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It wouldn't surprise me, either as head of IT: Stallman Convinces Cuba to Switch to Open Source or, perhaps, musician: Guantanamero.

Maybe there was a woman who answered his personal ad?

My superhero is St. Igignucius.

Pasting a lame bit of PHP over a perfectly nice picture by Escher (whose pictures are about as geeky as they get) isn't very clever, IMO.

Art that appeals to me: Escher, Da Vinci (Mona Lisa excluded), Boris Vallejo (not all of it), works by Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland, but Sylvie and Bruno is another good but much less well known one), Dali, xkcd, pbf, Jin Wicked (check out her painting of Stallman)

Art that doesn't appeal to me: Piet Mondrian (except the Piet programming language, that is funny), Warhol, Mona Lisa (I agree with another poster that Da Vinci made much more interesting things), cubism, most very abstract things that don't look like anything in particular.

And in case you were wondering, yes, it's authentic.

Considering his previous efforts, it's no wonder he's still unsuccessful.

Yea, it's paper made from hemp.

Do you have a source for that? :-) I actually have an interest in traditional inks and writing, but cannot find any source for the material of the Constitution. As far as I know it was written on parchment (skin) like many legal documents of the time. I have a friend who makes paper the (really) old fashioned way out of linen rags in the style of Europe, but I know that hemp was a popular fiber here.

Perhaps I misspoke. When I answered I was thinking of the "Declaration of Independence". Thomas Jefferson wrote drafts of the DOI on hemp paper. Here's are links for that. However the Jefferson Monticello says more than likely the paper was made from flax or linen rags.

Richard Stallman has a document on his website that says the USA Constitution was written on hemp paper. Another link says the drafts of the Constitution were written on it. There's one simple way to tell what paper was used for both the DOI and the Constitution, simply test them. However I can easily imagine the government not wanting to test them because if they are written on hemp paper then that would stengthen the hands of those who want to legalize hemp.

I propose that public education should include the teachings of St IGNUcius.

I don't live in the US, but I have an interest in the US politics in the sense that US is in fact the only superpower and in our globalised (and Americanised) world, everything that happens in the US quickly spreads elsewhere as well because of the global interconnectedness and the special position of the US in the world. Of course there is a personal reason for my interest in the US politics as well, as it is a place I would enjoy living if it were run by a sane president (such as Dr Ron Paul).

Of much more relevance to geeks and nerds is to see who well-known free software and open source activists support. RMS, for instance, supports Kucinich (who is off the magazine's matrix, why? and by the way he is a candidate that I do not support, but I think that even those who I disagree with have a right to have their views heard) and the Green Party (on which I have a slightly positive opinion, but I haven't researched it much). However, he also partially supports the one and only candidate that I also support*, Dr Ron Paul , and he explains his reasoning here: "The only Democratic or Republican candidate, aside from Kucinich, that clearly stands for human rights, democracy, and an end to torture, secret prisons and the occupation of Iraq is Ron Paul. I urge Republicans to support him for that party's nomination".

* Saying "support" however must be understood as "support among the available and reasonable options", and I also generally believe that politicians in general are not the most ethical people of the planet, and I know that most of them change their ways after they get elected and don't carry out their programmes, but some are better than others, and I think Ron Paul is the best among all the candidates (albeit I have some disagreements over his positions on the UN), and I actually should also say that I like him as a person, at least based on his writings. Unfortunately I can't vote for him, as I am in EU and not an American, although if he wins and makes the US a reasonable country to live in and removes all stupid laws introduced by Bush et al, I would certainly consider instant relocation, as I regard US among the best places to run a business (especially compared to here in EU where entrepreneurship is many times seen with suspicion)... in fact the presence of Bush was one of the primary objections to me even visiting the US for travel or business, let alone living there. I have a special interest in the 2008 elections because these are the elections that will determine whether the fascist reforms introduced by the Bush administration are going to be repealed as a historical paranoid mistake or kept as the new gospel. Apart from Kucinich and Dr Ron Paul, the other candidates who are well-known and have a chance of winning are most likely going to keep a few or most of Bush policies. Kucinich and Dr Ron Paul are the two only candidates who are most likely to reverse the trends that currently destroy the American culture and civics, and I think the most sane choice among those available is Dr Ron Paul. By the way Dr Ron Paul supports homeschooling, which is the best way to educate gifted future geeks and nerds.

It's like watching the Israelites wandering around in the desert without Moses.

You mean that angry guy with a flowing smelly beard who hasn't bathed in forty days and forty nights?

... but I am as confident as I am that the Sun will rise tomorrow that it will be safe from terrorists. After all, we have the children to think about.

July 12, 2005

Copyright © 2005 Michael David Crawford.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

It seems that David Clark, who led the development of the Internet way back in the '70's - did you know there even was a '70's? - wants to create a whole new Internet that will fix many of the problems the current Internet is plagued with. The New Internet's engineers will be much more careful this time around to make sure it works better than the first one did.

I'm afraid, though, that the engineers are not the only ones who will be deciding how our New Internet will work.

If one is able to find any privacy or anonymity in this New Internet, it will be because of some undiscovered security hole, which will be quickly repaired, rather than any kind of conscious design decision. Probably one reason they are accepting proposals before rolling it out is to avoid the sort of accidental security holes that enable pr0n, peer-to-peer filesharing and left-wing political activism.

Microsoft, a leading contributor both to this nation's technology base and to the campaign coffers of its leaders, will embrace this new technology and extend it in such a way that the development and dissemination of Open Source software will be, if not mathematically and physically impossible, at least as intractible as factoring a 2048-bit public key.

Imagine, if you will, Trusted Computing implemented at the router level, in such a way that any packets that go farther than one hop are certified not only to support protocols whose patent licenses are fully paid-up and on file with the legal department in Redmond, but whose content is compliant with the Windows standard. The faintest whisp of a Public License, GNU or otherwise, will result in the dropping not only of the individual packet, not only in the cancellation of the entire file transmission, but, within microseconds, the reporting of the physical location of the offending server to responsible law enforcement personnel. The identities of its rogue administrators will be fetched instantly from the database maintained by the Department of Homeland Security. (You will have to submit fingerprints and DNA samples to obtain a Windows server license, as after all, Internet servers can be used to disseminate explosives r

It's obviously new and forced. They want current employees to sign. That's changing the game on a captive work group and is second cousin to contract violations.

Then again, this is an abusive administration that lost it's mind long ago. Is ripping down posters from the gift shop at gunpoint crazy enough for you? How about tyring to deny the big bang and global warming? Yes, that's crazy political censorship of scientists. The investigative powers demanded here go hand in hand with that. When scientists say things that go against the immediate financial interests of the administration or it's corporate allies, public smear will be part of the punishment. There is no place for this kind of screening outside of classified work and even there a credit history and interview of a few friends is about as good as you can do.

What, instead of forcing GMO's and patents on both local and foreign farmers? That would be welcome everywhere, perhaps in ways you don't expect.

RMS founded FSF to protect computer users. GPL protected users until the proliferation of the Web made it possible to run a modified program on a network without revealing the source. The new AGPLv3 not only protects users but it also protects Web 2.0 businesses. For example, if I release the code of a blog site under GPL then I run the risk of a competitor improving the code to run a better site without revealing their source. But with AGPLv3, businesses can now safely release the code of their Web 2.0 sites without worrying about competitors. This creates a technological equality in the marketplace where the most successful sites will be those offering the best customer care, or the most sane privacy policies etc, which is actually what matters most in a Web business. How many times did you feel you had to use the services of a site which you disliked some of their policies but offered some features (ie technology) not present in competing sites? If competitors get to compete on customer care and the quality of offered products rather than technical features, then this will be good for the marketplace overall. Furthermore, with the greater adoption of Web 2.0, more and more of your software is going to be network-based, so at some point in the future instead of Matlab, Photoshop, and SPSS you will simply access a website. How would you feel if your mathematical and statistical calculations were done by software which you could not verify their source code because it is hidden behind the network? What if a future voting platform uses networked software? What if all future computers work with a network OS? Users get no protection when their software inner workings are hidden behind a network. AGPLv3 is one of the most wonderful developments in copyleft (but of course credit has to go Affero as well for conceiving the first Affero licence), and I actually immediately started offering generous discounts to any client of my software consulting business willing to release the resulting work under AGPLv3, and actually my discount rate for AGPLv3 is higher than that of classic GPL.

Disclaimer: I am a Contributing Member of the FSF.

She's ridiculously litigious and her inaction against her publisher is a threat to human rights. Richard Stallman (RMS) has good coverage of this issue and an explanation of why this campaign against buying Harry Potter books is necessary.

As others have pointed out here on /., she's a billionaire. Therefore she can afford to do quite a lot of things to her liking. I don't believe that she's "massively disappointed that this matter had to come to court at all". She's disappointed that this publisher hasn't buckled to her will (even though she stood up for herself against charges of plagiarism from the author of the "Larry Potter" stories). Perhaps more publishers will publish their works and defend themselves against malicious charges of copyright infringement.

She's ridiculously litigious and her inaction against her publisher is a threat to human rights. Richard Stallman (RMS) has good coverage of this issue and an explanation of why this campaign against buying Harry Potter books is necessary.

As others have pointed out here on /., she's a billionaire. Therefore she can afford to do quite a lot of things to her liking. I don't believe that she's "massively disappointed that this matter had to come to court at all". She's disappointed that this publisher hasn't buckled to her will (even though she stood up for herself against charges of plagiarism from the author of the "Larry Potter" stories). Perhaps more publishers will publish their works and defend themselves against malicious charges of copyright infringement.

No Slashdot thread is complete without RMS's opinion on the matter.

If RMS was wearing a suit and a tie then he would project strong and clear arrogance and lack of respect for the venue. Why? Because in that case he would be considering the people in the venue as customers that should be subverted with marketing messages and sales techniques.

RMS has clearly stated that he doesn't think of activism as being marketing and sales, as stated in his homepage: 'we shouldn't think of political activism as being marketing and sales, because those terms refer to business, and politics, when honest, is something much more important than mere business' .

I see nothing unreasonable in wearing a t-shirt and being barefoot.

RMS is right in wearing or not wearing whatever he wants. His message is the same one whether he wears a suit or is barefoot.

If you sincerely think that eccentricity is bad for free software publicity, then you should try to become an activist yourself and project whatever image you want. If you think free software advocates should wear a suit, then wear one yourself and go speaking at people about freedom.

RMS is a teacher: He is trying to teach you that you must value your freedom. RMS is not a superstar or celebrity. There is no reason why he should care about clothing. He just came and visited you in simple practical clothing to help you understand some issues about freedom. If people think it's better to look at his clothing instead of listening to what he has to say, then I am afraid society is still in the dark ages.

I personally see no reason why he should wear a suit, a tie, or shoes. T-Shirt and no shoes look perfectly reasonable to me.

Be grateful he didn't he didn't attempt to demonstrate nasal sex with plants ..

was: Re:he sported a T shirt, and no shoes

And gcc. And Emacs. And the GPL.

That's nice, and 20+ years old. What has he done lately to keep himself relevant? His personal web page is full of political propaganda and tripe (figures RMS would support the Green Party). It doesn't even have a section on software he's written, outside of the "Serious Bio" portion. His blog is nothing more than a listing of speaking engagements. And doesn't he have some sort of RSI that prevents him from actually typing (using speech commands instead)? As a developer, he's notoriously difficult to work with (why emacs has forked so much, for example). He's pretty much marginalized when it comes to code, and is nothing more than a figurehead for the FSF. A statue of a hippy would work just about as well.

Not only, though.

This is an interesting story, but must it come from "Erris"?

No, you ACs could have put the story up before me or after me instead of trying to game the Firehose. It works like this:

1. Use your spare time to look for things that interest you with Google News, RMS's Blog, Daily Rotten, The Register, BBC or just steal it from twitter.
2. Using your built in sense of morality, conflict and intelligence decide if there's really a story.
3. Visit the Firehose to see if half a million people have already submitted it and done a good job.
4. If they have not, do some more research and write a concise summary.
5. Give it a title that would make Steve Ballmer scream and push submit.
6. Enjoy the fireworks as multibillion dollar companies spam the result with insulting apologies, lies, spam and all manner of awful trash.

Proffit? No, entertainment is priceless.

What will be even more fun is watching you PR types submit bad news about the companies you represent so some nobody like me does not scoop you when things leak out into the press. Get writing, your boss is paying you to manage opinion here not dick around with one or two "trolls". Be sure to get all the juicy details before they leak out. Try pointing out to your boss that full disclosure is better than being blindsided.

A second post from an AC mentions the fabulous twitter and you have managed to create a tag that will point to more good stories in the future. Keep advertising my friend twitter.

Everyone else should check out the Vista Failure Log these AC's hate so much. It and most of what twitter posts is more intersting than a story about some clueless and rude manager at a big box store.

If you want to read some really intersting news, visit Stallman's Blog, which is updated every other day.

Reading Stallman's rant, I'm surprised you could find 17 warm bodies that'd put up with his bullshit let alone 17 developers.

Question from the audience: In the church of emacs, is using vi a sin?

RMS: No, it's a penance.


(Don't believe RMS has a sense of humour? See here and here.)

Question from the audience: In the church of emacs, is using vi a sin?

RMS: No, it's a penance.


(Don't believe RMS has a sense of humour? See here and here.)

Except that he is a religious leader. He even (admittedly, jokingly) says so himself. Morals have no place in an argument about rights and law. Rights are self evident and law exists to protect them.

Don't Buy Harry Potter Books

Heathen!

There is no system but GNU, and Linux is one of its kernels.

Sainthood in the Church of Emacs requires living a life of purity--but in the Church of Emacs, this does not require celibacy (a sigh of relief is heard). Being holy in our church means installing a wholly free operating system--GNU/Linux is a good choice--and not putting any non-free software on your computer. Join the Church of Emacs, and you too can be a saint!

Only alchemists and very poor cooks feel the need to have secret recipes. Look how little mark they leave on the world.

You mean like Sir Isaac Newton?

People can have all the benefits of open source code in their closed source products, they just need to stay away from the stinkin' communists who fly to Communist enemies of the free world and write wierd songs about their trips there while brainwashing the youth of America to give up the competitive advantage that their forefathers faught and severely died for to be used by a country with a population three times larger than ours, further empowering our modern day robber barons to ruin the lives of all of generations of Americans to come. Take what you want and tell the Communist or Self-Serving foreign open source people to S.T.F.U.

One giant piece of missing information is that all three internet giants refused the public Amnesty International debate. It's too bad they won't clarify their position as an aid to repressive governments. As the Register noted, "no news is good news" when you have something to hide. Because they refuse to meet their critics in the open, we are all left with speculation and stink. As all of us are dependent on these three companies to one extent or another, how censored is our own world view?

The answer is to help each other and report what you see. Alternatives, like Slashdot and blogs exist for this reason. The majority of us still get most of our "news" from "mainstream" sources but we don't have to. As long as the internet remains a free place we can inform each other of what's happening.

This is good news for small newspapers, if they take advantage of it.

I'm British (and biased as I was a Green candidate over here this month) so I don't know much about the US Green Party's policies, but looking at RMS's website, he seems to be promoting them.

According to Wikipedia, the announced prospective Green candidates are Alan Augustson, Elaine Brown, Kent Mesplay and Kat Swift and there is speculation that Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, Rebecca Rotzler, Cindy Sheehan and Al Gore might stand for the Greens.

Likewise, should we really listen to a man named Dick Stallman? I mean seriously...what the hell are we thinking. Dick Stallman, seriously your name is Dick...Stallman, no no no I'm sorry..I uh just..well I just want to make sure that I'm getting this right. D - I - C - K Stallman? hahaha...uh yeah ok...sorry.

and St. Richard Stallman

The name is St. Ignucius!

Until that wonderful utopian time, I find the idea that my highly skilled and productive work should benefit those who see me as an interchangeable part with someone in a third world nation, and benefit them for "free", no less, to be highly distasteful.

I agree. This is who we have to thank for said highly distasteful idea, too...along with a few others.

Grepya quoth: Now, I write software for a large and complex system containing millions of lines of code and I know that nobody could slip a single line of code into my project without my knowledge. This is because everything that goes into the build goes into a source control system, and email notification is generated to interested parties. Me and Ken Thompson pwnz0red your source control system twenty years ago, and we can slip in all the code we want without anybody being notified at all!

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Or in modern terms, who validates your compiler?

Free software clearly had a halo at one point. Just see this picture.

While we're on the subject, maybe we can get one for GNU, too?

I know you're posting with tongue firmly in cheek, but there is at least one. I can't remember where I first saw it, but here's their website: The Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn.

Not to mention Saint Ignucius and the Church of Emacs ;-)

You can't trust ANYWHERE on the internet anytime within, say, a month of the book's release to be spoiler-free. I found mine at RMS's website of all places about a week before the book came out. He was on a mostly irrational rant, as usual, about people's freedoms being violated, and in the process he just blatantly stated who killed who on what page, proving once and for all that he does not really care about people, only his own ideas.

Ahem.

So yeah. They were out there last time, and they will be again this time. The only safe place on the internet is probably the Mugglenet homepage, and that's assuming Emerson doesn't get his server hacked.

Richard Stallman recommends boycotting Harry Potter books: http://www.stallman.org/harry-potter.html

Dont forget the Church of Emacs! http://www.stallman.org/extra/church.html

Because it took a chunk out of Open Office's Google ranking starting the very same day MS announced the new name. The same reason that the next MS boondoggle got named Vista, after our esteemed Chairman Gates decided to turn his guns on healthcare systems. He even took a try at RMS.

I'll just wait here for the Free Software fire-breathing demons of zealotry. It's quite cold right now and my furnace needs a break.

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the coding of the closed and the tyranny of proprietary applications. Blessed is he who in the name of 4 Freedoms and good will frees the source through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's bitkeeper and the user of obsolete hardware. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my installation with binary blobs. And you will know my name is Saint iGNUcius when I lay my vengeance upon thee!11.

Don't Buy Harry Potter Books!
http://stallman.org/harry-potter.html

Have you ever read a political blog? They spend half their time shouting that the mainstream media is biased and ineffective, and the other half quoting MSM articles that happen to flatter their preconceptions. ...There is very little "news" that percolates from the blogosphere, compared to traditional, full-time, employed journalists.

Well, that's what the journalist's job is ... but they get tipped by your neighbor and critiqued by the blogs. Not even Clark Kent could see everything. It takes a whistle blower to out a scandal. All the gumshoe can do is some crude fact checking before passing the story on. If there's an advertiser conflict of interest, even that might not happen. If it does happen, there are thousands of people who know what they are talking about, ready to share their opinion. You might not be able to tell the difference but neither can the average gumshoe and that does not make the good opinions any less of a new resource.

Those resources are getting better too. As more people catch the news as it happens, you will see more of that first hand footage. There are also lots of good new news sites that are hiring full time journalists as well as taking whatever comes their way.

An interesting and good political blog comes from none other than RMS. I don't think he's ever found anything useful on MSNBC.

Now canonize RMS...

Done!

• Don't place blind faith in Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" to guide the marketplace.
• Don't confuse power and freedom