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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."
I've lived in Maine for about six years now, even though I'm in Mass for college at present. Education was one of the major draws when my parents moved there, and it will continue to be one of the major draws for other families, especially with this program in place.
I was back to visit for the Pop!Tech conference this past weekend; at Governor King's suggestion (he spoke briefly), I took a look at the Camden middle school, and it was incredible. The students were thoroughly engaged, and the teacher had the liberty to roam the isles and show them how to do things on their individual computers.
Yeah, I wish the program had used a linux distro, but anything is better than nothing. It's a really special thing.
Read jack phelps dot net
Either the press need to learn to actualy quote people acurate, or Microsoft needs to stop talking out of both ends (probably both.)
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A Microsoft spokeswoman said that Ballmer's remarks were not specifically related to the Xbox, and that the company was committed to selling the console in Australia. http://www.gamemarketwatch.com/news/item.asp?nid=
versus
Microsoft would be forced to reconsider selling the Xbox video game system in Australia, or seek changes to the law, following the acquittal in July of a Sydney man alleged to have sold chips that modify a Sony PlayStation 2 to play imported games, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said yesterday. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/18/1034561
It's really not that much better here in the UK. We have three main parties (actually more like 2.5, but I'll get to that.)
/actually oppose/ things. They have at least finally managed to ditch all the old ex-ministers they had, which considering they were some of the most hated men in the country, was probably a sensible move.
.5 party, the Liberal Democrats. Don't have that many suppporters, too close to the government on a lot of things, no doubt all funded by arms companies and crooked businessmen. Unlikely to win a general election. Still, some of their stuff appeals to naive knee-jerk liberals like me, and I have a Liberal Democrat MP because of that. They were also honest at least once when they pointed out that better services require more money, as opposed to mythical "efficiency savings" made by selling public utilities to large companies for fire sale prices and then paying whatever they ask for to keep them running.
The Labour party are currently in power, they're easily the most professional politicians (read that as you will), and they're going to be in power forever, because the opposition is so hopeless. They're also big fans of big business, "streamlining" the justice system and good suits. They're also hopelessly corrupt in a million small, depressing ways that make you wonder how they maintain any self-respect. But hey, they "care", so it's alright.
The reason the Labour party is going to be in power forever is, the Conservative party. They got beaten (demolished) in 1997, and they seem to have become less credible with every passing year. The reason that they got trashed in '97 was their corruption (real honest-to-god cash for favours stuff), unbearable arrogance and sheer incompetance. Since then, they've had two near-identical leaders who've spent most of their time playing right-wing catchup with the government and missing opportunities to
And the
As for the current state of affairs in Europe, parties are either given seats in direct relation to their voter numbers (proportional representation - used in most European democracies) or using the winner-takes-all system (single-member district plurality system, used in the US and Britain).
Both have downsides, neither is ideal. However having just two major parties does lead to a convergence of policies as both try to appeal to a broad "centre ground" spectrum of voters - as seen in both the US (where both candidates were accused of being in the pockets of business/media corporations) and the UK (the current Labour government being seen as following many of the previous Conservative policies). This results in a denial of choice to the voter, with low turnouts being a typical sympton. Another possibility is that of extremists gaining votes simply by virtue of being of only ones to offer something new.
As for dullards, the US has had an undistinguished record recently with Clinton being the only one who seemed to know what he was talking about policy-wise (as long as he kept his trouser zipper shut). Bush Snr and Reagan had their policies pretty much set by unelected advisors, and as for Bush Jnr...well saying he seems an improvement over Dan Quayle is the only compliment I can pay him. Europe's problem has been more with corruption rather than talent(German ex-Chancellor Kohl, French President Chirac and Italian President Berlusconi being examples).
It should really be named the Melinda Gates Foundation. She must be quite a woman. Until Bill made the best decision in his career, his charitable contributions from 1976 to 1997 amounted to be a big fat ZERO!!! It does appear the Melinda has had an enormous influence. In the past few years, the Gates Foundation has grown to one of the largest charitable contributors in the world when measured by dollars, but still is one of the smaller ones when you look at the percentage of the endowment they donate to charities. John D. Rockefeller gave 10% of his income every year to charity, beacause he realized that he built his fortune through the society and he owed that society a substantial debt. Maybe, someday, Bll Gates will come to the same conclusion.
Until then, I wil stand by my conclusion that Bill Gates has been a tightwad, of previously un-imaginable proportion.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "