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Toronto Open Source Conference Report
derrickoswald writes "Today's Ottawa Citizen is running a report in the TechWeekly section on the recent open source conference in Toronto organized by U of T's interdisciplinary Knowledge Media Design Institute and last month's Real World Linux trade show. It highlights the extremely poor Extremadura region of Spain's success story using open source to bootstrap themselves technologically. Quotes from FOSS luminaries include: 'Who controls the software, controls life. Well, it had better us. That's the real political meaning of the free software movement,' said Eben Moglen. Open source 'was the default way you built Internet Infrastructure. You wrote code and released it without trying to commercialize and monetize it,' said Brian Behldendorf." Newsforge (also part of OSDN) has a series of reports on the conference: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3.
Open Source software is about controlling life? I wonder that was what RMS was really thinking.
BLING BLING. Meet the architecture that's changing everything.
niggers gnaa
it makes sense
"They have adopted entirely the ideology of freedom that is part of this software movement," said Ghosh, program leader at the International Institute of Infonomics
I couldnt have said it better....
-Imidazole2
PowerPoint was required
Behlendorf led off with a comment that he is not used to PowerPoint -- the presentation software of choice for the conference, which is running Windows XP -- and apologized in advance if the PowerPoint requirement caused him to slip up, because he said he is used to the OpenOffice.org variant of the software.
Any idea why PowerPoint/XP were chosen in the first place, seeing as it's an OpenSource conference?
You will either get knifed by a Caribana reveller, or die from SARS. Stay the HELL away from the hellhole known as Toronto...
I'm not sure how exactly acceptance of open source software relates to "[my] rights online"
HOW'S MY POSTING? CALL 1-800-POSTING
Who controls the software, controls life.
Does that mike Linus the Kwisatz Haderach?
Gee, Brian -- you and apache.org may want to compare notes on this one.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Ninnle Linux had a booth at the Real World Linux trade show. It really impressed the crowd, what with all the free ISOs handed out.
Hello, my name is Xiang, a resdent of China. I cannot use last name the goverment watch us and will put me in camp if they find me writing this.
China government make Open source software illegal. It say causes bad thinks among China people. My friend Chiang was caught with Open source software and put in labor camp.
I miss Chiang
In fact dr. Yu-Yee, famos scientis say that Chinese people need more Open source software. he was found by goverment and put in camp like Chiang. I wonder if it same camp as Chiang. they can maybe I be in camp together making happy electronoc for western people. be happy! maybe your mouse or keyboard made by dr Yu-Yee or Chiang.
I miss Chiang.
dr Yu-Yee miss to but not as much as Chiang. He and me would go hunt duck with stones! Not hit many but still hunting. In fact we hit no duck, but still call it hunting! One time Chiang throw rock at duck and it hit tree and bounce and hit Chiang in face! hahaha!
I miss Chiang.
then goverment worker from Ministry of Rocks see us and chase us! we got away but good thing or we be in camp for 3 year for Rock Abuse Re-education. Maybe that where Chiang is in camp for.. maybe not for wanting Open source software.
I miss Chiang.
PS: excuse my english, not normal language to me.
- Xiang
On the front page there's a Microsoft ad touting how much better their server is and less expensive?? wtf? lol
That might be true for a small number of of obsessed geeks but the majority of people dont give a monkeys about who controls software. To them its just another product and their interest ends as soon as they have finished reading their email or their computer controlled car tells them it needs an oil change.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
you are teh ghey
I type this. confirmed that *BSD troubleD OS. Now
I am Portuguese and am currently working with a Spanish colleague who was falbbergasted when he read about the "extremely poor region of Extremadura". Hey, it looks like we're talking about sub-saarian Africa of something!
As a matter of fact, Spain is one of the best developed economies in the European Union. There may be some regions where e-development may not have reached somewhat high standards, but hold on! :)
The Gay Nigger Association of America, in support of Iraq have comissioned a new t-shirt featuring the head of the now deceased oppressor "Nick Berg"
order yours today
... is that the facility hosting the conferance had computers and projectors in all of the conference rooms already...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Oh man, I'm sure the average salary of a resident of the Extremadura province is still higher than someone living in Arkansas.
Spain is not a third-world country. It's one of the wealthiest nations in the world. Which is way the terrorists hate it.
"It highlights the extremely poor Extremadura region of Spain's success story using open source to bootstrap themselves technologically."
Maybe I took my dumb pills today but I thought it meant that the region had poor success.
A current best selling book is about punctuation. It evokes the picture of a gun-toting panda. Everyone knows that a panda eats shoots and leaves.
Computer software *does* control your life.
For the vast majority of people in inddustrialized countries, softwate controls how they get paid, how the bank maanges their money, how companies track their habits, how they buy goods and services, how their cars work, how *they* work, how they get to work, how they have fun, how they communicate. It controls nearly every piec eof equipment in the modern military. Getting through a day without interacting with a piece of software is near impossible unless you're on a caomping trip in the middle of the woods.
Pretty soon, software is going to be controlling your whole household. It's going to control every applianc ein the house. It's going to control your security system. It's going to control all communications in and out of that house, and it will all be unified.
So here is the doomsday scenario - in 25-30 years, when this is all in place, if one monopoly controls all this software, they *control society*. All they have to do is hide some backdoors well enough to slip through detection and they have it made. Who would be there to stop them? Anyone who spoke out on any public forum is automatically detected and flagged as a terrorist in the national database.
Open Source software, especially for anything at the national infastructure / military level, should be *paramount* on people's mids. The only reason it is not is an educational one. Us people in the know really need to get the word out on why this is important, because as software becomes mroe powerful, we're treading downa slippery slope.
I able to send coded message using kernel in Red Flag OS. OS will take over computer of someone rich in the USofA and post standard hTML form on /.
Me clever. Now please help me. I am hungry and do not want to work in factory. Can someone send money or outsource job to me? Thanks you very much.
Facts:
1. The GNAA is not comprised of black homosexual males
2. The GNAA are a bunch of miserable, scrawny, pimply faced teen-aged white boys living in their parent's homes. They WISH they had a life.
3. The GNAA are not funny
4. The GNAA are not clever
5. The GNAA ARE racists
6. The GNAA need to shut the fuck up now
7. The GNAA are the way that they are because they all have VERY TINY cocks
Solution:
All GNAA members!!! No, you can extend the length of your puny wormlike penises with the JES Extender! No longer do you have to be ashamed of the fact that you couldn't get a common house mouse off! Get the JES extender and you can finally brag about that 2.5 cm monster that you will finally have after a year's use! We all know that you have these tiny useless nubs and therefore must express your anger and resentment by posting your stupid GNAA posts here on Slashdot. A new day has come for you!!! Get the JES Extender!!!
Disclaimer: For those GNAA memebers with concave penises, we're sorry but you're out in the cold. The JES extender will only work with penises that stick out. Besides, since you've got a concave penis, you might be able to find a life in a freak show making lots of money by letting people laugh at your pathetic non-phallus. Sorry folks, but you're shit out of luck. Still... it's time for you to take your GNAA crap somewhere else.
The Ottawa Shitizen is a crappy newspaper at the best of times, but it still beats the VERY biased Ottawa Sun!
I'm shocked. Printed media that actually described free software properly. Props to Ottawa Citizen.
Who controls the software, controls life
That's very melodramatic. One can always make more software. I'd think a more true statement would be, "Who controls the energy, controls life." Talk about your closed system, energy production and distribution is tightly held. I'd think that rather than worry about a replaceable commodity like software, he'd be worried about keeping energy flowing. Energy is free and wants to remain free, yet we all pay for it.
Anyone for an open source energy production facility?
Sir, unlike your facts, the GNAA members are all straight.
Have a good day.
Matusow went on to make a point about Red Hat's corporate Linux licensing, saying that Red Hat has a per-CPU licensing scheme with an auditing clause in the contract, and that client companies could not modify the (GPL'd) code for risk mitigation reasons on Red Hat's part.
Either that's a "damn lie," or Red Hat has some explaining to do on the part of restricting GPL'd code.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
'Who controls the software, controls life.' - Eben Moglen
'He who controls the spice, controls the universe!' - Baron Harkonnen, Dune
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
Last I checked, the FOSS geeks control very little. People who don't know/care about controlling software seem to be increasing the control they do have exponentially.
Be it energy or open-source software or broadband or rice genomes. If an entity, artifact or class of artifacts becomes a control nexus, it becomes a vehicle for the transition of incumbent power.
Anyone for an open source energy production facility?
I think you're looking for the phrase "public-controlled." Similar in meaning, but different in application.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
They ought to give a monkey's $BODYPART about control. Condsider:
Software controls whether or not my car passes vehicle emmissions inspections. Someone who fails inspections will *never* know whether he really failed or whether he's being ripped off.
Software controls whether or not I'm flagged as a terrorist on a flight.
Software controls flow of goods and services around the world.
Software controls my bank account balances, and
Software may very well tally votes in the next election.
I want a non-vested party to be able to audit the code that controls those things.
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
What do get when all your country has is sand and niggers? Moslem Pigs. Sand Niggers.
People I've spoken to that don't care about free software often don't care about free speech either. Believe it or not there are people who have a "meh, people don't say anything important anyway" attitude to free speech. Wanting your computer to just work without worrying about the EULA is in some ways like wanting to just live your life without worrying about your country's government.
The Free Software is for people who like freedom or like software. If you like both, then it's right up your ally.
Hey, I got one of those! Kewl!
Ninnle forever!
I am involved in organizing the Toronto GOSLING (getting open source into government). If you are interested in being involved, please email me at vid_goslingslashdot@zooid.org.
I wonder how would one manage to get the accountants to hear/read of these "free as in freedom" ideas - for the ones that I came to know don't give a s*** about quality of software either.
gtkaml.org
... pretty much control everything unless you are living extremely primitive out in the wild someplace. Mod-erne life as we know it is totally enmeshed in it, so ya, open source is going to be an even more powerful aspect to all our lives in the future. Even non computerised "life" interacts with computerised life, if you think about it. All our goods and services are getting more and more dependent on it, it's critical part of it now. and it sure didn't take very long, either, we went from just a few computers on the planet to now there are untold billions of them, everywhere, doing so many things it's amazing, especially to people who have watched it completely happen.
Prices have dropped, technology quality and diversity have risen dramatically, and isn't this what we wanted, anyway, that eventually smart machines would take over all the mundane, leaving the humans to REALLY expand and explore, both inside themselves and out into space? Looking at it in that aspect, it seems to be the goal, automate and computerize to the extenet that we no longer have to struggle to just live, it's a great emancipator, part deux. So, the closer we can get to "free" with computers and software, the better, IMO.
I think we'll run out of cheap for civilians liquid petroleum productrs well before 30 years, it will be so expensive in terms of BTUS to get more BTUs only the worlds ultra rich and some governments will use it. They will force-switch us peons back to coal, and build more nukes, along with mass adoption of technologies like wind generators, etc. There's hundreds of years of coal left, heck, just one field in utah has enough for the entire planet for centuries, and humans will wind up burning all of it,along with extracting petroleum from tar sands, etc, probably using solar heat in the deserts for extraction, and sea water for the carrier for the slurry. You'll see interest in air pollution drop when fuel costs become 75% of peoples budgets, given everything has to be still manufactured and transported, using SOMETHING for the energy source. and I think that point could come within 15 years or so. Peak oil in all the significant fields outside of the middle east has ALREADY occurred.
One particular point to concentrate on in working
with government: instruct the public service to format all documents
accessible under a Freedom of Information Act as tagged ASCII.
(20th-century HTML and other SGML applications,
and again contemporary XHTML and
other XML applications, are thus
kosher, as are Open Office XML-formatted
word processor files. But the native M$oft Word binary formats are not
kosher.) M$oft will thereby be pressured to make its XP Office capable
of saving in an XML format, and thus to make its Office interoperable
with OpenOffice. - Interestingly,
the M$oft guy at this week's Toronto free/libre s/ware conference
is reported as skilfully dodging the question whether M$oft CURRENTLY
plans to let its Office suite save documents as XML. - If we tolerate
closed word-processor formats in government, we put our civil liberties
under threat, since we open the door to content revocation and digital
fingerprinting. That grim pair of KGB surveillance-society scenarios is
spelled out by Prof. Ross Anderson in the Computer Laboratory at
Cambridge University (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/), and
also in my essay 'No-Frills GNU/Linux: Philosophical Foundations'
(in the 'Literary' section of my http://www.metascientia.com).
"Who controls the power cord controls software and Who controls the software, controls life..."
What a bunch of clowns... what they were looking to make that a famous quote, who said those where luminaries?. is software god damnit is not oxigen or water which ARE necessaries for the real life.
These FOSS are just FUSS.
NEXT!!!!!!...........
'This GPL brings good luck to all software developers who use it. One guy used GPL software and licensed it under seomthing else and was eaten by a despondent goat with rabbies. One girl forked GPL software and keeped the license and she met the man of her dreams later that day and had Opensource children (they released videos of the conseption on teh internet). Pass on your GPL software to 10 of your closest friends and receive a millioin years awesome luck'
in all seriousness though, GPL is a great thing and is an essential tool in preserving freedom of information. it also happens to be the most successful chain letter ever
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
I'm surprised nobody mentioned that BSDCan started today at the University of Ottawa. If I wasn't working this weekend I would've gone (I think I'm only 3 or 4 hours away):(.
Some aim to please, I aim to tease.
Your argument makes 0 sense. The whole point of what I was saying is monopolies are bad, when one company controls most of the worlds software it is bad. I did not say anything about "software companies" in general, I said when one company rules a market, and it is a market everyone depends on, then that one company *does* control your life. Such a company could, and would, manipulate global politics, whatever. No one could stop them.
The examples you gave are all markets with a) tons of competion, and b) are geographically diverse. That is, the same power companies don't control the power in California, Maine, and the UK. But the same software companies do. And if they run rampantly unchecked...
"Open Source software...should be *paramount* on people's mids."
It's good we've got geeks to worry about this. By all means push hard on this issue - and use your skills to help improve the world - but for a large number of people in the world paramount issues in their mind are:
- can I get enough
- can I get enough to eat to live
- can I find shelter
- can I be safe from war or the after effects of war
Don't forget the big issues. Some of these may be solved by software, but remember the global context.