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Slashback: BitKeeper, Maine, Novell
I thought Adam Smith was in favor of free markets and the exchange of ideas. mrjive writes "The plot thickens. In response to yesterday's story, it turns out that the attack on the free software movement was attached to the end of the letter in question by Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash, who happens to have Microsoft as his biggest beneficiary. The original authors of the letter have sent an angry response for essentially twisting its original purpose. Read the full scoop here."
For the even-fuller scoop, see Roblimo's article on NewsForge.
Not bottling it up inside of himself. An anonymous reader writes "Richard M. Stallman has responded to comments made a week ago in response to his own Linux kernel mailing list post about the BitKeeper controversy. 'A technical issue or project sometimes raises ethical issues,' Stallman began. He did not stop there. More on the (newly cached and therefore a little bit Slashdot-immune) Linux and Main . Be gentle."
Free knowledge for sale for free, etc. OverCode@work writes "The complete LaTeX source to Loki Software's game programming book, Programming Linux Games, is now available on the author's site. This book was reviewed here a while back. Mad props to the publisher for letting this happen."
Everybody'sSQL haggar writes "MySQL (commercial license) will be shipped as standard with NetWare according to this announcement. I consider it a follow-up to the Slashdot story about the PostgreSQL port for NetWare. Apparently, the options for NetWare users are widening, thanks to open-source products!"
An iBook in every (lobster)pot! Call Me Black Cloud writes "Some time ago Maine awarded a contract to Apple for laptops for school kids. MacCentral has an interview with Maine governor Angus King where he discusses the success of the program. Despite the Maine state legislature's attempts to kill the program, it continues on. Why? Well, a $1M grant from the Gates Foundation certainly helped. Over the summer Apple delivered 18,000 iBooks and installed 239 wireless networks in 239 schools."
So long as they're not mandatory. Polo writes "I noticed that the Garmin Rino 110 and 120 are shipping. If you don't remember, these are FRS/GMRS Radios with integrated GPS. You can transmit your position to other units so they can hear you and see where you are. Pretty cool. This is a follow-up to an older story"
What the market will bear. His Nastiness writes "Just a follow-up that I ran across that indicates that Steve Ballmer may have just been blowing hot air on not selling the XBox in Austrailia anymore. See the previous thread here."
Why is the Gates Foundation sponsoring a campaign to buy Apple laptops? Not a troll, just wondering.
... itturns out that the attack on the free software movement was attached to the end of the letter in question by Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash, who happens to have Microsoft as his biggest beneficiary.
No surprise -- Microsoft is a huge contributor to both parties, including the Democrats -- whom some believe are supposed to be our saviors from the "evil, corporate Republicans." They're not -- they're on the inside what Republicans are on the outside.
If you really want a change, don't vote for either party -- vote Libertarian if you're on the right, Green Party if you're on the left, and independant otherwise. Both parties are in the pockets of big business, and that's bad both for those who advocate freedom from the government as well as those who despise deregulation.
The more we have third party, the closer we get to fairer, European-style representation.
It is a stretch to conclude anything about the general attitude or character of a person from one action, so I would not say the people who distribute non-free software are "evil people" in a general sense. I will say they have done one thing that is evil: distributing a non-free program.
Evil \E"vil\ ([=e]"v'l) n.
- Anything which impairs the happiness of a being or
deprives a being of any good; anything which causes
suffering of any kind to sentient beings; injury;
mischief; harm; -- opposed to good.
The only one being impaired of happiness. or suffering is Richard Stallman. Methinks someone is a little too big for his britches.Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Why is the Gates Foundation sponsoring a campaign to buy Apple laptops?
For one thing, the Gates Foundation and Microsoft Corporation are completely separate bodies; GF might have simply chosen what computer would benefit students the most. For another, MS Office and MS IE run on Macintosh computers.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The only one being impaired of happiness. or suffering is Richard Stallman.
Or anybody who wants to work on both the Linux kernel and revision control software. Even if working on Linux and working on Subversion are separate jobs, the restrictions of the Bitkeeper license apply to the person and thus cross from one job to the other, as I mentioned in my other comment.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Canada has managed quite well with a multi-party system; sure, they get some single-issue parties (like the Bloc Quebecois), and yes, they make trouble, but they also get stable, mostly competent majority governments most of the time.
--Larry
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
Whichever way you cut it. Activism doesn't belong in a technical list, even if he says that it's an ethical discusion. In Slashdot, he would be already at (-1, Offtopic). (Well, he wouldn't, but he should).
This strikes me as truly a bizarre comment.
the savagery of the multiparty system that plagued Europe during the Middle Ages through the 18th century and continues to plague it more today than ever
So what you're saying is that "those savages in Europe" haven't changed their governing methods at all since the Middle Ages? There is no democracy in England or France or Germany, merely a plague of some kind passing for democratic government? What exactly are you saying?
It seems like you're saying that it's a good thing if a sizable percentage of US voters have no direct voice in US government and that any system which offers a voice to the minorities among the populace is a savage and unwise one.
You know, everyone is always accusing Europeans of anti-Americanism. I think that Americans are at least as anti-European.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Who the fuck modded this up.
You have a two party system because it's modeled on Westminster.
The current system has virtually no input from the population and is becoming more and more like the royal courts of Europe used to be. A quick example is the number of career politicans and the number of Father/Son teams. Republican = Democrat there is so little difference as to be insulting.
You can stick your head in the sand and trot out the party line about democracy, freedom, liberty etc but please do not try and use examples to back you up that you obiuosly have not researched.
Research how closely related by blood American politicans are to European. Then go on to research where your current politicans were educated? Then see if you can guess why the population of America has virtually no say in their goverment or laws?
The two part system gives the illusion of a democracy when in reality all we do is change dictators.
>> vote Libertarian if you're on the right, Green
>> Party if you're on the left
> What are you supposed to vote in the middle?
The previous post was wrong - vote Libertarian if you're in the middle. What was that Ross Perot party called again? Are they still around? THAT would be the one to vote for if you're on the 'Right'.
I have a close friend who works for a medical research institution here in Chile. They research contraceptives and provide free reproductive health care for extremely poor people. They are supported, to a large extent, by grants from the Gates Foundation. Think what you may about Microsoft, I think Mr. Gates has done some really good things through the Foundation.
AFAIK, the Gates Foundation is also responsible for vaccines for millions of African kids, in places where the government can't or won't do it.
No
What???? Do you any idea what you are talking about?
Have you ever read Madison 10? The entire document is about the need for factions and the worry that there might not be enough. And what do you mean by forefathers? Last time I checked there weren't provisions for Republican and Democratic parties in the Constitution.
BTW, there were no democracies (at least in their current incarnation) in Europe in the Middle Ages. The only thing that even comes close is the Roman Republic which collapsed several centuries before the time period known as "the Middle Ages." So your first statement makes absolutely no sense.
Seems the major problem open source developers are having with the BitKeeper license is that it places a certain requirement on them, just like the GPL. The GPL community response to criticism has always been, "don't use GPL code if you don't like the license." Seems perfectly reasonable. If you don't like the BitKeeper license, then don't use BitKeeper. When you get down to the basics, it's the same damn issue.
-- Will program for bandwidth
If you really believed in freedom then the GPL would just be the same as the public domain. That's freedom. The BSD license is far closer to a truly free license, the GPL isn't even remotely close to a free license.
Or so says Larry McVoy.
The freedom to take someone else's freedom away does not equate to "more freedom". When one individual gains a priviledge, while many others lose priviledges, the world is not "more free".
Poor Larry's plaintiff wail in defense of true freedom rings hollow the minute you realize the only freedoms he really cares about are his own.
Yes, Larry, in defense of freedom, the GPL places restrictions on what you can do with code. That's the way it works. The GPL restricts you from taking away other people's freedoms.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
Your post was, of course, utter bullshit. The bit about "there is so little difference [between the parties] as to be insulting," particularly so. If you let your political opinions get sufficiently out of whack with the mainstream, then I suppose it's possible that Republicans and Democrats might look pretty much the same to you. Both parties advocate various degrees of laisse faire capitalism, for example. This is not inherently a bad thing.
Our system of government is not designed to be the best of all possible systems. It's designed to be just good enough. That's why it's stood unchallenged for over 225 years.
And your little remark about "the illusion of democracy?" The United States of America is not now, and never has been, a democracy. Pure democracy is a system fraught with more flaws than you can shake a pointed stick at. After all, the saying goes that a dictatorship is a country where you have to do what one stupid asshole says, and a democracy is a country where you have to do what one million stupid assholes say.
So the USA is not a democracy. It's a representative republic. Is this the perfect system? I doubt it. But is it the best one we've-- as a species, I mean-- come up with so far? Yes, definitely. Name one government that has worked as long or as well as the United States'.
I write in my journal
The moderators.
You have a two party system because it's modeled on Westminster.
We do not have a two party system, it is just that currently (and usually) only two of the parties are able to garner enough votes to even be considered.
The current system has virtually no input from the population and is becoming more and more like the royal courts of Europe used to be. A quick example is the number of career politicans and the number of Father/Son teams. Republican = Democrat there is so little difference as to be insulting.
The system has virtually no input because virtually nobody votes. It is rare to even get a 20% turnout. There are major differences between the parties, it is just that they are rarely talked about on political TV ads. Instead, the ads state:
You can stick your head in the sand and trot out the party line about democracy, freedom, liberty etc but please do not try and use examples to back you up that you obiuosly have not researched.
As an example of such un-researched examples:
Research how closely related by blood American politicans are to European. Then go on to research where your current politicans were educated? Then see if you can guess why the population of America has virtually no say in their goverment or laws?
How many people reading this are American citizens of age 18 or over who are not voting? I think that I can guess why they have virtually no say in their government and its laws.
The two part system gives the illusion of a democracy when in reality all we do is change dictators.
The are four main political views in America today. They are Libertarianism, Conservativism, Liberalism, and Socialism. The Libertarians and Conservatives have generally resided in the Republican party, although some conservatives are in the Democratic Party. Liberals and Socialists (the mainstream ones at least) are generally Democrats. The Libertarians and the Socialists have recently been splitting off as there own parties, the Libertarian and the Green parties. Neither of them will ever amount to much on any presidental election (lets hope) since they are to exteme for most people, and too extreme for comprimise.
The problem with the Libertarians is that they fail to realise that we actually do need a government, even a federal government, and we always will. They mainly only side with Conservatives because they aren't Democrats, who generally think that the solution to anything is a large government program.
The problem with the Greens/Socialists is that they want to replace the system of primarily corporate development and activity, which, while it has problem, actually works, with a system that has been demonstrated to not work on several occasions, all for the benefit of spotted tree frogs and the like. They will never get anywhere, because the American public likes their SUV's, McDonald's, non-fair-trade coffee, and cheap sweatshop clothing, and don't want to be told to change, and definitely not that they are evil.
Best Slashdot comment ever
Microsoft != Bill Gates.
That's right, Microsoft actually has less cash on hand than would be necessary to buy all of Bill Gates' shares, which, as of Oct 21 2002, are worth 59 billion dollars. Microsoft only has $40 billion in cash on hand, so the $2 billion/year interest figure is actually a conservative estimate.
Keep in mind, Microsoft also hasn't paid dividends to its shareholders in over ten years, and given that Bill Gates is a 12% shareholder, that amounts to a hefty amount of taxes that he's not paying. By not paying dividends, he avoids paying the top marginal tax rate of 39.6 percent that would apply to income distributed as dividends. By taking earnings entirely through stock sales, he lowers his tax rate to the maximum 20 percent that applies to capital gains. According to the most recent SEC reports on insider trades, Mr Gates sold more than $2.9 billion in Microsoft stock in 2001, benefiting enormously from the lower tax rate that applies to stock sales.
So, as I was saying... If Gates really was such a great individual, he would have donated more, and wouldn't be dodging federal tax laws (while simultaneously screwing smaller Microsoft shareholders).
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
It comes down to this; you CANNOT overspend on education. That combination of words has no place in America; or shouldn't, at any rate.
The question is not on HOW MUCH is spent on education, it's HOW money is spent on education.
Would the money spent to get a computer for every student have been better spent on buying updated textbooks, ergonomic desks, art supplies, or on repairing instruments for the school band? Given the price tags on each of those items, my guess would be that the tools of traditional education would end up of more value to the students.