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Bruce Perens Canned by HP
bmarklein writes "Bruce Perens has been fired by HP for "Microsoft-baiting". This was linked in part to the HP-Compaq merger, since Windows is now a much bigger part of HP's business."
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was that the last reason to do business with HP, falling out the window?
oh, my bad. that was years ago.
MORTAR COMBAT!
That's what the bastard gets for placing me on his foes list! I must have said something that really pissed him off cause I'm there all alone with Klerck the crapflooder. In the immortal words of Nelson, HA-HA!
Using your analogy, the CIA's advisor would be a rabid muslim fanatic, pushing to convert the entire world to Islam from within the government.
Perens didn't exactly have a objective view.
I like the Greens and the Libertarians, I work with those folks on issues, but I don't think that my promoting their individual parties should take precedence over my achieving actual change.
Do you realize that the Greens and Libertarians (as well as the Libertarians and the Democrats) are diametrically opposed in their beliefs in many ways? Greens and Democrats are very pro-government control over the economy (many Greens in particular are socialist), whereas Libertarians are very anti-government control over the economy. As for social issues, there is some minor overlap in certain places, but there is still a lot of differences.
Libertarians are FAR closer to Republicans than they are to Greens or Democrats.
I suggest you actually learn the differences between the parties before considering running for congress.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I don't know; call me crazy but I care about what my representatives actually believe rather than just wanting "anyone but a Democrat or a Republican". The perfect example of this would be people voting for Ralph Nader. I would be willing to bet that 95% of the people who like Nader have no idea what he believes beyond "he doesn't like corporations" (hint: What he believes is very, very frightening)*.
*And no, Naderites, I don't feel like getting into a debate about Nader. Go learn on your own how brain damaged he is, I'd rather just let him slip into obscurity.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
And for me, the issue of being allowed to think how I want is more important than being allowed to spend how I want.
To be honest, I think you should rethink that philosophy. As a wise man once said, "without economic freedom, all other freedoms are just an intellectual exercise."
Example: The government goes crazy and passes a law requiring prayer in schools. If you don't like it, and have no money, you suffer. If I have money, I send my kids to private school and am able to insulate them from the government.
The government in far more able to control you through high taxation and keeping you poor than by passing laws legislating how you think. As a practical matter, it's much more likely in the United States that you will be economically opprossed than socially oppressed, because we have constitionally laws against social oppression. We have none against economic oppression.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
The last decade of legislation proves that congress doesn't give a rat's ass about sticking to the constitution.
There are always people who are going to try and push past the limits of what they should. The difference is that when it comes to social limits, we have built-in protections in the constitution. You'll note there is no prayer in public schools, and no danger of that EVER happening (if anything, we go overboard on the opposite side). On the other hand, we have absolutely no limits on economic oppression except those imposed by our representatives in congress.
automatically side with big business even in those cases where the business has reduced overall freedom (MPAA, RIAA, Microsoft, etc).
While I'm against laws like the DMCA, I think the average Slashdotter REALLY needs to get some perspective on these things. The freedom losses from these issues are TINY compared the great issues of the day. Who cares if you rights to move around music limited? It's just not that important.
And in PARTICULAR, Microsoft is just not that big an issue. If Microsoft was an actual gatekeeper against other software, it would be more significant, but there is loads of competition in the operating system space. People run Microsoft free every day. They have a dominant market share, but they simply aren't a monopoly on the scale of a Standard Oil. That's why so many people, particularly Libertarians (I'm not one, by the way) don't care about the issue -- Microsoft simply isn't that powerful. They could be GONE tomorrow if there was a decent competitor. Microsoft is successful as much by incompetent competition as they are through their own actions.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I'm a registered democrat
I could have called that in my sleep. It's been plain to me for quite some time that the Free Software movement is just another plank in the Left Wing Extremist platform of the Democratic Party.
On the one hand, this disturbs me because there is the possibility that politicly savvy advocates could foist the GPL on an uneducated American populace.
On the other hand, I am happy to see more people (especially those outside the tech industry) exposed to the Free Software philosophy. When I explained it to my father, he exclaimed "that's communism!" without any leading from me. My father never touches a computer, but he was exposed to Socialist rabble-rousers in the 1930s, he saw the Nazis rise and fall, and he knows radical political bull**** when he sees it. You don't need to be an expert in order to understand what this is all about (in fact, being an expert can cloud your judgement). You just have to be an ordinary American with common sense. The true core of the Free Software movement won't stand the light of day. Ultimately, it's limited by the same factors that limit other attempts by Leftists to foist their ways on us. Even if you actually succeed in forcing taxpayers to fund GPL more than we already do, you will have to maintain your dominance. That would divert resources from the effort to maintain Unions (in steady decline since the Japanese started skunking us in autos), Public Education (beginning to crumble, and likely to erode further due to a recent landmark Supreme Court ruling), etc. So, in a strange way, I am sad that you won't be speaking out and attracting attention to your point of view.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?