Xref: utzoo gnu.misc.discuss:637 alt.religion.computers:1204 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!rutgers!uwvax!rang From: rang@cs.wisc.edu (Anton Rang) Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss,alt.religion.computers Subject: Re: The meaning of life, as it relates to hacking. Message-ID: Date: 22 Dec 89 06:18:23 GMT References: <4639@sugar.hackercorp.com> <4ZW1ijS00WBKE1qh5C@andrew.cmu.edu> <4804@sugar.hackercorp.com> Sender: news@spool.cs.wisc.edu Organization: UW-Madison CS department Lines: 28 In-reply-to: jb3o+@andrew.cmu.edu's message of 22 Dec 89 04:31:58 GMT In article jb3o+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jon Allen Boone) writes: >I can not say for your individual case, peter. However, i can say >that Microsoft Corp. has not helped out the economy much, especially >when they charge the prices that they charge. Actually, a good argument could be made that Microsoft has helped out the economy tremendously. The IBM PC, though it's not the most powerful computer in the world, has been quite a boon to businesses (the economy). Without MS-DOS, it wouldn't have been accepted nearly so quickly, or been as easy to program.... >As you say yourself, depending on people's good will has a poor track >record; thus we can not depend on people's good will (ie. giving away >source code) in order to see the state of the art improve. Just a quick comment here...IM(V)HO, giving away source code does not contribute immensely to the "state of the art" (I assume you mean "the art of programming"?). Source code isn't nearly as useful as new algorithms, say. Not that I'm sure what the best way to advance the "state of the art" is...though I think it's probably software engineering. Oh well, enough on this tangent. :-) Anton +---------------------------+------------------+-------------+ | Anton Rang (grad student) | rang@cs.wisc.edu | UW--Madison | +---------------------------+------------------+-------------+