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That would be the best of both worlds. I'll further add: every public library MUST have at least as many unfiltered computers as filtered ones.

Of course, we are talking Common Sense, a thing which will be outlawed by Constitutional amendment if GWB, Falwell et al get their way. Sigh.

Thank God I live elsewhere. Flying back home in, uh, 5 hours. B'bye. ;)


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

Not in the property sense. You could also argue that a raper deprives his victim of innocence, or a murderer deprives his/her victim of life, but that does not make these theft. Heck, you could argue that every crime deprives somebody of something, so everything is theft? No, there ARE crimes both less and more grave than theft which are NOT theft. Copyright violations are among then. Anything else is spinmeistering.

Of course, nobody calls a murderer a thief because murder is incommensurably graver than theft. Copyright infringement, on the other hand, is a minor violation (at least when not-for-profit or for personal use) which is being presented as an evil atrocity by the parts interested. I wonder when will they start calling the DeCSS and Napster authors terrorists.

Welcome to the realm of Newspeak, my friends. A doubleplusgood day for all.


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

I don't want to seem combatative, and I myself have downloaded a great deal from napster, but anyone who maintains it's anything other than theft made easy is rationalizing.

For %@$#&'s sake, will people ever stop calling copyright violations "theft"? It's NOT theft. Theft is when you DEPRIVE someone of something. You can steal a CD (a physical object). You cannot steal someone's ideas except by claiming them as yours. And I don't see people saying the songs they share on Napster were written by themselves.

Unauthorized copying / copyright violation may be illegal / criminal / felony / misdemeanor / whatever, but theft it is not. Use of the word "theft" in this context is the result of the Goebbels-like propaganda spewed by the media honchos.

It's the same as calling a person guilty of using inside information in stock exchange a "terrorist". Absolute nonsense.

Linguistically, it's the exact opposite of euphemism. Both are malicious wording.


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

Are you the GnomeICU guy?


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

Not YET. Picture this: in their never-ending war against copying, the media honchos (software included) instruct their spin doctors to spew the following propaganda:

"This so-called 'free-software movement' is nothing but an incentive to piracy. People who are enticed by their rhetoric, download their software, and read their political manifestoes start believing copying software (and copying in general indeed) is good. They'll start being more sympathetic to piracy. They'll refrain from denouncing other pirates. They'll have a moral excuse to pirate themselves if their 'Gnu' alternative doesn't perform so well. After all, we're just a greedy immoral mob, aren't we?

"Therefore, we urge for the criminalization of the so-called 'free-software movement' and immediate prosecution of their leaders, for incitation to crime.

"While we're at it, let's prosecute all those 'free software' companies for dumping. They're releasing competing products at zero price for chrissake!"

So there you have it. Let's fight it BEFORE they get too cozy with the idea.


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

Company XYZ is squeamish about open-sourcing their driver.
They say it's because it would release sensitive information.
If this is true, there are important functions being performed by software (the aforementioned driver)
Then the hardware is less-than-optimal and your CPU will do unnecessary work.
BUY FROM THE COMPETITION!

Oh, BTW people talk a lot about graphics boards but what about those horrid WinModems and WinPrinters? IMHO, even people who only use Windows should refrain from buying these.


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

Brazil uses ethanol (plain alcohol, the same one present in drinks). Only Indy-style racing cars use methanol AFAIK. I wonder where that comes from.


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

There's another problem with methanol: it's hydrophylic, so it will absorb moisture from the air, contaminating it. I'd be interested in hearing how Brazilians address this problem.

Methanol absorbs water only up to a certain point where the mixture becomes stable -- the two of them even evaporate evenly. If I remember right it's about 4% water. AFAIK methanol for cars is already at that point. Methanol combustion gives out water anyway (along with CO2), so I guess the engine just lives with it.


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

No. Mostly from the Northeast region.


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

1) The original poster is half correct about the difficulty to start a methanol engine. The cold-weather problem has been GREATLY diminished over the years by smart electronics.

2) The great problem in the alternate fuel area is (of course) political. There is a government agency here called Proalcool who's supposedly in charge of stimulating the use of alcohol instead of gasoline. Now, the whole program was started in the wake of that horrible mess the Arabs got everybody into in the early 70's. Along the way, there were times in which the program was on the brink of extinction because of low gas prices. (with under-the hood help from the oil companies no doubt) There was even a period in which NO new alcohol cars were coming out of the factories (unlike now). Needless to say, environmental considerations never had a great influence.

3) Now there's a third fuel being used by cars (mostly taxis): natural gas. Still a fossile material, but less nasty than gasoline.

4) Alcohol WOULD be way cheaper than anything else with proper management and smart, well-organized agriculture. The fact is, <rant> Brazil is and has always been run by an upper caste of idiots who don't give a damn about the population's well-being or the country's progress. AND the sheep-factor of the average Brazilian is even higher than that of Americans (believe it or not).</rant>

5) Despite all of this, alcohol cars have been uninterruptibly available for more than 20 years, and they do work. Just to show how strong the idea is.

6) Let's not forget alcohol combustion gives out plain old CO2, while gasoline has all those nasty things (like CO for instance) coming out of the exhaust.

7) It's a Brazilian invention, so I get to be proud of something else besides Pelé and Ayrton Senna! ;)

"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

All costs? You mean, REALLY all, as in by whatever means necessary? Are you willing to have your country (I'm assuming you're from the US) turned into a Christian equivalent of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan? Coz that's what you'll eventually get, Mr. At All Costs.


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

Gnot as gmuch as the 'g' gthing.


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

You are correct. Don't know about the Palm, though. I wouldn't discard the possibility, since it seems to be enjoying better health than WinCE nowadays.


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

They could teach a thing or two to the Wine and VMware people. MAME's success in emulating the most oddball hardware/software configurations imaginable is nothing short of heroic. And yes, you guessed it, I'm an early-80's arcade nut. :)


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

Could your company consider working on the Harmony project, or something equivalent that could end this irritating licensing melée once and for all? Pardon me if the question does not apply; I know nothing about your company's business plan except it's about Linux. ;)


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

This means that OEM's who want to continue selling PC's with Microsoft products will have to start charging more for the PC's.

And this will lead to more expensive PC's for everyone, since OEM's need to offer M$ products in order to be competetive.

Your logic is correct, but there's more to this scenario:

1) They can sell the machines with alternate, free less-expensive OSs like Linux
2) They can sell the machines like this:
With Windows: 2800 DM
Without Windows (OS-less or with Linux or BeOS or whatever): 2500 DM
with all the standard disclaimers. Leave it to the user whether he wants to install the OS on his own, ask for a friend's help, buy Windows, pirate Windows, pirate QNX, install FreeBSD, whatever. Either that or he pays US$ 150 more for the convenience. (1 DM ~ US$ 0.5)

Yes, this may indirectly boost illegal copying. However, the PC manufacturer is not endorsing it in any way. They're clear.

Is this any different from a store owner opening up a bag of bite sized candybars and selling them despite the fact that they all have "this item is not packaged for individual retail sale" written on the label?

No, it isn't, and yes, I think the store owner should have the legal right to do that too (as long as the unpackaging doesn't damage the product in any way).


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

I don't know when I would have found the time to write Slashdot during college if we didn't have computers in the classroom ;)

Come on, college is a completely different thing. If you haven't learned to think by then, you never will. Ooops, sorry, didn't mean to offend anyone. ;-P


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

Personally, I think if you're dumb enough to confuse them, you deserve to be watching the wrong one.

You mean the one with Tom Hanks, right?


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

How hard is the CorelDRAW vector format to be reverse-engineered? Can't be harder than .DOC.


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

Yes, but this is only part of a more fundamental Corporate Truth:

IF YOU DO ANYTHING AND WE DON'T GET MONEY AS A RESULT OF IT, IT'S ILLEGAL!


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

If I worked for a web-mail or search-engine company, I'd do something like this: If the user sends a message to (or searchs for) nonexistent@nowhere.com, the resulting page is a Java game or something like that. The good thing is, this doesn't occupy space on your HD!


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

Senna! (yeah, I know prost means "cheers" but WTF)


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

Maybe not. Maybe the destruction will be limited to our galaxy.

McFly regards

"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

See here. Did the US point their nukes or what?


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

(*sigh*) Then expect Mexico to be shortly strongarmed into changing its patent law to something more gangster^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcorporation-friendly. Yeah, I'm in a pessimistic mood. Does it show?


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

Uh, is there anything done for KDE which resembles Helixcode? Their autoupdater kicks ass. OTOH all those juicy KDE apps (Konqueror, KOffice, KDevelop) are starting to make me salivate.


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

Now that the collective smart@$$ in everybody has had the opportunity to manifest, let me rephrase: How's the status of BladeENC? There were some legal problems with it IIRC. Maybe it'll do the same thing LAME did?


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

Lame's An MP3 Encoder. See? Grammar is preserved.
What's the status of Blade, by the way?


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

That could be something. Maybe a letter campaign directed at big non-IT companies (banks, departament stores, fast food chains...) saying, "Watch out for this law! It's going to screw your company ROYALLY!".

If you're a shareholder showing concern, all the better. It'll give them the chills. Who said Big Bu$$ine$$ is good for nothing?


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

Have you noticed the NYT article's author has the same surname as the pro-censorship assholic judge of the case? Family feud?


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman