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FSF's "Defective By Design" Targets Apple Genius Bars
mjasay writes "At OSCON this year, MySQL's Brian Aker made this bold statement: 'Microsoft is irrelevant ... We're more worried about Apple.' The Free Software Foundation appears to have caught the hint, and has turned its attention to all-things-Apple with a 'denial of service' attack on the Apple Genius Bars. The idea is to completely book all Genius Bars and then ask the 'geniuses,' over and over again, a few questions about Apple's proprietary ways (while, apparently, real customers with support issues are left to flounder). Lost in this anti-Apple fervor, however, is the Free Software Foundation's complete and conscious failure to protect the web. Richard Stallman has long felt that software that doesn't sit on his desktop doesn't affect his freedom, but isn't the opposite true? Why is the FSF focused on Apple when the bigger concern should be Google, Yahoo!, Amazon, and other web players, a point made by Tim O'Reilly recently at OSCON?" Defective by Design is just one of many FSF projects, remember; it hardly seems fair to say that the FSF has been ignoring the implications of software as a service.
I propose we call up the FSF and ask for help getting HURD running.
You seem to have implicitly invented a useful word (and derivatives).
Adsperger (n): Someone who advertises or engages in publicity without any understanding of how the ads will be perceived.
Adspergize (v, transitive.): To alienate a readership through poor understanding of their response.
Adsperg (n): An advert that annoys the reader not from deliberate intent, but from an inability to understand the likely range of responses to the ad.
To a lesser extent, we all act in a similar manner at times, being offensive in public. This post could well annoy people with Aspergers Syndrome. Well, I can be an insensitive clod at times, and do suspect I have a touch of AS.
Oh well. "For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn." Welcome to slashdot.