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Comment: Re:No, the US has too much freedom for Apple. (Score 4, Insightful) 1303

by raddan (#38780585) Attached to: How the US Lost Out On iPhone Work

I'm sorry-- this is idiotic. Capitalism's only value is profit. But that does NOT imply that workers get the shaft. Quality control is a very important part of manuacturing, and it is a FACT that workers who care about their work do a better job. This is why the Toyota Production System works. It works in America. You can hardly argue that Toyota is not capitalist.

Waking people up in the middle of the night out of company dorms so they can fix your design errors ain't flexibility-- it's slavery. Arguing that it is "just capitalism" is disingenuous, because capitalism is entirely compatible with happy and prosperous workers.

Comment: Re:To avoid antitrust (Score 1) 248

by raddan (#38639218) Attached to: Did Microsoft Make Google Pay Triple Rate To Mozilla?
I stand corrected re: original license of KHTML.
Have you read the BSD license? It is incredibly short and says nothing of the sort re: re-licensing. In fact, it implies precisely the opposite. I'll give you the sprawling 3-clause version:
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Copyright (c) YEAR, OWNER

All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

  1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
  2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
  3. Neither the name of the ORGANIZATION nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

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More here:
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75436/relicense-bsd-2-3-clause-code-to-gpl

Comment: Re:To avoid antitrust (Score 1) 248

by raddan (#38526954) Attached to: Did Microsoft Make Google Pay Triple Rate To Mozilla?
Wrong on many counts. Firstly, you can only change a license if you own the copyright. I just checked out a copy of WebKit from their svn repo. Copyrights are all over the place-- some belong to Apple, some belong to Google, and many little pieces here and there belong to private individuals. Getting everyone to reassign their copyrights would be a nightmare. This is why many GNU projects require copyright assignment statements before you contribute patches.

Secondly, Apple put all of their original contributions under the (L)GPL. The original codebase, KHTML, was contributed by Qt, and that was BSD-licensed.

Comment: Re:Monitor definitely (Score 1) 522

by raddan (#37705852) Attached to: The best computer upgrade I've ever done was:
Ditto this, but my "investment" is a good keyboard. After using Apple's first-gen all-white keyboards, I started developing severe wrist and elbow pain. This is because, as the keyboard aged, it developed a "mushy" feel, such that, in order to register a keypress reliably, you had to pound on the keyboard.

I switched to an old IBM Model M I found in a recycling bin, and the pain went away almost immediately. I still have that model M, at home. At the lab, I use an old Apple Extended Keyboard II (dug out of my closet; it came with my Mac in the mid-90's), which has most of the "feel" of a Model M without the noise (which would definitely drive my labmates crazy).

I'm sure that there are good modern keyboards (and ones that don't require ADB-to-USB and PS/2-to-USB adapters), but these things seem to never die. Despite the fact that I got them for free (well, I actually bought the ADB keyboard in the 90's, at great expense, but that cost has been amortized over 17 years), I would gladly pay for keyboards of this quality.

The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because it isn't here. -- Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley)