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Free Software Foundation Turns 25
An anonymous reader writes "On this day, 25 years ago, Richard Stallman created the Free Software Foundation. He had been the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Artificial Intelligence Lab. Tired of seeing software that he and others had written appropriated (without acknowledgment or compensation) by disreputable software companies and then told to pay for software they had written, Stallman took action, creating the foundation. The original license was written by Stallman. Stallman had subsequently written a large number of GNU tools, but the license was his most important contribution."
Not really, while I admire the FSF and admire Stallman for his code contribution, a Nader/Stallman ticket would be disastrous for the country. Especially the Nader part. Straight from his website he endorses racism in the form of affirmative action. Affirmative action is nothing more than basic racism, choosing someone because of their race or gender in order to fulfill a bullshit dream of "increasing diversity". Unless you believe that minorities are incapable of being as qualified as white people or women more incapable compared to men, you shouldn't support affirmative action, you should instead choose to have free-market solutions where everyone is level and people are chosen because of their qualifications, not excluding a white male with superior credentials in order to take a black female with fewer qualifications. Nader also mistakenly believes that government can be a solution for problems when historically governments have just made bad situations worse. Nader also maintains a laughable belief in moving away from safe, effective nuclear energy with more subsidies for solar energy despite nuclear power being more safe and cost-effective. He also proposes adding in new taxes which would slow down an already stagnating economy, etc.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
A good affirmative action program uses a variety of methods to achieve the goal of increasing diversity, including using race and gender as one of many factors in evaluating the suitability of an applicant.
Now, anytime you include "race and gender as one of many factors in evaluating the suitability of an applicant" that is racism right there.
Race and gender shouldn't matter it should be equal and should be based solely on qualifications.
More structural solutions are required to promote economic and educational equality, including a long overdue and practical Marshall Plan to eliminate poverty in the United States, and an education-focused restitution trust fund.
In other words, Nader is comparing war-ravaged Europe to the mentality of minorities. That simply by being a minority they need extra assistance in getting an education. How is that not racist?
Any time you use race to determine how much you are going to give someone as a scholarship, that right there is racist, especially when you are using taxpayer funds to do that.
At the federal level, authentic minority set-asides and affirmative-action arrangements are a modest way to support the growth of businesses owned and controlled by people of color. Affirmative action is a modest means for businesses to redress historic discrimination. Affirmative action at universities is an important tool to promote campus diversity and educational equality.
Again, Nader is using racist language. This idea of "diversity" being a huge goal is simply racist rhetoric. It sounds more or less like Animal Farm "All men are created equal, but some men are created more equal than others".
Nader is either saying one of two things here, he is either saying that non-minority races have little to add to society or he is saying that minority races, given an equal playing field have no chance because they can never get enough qualifications to fairly compete with non-minorities.
The Justice Department should intervene to oppose judicial rulings against affirmative action in higher education and other spheres.
And here again, Nader is arguing in favor of racism demanding that any rules against racism be struck down.
Based on his own website, I think it is safe to say that Nader's view of affirmative action is racist.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
No affirmative action does not level the playing field. The only way that someone would think that affirmative action levels a playing field is if they were racist and believe that minorities cannot compete based on qualifications alone.
What levels the playing field is employment based solely on qualifications, totally ignoring race. Same thing with education and the like.
If we really want to take racism out of the equation, we shouldn't use race as a basis for anything, but affirmative action is not like that, affirmative action is simply racism because you give preferential treatment to someone based solely on their birth. Affirmative action takes the statement "All men are created equal" and turns it into "All men are created equal but some men are created more equal than others".
So long as affirmative action remains, racism will remain.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The thing that is broken about it is that it is racist. If we abolish affirmative action and concentrate simply on equal-opportunity employment the system is no longer racist because the system no longer differentiate between race as a primary method of choosing applicants.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I think the tendency to label an alternate political argument as something highly objectionable itself causes some problems. (Darkness404's Offtopic mods seem to be an example of this.)
Consider radically different solutions. I’ve tired of toeing the mainstream line myself.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Why should he/we throw away those advantages, or just give them to somebody else instead?
I've yet to see any satisfying practical arguments for why majority groups should support this kind of stuff, just idealistic moralizing.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
On affirmative action, I like phrasing along the lines of "to address the problems of the past, move on past them, rather than continue to obsessively focus upon them"
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
A good affirmative action program uses a variety of methods to achieve the goal of increasing diversity, including using race and gender as one of many factors in evaluating the suitability of an applicant.
Could it be more clear right there? Yeah they say its not a "primary" method of choosing applicants, but something tells me if I decided to make race a "non-primary" condition in hiring a workforce in order to "have an ethnically homogeneous workforce" I would be branded a racist, but if I do the same thing in order to create a "diverse" workplace suddenly thats not racist? Anytime you use race as a factor in choosing an applicant it is racism.
Applicants should be chosen solely by their qualifications. If they happen to be qualified and white, black, hispanic, asian, gay, strait, female, male, transvestite, american indian, etc. then you should hire them because they are qualified not because they are white, black, hispanic, asian, gay, strait, female, male, transvestite, american indian, etc. but that isn't what affirmative action is, affirmative action is setting a higher standard for people of the majority and loosening your standards to hire minorities. It is a double standard based on race/gender/etc.
For example, when universities offer a scholarship to increase "diversity" by, say, giving $1,000 to applicants who are latino, black or asian with a 3.5 GPA but only give a $500 scholarship for people in the majority that is just as racist as giving $1,000 to someone if they were white and only $500 if they were in the minority.
The very goal of "increasing diversity" is a racist goal, it assumes either that without special help minorities would not be able to legitimately have just as good of qualifications as the majority or something negative about the majority.
We should not aim to "increase diversity" but rather aim to have a fair system that puts everyone on a level playing field, which is to give preferential treatment to no one, white, black, hispanic, asian, etc. but rather completely ignore race as any part of the decision.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I've considered affirmative action, but it solves none of the core problems of racism, its simply racist in the motivation.
The very idea that some ethnic groups need help "leveling the playing field" implies that the majority is superior to the minority and it is in the same vein of the "white man's burden" that minorities would never achieve greatness if it wasn't for the "superiority" of the majority culture.
If someone believes that all people are created equally without regard to race, then there is no need to support affirmative action because someone, no matter their race, could become just as qualified as the majority which also needs to work just as hard as the minorities to reach the qualifications.
The only justification of affirmative action in 2010, is if you believe that minority races have deficiencies that the majority race does not, such as a lower-than-average intelligence or the like and would thus need more help to succeed.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.