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Iron Man's New Villain — an Open Source Terrorist
An anonymous reader writes "In a recent interview on Comic Book Resources about his new continuation of the Marvel comic-book series 'Invincible Iron Man,' Matt Faction provides information about the the new series (debut will be May 7). The villain is Ezekiel Stane, son of Obadiah Stane (the villain of the new Iron Man movie opening on May 2). Whereas Obadiah was a ruthless billionaire who fought as the Iron Monger, Zeke 'rejects the strategies of his father as being the crude tactics of Attila the Hun.' Instead, he will be 'a post-national business man and kind of an open source ideological terrorist.' As the author puts it, 'Windows wants to be on every computer desktop in the world, but Linux and Stane want to destroy the desktop.' The concept has gone over well on the CBR forums."
Since 9/11, every goddamned thing is considered terrorism. Shoot a gun downtown? Terrorism. Drink someone's milkshake? Terrorism. Ship cocaine from Colombia to the U.S. Yep, terrorism.
No! It's not! There are proper terms here, and by calling any crime terrorism you insinuate that the crimes are perpetrated by terrorists. That's giving a whole lot of credit to idiot criminals.
Installing Linux on the computers of unwitting Windows users may be a dumb plot, but it's hardly terrorism. If it were, every goddamned user on Slashdot would be a terrorist for trying to wrest Windows from Granny's warm, wet hands.
I'd like to see this OSS terrorist face the CEO of Nerv (from that other forgettable hacker movie a few years back). Geek Terrorist. Coming soon to a basement near you!
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Goddamn, I'd rather be Rick-rolled.
If you actually RTFA he is just using open source/closed source as metaphor.
Do you really this the world of entertainment really gives a fuck about the tensions between open and closed source?
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Still, we have ATi (AMD) specifications at least. For many users, closed drivers are as good as no drivers.
For a few ideological zealots, closed source drivers are as good as, or worse than, no drivers. For "many users", closed source drivers make the product work and thus are fine.
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Assuming those binary blobs even work on your chosen operating system and processor, or the versions thereof.
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Not that I don't agree with you that all that is bad (extortion, blackmail, etc.), but they are not "terrorist patterns" in any way shape or form: they're not really producing terror, in the name of a political agenda (that is what I understand terrorism to be).
</pedantic>
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"No ambiguity in the term"? When a roadside bomb attacking military vehicles is "terrorism", the word has lost all meaning.
Property is theft.
Apartheid is always going to be a touchy subject, so I have to watch my words here, but... Nelson Mandela was a terrorist. That his cause was noble is beyond doubt, and his leadership of the post-Apartheid South Africa was magnificent, but the fact remains that he was the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, which carried out bombings of civilian targets and which was therefore a terrorist organisation.
They say that one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist, and I agree with the parent post that we have to be very sceptical whenever somebody uses the term "terrorist" because they usually have an agenda in doing so. But we also have to be careful not to condone acts that are genuinely terrorism just because we don't think the perpetrators are bad people. The world isn't made up of saints and sinners, and sometimes even good people cross a line.
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When a roadside bomb attacking military vehicles is "terrorism", the word has lost all meaning.
"Terrorism" was originally defined as violence against civilians to affect politics. How are actions against soldiers in any way considered "terrorism"? Yet the American government called the barracks bombing (pre-911, under Clinton IIRC) "terrorism" and the present terrorist-in-chief (if military actions against soldiers is terrorism then?) considers roadside bombs to be "terrorism", then as you say, the word has lost all meaning.
It is now just a propaganda ploy.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
If bombing civilians makes an organization terrorist, then any government which has engaged in mass aerial bombardment or artillery strikes is a terrorist.
Not that I disagree with that conclusion. It's all about who writes the history.
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How is the parent a troll? Sigh. The moderators must be smoking up again.
Linux would never have become what it is today if it hadn't been for widespread documentation of hardware-software interfaces. "The next Linux" will need the same. It boggles the mind how many Linux users refuse to understand that.
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Once you've had the experience of a system software upgrade rendering hardware unusable, and the manufacturer flat doesn't want to provide new drivers for old equipment, you will immediately see the value of open source drivers.
A working closed driver is nice when it supports your system. An open driver means that if more than four or five hardcore geeks out there run a similar system as you, you WILL have a driver.
So no, for day to day use on current consumer desktops that are free to update and reinstall whenever, closed drivers aren't a big deal. That isn't the only type of system out there.
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Once you do this, then explain how the US would not be a state sponsor of terror, based on our confirmed historical support of right-wing paramilitaries in Nicaragua, and our more recent involvement funding warlords in Somalia, and violent separatist groups in Iran.
For extra-credit, justify the US's refusal to prosecute perpetrators the My Lai massacre, or our WW2 era concepts of total war, or even better, the African National Congress's tendency to or Irgun.
After you finish with the mental acrobatics necessary to do such a thing, then apply these new and broad standards to Hezbollah, Hamas, or the Mahdi army.
The point? Things are not black and white, and we do not possess any moral high-ground upon which to condemn others. Terrorism is just a tactic, one used for good and bad. And at the same time, a tactic that kills far less people then organized war.
If a civilian in the US were to attack our government troops it would be an illegal act.
Kind of like when civilians fired on British troops during the US Revolution? The winning side's "freedom fighters" are the losing side's "terrorists".
If you target civilians for political purposes it's terrorism. Calling anything else "terrorism" is propaganda, and a lie to boot.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest