No one in the music "industry" (isn't it sad when arts and sciences become "industries"? Computer "science" --> computer "industry"... musical "arts" --> music "industry"... medical "arts and sciences" --> medical "industry"...) gives a crap about that.
American capitalism isn't about making money. It's about making more money. And more. And more. And still more.
It's, in a nutshell, about squeezing as much money as possible out of the system without getting yourself sued for "unfair pricing" or whatnot. These record company execs, they already sit behind expensive desks made of exotic woods in plush offices, they already drive expensive cars, they already feed their little kids caviar. But that's never been enough in America.
Every time this happens, the reaction of the music industry and those who support them is essentially "It's OURS! It's OUR PROPERTY! It's all about PROPERTY!"
They probably are. US law, from what I know of it, tends to follow a very old-fashioned notion of heirarchy-- that is, if you're the "supervisor" or "employer" of a given person, you're responsible for anything they screw up. It's a scary thought, but you can very easily find yourself held responsible for what someone else did-- even against your will.
Umm... the fact that Red Hat engineers participated doesn't mean they "did their job correctly", boy-o. Remember that Red Hat's latest releases seem to be competing with MS to see how big the HD and RAM requirements for a base install can go... these guys AIN'T known for efficiency, quality or what-have-you. They ARE known for making Linux a household name by commercializing it. And nothing more. Red Hat, their engineers and their software are hardly known as the pinnacle of technical quality. They're known as the guys who turned Linux into a business.
I'm not a minor. Believe it or not, some of us care about groups we aren't members of. Not EVERY/. user is simple enough to only care about their own groups.
I've been concerned by the state of age-related laws in the US for some time. Basically, they make no sense. The law states that you have to be 21 to drink, yet only 18 to smoke (and while drinking a glass or so of wine a day can benefit your health, there is NO way (at least, in most circumstances.. obviously, it might help you prevent freezing to death or something;)) that smoking can benefit your health.), 16 to drive a car, et cetera. The laws would be better off if they were based around logic (i.e. ban drunk driving and public drunkenness, and allow ALL other drinking, as it's your own business if you get drunk in private or in a bar), but I'm not counting on the US government to magically start being logical any time soon..;)
Basically, the problem is paranoia, driven by hypercapitalism. American companies are so driven by the need to profit that they will notice and conscientiously avoid anything that even remotely might cause them to lose money to the legal process directly (i.e. through a successful lawsuit against them) or indirectly (i.e. through resources consumed during an unsuccessful lawsuit against them). This causes a slew of liability-related problems which people are, I believe, all too eager to blame on the legal system. (I.e. "Well, they can be sued, so I don't blame them for not doing ") Meanwhile, hardly any of the silly restrictions like this that pop up from time to time are actually due to legal requirements.
Of course there's no legal restriction on the age of conference attendees-- the right to assemble peacefully has never (yet) been denied to so-called "minors" (I really do hate that word, as it implies that everyone under 18 is somehow "insignificant") on the books. It's because of liability fears. For similar reasons, I was once told, after schlepping my most expensive motherboard, CPU and RAM two miles on a bike in my backpack after a dramatic power supply failure (basically, it died, sparks flying, after it somehow got shorted out..not sure what contacted what), that even if I signed a waiver acknowledging that the store had no liability for whatever happened to me or my machine, I could not merely borrow a screwdriver and a power outlet and attempt to put said parts into a case I'd just purchased. At this point, I was frantic, and I expressly noted that in exchange for the rights to test my parts there, using my own time and effort, I'd gladly sign a waiver absolving them of all blame should something happen to me or my equipment... they said no. Lawyers are a predatory bunch, and they especially feed on the neurotic paranoia of the American capitalist system.
The best solution to this problem would be to try to intervene in specific cases. I was extremely upset when I found out that a particular Apple convention was going to be 18-and-up only...especially because of Apple's well-known ties to the educational system. So I did at least some of what I could have-- I phoned them up. Perhaps those of us who care about this issue should do likewise with these convention organizers?
Nope. It's a general computer thing. "Processes" are what you might call "tasks" or, more likely, "programs I have running". What this guy's written is a way to stop those processes-- or, in computer terminology, "kill them"-- by shooting up creatures corresponding to them in a modified version of DOOM. Has nothing to do with XFree86 (which, by the way, is only one of many X servers out there... NOT the only one, though practically the only one that won't cost you a bajillion bucks, and gives you the source), though you can probably run it under X.
Since you seem so uberconfused, I'd like to strongly recommend that you get a few good computer books from O'Reilly and Associates and learn a bit.:)
I guess it just goes to show you that the characterization of Billy-boy as not one who cares about money above all, but about winning above all, might just be true. Doing something like this almost certainly wouldn't earn them much-- if anything. Seems like they just want to win. Read the recent/. post on the analysis of that BBC interview with Gates... it links to some interesting material on him. Apparently, the guy doesn't care so much about money or putting competitors out of business as merely "winning"...
As Eric Cartman would say, "Dude, this is @#^&ing weak..."
Aaaaanyhow, this is just the sort of law you're supposed to ignore, eh? Sorta like those ones about not owning more than two cows and a pig, or not driving past a church on Sunday, etc. etc. etc...
Money doesn't justify doing something that's inherently ungenerous. It'd be really nice if he'd have made the program free (speech + beer) instead. People could benefit from that code. And if he didn't have the 'rights' to release certain portions of the code (i.e. if they were licensed somehow from others), coders would gladly step up to fill in the blanks.:) That's just MHO. YMMV.
Your point about the Win32 API is a good one. However, in regards to the WinAmp bit-- remember that WinAmp does a buttload more than x11amp, and probably a buttload more than any other X WinAmp clones out there (there is at least one other, non?)... Just a note there. Of course, it would be nice if WinAmp would become free (speech) software too...
Red Hat is not serious in the least about "open source", let alone about "free software". As evidence, consider the following:
* Red Hat sells Red Hat Motif, a closed-source program, for $150. * Red Hat has, in the past, sold various other closed-source programs. * Red Hat's commercial version (i.e. not the one you download) includes an entire CD filled with nothing but commercial programs, most (all?) of which are closed-source. * Red Hat's site is littered with ads for closed-source programs, including an exceedingly expensive compiler (namely, Code Warrior). * Red Hat makes no efforts to separate closed-source (or, for that matter, non-free) software from open-source software in its distribution. Things like Netscape and, in the past, XV (I've heard they took it out?), are mixed indiscriminately with the other packages in Red Hat's heirarchy of package categories. They make no efforts, as Debian does, to separate the "free" from the "non-free", or at LEAST the "open-source" from the "closed-source". They're just all mixed in in one great big mishmash.
Think about it. All of this adds up to the simple conclusion that Red Hat does what they do pertaining to helping the "open source" movement not out of any sort of moral belief, but out of the desire for money.
We won't see shareware/freeware ported, since the cost of this package will almost definitely be quite prohibitive...shareware from big names like Id Software... err.. well, Id's already doing native Unix stuff... okay, shareware like WinZip and the like might get ported... and I'm sure someone at WinAmp would take a swat at it... but by and large, such a thing will almost definitely be priced out of the range of shareware/freeware coders...
Also, bear in mind that the Linux scene has "advanced" only in the opinions of some. For those of us whose primary concerns are quality, tight code and the free software ethic, the Linux scene has horribly DEVOLVED, not evolved. For those who are focusing on increased availability of productivity/multimedia/game/etc. apps and device drivers, yes, these are definitely the best of times. It all depends on where your priorities lie...
Well, I for one am working on a free software (not "open source", TYVM) e-commerce package called ENSale (named after the first group I dstartted work on it for). It's currently a whopping 100K of Perl; however, I want to PHPize it and perhaps C-ize it as well. It already has some spiffy features. Basically, it's an HTML preprocessor roughly along the lines of MiniVend, only without the shoddy documentation, unhelpful user community (well, there's NO real "user community" for this stuff yet, but I want to make a helpful one if this gets popular;)) and sendmail-like configuration difficulty...heh. Anyone out there interested in helping me PHP- and C-ize the thing? Bear in mind, this project is COMPLETELY GPLd and will remain thus. If you can work within those terms, I'd love help.
Excuse me. EXCUSE ME. I'd like to know what I did here that made my original post "flamebait"? I have an opinion-- that helping people who aren't out to help their neighbors isn't a good thing-- and I think that I have a right to express that opinion! Would the person who labeled my post "flamebait" kindly step out of the shadows and e-mail me with her/his rationale?
I love how they put us all in one pot.
on
Managing Geeks
·
· Score: 1
"But, as important as money is to tech people...
I love how it puts all tech people into one pot in one nice, neat sweep. Maybe money's important to some of you/.ers, but it isn't important to THIS "tech person". Blech. I love how businesspigs^H^H^Heople love to generalize.
I noticed that the software mentioned is available for Windoze, MacOS and BeOS, but not any free software OSes. Also, something tells me that this guy's not about to go free-software with his new stroke of "genius". Perhaps-- and this may be off the topic, but I feel it's important-- perhaps we could establish a corps of Slashdot geeks who monitor new postings and, whenever someone mentions a new non-free-software technology worth noting, seeks out to spawn off an effort to clone or surpass it.
Another thing that bothers me is that slashdot articles generally seem to draw no great distinction between free and non-free software. Sure, by all means, articles like this inform and entertain, but it would be nice (just my opinion) if they also said something like "It would be nice if this was free software" or "Anyone out there wanna join me in cloning this and making the clone free software" or the like...
Actually, the Mac stuff is there to piss off the M$ junkies, and yes, I DO want Apple to make MacOS free software. Incidentally, it's worth noting that Apple is moving closer and closer to making their OS free software, whereas Red Hat is moving further and further away from free software ideology.
I don't care about "open source". "Open source" started out as a euphemism for "free software" used to sell the concept to businesses, and now has turned into a meaningless buzzword. It's roughly equivalent to what happened to "hacker"-- it got into common use and was warped out of its original meaning.
2002: Microsoft begins attempts to buy out AOL. At first, AOL is reticent to give up control to their long-term arch-rival, but Gates is persistent, and soon shareholders are clamoring for the opportunity to create a "more efficient selling force in the computer industry".
2003: Over the span of six months, Microsoft completes acquisition of AOL. Bill Gates contributes several dozen billion of the requisite money (he calls it "funds", of course) himself as a PR move (he says it's "to demonstrate my personal commitment to a brighter future for the home desktop"), and simultaneously donates another dozen billion or so (which STILL leaves him the richest person on Earth) to poor inner-city schools to build computer labs filled with Windows- and Office-running computers, as part of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's efforts to supplamt Microsoft's commercial success through savvy business moves masquerading as charity.
2003-2004: Bill Gates campaigns for President on the Libertarian ticket. (Remember the "freedom to innovate" thing?) He loses, but enjoys greater success than any previous third-party candidate to date.
2005-2007: Bill Gates steadily sends out a variety of PR documents demonstrating why he knows what's best for the national economy, and why he should be elected in 2008.
2007-2008: Bill Gates is elected President. Those who write publically against him are labeled "communists".
2009: With rising anti-communist fears, the nation enters a new "red scare" era, led by the latter-day McCarthy, a hitherto-unknown ex-Microsoft executive named Michael Trippman. Those who protest to Microsoft's actions are labeled "commies" and blacklisted by a wide range of organizations, including the National Objectivist League, the League for Freedom to Innovate, and (distributed secretly, of course) the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
2010: Under pressure from President Gates and the League for Freedom to Innovate, the ISO approves a group of new standards, known as ISO 2010X(TM). These include ISO 20101, "a description for a standard binary format", a marginal improvement on the Win128 binary format, ISO 20102, "a description for a standard graphical user interface", a direct transcription of the Windows 2008 interface and ISO 20103, "a description of a standard filesystem for computers", a direct transcription of the FAT128 filesystem. Unique to ISO history, many of these standards' actual specifications are held secret to the public, and are available directly from Microsoft for exhorbitant licensing fees. This development is hailed as "a bold step forwards in computer science."
2011: The "Innovation Station", a university that teaches new programmers how to use Microsoft products, is established, with campuses in Washington, DC and Redmond, WA, with a planned campus in Los Angeles, CA. Bill Gates comes forward with a bold plan that, he says, represents the next logical step in the development of computers. This plan is unveiled in the form of the Software Standardization Act, which makes it a crime to distribute or sell software which doesn't comply to ISO 2010X. After a brief and listless debate in Congress, the bill is passed. The Supreme Court fears Bill Gates's blacklists and powerful connections too much to counter this, and stay silent, not taking any action against the Act. Score one more for President Gates.
2025: The first programmers are executed for attempting to distribute a free-software operating system. Calling themselves the "New Stallmanites", they are nearly lynched by an angry suit-wearing mob, brought to trial, convicted of "crimes against the spirit of innovation" and violation of the SSA, and are put to death the next year by a DeathDroid powered by Windows CE 12.5.
2040: Extraterrestrial life finally contacts Earth! Upon conversing with us for a day, the aliens conclude that we've basically been spending the past several hundred years spurning the possibility for serious advancement in favor of passing small green pieces of paper about, and they promptly leave. The next time they will return, the Earth will be a charred cinder and all of humanity will long since be dead-- we never hear from them again.
2055: A gigantic asteroid is detected on a collision course with Earth. However, because we've been putting most of our efforts as a species into developing ever-more-advanced terrestrial weapons and ever-more-advanced ways of making money, we are helpless to defend ourselves against it.
2056: The asteroid strikes the Earth. The human race is no more.
Yes, they have every right to charge whatever the hell they want for THEIR (learn to spell, please) work-- however, I firmly believe that one should ALSO have the right to snort coke all day in the privacy of one's own home, but that one shouldn't do it-- it's just plain a Bad Idea.
Just because it is (or should be) your right doesn't MAKE IT "right". Learn the difference.
Everyone should have the right to create a horrible, bloated piece of software and charge $499.95 for it. That doesn't make it a good thing to do.
Have any of you considered that (well, as of last I looked on their site) QNX is so high-priced that they don't even tell you how much the bloody thing costs? We're talking here about people who sit down and code a really cool OS, then charge an arm and a leg for it and don't copyleft it. These are people who we should villify, not praise. Why should these scabs get the benefit of free praise on/.? We should know better than that. Sure, the QNX floppy is nice, but where's the source? And where's the rest of the OS that went with it? Oh, yes, that's available now for USD$XYZ, and no, source is not available-- what are you, some sort of a "hacker" (sic) trying to "hack" (sic again) into our computers? (Capitalists never say "boxes"...)
Don't you people have anything better to do than focus on the business side of computing? Frankly, it's rather vulgar. I don't know about you, but I went into computing BECAUSE I LIKE COMPUTERS, not because I wanted to see how big, rich fat-cats could benefit from technology. Sickening.
What on EARTH does it matter how cheap PCs are when you buy them by the thousands? How many of you can buy PCs by the thousands for your own PERSONAL use? None, unless one of you out there happens to be Bill Gates. And how much does it matter if PCs don't come with support? If you don't know how to do your own rack-a-fratchin' support for ordinary desktop PCs, what the fsck are you doing running Linux?
Slashdot Mirror
No one in the music "industry" (isn't it sad when arts and sciences become "industries"? Computer "science" --> computer "industry"... musical "arts" --> music "industry"... medical "arts and sciences" --> medical "industry"...) gives a crap about that.
American capitalism isn't about making money. It's about making more money. And more. And more. And still more.
It's, in a nutshell, about squeezing as much money as possible out of the system without getting yourself sued for "unfair pricing" or whatnot. These record company execs, they already sit behind expensive desks made of exotic woods in plush offices, they already drive expensive cars, they already feed their little kids caviar. But that's never been enough in America.
Every time this happens, the reaction of the music industry and those who support them is essentially "It's OURS! It's OUR PROPERTY! It's all about PROPERTY!"
But it's not. It's not all about property.
It's all about money...
They probably are. US law, from what I know of it, tends to follow a very old-fashioned notion of heirarchy-- that is, if you're the "supervisor" or "employer" of a given person, you're responsible for anything they screw up. It's a scary thought, but you can very easily find yourself held responsible for what someone else did-- even against your will.
Umm... the fact that Red Hat engineers participated doesn't mean they "did their job correctly", boy-o. Remember that Red Hat's latest releases seem to be competing with MS to see how big the HD and RAM requirements for a base install can go... these guys AIN'T known for efficiency, quality or what-have-you. They ARE known for making Linux a household name by commercializing it. And nothing more. Red Hat, their engineers and their software are hardly known as the pinnacle of technical quality. They're known as the guys who turned Linux into a business.
I'm not a minor. Believe it or not, some of us care about groups we aren't members of. Not EVERY /. user is simple enough to only care about their own groups.
I've been concerned by the state of age-related laws in the US for some time. Basically, they make no sense. The law states that you have to be 21 to drink, yet only 18 to smoke (and while drinking a glass or so of wine a day can benefit your health, there is NO way (at least, in most circumstances.. obviously, it might help you prevent freezing to death or something ;)) that smoking can benefit your health.), 16 to drive a car, et cetera. The laws would be better off if they were based around logic (i.e. ban drunk driving and public drunkenness, and allow ALL other drinking, as it's your own business if you get drunk in private or in a bar), but I'm not counting on the US government to magically start being logical any time soon.. ;)
Basically, the problem is paranoia, driven by hypercapitalism. American companies are so driven by the need to profit that they will notice and conscientiously avoid anything that even remotely might cause them to lose money to the legal process directly (i.e. through a successful lawsuit against them) or indirectly (i.e. through resources consumed during an unsuccessful lawsuit against them). This causes a slew of liability-related problems which people are, I believe, all too eager to blame on the legal system. (I.e. "Well, they can be sued, so I don't blame them for not doing ") Meanwhile, hardly any of the silly restrictions like this that pop up from time to time are actually due to legal requirements.
Of course there's no legal restriction on the age of conference attendees-- the right to assemble peacefully has never (yet) been denied to so-called "minors" (I really do hate that word, as it implies that everyone under 18 is somehow "insignificant") on the books. It's because of liability fears. For similar reasons, I was once told, after schlepping my most expensive motherboard, CPU and RAM two miles on a bike in my backpack after a dramatic power supply failure (basically, it died, sparks flying, after it somehow got shorted out..not sure what contacted what), that even if I signed a waiver acknowledging that the store had no liability for whatever happened to me or my machine, I could not merely borrow a screwdriver and a power outlet and attempt to put said parts into a case I'd just purchased. At this point, I was frantic, and I expressly noted that in exchange for the rights to test my parts there, using my own time and effort, I'd gladly sign a waiver absolving them of all blame should something happen to me or my equipment... they said no. Lawyers are a predatory bunch, and they especially feed on the neurotic paranoia of the American capitalist system.
The best solution to this problem would be to try to intervene in specific cases. I was extremely upset when I found out that a particular Apple convention was going to be 18-and-up only...especially because of Apple's well-known ties to the educational system. So I did at least some of what I could have-- I phoned them up. Perhaps those of us who care about this issue should do likewise with these convention organizers?
Nope. It's a general computer thing. "Processes" are what you might call "tasks" or, more likely, "programs I have running". What this guy's written is a way to stop those processes-- or, in computer terminology, "kill them"-- by shooting up creatures corresponding to them in a modified version of DOOM. Has nothing to do with XFree86 (which, by the way, is only one of many X servers out there... NOT the only one, though practically the only one that won't cost you a bajillion bucks, and gives you the source), though you can probably run it under X.
:)
Since you seem so uberconfused, I'd like to strongly recommend that you get a few good computer books from O'Reilly and Associates and learn a bit.
The battery life might be just fine. Look at what happened with the color Game Boys...those things are SO good with the batteries, it's not funny.
One word. WOW.
/. post on the analysis of that BBC interview with Gates... it links to some interesting material on him. Apparently, the guy doesn't care so much about money or putting competitors out of business as merely "winning"...
I guess it just goes to show you that the characterization of Billy-boy as not one who cares about money above all, but about winning above all, might just be true. Doing something like this almost certainly wouldn't earn them much-- if anything. Seems like they just want to win. Read the recent
I have just one thing to say...
As Eric Cartman would say, "Dude, this is @#^&ing weak..."
Aaaaanyhow, this is just the sort of law you're supposed to ignore, eh? Sorta like those ones about not owning more than two cows and a pig, or not driving past a church on Sunday, etc. etc. etc...
Money doesn't justify doing something that's inherently ungenerous. It'd be really nice if he'd have made the program free (speech + beer) instead. People could benefit from that code. And if he didn't have the 'rights' to release certain portions of the code (i.e. if they were licensed somehow from others), coders would gladly step up to fill in the blanks. :) That's just MHO. YMMV.
Your point about the Win32 API is a good one. However, in regards to the WinAmp bit-- remember that WinAmp does a buttload more than x11amp, and probably a buttload more than any other X WinAmp clones out there (there is at least one other, non?)... Just a note there. Of course, it would be nice if WinAmp would become free (speech) software too...
Oui, oui, et en France, we do not need to know how to be speaking zee correct Eengleesh eizzer...
Red Hat is not serious in the least about "open source", let alone about "free software". As evidence, consider the following:
* Red Hat sells Red Hat Motif, a closed-source program, for $150.
* Red Hat has, in the past, sold various other closed-source programs.
* Red Hat's commercial version (i.e. not the one you download) includes an entire CD filled with nothing but commercial programs, most (all?) of which are closed-source.
* Red Hat's site is littered with ads for closed-source programs, including an exceedingly expensive compiler (namely, Code Warrior).
* Red Hat makes no efforts to separate closed-source (or, for that matter, non-free) software from open-source software in its distribution. Things like Netscape and, in the past, XV (I've heard they took it out?), are mixed indiscriminately with the other packages in Red Hat's heirarchy of package categories. They make no efforts, as Debian does, to separate the "free" from the "non-free", or at LEAST the "open-source" from the "closed-source". They're just all mixed in in one great big mishmash.
Think about it. All of this adds up to the simple conclusion that Red Hat does what they do pertaining to helping the "open source" movement not out of any sort of moral belief, but out of the desire for money.
We won't see shareware/freeware ported, since the cost of this package will almost definitely be quite prohibitive...shareware from big names like Id Software ... err.. well, Id's already doing native Unix stuff... okay, shareware like WinZip and the like might get ported... and I'm sure someone at WinAmp would take a swat at it... but by and large, such a thing will almost definitely be priced out of the range of shareware/freeware coders...
Also, bear in mind that the Linux scene has "advanced" only in the opinions of some. For those of us whose primary concerns are quality, tight code and the free software ethic, the Linux scene has horribly DEVOLVED, not evolved. For those who are focusing on increased availability of productivity/multimedia/game/etc. apps and device drivers, yes, these are definitely the best of times. It all depends on where your priorities lie...
Well, I for one am working on a free software (not "open source", TYVM) e-commerce package called ENSale (named after the first group I dstartted work on it for). It's currently a whopping 100K of Perl; however, I want to PHPize it and perhaps C-ize it as well. It already has some spiffy features. Basically, it's an HTML preprocessor roughly along the lines of MiniVend, only without the shoddy documentation, unhelpful user community (well, there's NO real "user community" for this stuff yet, but I want to make a helpful one if this gets popular ;)) and sendmail-like configuration difficulty...heh. Anyone out there interested in helping me PHP- and C-ize the thing? Bear in mind, this project is COMPLETELY GPLd and will remain thus. If you can work within those terms, I'd love help.
Excuse me. EXCUSE ME. I'd like to know what I did here that made my original post "flamebait"? I have an opinion-- that helping people who aren't out to help their neighbors isn't a good thing-- and I think that I have a right to express that opinion! Would the person who labeled my post "flamebait" kindly step out of the shadows and e-mail me with her/his rationale?
"But, as important as money is to tech people...
/.ers, but it isn't important to THIS "tech person". Blech. I love how businesspigs^H^H^Heople love to generalize.
I love how it puts all tech people into one pot in one nice, neat sweep. Maybe money's important to some of you
I noticed that the software mentioned is available for Windoze, MacOS and BeOS, but not any free software OSes. Also, something tells me that this guy's not about to go free-software with his new stroke of "genius". Perhaps-- and this may be off the topic, but I feel it's important-- perhaps we could establish a corps of Slashdot geeks who monitor new postings and, whenever someone mentions a new non-free-software technology worth noting, seeks out to spawn off an effort to clone or surpass it.
Another thing that bothers me is that slashdot articles generally seem to draw no great distinction between free and non-free software. Sure, by all means, articles like this inform and entertain, but it would be nice (just my opinion) if they also said something like "It would be nice if this was free software" or "Anyone out there wanna join me in cloning this and making the clone free software" or the like...
Just my 2c...
Actually, the Mac stuff is there to piss off the M$ junkies, and yes, I DO want Apple to make MacOS free software. Incidentally, it's worth noting that Apple is moving closer and closer to making their OS free software, whereas Red Hat is moving further and further away from free software ideology.
Debian forever!
I don't care about "open source". "Open source" started out as a euphemism for "free software" used to sell the concept to businesses, and now has turned into a meaningless buzzword. It's roughly equivalent to what happened to "hacker"-- it got into common use and was warped out of its original meaning.
2002: Microsoft begins attempts to buy out AOL. At first, AOL is reticent to give up control to their long-term arch-rival, but Gates is persistent, and soon shareholders are clamoring for the opportunity to create a "more efficient selling force in the computer industry".
2003: Over the span of six months, Microsoft completes acquisition of AOL. Bill Gates contributes several dozen billion of the requisite money (he calls it "funds", of course) himself as a PR move (he says it's "to demonstrate my personal commitment to a brighter future for the home desktop"), and simultaneously donates another dozen billion or so (which STILL leaves him the richest person on Earth) to poor inner-city schools to build computer labs filled with Windows- and Office-running computers, as part of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's efforts to supplamt Microsoft's commercial success through savvy business moves masquerading as charity.
2003-2004: Bill Gates campaigns for President on the Libertarian ticket. (Remember the "freedom to innovate" thing?) He loses, but enjoys greater success than any previous third-party candidate to date.
2005-2007: Bill Gates steadily sends out a variety of PR documents demonstrating why he knows what's best for the national economy, and why he should be elected in 2008.
2007-2008: Bill Gates is elected President. Those who write publically against him are labeled "communists".
2009: With rising anti-communist fears, the nation enters a new "red scare" era, led by the latter-day McCarthy, a hitherto-unknown ex-Microsoft executive named Michael Trippman. Those who protest to Microsoft's actions are labeled "commies" and blacklisted by a wide range of organizations, including the National Objectivist League, the League for Freedom to Innovate, and (distributed secretly, of course) the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
2010: Under pressure from President Gates and the League for Freedom to Innovate, the ISO approves a group of new standards, known as ISO 2010X(TM). These include ISO 20101, "a description for a standard binary format", a marginal improvement on the Win128 binary format, ISO 20102, "a description for a standard graphical user interface", a direct transcription of the Windows 2008 interface and ISO 20103, "a description of a standard filesystem for computers", a direct transcription of the FAT128 filesystem. Unique to ISO history, many of these standards' actual specifications are held secret to the public, and are available directly from Microsoft for exhorbitant licensing fees. This development is hailed as "a bold step forwards in computer science."
2011: The "Innovation Station", a university that teaches new programmers how to use Microsoft products, is established, with campuses in Washington, DC and Redmond, WA, with a planned campus in Los Angeles, CA. Bill Gates comes forward with a bold plan that, he says, represents the next logical step in the development of computers. This plan is unveiled in the form of the Software Standardization Act, which makes it a crime to distribute or sell software which doesn't comply to ISO 2010X. After a brief and listless debate in Congress, the bill is passed. The Supreme Court fears Bill Gates's blacklists and powerful connections too much to counter this, and stay silent, not taking any action against the Act. Score one more for President Gates.
2025: The first programmers are executed for attempting to distribute a free-software operating system. Calling themselves the "New Stallmanites", they are nearly lynched by an angry suit-wearing mob, brought to trial, convicted of "crimes against the spirit of innovation" and violation of the SSA, and are put to death the next year by a DeathDroid powered by Windows CE 12.5.
2040: Extraterrestrial life finally contacts Earth! Upon conversing with us for a day, the aliens conclude that we've basically been spending the past several hundred years spurning the possibility for serious advancement in favor of passing small green pieces of paper about, and they promptly leave. The next time they will return, the Earth will be a charred cinder and all of humanity will long since be dead-- we never hear from them again.
2055: A gigantic asteroid is detected on a collision course with Earth. However, because we've been putting most of our efforts as a species into developing ever-more-advanced terrestrial weapons and ever-more-advanced ways of making money, we are helpless to defend ourselves against it.
2056: The asteroid strikes the Earth. The human race is no more.
Yes, they have every right to charge whatever the hell they want for THEIR (learn to spell, please) work-- however, I firmly believe that one should ALSO have the right to snort coke all day in the privacy of one's own home, but that one shouldn't do it-- it's just plain a Bad Idea.
Just because it is (or should be) your right doesn't MAKE IT "right". Learn the difference.
Everyone should have the right to create a horrible, bloated piece of software and charge $499.95 for it. That doesn't make it a good thing to do.
Have any of you considered that (well, as of last I looked on their site) QNX is so high-priced that they don't even tell you how much the bloody thing costs? We're talking here about people who sit down and code a really cool OS, then charge an arm and a leg for it and don't copyleft it. These are people who we should villify, not praise. Why should these scabs get the benefit of free praise on /.? We should know better than that. Sure, the QNX floppy is nice, but where's the source? And where's the rest of the OS that went with it? Oh, yes, that's available now for USD$XYZ, and no, source is not available-- what are you, some sort of a "hacker" (sic) trying to "hack" (sic again) into our computers? (Capitalists never say "boxes"...)
Don't you people have anything better to do than focus on the business side of computing? Frankly, it's rather vulgar. I don't know about you, but I went into computing BECAUSE I LIKE COMPUTERS, not because I wanted to see how big, rich fat-cats could benefit from technology. Sickening.
What on EARTH does it matter how cheap PCs are when you buy them by the thousands? How many of you can buy PCs by the thousands for your own PERSONAL use? None, unless one of you out there happens to be Bill Gates. And how much does it matter if PCs don't come with support? If you don't know how to do your own rack-a-fratchin' support for ordinary desktop PCs, what the fsck are you doing running Linux?
It's time to re-think our priorities, people...