Comment Re:1984? (Score 1) 513
Obviously you overestimate the quality of Encyclopedia Britannica which is also full of errors.
Comment Re:1984? (Score 1) 513
Obviously you have not been smacked down by Wikipedia editors for reporting original research in Wikipedia. In other words if you want to prove that someone famous lives in your town going to their house and interviewing them is not sufficient. You must publish that interview somewhere else (and not self-published because they'll smack you for that too) and then someone else must correct the article. All because some newspaper got lazy and reported the incorrect town of residence as a larger town nearby. No, I'm not upset though.
Barack Obama Sworn In As 44th President of the US 1656
Just before noon today, Eastern time, Barack Obama was sworn in before the US Capitol building as the 44th President of the United States (Whitehouse.gov has already been updated to reflect the new President), and offered an inaugural address which outlined some of the challenges that the country currently faces, both within the country's borders and abroad. Obama's election has been called "a civil rights triumph," and his candidacy has inspired perhaps the most visible political involvement of young voters of any candidate since John Kennedy. Here's your chance to discuss the newest occupant of the White House and what you'd like to see happen over the course of his presidency.
Getting Paid To Abandon an Open Source Project? 654
darkeye writes "I'm facing a difficult dilemma and looking for opinions. I've been contributing heavily to an open source project, making considerable changes to code organization and quality, but the work is unfinished at the moment. Now, a company is approaching me to continue my changes. They want to keep the improvements to themselves, which is possible since the project is published under the BSD license. That's fair, as they have all the rights to the work they pay for in full. However, they also want me to sign a non-competition clause, which would bar me from ever working on and publishing results for the original open source project itself, even if done separately, in my free time. How would you approach such a decision? On one side, they'd provide resources to work on an interesting project. On the other, it would make me an outcast in the project's community. Moreover, they would take ownership of not just what they paid for, but also my changes leading up to this moment, and I wouldn't be able to continue on my original codebase in an open source manner if I sign their contract."
Comment Re:A Question.... (Score 4, Insightful) 509
The problem is that in the United States the local shops have several things going against them. First, the selection is often not all that good which is a problem for informed consumers who usually want one of a couple options none of which may be carried by the small retailer. Second, and perhaps more important to Americans is the price difference. It's usually a lot more than the few cents you cite. Often a product will cost at least tens of dollars more and depending on the price of the product perhaps $50 or $100 more from a local store. These are not insignificant price differences and people, at least Americans, will put up with just about anything to save $5. Unless your local store is within $5 on just about everything you will loose customers to the big store no matter how much better your service is, many are not. This is not to say there are not successful small, local computer (and other) stores but there are a limited number of them, usually in densely populated cities making it much more convenient for most consumer to shop at the (much closer and much less less expensive) big box retailer.
