What will Linux become?

[Bernie_by_the_Sea]

MS stockholders' money made OpenOffice possible.

Excuse me? Stardivision and Sun customers made Openoffice possible.

By directly stealing the ideas of Microsoft Office...

Gimp volunteers made Gimp possible.

By directly stealing the ideas of PhotoShop...

OpenSource is often a form of thievery.

Why aren't we all in jail then? Oh, that's right. Because we haven't stolen anyone's code, violating copyright, we're not violating patents... in fact the people who actually do this are in companies like Microsoft, which think they are powerful enough to get away with it.

Whether or not something has been made a crime punishable by law does not remove the thievery element. Copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret law has been consistently weakened in the U.S. in the past few decades. Intellectual property has always been difficult to protect by law and in fact it exists only by law. If not for the government there could be no ownership of ideas, words and pictures. Patents and copyrights arose only in the Industrial Age, the Age of Capitalism. Throughout most of mankind’s history it was not illegal to copy anything. With a loss of intellectual property rights you lose a part of capitalism and socialism has won. The Internet is rapidly eroding what few intellectual ownership rights still exist. It’s just too easy to steal ideas on the Internet. No government is big enough to protect the creative ideas of others these days.

For someone with the background that you claim you have, I'm surprised by your apparent lack of understanding of how the free market works - people make products which compete with each other. Why do you have a problem with this? If this was illegal then not one of Microsoft's products would ever have existed.
You should also be aware of the almost complete lack of innovation in Microsoft's products... although the same probably can't be said for things like Photoshop.

I know how a free market would work if one existed but at no time in human history has there ever been a free market. It’s always been a governmental controlled market in one way or another. A product consisting of ideas and words strung together in a new and useful way is stolen the day it’s made public. There can be no competition since all then have the same product. No one has come up with a way to protect ownership of an innovative idea so there is no financial incentive to develop any, which partly explains why Microsoft doesn’t really try very hard. Each innovation of Microsoft has been immediately stolen, mostly by the OpenSource community. Microsoft invented, or at least purchased, the Office concept and owned it until RobinOpenSourceHood stole it and gave it to the poor. RobinOpenSourceHood is diminishing the gold in the MS Castle and the peasants are eating better, but Robin Hood was still a thief. He would have been hanged if the sheriff had caught him.

[puppyite]

K-Meleon runs in WINE.

If you installed K-Meleon in Windows you can run it in Puppy Linux with WINE without installing.

If you don’t have Windows you can still install K-Meleon with WINE in Puppy Linux.

[glassparrot]

I spent most of the day yesterday cutting a hard-drive Puppy installation down to a meager size of 16 megabytes in order to trim the fat off of a little utility I have that simply boots up so that it can change the graphics mode of my Asus Eeepc.

I found it really delightful to work with the command console and no X, and to be able to boot it up and shut it down in a few seconds. Linux has a really wonderful rhythm when you get down to that level and sing to its soul. It struck me that when it comes to X, Linux really hasn't found itself yet. On the one hand, you have rubber-room operating systems like Ubuntu where the computer is more like an appliance, than a workshop - and on the other, you have examples like Puppy Linux which are fragile and high-maintenance with very hot controls.

I wonder what you folks think about developing a new form of Linux which would return to a text based interface. You'd tab into a full screen console to do your work, and then you can tab out to browse the net, watch video, look at pictures, etcetera. Perhaps some of you know the old folk tale about John Henry... a tunnel digger who tried to outcompete a steamshovel. There was a contest where a machine operator and John Henry went head to head to see who could dig a tunnel the fastest. The story goes that John Henry won, but he died immediately afterward because of the strain on his body. That seems to me to be good metaphor for what's happening in the competitition between Linux and Microsoft.

My thought is that if we could cut this overhead out of designing software - the time it takes to work up a GUI... free software designers could focus their precious time more on making high quality routines... things like Imagemagick, and Ffmpeg. I think that this would allow accelerated development in the free software world. Naturally, this kind of Linux which has almost purely a text-based interface would only appeal to really dedicated and curious computer hobbyists and professionals. It seems like a good division of labor, though, to have software designers making procedural stuff, and users be responsible for creating usability... for designing their own interface for those tools. I think it would be the most natural way to recapture this idyllic past that Richard Stallman always goes on about when he talks about his early years collaborating with other software designers.

What do you all think about this idea?

_____________________

[RetroTechGuy]

MS stockholders' money made OpenOffice possible.

Excuse me? Stardivision and Sun customers made Openoffice possible.

By directly stealing the ideas of Microsoft Office...

"Microsoft Office ... introduced by Microsoft in 1989":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office

Which was well after other tools were available.

And Microsoft stole their idea from earlier word processors (e.g. Wordstar, PC Write, Word Perfect, etc...). For example:

1978: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordStar

1983: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Word

And stole the idea for Excel from VisiCalc...

1979: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc

1982: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel

Gimp volunteers made Gimp possible.

By directly stealing the ideas of PhotoShop...

And Photoshop stole their ideas from Deluxe Paint, and...

Intellectual property has always been difficult to protect by law and in fact it exists only by law. If not for the government there could be no ownership of ideas, words and pictures. Patents and copyrights arose only in the Industrial Age, the Age of Capitalism. Throughout most of mankind’s history it was not illegal to copy anything. With a loss of intellectual property rights you lose a part of capitalism and socialism has won. The Internet is rapidly eroding what few intellectual ownership rights still exist. It’s just too easy to steal ideas on the Internet. No government is big enough to protect the creative ideas of others these days.

We should also note that there are few truly independent ideas. You have an idea, but it is a combination of ideas which are already known -- and in many cases, quite well known. Even the language you speak, to communicate your idea is not new -- someone else could "own" it... The uniqueness of the "new idea" comes from the melding of the previously known (and more rarely unknown) concepts and ideas, creating a new amalgam.

We continuously build upon "prior art" -- this is also why the founders established protections of ideas "for a limited time", rather than forever. If you can simply lock an idea in a box (a "forever patent") and keep it there forever, you ultimately stifle innovation and creativity. Every new invention must weave it's way through the infinitely deep history of "forever patents", which picket every concept and idea that can be imagined. Instead, these pickets eventually fade from legal defense, and an inventor need only worry about current fences and pickets, to proceed with his invention process.

This process is a good balance of "no protection", and "no new invention".

As an analogy, businesses already see this stifling effect from federal regulations -- an ever growing lists of "dos and don'ts" which result in people not creating (jobs or inventions).

Madison explained this in Federalist #62:

It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?

[RetroTechGuy]

K-Meleon runs in WINE.

If you installed K-Meleon in Windows you can run it in Puppy Linux with WINE without installing.

If you don’t have Windows you can still install K-Meleon with WINE in Puppy Linux.

Thanks Puppyite!

[cthisbear]

The trouble Bernie_BS .. is that over there ...
you lot believe that MS invented the whole box and dice.

Nice to see RetroTechGuy's links...
that might help stop the babbling brook.

""""""""

All MS managed to do was steal ideas and peddle it off
to pilgrims like you...thanks John Wayne.

///////

A typical example of MS and its Mafiosa style of force...should read farce,
was launching Win98 where they stitched up Netscape.
What a clunker 98 originally was.

Instead of 8 megs of ram aka Win95...you had to have 16 to run it.
Intel and Microsoft...can't beat that duo for collusion.

Then 98Lite came out and showed the world what idiots and liars
they were. Read up mate...
his original program could fit 4 times on a floppy.
And 98 could run on 8 megs again.

And it was fast. Did MS invent that??
Ah! no it was Shane Brooks....another Aussie.

" 98lite was one of the first programs to provide a method for
removing Internet Explorer. It was written in response to Microsoft's claim, in antitrust proceedings, that IE is integrated into Windows
and cannot be removed without breaking other features. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/98lite

""""""""""

" Maybe the only thing wrong with Puppy is that users' expectations
tend to exceed the developer's intentions."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Kauler

Sometimes with old age some get wiser.
And some remember distortion as fact.

Chris.

[RetroTechGuy]

Nice to see RetroTechGuy's links...
that might help stop the babbling brook.

Part of my point, of course, is that none of these guys worked in a vacuum, and came up with an idea all by themselves. That just isn't the way science, engineering, or OSes are done... (I know that people think that scientists come up with great inventions by toiling away in their basements, but not true).

Someone said "hey, wouldn't it be great if you could take cthisbear's widget, and merge it with Bernie's widget, and then...." -- POOF a "new idea" appears.

The person with the idea often doesn't even have a clue how to do it, just light the fire for someone who does. And communication spurs on technological change -- think about how much occurred when a snail mail system was established (centuries ago). And as we communicate faster, the ideas and concepts travel faster, and innovation goes faster.

I believe that James Burke pointed that out, some 30 years ago, in his original Connections series (my recollection is that was episode 10, which was concluding discussion -- but my memory is a little foggy).

[Dewbie]

cthisbear wrote:

The trouble Bernie_BS .. is that over there ...
you lot believe that MS invented the whole box and dice.

M$ itself certainly does. From Wired.com:

Over the last six months, Microsoft has targeted several of Google’s Android partners with patent infringement lawsuits, but has yet to go after Google itself.

The latest example is Microsoft’s campaign against Barnes & Noble, which it says violates Microsoft patents in its Nook e-book reader that runs Android. The company has also sued Foxconn and Inventec, hardware manufacturers that build components for the Nook. The latest lawsuit follows last October’s Microsoft attack on Motorola, another key Google Android partner.

More here.

[disciple]

MS stockholders' money made OpenOffice possible.

Excuse me? Stardivision and Sun customers made Openoffice possible.

By directly stealing the ideas of Microsoft Office...

Gimp volunteers made Gimp possible.

By directly stealing the ideas of PhotoShop...

OpenSource is often a form of thievery.

Why aren't we all in jail then? Oh, that's right. Because we haven't stolen anyone's code, violating copyright, we're not violating patents... in fact the people who actually do this are in companies like Microsoft, which think they are powerful enough to get away with it.

Whether or not something has been made a crime punishable by law does not remove the thievery element. Copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret law has been consistently weakened in the U.S. in the past few decades. Intellectual property has always been difficult to protect by law and in fact it exists only by law. If not for the government there could be no ownership of ideas, words and pictures. Patents and copyrights arose only in the Industrial Age, the Age of Capitalism. Throughout most of mankind’s history it was not illegal to copy anything. With a loss of intellectual property rights you lose a part of capitalism and socialism has won. The Internet is rapidly eroding what few intellectual ownership rights still exist. It’s just too easy to steal ideas on the Internet. No government is big enough to protect the creative ideas of others these days.

For someone with the background that you claim you have, I'm surprised by your apparent lack of understanding of how the free market works - people make products which compete with each other. Why do you have a problem with this? If this was illegal then not one of Microsoft's products would ever have existed.
You should also be aware of the almost complete lack of innovation in Microsoft's products... although the same probably can't be said for things like Photoshop.

I know how a free market would work if one existed but at no time in human history has there ever been a free market. It’s always been a governmental controlled market in one way or another. A product consisting of ideas and words strung together in a new and useful way is stolen the day it’s made public. There can be no competition since all then have the same product. No one has come up with a way to protect ownership of an innovative idea so there is no financial incentive to develop any, which partly explains why Microsoft doesn’t really try very hard. Each innovation of Microsoft has been immediately stolen, mostly by the OpenSource community. Microsoft invented, or at least purchased, the Office concept and owned it until RobinOpenSourceHood stole it and gave it to the poor. RobinOpenSourceHood is diminishing the gold in the MS Castle and the peasants are eating better, but Robin Hood was still a thief. He would have been hanged if the sheriff had caught him.

All MS managed to do was steal ideas and peddle it off
to pilgrims like you...

Do you apply this thinking to everything, or just software?
Have all car manufacturers "stolen" Karl Benz's idea?
Did Benz "steal" the ideas of Nicéphore and Claude Niépce and François de Rivaz?
Did de Rivaz "steal" the idea of whoever invented the wheel?
How do you live with the guilt of your life being full of "stolen" goods?

[sc0ttman]

just as a quick note, copyrighted material has been around in various forms for centuries before the industrial revolution - I know it is not at all important to correct anyone on this, I know...

But I find it interesting to note, that certain symbols have been 'owned' (although differently from now, of course) by certain institutions for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years...

The snake round the sword? The reef of leaves? The royal seal? The sun symbol? The pagan cross? The more meaningful and insightful the image, the more it gets protected.

An example of this, which I at least find interesting, is the fact the very early Romans/Latins noticed tribesman etc, wearing reefs, to denote their royalty, power or status. Romans went on to adopt this for their leaders - Caesars et all..

The symbol of the reef, then passed on to various cultures who associate it with leadership and power... And now we have the U.N - who chose a globe, encompassed by a reef, as their symbol.

Another example would be the World Health Organization taking a logo which stems from symbols denoting medicine/doctor, way back in Ancient Egypt period and region.

I think we need a Project Gutenberg of semiotics!

[disciple]

Those things are more like trade marks than copyright.

[rcrsn51]

The trouble Bernie_BS .. is that over there ...
you lot believe that MS invented the whole box and dice..

Precisely. The concept of the integrated office suite far predates the release of MS Office. Look up Lotus Symphony or Framework or Valdocs.

MS Office "won" the battle of the office suites because they were better able to integrate their version into Windows. Which was another concept invented by Microsoft.

Oh, wait ...

[TheAsterisk!]

The future of Linux is what it is today, a toy for tinkerers and hobbyists to play with, taken seriously only up to a point.

That's right! Only amateurs and naive idealists, like the US DOD, IBM and Google, for example, care about Linux!

Often they do improve the product but not enough that anyone wants to pay real money for it.

The price is not low to free because of a lack of demand. Rather, the price is low to free because permissive electronic replication and distribution effectively makes for a near-infinite supply. Selling free software (not support, mind you) is like trying to sell air captured from the atmosphere, and it's a silly idea for much the same reason. (This, by the way, is also more or less the same reason that downloadable media is almost always overpriced for the market, and why such a "black market" of illegal downloading, copying and electronic redistribution exists.)

By directly stealing the ideas of Microsoft Office...

Which 'stole' from WordPerfect, etc... See the preceding posts.
Need we rehash where MS-DOS and the NT kernel come from? Plenty of (actual code-lifting) thievery there, too.


To say that Micorsoft produces quality work is to disregard sound engineering practices and principles.
Try this: find an engineer in a non-computer science field (civil, structural, mechanical, etc.) and explain to them what the registry in NT-based systems is, how it's set up and how it operates. I've managed to get a few incredulous responses, sometimes with bug eyes, and it's good fun every time.

[rjbrewer]

An example of this, which I at least find interesting, is the fact the very early Romans/Latins noticed tribesman etc, wearing reefs, to denote their royalty, power or status. Romans went on to adopt this for their leaders - Caesars et all..

The symbol of the reef, then passed on to various cultures who associate it with leadership and power... And now we have the U.N - who chose a globe, encompassed by a reef,

"Reefs"?
Must have started in Atlantis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wreath

[Bernie_by_the_Sea]

just as a quick note, copyrighted material has been around in various forms for centuries before the industrial revolution - I know it is not at all important to correct anyone on this, I know...

To correct anyone you'd first have to know something about copyrights. Before the invention of printing there was never any need for copyrights. The early copyrights protected only words -- images came along much later. Legal historians usually consider the first copyright law to be the British Statute of Anne in 1709 although there were a few earlier ones. Pope Alexander VI, the pope with the most mistresses and illegitimate children, issued a bull in 1501 against unlicensed printing of books. There were a few cases where a government, usually a king, would grant a copyright to an individual but there was no legal provision for an ordinary subject/citizen to get one. Those isolated rare cases were business monopolies granted as a royal favor.

But I find it interesting to note, that certain symbols have been 'owned' (although differently from now, of course) by certain institutions for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years...

The snake round the sword? The reef of leaves? The royal seal? The sun symbol? The pagan cross? The more meaningful and insightful the image, the more it gets protected.

Other than the royal seal, which is not like a copyright, none of these symbols were never protected by anyone.

An example of this, which I at least find interesting, is the fact the very early Romans/Latins noticed tribesman etc, wearing reefs, to denote their royalty, power or status. Romans went on to adopt this for their leaders - Caesars et all..

This has nothing to do with copyrights. A symbol of rank is not "copyrighted." A general's stars in the U.S. and British Empire are not copyrighted. A king's crown is not copyrighted.

Copyright, patent, trade secret, trademarks and the like are are specific concepts in law. They are created and protected by governments (or the medieval church acting as a government). The first copyright under the Statute of Anne was for two years.

[Bernie_by_the_Sea]

The future of Linux is what it is today, a toy for tinkerers and hobbyists to play with, taken seriously only up to a point.

That's right! Only amateurs and naive idealists, like the US DOD, IBM and Google, for example, care about Linux!

There's another one of those cultic emotive symbols. I did say up to a point. Do you know what that means? Be careful you don't confuse Linux, GNU and Unix. I said nothing about amateurs or naive idealists.

Often they do improve the product but not enough that anyone wants to pay real money for it.

The price is not low to free because of a lack of demand. Rather, the price is low because permissive electronic replication and distribution effectively makes for a near-infinite supply. (This, by the way, is more or less the same reason that downloadable media is almost always overpriced for the market, and why such a "black market" of illegal downloading and electronic redistribution exists.)

The price is low to free because the product has no market value. This means zero demand. A near-infinite supply always tends towards zero demand. People will accept some things free that they aren't willing to buy. Illegal downloading or copying exists because government lacks the ability to stop it. In a free market it is not possible for a product that sells to be overpriced.

To say that Micorsoft produces quality work is to disregard sound engineering practices and principles.
Try this: find an engineer in a non-computer science field (civil, structural, mechanical, etc.) and explain to them what the registry in NT-based systems is, how it's set up and how it operates. I've managed to get a few incredulous responses, sometimes with bug eyes, and it's good fun every time.

Do you imagine Windows is Microsoft's only product? Do you understand the concept of backwards compatibility or co-compatibility? Perhaps not, since many/most in Linux do not. There's certainly very little in Puppy. Maybe it's your explanation that makes it sound so incredulous.

[TheAsterisk!]

There's another one of those cultic emotive symbols.

Cult? Emotive? No, I just think you're wrong, and I tend towards vigorous confrontation in my responses to such staggering volumes of nonsense as you have posted in this thread.

A near-infinite supply always tends towards zero demand.

Your problem is twofold: you've used two meanings of "demand," one which hinges upon market and retail value and one which you have used to denigrate the worth of Linux, and you ignore that I am addressing the notion of causality and consequence. The inverse relationship between supply and demand does indeed hold, but my point is a sort of chicken-v-egg thing, in that the demand ($) in this case is low as a result of the huge supply, and not- as you seem to claim- that the demand is low because of technical and practical inferiority.

People will accept some things free that they aren't willing to buy. Illegal downloading or copying exists because government lacks the ability to stop it. In a free market it is not possible for a product that sells to be overpriced.

Are you nuts? Sure, you can charge whatever you want, but that doesn't mean the market has to agree and bear the price. Black markets exist (by definition of a black market) in two sets of circumstances which are not mutually exclusive: one, when a good or service is banned (prostitution, narcotics, etc.) or two, when services and/or goods are exchanged via illegal means to avoid taxes or exceedingly high prices. Both involve illegal activity, but only one is motivated by the illegality of the trade itself.
Black markets still follow the basic economic rules of scarcity, and do not exist in some sort of a vacuum. The main reason a 'black market' (I continue to bracket it, as money rarely if ever changes hands, and there's no bartering, etc. going on) exists with digital files in violation of copyright law is that distributors (record companies, stores, etc.) have yet to accept that when digital files are given to persons with their own means of production (digital copy machines, i.e. computers) then there is nothing but law keeping the means of production and distribution exclusive to those companies. Effectively, if the laws that artificially introduce scarcity into that market are simply broken, you get damn near infinite abundance, and the price drops. That a collection of law makes the market into a 'black market' does not stifle the economic reality of the situation; digital music prices have indeed gotten much lower, as have CD and DVD prices, mostly because of this.
A business distributing and copying digital goods is at best not long for this world, in the absence of a proficient totalitarian state set on enforcing copyright law. This leads to one of two conclusions, which are mutually exclusive: either the old business model dies, just like so many others, or the state becomes interested in arresting and imprisoning those who threaten the tenability of such an industry, or the industry dies. (Given that the expressed purpose of copyright law (and patents) is not to protect an intangible property right but to promote the general progress in a utilitarian sense, I can't see how a legal scholar would rationally sell the totalitarian option.)

Do you imagine Windows is Microsoft's only product?

No, but the rest of their business sits on top of it. No Windows, then no Office. No Windows, not bulk-sale deals with OEMs and businesses. (The rest of their business beyond Windows and Office is largely a giant money hole at this point; Windows and Office make money, and pretty much everything else loses it.)

Do you understand the concept of backwards compatibility or co-compatibility?

Yes, I do. In fact, it's one of the main reasons that so many of Window's current security problems and bugs can be traced back as vestigial features originating in very early versions of the NT kernel or even DOS.

Maybe it's your explanation that makes it sound so incredulous.

Not really. Basically, engineers are usually surprised that such an important element of the system is centralized- meaning it's a potential single point of failure- and that it gets modified on-the-fly, while the systems and applications are running and potentially relying upon it, and they further don't seem to like that it covers settings for everything, from drivers and RAM usage to application settings. It also means that installers for Windows have become more and more complex, which introduces yet more chance for errors. Because everything sits in one place, errors from one application or service accessing the registry can wipe out everything and screw up the whole OS.

Frankly, the older method of using individual INI files looked messier in a file browser, but would make it much easier to mitigate and fix errors. They'd only need to update their methods to store individual users' settings in dedicated files instead of using one INI for everyone.

TL;DR: The registry offers no improvement over separate settings files, but it does make the system's innards look superficially tidier while actually introducing needless additional complexity and potential for system-wide failure. It plays fast and loose with basic engineering principles to be applied to the design of any robust system.

[8-bit]

You talk about linux and backwards compatibility as if there is very little.
First, I have linux as my primary OS.
But I have a slew of legally bought software that was made for windows.
And a slew of it will not run on the later versions of windows.
I suppose to be fair, I should mention that I have MS Office 97PRO installed on a Vista system.
Microsoft update keeps trying to fix it with security updates for MS Office 2000PRO.
I now selectively pick which updates I let Microsoft install so as to preserve my software.

Also...As to driver support for older hardware, I think linux has actually did a better job than MS. I have some older hardware that I cannot use with Windows as support was dropped.

I guess what I am trying to get at is that both linux and MS Windows have their good points and bad points.
And if the user is smart enough, they can form either to their liking.
And the things you cannot change, you learn to live with.

As to copyright of software, I wrote a utility a while back that was basically a GUI interface for command line utilities that were used to format a USB floppy.
I never copyrighted it and included a statement that it was free to use, modify, and beleive it or not, I never got any feedback on it at all as to suggested improvements or modifications.
For being software that supports outdated storage hardware, it evidently is getting some use as I see from the amount of downloads it got.

Also, picture this:
Just suppose that the original makers of copyrighted programming languages demanded royalties from everything that was made using their programming languages.
Where would that leave us.
Imagine if MS or linux bought the copyright to the programming languages and then dictated that all software and OSes made using it were subject to royalties.
Now that is food for thought.

[myke]

Just as the invention of printing accelerated the process of simplifying the alphabet and so gradually made it easier for people to learn how to read, the invention of the Internet has made it easier for people to communicate and exchange information, ideas and thoughts.

Copyright prior to the invention of printing was really not necessary. The distribution of manuscripts (i.e., handwritten documents) was a hit-and-miss affair. In Hellenistic times, boats sailing into Alexandria had to surrender any manuscripts for copying. And that was at one of the heights of pre-Renaissance civilization.

With the invention of printing it became easier to disseminate literature, thoughts and ideas as well as pornography and subversive ideas. Yet even so governments could still control this to a certain extent by licensing printers and keeping them under surveillance. That would have been quite effective except for places like the Dutch Republic that allowed a fairly free flow of ideas and literature.

Today, copyright holders have to face the fact of a medium, the Internet, which has made the dissemination trivial.

What this means is that ideas in themselves have lost any commercial value. What does have value is the specific implementation of an idea, which requires in useful cases, effort, planning, disciplined organization and resolution of the inevitable obstacles that occur along the way.

[glassparrot]

Beautiful post, Myke... thanks!

pre-Renaissance civilization

You're not kidding about the Ptolemies' Alexandria being pre-Rennaissance! South of the border in the USA we lose all this historical perspective. Our sense of history goes back two hundred years and ends at our revolutionary war in 1776.