an abstract idea. No more than they can own the day Tuesday, the number 5, or gravity. Laws that regard ideas as property are simply a travesty.
Abstract ideas are things that always existed, nobody built them. A few gifted people may occasionally stumble across a new one. But they are explorers, not creators.
That's not to say I don't think people should be rewarded for discovering genuinely useful ideas. But there are far better ways to do this than the patent system, which have the added advantage of avoiding this absurd notion of "intellectual property".
If there's one freedom I value above all others, it is the freedom to think of whatever I choose. Nobody owns any of the ideas in my mind. Anything that I can imagine or comprehend, I believe I have as much right to utilise as anyone else on this planet.
Intellectual Property is an injustice which I think a lot of people intuitively dislike, even if they can't put their finger on the exact reason why. The reason is this: the non-proprietary nature of ideas is a fundamental truth, a fundamental right which should not be denied. The sooner that human society wakes up to this fact, the better.
Freedom is about youself, as an individual, and the rights that you enjoy. It is never about power over the lives and works of others. Always remember that.
Patents are currently justified becuase they are alleged to promote progress in the useful arts. I would like to argue that this is, to put it bluntly, complete hogswash.
Progress occurs spontaneously in the minds of individuals. This may happen in universities or research centres, but more often than not it is just a lateral thinking person who sees a good way to solve a problem. Businesses solve problems like this all the time, and I think it is no coincidence that some of the greatest progress we have seen in the twentieth century are due to fiercely competitive markets in various commodity technologies.
Patent monopolies are the antithesis of progress - they remove most incentives for further innovation and create unnaceptable barriers of entry to innovative competitors. They create a hugely costly system of IP law which is a pretty impassable obstacle for small players in any case. Additionally, the beaurocracy and royalties imposed on companies needing to use a patented idea inevitably means that the invention is never used as much as it should have been.
You see, all inventions will be discovered ultimately. Real science will be done by people who are eternally curious and love their subject. Practical innovations will arise naturally as people need them. Business ideas will be created by businessmen, that is their job after all.
So why are we still enslaved by this idea of patents? I'll admit that some inventions may occur slightly sooner because of financial incentives, and biotech may fall into this category. But even then, the benefits of these inventions are less than they would otherwise have been because the high price of patented products limits their usage.
Furthermore, it is not clear that mankind is fully ready to handle the implications of some discoveries. Patents tend to encourage an unquestioning headlong rush into ideas such as GM food, designer babies, cloning humans and growing body parts. Not that these are necessarily bad, but I for one can see the advantage of actually slowing down progress until some of the ethical issues are properly sorted out. Without patents, we wouldn't have the problem of a self-interested lobby pushing these ideas before mankind is mature enough to handle them.
Aside from the fact that I am morally offened at the thought that anyone could "own" an abstract idea, I think it is clear that patents of all kinds impose a huge burden on society. Without patents, products would be cheaper, the economy would be far more competitive and progress would *still* happen as companies fight to keep a step ahead. Any country that dumped patents right now would start to see the benefits of a *real* free market.
Why are geeks always so bloody pedantic?
You couldn't get a stalemate (no available moves) this early in the game.... you could not have taken enough pieces. But 'mate' is conventionally used to mean checkmate by pretty much every chess player I've encountered. I've never seen an official definition though.
The big Linux IPOs are a good thing for small developers.
For one thing, it's a great motivational boost to know that what you are doing could make you mega-rich. Some people like that kind of incentive.
Secondly, it is clear that the open source movement as a whole will benefit from the injection of cash and corporate credibility that these kind success stories bring. It's a necessary step in maintaining the progress of free software. Small developers with their eye on the ball will do well in the open source consulting and bespoke development businesses.
But most importantly, it is clear that the business model of firms like Red Hat rely upon the goodwill of the open source community. Thus, Red Hat will have a big incentive to keep the small developers onside through sponsorships, awards, share handouts etc.
These kind of activities don't cost much for a multi-billion pound company. By cultivating small developer support for their systems, Red Hat et al. will probably get better press and actually increase their share price.
All in all, I don't think there is too much to worry about. Red Hat can't renege on open source principles precisely because the market won't look kindly on any company that chucks it's mindshare out of the window.....
This is getting daft. This is roughly equivalent to patenting the "process" of shopping. Patents were meant to encourage the development of gadgets during the industrial revolution. They were never intended for abstract ideas, and certainly not business models. Businesses are meant to compete in the marketplace, and not cushion themselves with artificial legal barriers.
It's clear that there are enough bullshit patents filed for slashdot to run one of these stories every day. It's also clear that patents are a pointless and costly system in an information-centric world.
But it would be nice to see some of the stupidity of the patent system be aired a little more frequently outside the relatively enlightened forum of Slashdot. A bit of grass-roots evangelization is needed. Consequently, I am planning to put up a webpage with a few pointed rants about the present system, and ideas about what it could be replaced with. If you have any views on this that you would like to see aired, mail me at:
mike@mikera.net
Slashdot may be biased, but at least it's open about that... You have a right of reply, and the real meat of what I find interesting here is in the discussions anyway. If something in an article is clearly rubbish, this will be pointed out remarkably fast.
I don't think you can ever really escape bias. I haven't seen much truly objective journalism from *any* source. But if there is to be an element of bias, it might as well be in favour of a good cause such as the open source movement.
Even if the idea is obvious, somebody has to implement it first.
I don't see how that gives anyone ownership over the original idea. I don't believe that anyone should own an idea anyway, but that's beside the point.
This is Somewhat like the Russians claiming to be the only country with the "right" to put men in space.
Valid and fair?
I can't believe I just read that. I came up with an equivalent system over ten years ago when in my foolish youth I was dreaming how you would buy things in a futuristic world.
I was quite enamoured with my new Atari ST at the time, and I thought it would be quite neat if a shop came in a "window" with all the objects as "files". If you clicked on something it would appear on your doorstep the next day.
Clearly I'm kicking myself for not patenting the idea there and then. But the thing is, even as a twelve year old I though it was a tad obvious....
It's ideas like this that make me wince at the outright stupidity of most governments around the world.
It's a pretty universal economic law that if you impose a cost on a certain kind of activity, the amount of that activity undertaken will tend to decrease.
Now costs include the cost/inconvenience of making a transaction. Although ivory tower economists tend to assume this cost out of existence most of the time, it is seriously important in the real world. Reducing transaction costs is one of the big determinants of economic organisation, e.g. the economies of scale of large firms.
Still with me?
OK, now consider a government that imposes a system whereby every *transaction* is taxed. The actual rate of tax is irrelevant, since it is vastly outweighed by the huge incovenience of recording transactions and beaurocratic monstrosties to administer and police the whole scheme. Companies will be faced with burdensome legislation and will probably have to shell out vast sums for new automated systems. Worst of all, the cost of making transactions will be a discourage trade in general and the economy will slow down.
I for one would be very disappointed if the potential of the internet is squandered by a bunch of clueless politicians who don't understand basic economics and are utterly clueless with regards to technology.
But let's not give them the chance, eh?
It's a fair point that visual configuration tools are pretty non-existent for Linux. But given the relative youth of Linux as a desktop OS and the speed of development in most other areas I can't imagine this situation will exist for long.
But that's almost beside the point, which is that the Linux way of providing configurations as text files if you want them is inherently superior to the Windows way. Simplicity, in this case, is a good thing. In Linux it is possible for third party vendors to write sophisticated configuration tools without having to conform to Microsoft's API of the month.
Linux will evolve to contain all the visual config tools that you desire, and when it does Windows will have little left to recommend it to a novice. Then Windows will be left as your dinosaur OS. And when this happens, experienced sysadmins will still be able to dip into the raw config files and activate settings that nobody though to include in a pretty dialog box.
I'd have to disagree very strongly. There are *lots* of ways to reward innovation. If the patent system has survived this long, it's only because people aren't imaginative enough to think of something else. Nobody is suggesting that people should go unrewarded for their labours. The main problem is that the patent system is about the single worst solution to the problem.
Some pretty trivial economics will tell you that any resource that can be duplicated at zero cost (i.e. ideas) must have a zero market price if your economy is going to be efficient. Companies should be free to take any idea, and then make money by competing on its implementation. That is as close to a perfect market as you can get.
In this model, research itself benefits the public primarily, and should be paid for with public money. In practice this means a combination of funded university research and financial awards for people who create a product which is a proven commercial success. The costs of running this system would be trivial compared to the economic benefits of running a real free market in ideas. You can also save all the costs of running and enforcing the present patent nonsense.
Lets face it, the only people who benefit from the patent system are lawyers and would-be monopolists. Individual inventors don't benefit much for certain. The whole thing needs a change, and the sooner the better.
Of course it matters. Stock markets are all about bluff, double bluff and guessing just how irrational other people are going to be.
There only has to be *the possibility* of someone buying for a stupid reason, and everyone else will buy to get in first.
Then you might as well buy, because you know all the rest of the lemmings are going to bid the price up even more.....
I don't see what your problem is with this situation. If programmer A wants to use the work of B, C, D etc. in a commercial product then of course he needs their permission. If he doesn't get it, then he has to make do without their help.
It's hardly a case of "pollution". If I were programmer B, I'd be highly ticked off if someone took my work on any GPL project and used it in their own proprietary project. I'd have every right to complain.
Basically, open source software should be seen as a donation to the community. Making it proprietary again is like stealing out of charity boxes. If you want to make money off distributing, consulting and support then that's just fine. But the software must stay free.
For goodness sake, this is the whole *point* of the GPL. Software for the good of all, payment for the work you do rather than as a royalty for some fictitious property right. If you don't like this idea, then don't use the GPL, but then don't go expecting freebies from the open source community either.
I'm a big fan of the GPL precisely because it doesn't allow proprietary forks. In fact, without the GPL I probably wouldn't be developing open source code at all.
If I write code and give it to the world, I'm doing it because I choose to, I think people might appreciate my work and maybe I'm feeling a little bit altruistic.
But I wouldn't do this if it were possible for somebody to take my work, make it into proprietary software and make a profit off my labour. I like the GPL because this is precisely the abuse it is designed to prevent. It's important to know that your code won't get ripped off.
As for open source forks, I actually think these are a good thing. Good ideas will flourish, unsucessful forks won't last long. This is the key to evolution, and as long as forks are guaranteed to stay free, I'm quite happy to see them happen.
Just one point: producer cartels are illegal. The baby bills would not be permitted to co-operate in a way that allowed them to wield combined monopoly power. I'm sure whoever engineered the breakup would do so in a way that guaranteed active competition.
IIRC, in the US competing suppliers are not even permitted to *talk* about pricing arrangements with a competitor. Maybe a lawyer could clarify that one a little.....
Given that baby bills with equal access to the source code would have identical products and target markets, I would anticipate that they would be very fierce competitors. Prices would drop rapidly, and there would be a huge incentive for the baby bills to improve their products to gain a competitive advantage.
I Quite agree. The goverment is definitely not the one to mess with software design.
But they could do us all a great favour by writing some simple legislation that requires all APIs to be open. In the name of fairness, I guess this should apply to all companies, and not just Microsoft.
I can't think of a single situation where having a secret API is beneficial to the industry as a whole. The only point of secret APIs that I can see is as a tool of unfair competition or as a way to lock in consumers. Neither of these is good.
One the government have done their job and set the framework for fair competition in place, they should get out and leave the invisible hand to do it's job.
If MS gets broken up, then the new companies won't have anywhere near the monopoly power that microsoft currently enjoys. Any breakup would have clauses preventing the companies merging back together again (e.g. via stock swaps), so there would be no danger of them becoming a monopoly again.
All the baby bills would have an economoic incentive to cut prices, increase quality and outpace the others. That's why we want the breakup in the first place. Adam Smith's invisible hand simply doesn't work unless markets behave competitively.
If the baby bills tried to fix artificially high prices by collusion, they would be utterly screwed by anti-cartel legislation. Price fixing is illegal in most economically developed countries. They wouldn't be able to individually break standards, because breaking compatibility would really make them look like a bad investment.
My guess is that the baby bills would, after some initial confusion, end up targetting slightly different market sectors. One might aim at home users/education sector. Another may go for corporate contracts. Another may position itself for government deals. I would also predict a fairly rapid drop in prices as the companies each try to promote their windows version early on.
Breakup is good for the consumer, good for the industry and maybe even good for Microsoft shareholders in the long run.
It also has the great advantage of requiring very little in terms of red tape and goverment regulation. Once the breakup is done, the goverment can simply get out and leave competition to do its thing.
I believe the Microsoft Approved solution is to write a small (100k-ish?) Visual Basic program that calls the SendKey command a few times.
This will emulate the necessary key presses to start your autocapture, and you can put a shortcut to this program in the startup folder.
Of course, this procedure won't work if anyone changes the menu layout, if any other application rudely decides to mess with the keyboard at the same time, or on alternate Tuesdays.
But hey, you can at least put a pretty icon on your new app and marvel at the beautifully integrated COM technology and laugh at all those dumb Linux geeks who would have to write a one line shell script to do the same thing.
Perhaps there should be a "global" opt-out list, i.e. if you put your name on it then *nobody* can hold marketing data on you.
For someone on this list, companies should only store the information needed to provide a direct service that has been specifically requested.
Individuals could then rescue themselves from endless junk mail. Companies could save the hassle and cost of having to deal with those individuals who take offence at their privacy being invaded. Those customers probably aren't very receptive to direct marketing anyway, so they don't lose much by wiping them off their databases.
This doesn't look like it would be very difficult to do providing it was well enough publicised and everyone played by the rules. Does anyone know if there is there anything like this already?
As soon as this little baby comes out, I'll be making a quick Linux port. And then I'll invest a few days hacking together a Head Up Display style window manager, complete with luminous green target sights and optical tracking systems.
And thus I will earn immortal fame for being the one to unleash upon the streets of the world a plague of geeks pretending to be The Terminator.