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If you don't think that Microsoft isn't doing all it can, roping in anyone it can force, jigger, or bribe to join them in their little dance in hell, they should read http://catb.org/~esr/halloween/index.html The Halloween Documents with an open mind.

It's quite evident what MicroSoft wants. What isn't so clear is what the rest of us get out of it.

Who cares who did things first? Users don't. They care who does things right. That's the main thing Linux needs to take care of: usability and user-friendliness on the desktop, in applications as well as administration. A lot has been accomplished in this respect, but still more needs to be done. As long as things described in The Luxury of Ignorance still apply, Linux is not "there" yet.

Why Closing a Driver loses its vendor money

ESR may or may not be popular on Slashdot, but he covered this topic pretty well in the Cathedral and the Bazaar.

Why Closing a Driver loses its vendor money

ESR may or may not be popular on Slashdot, but he covered this topic pretty well in the Cathedral and the Bazaar.

Yeah, I read for a long time before getting a uid. I'm always very reluctant to actually sign up for a site. Yet another username/password to keep track of. Cost me a lot of bragging points I suppose.

I first found the open source world when, as a 16 year old, I searched for "hacking" and instead of tips on unlocking software and spreading 'warez', I found myself reading an essay by Eric Raymond on what it means to be a 'real hacker'.

From there I decided to build my own Linux box and started following Linux weekly news for updates (I needed support for my graphics card to come out, so I followed every update). Many of their stories linked to Slashdot stories, so that's how I found /. That was either 1997 or 1998.

> After 10 years, your operating system (I assume you're a linux zealot by your demeanor) still has a lower market share than Windows 98. Vista has been out for nine months and already has a larger market share then Windows 2000, OS X and Linux combined.
>
> Who's failing again?

Hmmm.... Do I smell astroturf?

Seriously, you might want to take a lesson or two from Dr. Hatsumi, who was featured in a story right here on Slashdot:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/28/153201

Two of the many pieces of wisdom Dr. Hatsumi teaches to his students are "Either you leave the fight happy, healthy, and able to walk home ...or you don't" and "If you think the only way to defeat your enemies is to destroy them, then you have already lost."

To put this in context, the numerous but small Ninja clans faced an extremely powerful enemy -- the Samurai warriors, who were given orders by Japan's daimyo lords and the Shogun warlord to oppress and kill the Ninja and their families. To fight such an enemy in conventional toe-to-toe warfare would have been suicidal, so the Ninja adopted the survivalist hide-hit-and-run strategy that made them notorious and even revered throughout the land. The Ninja's goal wasn't to wipe out the Samurai and topple the Japanese government, but to always thwart their enemies' efforts at exterminating them.

In the end, the Samurai lived long enough to see their warrior class abolished by their own government -- while the Ninja continued to survive and endure to modern times. Even now, Dr. Hatsumi is greatly sought by military forces and security agencies as a valuable instructor in the fighting arts.

By comparison, the great Gates Mega Software corporation (empire) is on the record for having declared Linux and its various distros (clans) as The Enemy:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/

So, Micro$oft wants to wipe out Linux, while Linux wants to survive. Therefore, if Micro$oft hasn't wiped out Linux, they haven't won. If Linux is surviving, it hasn't lost.

"But Linux will *never* be as big and powerful as Micro$oft, so haha!" Yes, and the Ninja were *never* as big and powerful as the Samurai. Thing is, the Samurai are no more. The Ninja are still here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhhkgMu7adk&mode=related&search=

Victory by default, last man standing wins.... call it what you will.

I don't have a problem with it being made up. I have a problem with it being stupid.

The word "virii" implies the singular is "virius" and is only used by clueless people who are dazzled by the double i's. If you are going extrapolate grammar and spelling constructs based on other languages, which is a time-honored hacker tradition, then at least be consistent about it.

Given that, by extrapolation from the word "radius", it then makes sense to talk about two Toyota "Prii", but two "viri", with one 'i' at the end.

ESR has a proposed solution to this in one of his essays: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/world-domination/world-domination-201.html

Basically, the solution is to build in an (optional) method to the mainstream Linux distributions so that users can purchase and install legitimate codecs, or get them with the distribution pre-installed. The parent company of Lindows purchased the rights to the codecs' IP already, so it's really a matter of taking them and working the licenses into Ubuntu or a similar, more popular distro.

Yes, this would make the resulting distro non-free, in the same way that pre-installing a proprietary video driver would, and it would mean that there would be a charge to the user for each machine that they got with Linux on it. However, it would still be far cheaper than Windows (remember: Windows has to pay for the same IP licenses, it's just built into the cost of the entire OS; with Linux, that would be your only cost), and as a result you'd get a machine that could deal with modern multimedia and video out of the box, or with at most a one-click install. None of the current hunting around on forums for instructions that come with a lot of "wink, wink, nudge, nudge, informational-purposes-only" disclaimers.

Your high ID gives a hint on the origin of your cluelessness, young one.

You have much to learn.

To summarise: when referring to MIT, "hacks" are pranks, often played on rival universities, usually Caltech or Harvard.

Now it places my signature to the very bottom of the email - below the quoted text I am responding to.

Er, yes, otherwise how are you going to trim the portion of the quoted email to just the relevant parts and respond in line?

Surely you're not one of those evil top-posters are you?

How is Microsoft holding free software innovation back? How is this Office Suite or Open Office more innovative than MS Office? At least they innovated the new Ribbons interface whereas OO seems to be stuck on cloning the older versions. The only better thing I've seen in OO was that it used a gzipped xml compared to the opaque binary files that MS Office uses, but this hardly matters for the business users out there.

Your questions are important ones and need good answers for those who don't see the obvious. I don't know if you read my blog entry "SCO finally dead! MS next?" even though I don't prove my statements there about Microsoft having hold free innovation back, merely indicates the explanation for those who have same type of insight as me, which is not rare, about 50% of the people I know have this insight.

However, if you are very young and have grown up with the PC only, no Unix, no Lisa, no Mac, no Amiga then I don't expect you to have this insight. To achieve this you need to care a lot about computers and have been around them for a few decades. For my own I took my MSc in engineering physics with a enhanced focus on computer science 1981. After that I was working with software development and systems design the next ten years, teaching, research and development the next ten years, resulting in a PhD in computer science 2003 (my thesis, pdf) and I am now working as a researcher and research consultant in own company when at the same time developing a new business idea a mass innovation concept Wish-IT® to encourage free innovation, to give consumers, manufacturers and investors what they want.

To make a few brief statements about Microsoft.

1. Bill Gates is smart, but he lacks visions and he doesn't really care much about computers and computer science. He is a hacker, but unfortunately lacking the philosophy and spirit of a hacker his interest was just to make money on computer hacks. OK, something he managed quite well though...
2. Bill Gates as being the

SCO (originally, anyways) was in the business of selling UNIX systems - which is a niche market. And that niche is pretty well defined. People like us /.ers fill that niche. Ideally, we're the people The Suits ask whenever they say "we need a solution to this problem."

By attacking Linux, they offended pretty much their entire target market. Nobody here would recommend SCO for anything, and last I checked our user ID numbers were over a million.

That is some seriously monstrous bad PR to try to get over.

Of course, all this assumes that Darl actually wanted to run a software company in the first place. Maybe he doesn't care about SCO at all, and just makes these noises in the press because that's his job. It's equally likely that he's a paid assassin out to tarnish the reputation of open source, or even better yet put an end to open source in the business sector. See the Halloween X document for clarification. Link 1. Link 2.

...and got somebody else to foot the bill.

That somebody else is Microsoft.

See the Halloween X document.. Details here.

Because, at its core, it's the continuation of the guestbook phenomenon of the '90s. Most geeks now realize how unnecessary and silly those were - enough so that ESR lists them as a characteristic feature of HTML HELL. A lot of geeks have considered blogs, or at least the typical examples thereof, to be no better. Besides which, geeks don't need MySpace: we can write our own webpages (in flawlessly valid HTML at that). The point of social networking sites is to make easy for non-geeks a subset of the same communications media that geeks are already adept at. That's fine, for what it's worth, but I have to laugh when 13 year-olds tell me they know more about computers than I do just because they have a MySpace and I don't. Social geeks with e-mail, a well-designed webpage, and AIM/ICQ; posting on USENET; and practically living in IRC, don't really need MySpace. For somewhat less social ones, like myself, e-mail, AIM/ICQ, occasional posts to USENET (as well as /. and other sites), and casual IRC use is plenty (I do keep meaning to put a new webpage up - I had one in college). Either way, maintaining a MySpace or Facebook page would not only be superfluous, but a distraction.

Nothing wrong with asking for the opinions of others

There is when the reason you are asking is so you don't actually have to learn what your teacher wants you to learn.

Look, it's early September. Kids are just going back to school. This is obviously the first assignment for a class project. The submission is clearly just rewording the assignment, right down to the list of things he should include in his answer, no doubt copied straight from the blackboard. You can spot homework questions a mile off.

This guy should be learning how to evaluate platforms on their merits, but instead he's trolling Slashdot for things to copy down. Don't you think he should be able to figure out how to pick a platform without resorting to doing whatever anonymous Internet denizens tell him to? This is the kid who will grow up to be the luser that hassles you with FAQs and demands code to copy & paste so he doesn't get fired, and you are enabling him.

This is yet more evidence of the need for a real life Final Virus. It's just a shame that in order to write malware of this complexity you pretty much have to be employed full-time by the Russian mafia to do it.

Yes, I'm militantly anti-Windows. This kind of attack is the reason why. That botnet is practically fucking sentient. Pick any ten supercomputers, imagine them in a Beowulf cluster, and you still won't be anywhere near its power. All because Gates cut a deal with IBM 20 years ago. Fuck that.

welcome to the age of recursion

Seriously, what's the point of "yes, with comments"? I mean, if the standard is endorsed, what are the odds that the comments will be addressed?

It means the standard is workable but could be improved the way you noticed. Outside of Redmond, people engage in constructive criticism and mean mostly mean well.

The adversarial tone above is the worst damage that M$ has done to ISO. Standards are agreements meant to reduce duplication of work and friction between people, not a way to lock people into buying your crap. Real standards, like ODF are created by groups representing many interested parties. They are complete and easily implemented by others, and exceptions are always documented. OOXML, on the other hand, is incomplete, contradictory, patent protected and will remain single vendor. It's presentation was an affront. The gamesmenship was worse. If it that kind behavior is tollerated and encouraged, there will be no standards for anything. But this attack has been coming for ten years. As they put it themselves,

OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market.

M$'s true intentions and use of standards is everything standards are supposed to avoid. This fact has been drug up in court several times.

ISO should punish those who took bribe as well as those who offered them. M$ should be banned from participation for a good long time or they will succeed in their destruction of real standards.

I'm confused too. Isn't "ethical hacker" the same as "ethical burglar" or "ethical rapist"? That doesn't make much sense.

Of course, in old-english the word "hacker" referred to old guys with grey beards doing crazy things on green-screen TTY's using LISP and M4. Bad guys were "crackers". Now days, we just use cracker for guys who break into vaults and of course crackhead white dudes. Hackers are what we use for criminals.

So yes, I'm just as confused as you.

I think I'm a geek, this reads like a psychological profile of me. I am however relatively poor for a native of a western society. Personally I'm an anarchist, although not the window smashing reactionary kind. I suspect we are broadly libertarian because we are smart, we can see through the lies that the authoritarians use to bolster their authority.

One of the more vocal FOSS advocates defines libertarianism here.

He self-designates as an anarchist (often considered far-to-the-left) but I suspect many would call him a right-libertarian.

As for me, I grew up in several hyper-authoritarian countries (Marcos's Philippines, Lee's Singapore, Park's Korea) and saw the negative effects of such authoritarianism. A trip to Panmunjeom on the border between North and South Korea pushed me over the edge into libertarian thinking. Seeing farmers doing their harvesting being herded by uniformed men with guns left a permanent negative afterimage in my brain. Taking a look at the two Koreas from space at night continues to persuade me that authoritarian governments are bad for humanity.

I was not a geek then (I was an English major who was teaching English as a Second Language at the time) but became a geek later, partly because I saw ("Revenge of the Nerds") the revolutionary possibilities provided by technology. For example, a geek named Dee Hock revolutionized business and commerce by inventing the credit card, one of the tools of a society where individuals are empowered to control governments rather than vice-versa.

... exactly. I'm glad we are in agreement. Open source does **not** instantly guarantee security.

According to your link, the name for bang in INTERCAL is wow, actually. The sibling poster is more correct: see the entry on bang in the Jargon file for more information.

The Jargon File.

http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/

The purpose of a rootkit is to let you get back in easily later, or once you're in, to let you get `root' easily. The Bioshock SecuROM thing *is* a rootkit -- the service it installs is there to let the SecuROM stuff run as a privileged account, and that's what rootkits do (it's also what things like `su' do.) But merely hiding a directory doesn't make it a rootkit. (It's probably still malware, but a different kind of malware.)

Rootkits often do attempt to hide themselves, but merely hiding yourself doesn't make you a rootkit.

Actions of supplying Iran, Cuba, Syria, North Korea and the other countries on the weapon export list with the technology or know how to build weapons can result in jail time.

You forgot China because it undermines the premise.

There is nothing on a UAV list the "bad guys" don't already have. Violations come when big dumb companies like Boeing provide countries with technology that improves the accuracy of ICBMs in a real way. Something that can be thought up by a few people in their garages is something you should assume the enemy already has.

This kind of bullshit was predicted three years ago:

I also expect a serious effort, backed by several billion dollars in bribe money (oops, excuse me, campaign contributions), to get open-source software outlawed on some kind of theory that it aids terrorists.

First note that this is not an Open Source problem. Lists that work with commercial software and hardware have the same set of concerns.

Nor is it a problem of lists. There's no reason to keep a person off a list. If this were true, it would be easy to DoS every list in existence by creating "Iranian" or "North Korean" sock puppets. It's what you put on the list that you have to be careful with and you should really expect information you share to go where you don't want it to. Each individual contributor has to be careful with what they put up.

Being cavalier and saying he shouldn't worry about it till they shut him down is encouraging him to gamble with his freedom.

A country where people can't get together and talk about their toys is a country that has abandoned its freedom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond
http://www.catb.org/~esr/
http://esr.ibiblio.org/

Nuclear decay is objective proof of randomness. So is quantum electrodynamics.

Ever since Mabel the wonder scuba diving monkey died, Chimp enrollment has been down at all universities. Makes sense to me.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/S/scratch-mon key.html

What Is A Troll?

The term derives from "trolling", a style of fishing which involves trailing bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The troll posts a message, often in response to an honest question, that is intended to upset, disrupt or simply insult the group.

Usually, it will fail, as the troll rarely bothers to match the tone or style of the group, and usually its ignorance shows.

Why do trolls do it?

I believe that most trolls are sad people, living their lonely lives vicariously through those they see as strong and successful.

Disrupting a stable newsgroup gives the illusion of power, just as for a few, stalking a strong person allows them to think they are strong, too.

For trolls, any response is 'recognition'; they are unable to distinguish between irritation and admiration; their ego grows directly in proportion to the response, regardless of the form or content of that response.

Trolls, rather surprisingly, dispute this, claiming that it's a game or joke; this merely confirms the diagnosis; how sad do you have to be to find such mind-numbingly trivial timewasting to be funny?

Remember that trolls are cowards; they'll usually post just enough to get an argument going, then sit back and count the responses (Yes, that's what they do!).

How can troll posts be recognised?

* No Imagination - Most are frighteningly obvious; sexist comments on womens' groups, blasphemy on religious groups .. I kid you not.
* Pedantic in the Extreme - Many trolls' preparation is so thorough, that while they waste time, they appear so ludicrous from the start that they elicit sympathetic mail - the danger is that once the group takes sides, the damage is done.
* False Identity - Because they are anonymous cowards, trolls virtually never write over their own name, and often reveal their trolliness (and lack of imagination) in the chosen ID. As so many folk these days use false ID, this is not a strong indicator on its own!
* Crossposting - Any post that is crossposted to several groups should be viewed as suspicious, particularly if unrelated or of opposing perspective. Why would someone do that?
* Off-topic posting - Often genuine errors, but, if from an 'outsider' they deserve matter-of-fact response; if genuine, a brief apposite response is simply netiquette; if it's a troll post, you have denied it its reward.
* Repetition of a question or statement is either a troll - or a pedant; either way, treatment as a troll is effective.
* Missing The Point - Trolls rarely answer a direct question - they cannot, if asked to justify their twaddle - so they develop a fine line in missing the point.
* Thick or Sad - Trolls are usually sad, lonely folk, with few social skills; they rarely make what most people would consider intelligent conversation. However, they frequently have an obsession with their IQ and feel the need to tell everyone. This is so frequent, that it is diagnostic! Somewhere on the web there must be an Intelligence Test for Trolls - rigged to always say "above 150"

Who is at risk?

Any newsgroup, bulletin board, forum or chatroom can attract trolls, but they don't have the brains to attack nuclear physicists, and they are drawn to the quick response where sex, religion and race are found; so politics is easy prey.

One troll famously tried to infiltrate a mensa group; the results read like 100 trolls

It was the Halloween Document 7: http://catb.org/esr/halloween/halloween7.html

In short, because desktop is the key to truly getting acceptance of Free Software.

The long answer is this:

Because my grandmother couldn't really care less (or tell) whether her webmail gets served via Samba or IIS.

Because Mono is a project designed to allow running commercial software on Linux (I know that's a generalization, but let's be honest), and assuming wide acceptance of Linux kind of defeats the point of using Mono as a metric.

Because there are only a handful of people who actually make decisions about which groupware package to use.

Because until your average computer purchaser knows that there is such a thing as Free Software, they will keep using the junk from Microsoft they see on store shelves.

I wish OpenOffice would be a significant catalyst to Free Software emergence. But even as wonderful a suite as it is on top of Windows, it's not getting adopted since people use the false logic that if they use Microsoft Windows, they should use Microsoft Word. I expect wider consumer awareness following an increasing number of government bodies adopting it, but the rate seems very slow, and recent news of document standards has not been encouraging. OpenOffice is a wonderful technical success story, but rather mediocre when it comes to marketing and evangelism. I don't know the numbers, but I assume Firefox is beating it by far, despite competing in a wider market. I'd give Pidgin (once Gaim) its own paragraph, but it similarly failed in marketing in the U.S. (why does my Alma Mater still install Trillian on its lab computers?).

Firefox (why wasn't that one mentioned) is another example that doesn't really help very much. Sure, it's Free Software, but Internet Explorer is free (as in beer), so it's not a major decision on part of the consumer. Also, it's not as complicated or critical as an office suite or and operating system. People who try Firefox don't have to worry about it sucking a year down the road, since they can switch back. Not so with the bigger systems. It's a great way to demonstrate that Free Software is innovative and secure, but I don't think it's going to alleviate the fear people have of (Free Software == free software) fallacy.

Another important item for your list could have been Wikipedia, which while not important from a Free Software standpoint (though MediaWiki is widely adopted) has been very helpful in exposing the advantages of the Bazaar over the Cathedral (required reading). It may prove a significant player in the adoption of Free Software.

To me it seems that a Linux-based Desktop operating system is the only way wide adoption and recognition of Free Software will happen. My girlfriend loved that I could install a free office suite on her aging Windows machine, as well as a browser that didn't crash. But to her these were simply anomalies- she didn't grasp the idea that there is a LOT of software that was both freely available and of high quality. This was until her Windows installation finally expired and she started using our MythTV station as a desktop. She still fears having Linux installed on her next computer, fearing a lack of geekiness. It still *seems* hard to use, and that perception must be changed.

I see three sub-goals in accomplishing this:
* We really need the media to stop calling Linux a piece of software built by hobbyists- it hasn't been that for a very long time, as well as not referring to it as simply being free (as in beer), which is a very bad word. A counter to Microsoft FUD would probably help too.
* We need ((non-enterprise)-consumer)-quality distributions and corporations who back them with financial and technical support. My grandmother couldn't care less about the new RHEL- it sounds like overkill and she's not paying for that.
* Following the above two, decision makers may be able allow these to be installed so the public becomes aware that Linux is capable of being a mainstream operating sy

LOL.

The courts are collaborators with obvious evil.

...If it's so good why would you give it away for free?...
With physical economies items manufactured use money all along the way to the consumer so it's final cost reflects to a degree the qualities of its manufacture. Information economies are different. With Information the costs change in one fundamental way: moving bits is so cheap that the cost factor gets removed out of the equation right off the bat. This enables what ESR called 'The Magic Cauldron' and I relate to the Stone Soup Parable. In the Stone Soup Parable everybody contributes their little bit and in the end they all enjoy a nice pot of stew. So when you decide to use some Free program someone gave you and you release your modifications back then the parables description of the mutual benefit applies. Open-source is a co-operative development process that implements the Stone Soup Parable.

I bet i could write a secure voting machine that could handle state and federal elections securely in a couple of days in any language from assembly to bash!

Maybe something like this?

Angry Fruit Salad.

Actually, they're a Slashstalker. I notice that after I've burned some fool with a properly crafted flame, especially a thorough fisking, they just disappear from the thread, then suddenly a lot of my other, unrelated posts get TrollModded for a few days. Especially "Overrated" mods, but the other downmods are typical, too.

These people are pathetic. They can't argue, they can't think in the first place, and they're such a sore loser. All usually anonymous. Worthless punks.

I've killed some time on this since it's a pretty interesting idea. It turns out there are plenty outside the D and F range. It does seem to like pages with a single Flash object and not much else, so that's bad. It also makes some pretty arbitrary decisions which don't mean squat to many sites. There are some sites that get enough traffic that speed is a factor but not so much that a content delivery network is really necessary, for example.

I skipped the actual link and score on sites that are pretty much just representative of the sites around them. I wanted to include them by name, though, to show where they fall. I've stuck mostly to main index pages, and I've noted where I've gone deeper.

A: Google (99%), Altavista main page (98%), Altavista Babelfish (90%) (including upon doing a translation from English to French), Craigslist (96%), Pricewatch (93%), Slackware Linux, OpenBSD, Led Zeppelin site at Atlantic (100%), supremecommander.com, w3m web browser site (96%)

B: Apache.org (87%), the lighttpd web server (84%), Google Maps, which also got a C once (84% in most cases), Perlmonks (84%), Dragonfly BSD (85%), Butthole Surfers band page (81%), 37 Signals

C: One Laptop Per Child,, ESR's homepage, the Open Source Initiative (78%), Google News (73%), Lucid CMS (74%), Perl.org (75%), lucasfilm.com, Charred Dirt game

D: gnu.org, The Register, A9 (66%), kernel.org, Akamai (64%), kuro5hin.org, freshmeat.net, linuxcd.org, Movable Type (61%), Postnuke, blogster.com, Joel on Software (67%), Fog Creek Software, metallica.com, gaspowered.com, Scorched 3D (68%), id software (64%), ISBN.nu book search

F: MS IIS (49%), microsoft.com, msn.com, linux.com, fsf.org, discovery.com, newegg.com, rackspace.com, the Simtel archive (26%), CNet Download (29%), Adobe (58%), savvis.com, mtv.com, sun.com, pclinuxos.com, freebsd.org, phpnuke.org, use.perl.org, ruby-lang.org, python.org, java.com, Rolling Stones band page (56%), powellsbooks.com, amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, getfirefox.com

My site for my company (96%) gets an A (no, I'm not going to get it slashdotted) which is pretty simple but has a pic and some Javascript on it. Several sites I have done or have helped design with someone else get C or D ratings.

There's a spectrum here, and Moore's Law works at both ends (and points between): it can be formulated as predicting exponential growth in the computing power available for a given constant price (and/or device size, and/or energy consumption, etc.), or it can mean exponential decay in the price (size, energy, etc.) for a given constant level of computing power. One form of the equation is simply the logarithm of the other. And it's largely the same basic technological improvements that drive it at both ends.

So a series of ever-smaller/cheaper devices with roughly constant functionality isn't a threat to Moore's Law, it is Moore's Law! It's just that the industry has tended to ignore that end of the spectrum in favor of the "faster! faster! faster!" end, and that may be changing.

It could, however, be a (much-needed!) threat to Gates's Law, the observation that the efficiency of software seems to halve every 18 months or so, giving us roughly constant functionality for our exponentially-growing computing power. Your example of JavaScript driven productivity software illustrates this perfectly:
"But what'll we do with all those cycles/megs when computers are 1000 times more powerful than what we have today?"
"I know! We'll create a new software platform that's 1000 times slower than what we're using today, and rewrite all our existing applications in that!! Web!!!"

But there'll also be no shortage of uses for ever-increasing CPU power. You're right that future computing applications will be radically different from what we have today. Re-inventing the desktop in the browser doesn't qualify, and even the Gibson-esque cyberpunk vision of virtual reality is a bit quaint compared to the Singularity (and related) stuff currently going on in science fiction. (Lately, I've been reading a lot of Charles Stross -- I highly recommend Accelerando, which is free to download).

As a matter of fact it's not necessary to wait for a public comment from ESR to know his views. If anything, these events can only reinforce his views that he wants "to see Microsoft broken on the wheel not by government fiat but by enlightened consumer choice". (Source: Halloween Documents FAQ

Isn't he on the linspire board or something?

According to this post apparantly by Linspire's CEO Eric is (or at least still was on Feb 23, 2007) "one of many un-paid volunteers of the Freespire Leadership Board". I wouldn't be surprised if Eric reconsiders his involvement in that project in reaction to Linspire's agreement with Microsoft, but it's his choice of course.

but you definitely have anti-MS bent.

> While I fully agree that the rules of English are screwed up, you need to put your trailing comma before the closing quote

That's the rule for American English. British English is often more logical.
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/quota tion.htm
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/writing-style.html

Sex Tips for Geeks by ESR.

I know it's by ESR, and some people might put that off, but trust me, it really excited me to think about a guy actually doing what he recommends.

It really is good advice for you guys out there...

Master Foo Discourses on the Graphical User Interface
One evening, Master Foo and Nubi attended a gathering of programmers who had met to learn from each other. One of the programmers asked Nubi to what school he and his master belonged. Upon being told they were followers of the Great Way of Unix, the programmer grew scornful.

"The command-line tools of Unix are crude and backward," he scoffed. "Modern, properly designed operating systems do everything through a graphical user interface."

Master Foo said nothing, but pointed at the moon. A nearby dog began to bark at the master's hand.

"I don't understand you!" said the programmer.

Master Foo remained silent, and pointed at an image of the Buddha. Then he pointed at a window.

"What are you trying to tell me?" asked the programmer.

Master Foo pointed at the programmer's head. Then he pointed at a rock.

"Why can't you make yourself clear?" demanded the programmer.

Master Foo frowned thoughtfully, tapped the programmer twice on the nose, and dropped him in a nearby trashcan.

As the programmer was attempting to extricate himself from the garbage, the dog wandered over and piddled on him.

At that moment, the programmer achieved enlightenment.

http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/gui-p rogrammer.html

The Quake fiasco has already taught us plenty about this: don't trust the user.

The US still is under the impression that sanctions and trade embargoes will actually cause regime change in these countries. Even though they haven't worked at all ...

They started working they day they were made. While regime change is nice, it's not the only reason to have trade embargoes. A more fundamental reason is to stop helping tyrants. Trade is always mutually beneficial, the first goal of embargoes is to end that benefit to countries that oppress their own people. A second reason is to maintain the value of your own labor. The whole purpose of oppression is to make yourself rich off other people's work, aka slavery. Trade with countries that use slave labor puts free industry at risk. These goals are noble and worthwile, despite obvious contradictions and omissions like China's most favored nation status and other of our own misdeeds.

That being said, this article stinks. Export controls have been used against free software before and were entirely pointless. The line of reasoning would extinguish any and all network software distribution, free and non free. Focusing that line of reasoning onto free software as "free software aids terrorists" is a tactic that was predicted:

I also expect a serious effort, backed by several billion dollars in bribe money (oops, excuse me, campaign contributions), to get open-source software outlawed on some kind of theory that it aids terrorists.

Using OLPC for this purpose is particularly asinine. They might as well outlaw cookbook publication because some hated foreign leader might get his hands on the Joy of Cooking and use the fresh pork section as a guide to cooking babies.

He maintained fetchmail from 1996 to 2004, and... er... see for yourself.