Overall, very nice article katz.. I have to say your social commentary is tenfold better than your analysis of the so-called "linux/geek community"
I have read a lot of the comments here, and have to say that the biggest thing I see going is a synchronized "passing of the buck" to somebody else.. or at least, rejecting one particular factor.
The gun enthusiasts say that it wasnt guns which did this. "Guns dont kill people, people kill people," and other inane phrases can be heard. No, it wasnt the guns which "caused" this incident, but then, there was no one thing that "caused" this incident - it was an unfortunate situation caused by a number of circumstances. One of those circumstances was the easy availability of guns. It plays a role, and a significant role at that.. two kids are not going to be able to kill 15 people in a school with a butter knife - at least, it would be a lot harder.
The "internet pundits" ( who are usually the gun pundits also ), say that it wasnt the internet which did this. The Internet too was a factor. The availability of easy communications channels helped these kids. For me however, the internet is quite a different case from guns because the internet's sole purpose is not to kill - unlike guns.
The gaming enthusiasts say that it is not the horrific and completely ghastly needless violence and lack of imagination present in modern 3d shooters which caused this incident. The games too played a role. One can argue wether the kids were psychotic because they played doom, or played doom because they were psychotic, but I dont think the cause-effect distinction is very meaningful here. The point is, these games reinforce generally violent tendencies in children. Some times it spills over, most of the time it doesnt.
People also blame the parents - and it's true that the parents did have a lot to do with it. So did the community. These kids are smart. Reading their website, I find it witty, in a very rabid, violent and extreme manner. They knew what they were doing and they knew what it would accomplish. They didnt give a shit about the people they killed because they beleived that the community around them didnt really give a shit about them. They just didnt care. If they were in heaven (or hell) now, they'd be laughing at our wonderful psychoanalysis of them, saying to each other "we really showed those fucks, didnt we?"
Anyway - all the above-mentioned items went into this tragedy. If we take the advice of most of the posts here, we'd just leave all of them, and incinerate the parents for what their children did (that's the impression I get anyway). Something should be done for ALL the above-mentioned subjects.. The availability of guns should be dealt with, the prescense of web-sites should be noticed, the ubiquitousness of needlessly violent 3d-shooters should be curbed, parents should be made to care, and the community should be educated.
I'll tell you why the internet is not "the new jerusalem".
The new jerusalem is heaven. If you sit down and think really hard about what heaven would be like, you come to the inevitable conclusion that it would be REALLY REALLY REALLY BORING. If you take a close look at christianity, pretty much everything that is enjoyable is sinful in one way or the other. The internet is WAY too much fun to be heaven.
Yuck.. the FLUX article. It's too obvious to be FUD, it's just stupidity.
While free distribution is a great marketing tool (think about all those samples you get in the mail), what does it say about the product itself? Frankly, it says that the product (or the effort that went into making the product) has no value. Is that what you software engineers out there want?
What is free has no value. That statement should be framed and put up on a wall. Excuse me? BiND, Apache - half-the-internet. Guess this software has no value then...? Let's all just switch to MS Visual DNS Pro 4.0 SP3 - it costs more, it MUST be worth more!
If, however, you gave away all software, how would you pay the creators of that software? You destroy the subtle motives that only cash can bring--motives such as food on the table, a warm place to sleep, and so forth. What you're left with is a bunch of amateur coders who need to have real jobs to make ends meet. Are these the type of people you want developing the software products your business depends on?
This whole statement assumes that the programmer's product is released by somebody else who needs to pay for this programmers time. One difference in paradigm of the Free Software Movement is that it is the PROGRAMMER who owns the code, and releases it. In other words - the labourer controls the means of production (Damn red commie ratfinks!). Look, no-one is going to design a multi-million dollar specialized application for your company specifically for free. Free Software is about providing a good piece of software that can be used by everyone. It is not about making everything free. It's about making the fundamental operations needed to be provided by a computer, available to the masses, and not concentrated in the hands of highway robbers to take money from you for things that you MUST do. "ls" is free. "gcc" is free. "Molecular Modeler 3.13 by Fictitious Software (tm)" is NOT FREE. It's about people providing a service to a community, and (cover your children's eyes people) DONATING IT.
Ironically, these folks are sowing the seeds of their own destruction. If they actually succeed in making software free, no one will be willing to employ them to create a product with no value. Soon, students will stop studying software development in college since there won't be a way to make a career out of it.
How so? There will always be jobs that the average student programmer cant handle by himself. And one HAS to ask the question - if there is a programming task that can be completed by a student in college - then WHERE do you get off charging exorbitant prices for it? If Apache can provide a better solution for half the servers on the net, and it is created by a bunch of college students - WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU ABOUT THE COMPANY WHICH PROVIDES THE SAME (OR WORSE) PRODUCT, AT A HIGHER PRICE??
If intellectual property isn't property, then just what is property? Why not just give away cars, houses, and everything else?
When person A gives person B a car, person A does not have the car anymore. When person A gives person B a copy of the blueprints of the car, person A loses NOTHING. This is the difference between "material" property, and "intellectual" property. There are circumstances where "intellectual" property should be protected, but in the LARGE majority of cases, it is used in a selfish and bigoted way, which does very few people any good, except perhaps the peron "owning" the intellectual property.
If software is free, why does it matter who takes credit for it? After all, aren't we all just one big, happy family contributing to a great, shared codebase for all of humankind? Why should it matter that someone uses some code from someone else? The way I see it, "credit," better known as fame, is just another method of payment. If the big kahuna of the FSF wants free software, he shouldn't demand the payment of fame for its use.
Fame is different from money. If an author writes an article for a magazine, and gets paid to write that magazine, he has NOT SOLD THE RIGHTS FOR THE CONTENT HE WROTE. Fame and money are not mutually substitutable. Stallman's push behind GNU/LINUX is not as much for personal fame (though that could be factor), but to gain a spotlight for a movement that played a major part in the success of Linux. He wants his idea, and products based on his idea, to succeed. He is pushing his ideology, not demanding "payment" for his software. The argument made here is VERY VERY childish.
In short, I'm not against software being given away. I just want the folks who write that software to be paid--and paid handsomely--for writing it. That is the proper model for the industry. So the next time you think about using some free software, consider its cost to the software industry.
Thank you for standing up for poor programmers everywhere, downtrodden upon by the cruel selfish bastards of the Open Source and Free Software. Let us all start a REVOLUTION against our Open Source oppressors!
You know, I really dont give a SHIT about the software industry if it provides bad products at high prices. If FS should be considered anything, it should be that it is the BEST competitor to come along in a LONG time - and just hope that it will jumpstart an industry stagnated with the likes of Microsoft, who rely more on glitz than real work and good products. Linux,GNU,FSF is here because there was a need, and it fulfilled that need. Those in power, those who were growing fat on their bad software, are now apprehensive that this movement might actually FORCE THEM TO MAKE BETTER PRODUCTS (What a travesty of justice and capitalism THAT would be!).
The arguments made in this article are not even worthy to be read - except for the fact that they give you a glimpse into the fears of the software giants as they exist today.
That's not the right analogy to use. You see, there are just about as much "stupid" users who use cars as there were 60 or 70 years ago. The factor is that the CARS have changed. Earlier, you had to have a knowledge of the engine and how the car worked to be able to fix and maintain it. With time, service centers developed, cars got easier to use - simpler. Have you tried driving a '59 ford truck? It's fun as hell, but you gotta pull a hell of lot of cranks and levers to keep the thing going. You have to know about the internals of the truck to actually get some use out of it.
In short, the people havnt changed, the product has. Thus, in the future, there will STILL be a lot of so-called "stupid users", but they will have products that are designed well so that they cant really mess it up unless they do something really bad - like spilling coffee on their monitor - something which could be compared to a car crash.
The state of the market right now is far from it. People still havnt started demanding stability from the software, like they did from their cars. The difference is - if they lose control of their cars, they might lose their life - but if they lose control of their computer, they simply lose some documents and their 'spice girl pics'.
This article is plain bullshit, and the growing trend that it signifies is also bullshit.
Now that a lot of people have heard of Linux, and they've all heard how "snazzy" it is, the trend they are pushing at is to make Linux "easy to use". The mainstream is gently chiding the Linux user-base and developer-base for not providing a "user friendly" product. This is absolute crap.
I ask - what is the big deal with user friendlyness? Linux is (for most purposes) UNIX. UNIX is a developer's system. It is not a happy system where you can "get on the web easily and surf for spice girl pics," as Salon puts it. But should it be like that?
The power of a Linux system in the Command Line. No decent Linux user runs X without running an x-term (rxvt, kvt, etc..).
A lot of you say though - that the both can co-exist. There can be the command line for the geeks and a nice pretty gui for the newbies. Sure, I can accept that - but look at what the attempts have produced so far: GNOME - a graphical user interface system that is in reality very little more than a pretty pixel pusher. Same for KDE. Is there anything you can do in GNOME that you cant do on the command line faster and with more power? (except for picture-viewers/editors, but that is a special case). It's redundant effort.
I can immediately spot command line application for most GNOME apps. text editor? vi/emacs irc client? what else - BitchX web browser? lynx counts, unless you want pics file browser? um.. bash, csh, mc calculator? bc ide? emacs, and there are tons of text ones
Almost all GNOME/KDE apps are just pretty covers on top of the real power of the console utils.
I'm not saying that nodoby needs a graphics interface. For some applications, GUI are essential - you just cant conceptualize them on a command line - eg. Office suite with WYSIWYG, Graphic modelers, etc.
If people really want to develop easy to use applications. That's fine. If they feel the need to really create a seamless easy-to-use intuitive graphical interface for the layman - it's cool with me. But dont do it because you feel a need to "justify" Linux or GNU to the majority. Linux has nothing to prove - and you can see this even in Linus's personality.
If it keeps going like this, it will come to even more "chidings" and requests.
'Its a shame that rm -r / just deletes the whole hard drive without telling you.. would it be possible to maybe print out "YOU ARE ABOUT TO DELETE ALL THE FILES AND DIRECTORIES ON YOUR ROOT DIRECTORY, AND ALL OTHER DIRECTORES WHICH BELONG IN THIS DIRECTORY. ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO THIS? YES/NO?" '
So far it looks like an even spread. 2 for "less than 1000" and 2 for "1000-1500".
I think most people here would be in the "less than 1000", including me. Of course, if you count all the lines of code that 1 line of python code leverages.. I guess you could argue that I wrote more than 1000.
And I'm sure some guy out there will just run vi (or emacs for the sorry vi-challenged people), type one ' printf("wheee") ', and then yank and paste 'till the sun comes up, and legitimately call it his 1000 (or 1000000) line program...
I know a lot of you here are fraggers, so would object to what I have to say.
This is expectable. When you get games, where the sole purpose is to go around shooting people, what the hell is supposed to happen? If you sit and play these games too long, it really warps your mind. In what the fuck kind of game do you go around and shoot things for no fucking reason? "But it's just a game," you say. Hell, let's all grab some shotguns, and go out to the fields, and start trying to blow each other's heads off.. what cool special effects we can have - wont that be a wonderful game?
"But it's different because it's on a computer, and not for real," you whine. With the graphics nowadays it's gettting pretty fucking real enough. This is the great use that humanity has found for computers - drawing flying bloody body parts fast enough so that it seems smooth to the human eye. Sure YOU may know the line between computer and reality, but do kids?
Third, what is the fucking point of these games? Sure, the graphics woo me too, they're nice. But how can people even play these things for more than 2 minutes? Where is the skill? Do people go around bragging about their skills in controlling their keyboard arrow keys? If there is a certain skill in that, wouldnt it be comparable to the skill involved in jacking off or some similar inconsequential activity?
Anyway, conclusion time. These games should be restricted from children. There is a reason why people below 18 are not allowed to vote. There is a reason why people below 18 cannot have sex with people above 18, without the older person going to jail. There is a reason people below 21 can't drink. It all reflects a general concencus that you need to attain a certain age before which you are not fit to make concious, sound decesions regarding certain subjects - and this is one of them. I think games should have ratings which segregate them to certain age levels.
I can hear all you libertarians shouting - "Freedom!." But for certain things, freedom shoul d be restricted. 10 year olds do not have the freedom to have intercourse with an adult. This is because they are not deemed mentally fit to make such a decesion. Violent games fall into the same catergory.
This article makes some really good arguments that, at face value, seem valid, but really dont lead anywhere.
Essentially, the article tries to psychoanalyze Nader's reasons for going after Microsoft. Here, they identify "open source", and "free software" as the ideological stance that Nader is purusing, and then go on to try to discredit "open source" and "free software" concepts. At the end of their article, they state, very curtly and without any previous justificiation of their statements, that Microsoft is right and Nader is wrong. In short, their argument has nothing to do with their conclusion.
The point here isn't wether or not the OSS concept is bad or good, but wether Microsoft has been a fair competitor in the "market". The article never mentions technical superiority, but bases it's arguments on the assumption that most people prefer Microsoft software over OSS, and declares that as a failing of the OSS paradigm. In making these arguments, it ignores a key point:
The OSS community does not spend millions in advertising their products, while Microsoft is shameless in it's plight to assure customers that they are actually getting something of value forthe $97 they pay for the latest upgrade of their software. Consumers do not make choices in a vacuum, but in an environment pervased with advertisement and promotion.
Furthermore, they do not even try to refute Nader's accusations of predatory licence practices, and simply make a reference to "property rights", and expect their argument to be fulfilled. Microsoft's licencing practices have created an environment where the average person cannot easily come in contact with alternative products. How can a person decide if he or she wants to use Linux or BeOS or BSD if he/she does not even know it exists?
This article is essentially a bypass of the real issues put forth by Nader and the DOJ. They make an unsuccessful feint of the arguments made against Microsoft.
I disagree with you there. You cant just going bombing places because there is violence there. The capacity for indiscriminate violence exists everywhere. IT exists in the US to a large extent. Given the right situation, the people of the US WILL comming terrible crimes - genocides. This is true of ALL countries. The common factor in all these situations is this: change approaches and a large section of the population is left behind, disenfranchised by the change. This is true of the serbs today. It was true of the Germans during Hitler's time. IT is true when you look at white supremacist extremism in the northern US. It is true even in my home country of India, where the dominant hindus are extremely bitter about their situation and are taking it out on the christian population there. Annihilation is not a solution. If that is the only solution you can think of, I hope I will never see the day that anybody like you will ever hold any position of power. In this situation, my anger is more toward NATO than Milosovech. You will always have madmen, they are a dime a dozen. It is up to the "intelligent" and "rational" to deal with them in a responsible way. NATO is not dealing with this situation in a responsible way at all. I even question the RIGHT of NATO to do this. The UN is where the decesion to attack must be made, if it is made at all. The UN might at least be considered half-way impartial and not completely under the sway of the doctrines of the United States. The NATO decesion is a unilateral decesion, which I am very wary of.
By It's rash actions, NATO has significantly worsened the situation in Kosovo. I keep saying NATO, but that is a misnomer. We all know who the big guy is here: the United States of Glorious America. NATO is just a front organization for legitimizing the US's actions as "valid" in the eyes of the international community.
This is going to be messy. People are going to die - and it could have been prevented. It is the US's (NATO's) irresponsibility that has caused the death of these people. Tribal hatred cannot be dealt with by using bombs.
The us government deserves all that it is getting, and I hope that they get all thats coming to them. After all, their utterly STUPID, RASH, IRRESPONSIBLE move has pretty much caused the ethnic cleansing of a people. Dont get me wrong, I'm no Serb apologist - I know full well what's going on in Kosovo, and I personally compare Milosovech to a less-rabid Hitler. But the thing that really irks me is: Did NATO think for 1 minute before attacking? Does NATO care one ounce for the Albanians? NO they dont. The NATO campaign has FAILED MISERABLY, but everyone is too proud to admit it. They bring pictures of weapon silos and say "Look at how we bomb them. Look at how precisely our bombs hit their targets. Look at the big explosions. Are they not nifty?????". While NATO is busy bombing away, sporting their full fledged penile erection, more and more people are being killed.
What do you do when you have a madman holding a country hostage - go in and start shooting indiscriminately? Make that another botch-up for the U.S. and their merry men.
Remember this: NATO (Mainly the US and UK) is at least HALF as responsible for the slaughter going on in Kosovo as Milosovech. It showed absolutely NO responsibility in it's planning, it showed absolutely NO consideration for the situation in Kosovo, and NO consideration for what might happen if it went in and started playing the US's trademarked -COWBOY POLITICS-.
Fuck the US. Fuck clinton. Fuck blair. Fuck milosovech.
Oh no! What if the russians get a hold on this technology! Worse! What if the Chinese get a hold of it, the United State's leading position as the pure, uncorrupt leader of the free world will be threatened, and disenfranchised people all over the world will lose their voice for freedom!!!
Watch out, it might just be the time to bring out little-boy and fat-man again.
Weak minded paranoid reactionist. Excuse me while I finish my taco.
-Laxative
Just lust, easier sussed, true love makes me untrue It's hard to make a stew when the meat keeps looking up at you -Elastica
Um, I'm a student in university in Canada. I didnt even hear of theos before this. I'm not plugging. I have no special interest in this case. I'm not saying theos has a claim to theos.com, I'm just saying that he should be a nice guy - maybe negotiate a higher monetary payment. The right thing to do is just give theos the domain.
theos is not behaving childishly at all, their e-mail is very polite, and they offer what they think is a good enough monetary compensation. If "theo" does not like that, he should negotiate. Of course, it is entirely his choice to not even talk to theos, but then it will be HE who will be behaving childishly. Theos is not one of those big bad guys that is trying to bully the little guys. They just want the "obvious" website for their product. Nothing wrong with that.
I dont have a big problem with "theos" asking for "www.theos.com". Of course, the "we-re gonna sue yor pants off" rhetoric is not very cool, but it's how these guys work. For them, it's messed up if someone actually does something just because you asked nicely. As for the $35, just be happy they arent jumping up and down like little brats saying - "my lawer will show YOU!".
This is not close at all to "archie -> veronica" or "toyrus -> *rus". I think whoever owns "theos" should just a nice person and give it.
I dont know if you people watch C-SPAN very often, but I do every once in a while. Let me tell you gingrich is one bag of hot air. The so called "futurist" just repeats outlandish suggestions to make people think what he says is really worth something. Example? Of course...
One happy afternoon while watching c-span I happened to tune in on one of gringrich's wonderful speeches, where he was talking about education funding. This was his idea: You can decrease education spending, and increase tax-cuts, so that people can get internet access at home. His hypothesis: After about age 5, "kids can learn all they want from the Internet!". He actually said this. I spent the next week and a half fucking laughing my head off. That statement ranks up there along with gore's "I created the internet."
Politicians can talk sweeter than a jock on prom night, but it doesnt mean shit.
Well, from the past 5 comments.. I can see the linux defense guns coming up and aiming. "FUD" they scream. Step back and take a look people, I think this article has some valid points.
This sort of situation is really inevitable. When companies get involved, they are going to pursue their bottom line, and they really dont give a shit about anything else. They dont give a shit about freedom, open source, or the community unless it is really advantageous for them. There is no advantage for RH in LSB. Why should they advocate something that might take people away from their platform?
"Look at gnome.. rpm," you say. There's a difference. Gnome is different because I believe redhat sees a financial advantage right now about keeping it's contribution open source. Furthermore, they cant close-source it because it's based on GTK, which is OSS. They know that if they could close-it, and they did, everyone would stop using RH, pretty much, so they dont.
RPM is a different problem altogether. RPM was created by RH when linux was still quite a small deal. Since then, RH has grown by leaps and bounds, and so has Linux.
The thing to know about companies is, they are NOT human. After a certain critical mass, they retain NO human qualities. RPM was released when RH was still run by humans, and humans who cared somewhat for the linux community. Furthermore, Linux itself was a very small platform back then, and all developments had to be shared if it had any chance of hitting the big time. Now it has.
There's just one more thing I'd like to point out. There are tons of people out there who have absolutely no problem with Linux getting in bed with the big guys - IBM, SUN, SGI, Dell, Compaq, etc. I just ask, has anyone noticed how far Linux has come WITHOUT any business help? Were the businesses here when kernel 1.2.13 became 2.0.0? Why do people attatch such a big significance to "market share"? Is "market share" going to make Linux inherently better? Is the worth of an operating system decided by how many people use it, or it's technical features? What is the worth of an OS if it is used by everybody, but technically lacking? What price is this community willing to pay to gain widespread acceptance in the world?
Big business did not help Linux 1 iota in it's development - and they wont help either unless they see a very direct way for them to profit from it. And greedy profit-seeking, in this case, is very very bad.
The feeling now is something akin to "look mom, I build my own race-car and it won the indy-500, and now all these nice rich people want me to wear their shoes and clothing, and they say they'll give me lots of money for it too.. gee whiz". Big business has a way of leaving everything it touches in a state of decrepid waste. Watch out.
Take a look at the wonderful south-east asian tigers, which the U.S. just LOVES, despite that tricky little problem of dictators. Take your pick: Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand. The economies there, until recently, were skyrocketing. Do you think it reflected on the living status of the people? What happened after so many years of a skyrocketing economy in south-east asia?? crash - call it Asia's black tuesday. Where are the people of south-east asia now after so many years of such a good fucking economy? They're starving and working in sweatshops. This panacea you call "a better economy" seems only to work for the rich - what a pity.
Lets take an example closer to home. In the US, the days of the highest economic growth was when the most companies were downsizing the fastest (as in early '90s). Isnt that ironic? The most people are losing their job, but the economy is doing great!
There is only one thing that a "good" economy veritably does: it makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.
Sorry for calling your personal example a sob story by the way.. coffee is just wearing off.
I'll use my personal example. I moved to canada 6 months ago. Even though the economy here is not as good as the economy in the US, it is a better place to live. You pay a lot to the government, but you also get a lot back. Everyone gets a lot back. Canadian society is healthier than US society. A good economy does not mean anything if the people dont do well. The original assumption behind capitalism was that a better economy means a healthier society. This is simply not true.
Give me a break with your sob story. Do you know it actually costs money to run a government? It's not free, people dont volunteer.
You mention the industrial revolution. Sure the industrial revolution was great, but there were a LOT of things about it that sucked. LIKE:\
the black slaves in the south used to supply the textiles with raw material so the industrial revolution could happen
the exploitation of millions of workers and farmers by large businesses.
THe cause of the great depression
What the hell does an "economy" matter if the people arent taken care of. What is this god "economy" we must all pay homage to? You think you can just say that one word and expect everyone to say "OH, JEEZ, guess you are right, because it affects the economy". An economy does not matter SHIT if the people in that economy are treated like crap. Indonesia had a fucking good economy the last 20 or so years.. you think it's worth a lot? Where do you draw the line between an economy and working in a sweatshop for $100+ shoes from Nike??? Buzzwords do not make good arguments.
Ok, I'm gonna go fucking psycho now. This whole anti-tax thing about, "I should not be taxed and all my money should be my own and no-one should mess with it" is completely hypocratic. You dont realize one fucking iota of government and organization works, and go shooting your mouth off.
Taxes are necessary. THey are not evil. If you dont have taxes, you dont live in a nice society where you are protected from bad people and where it is made sure that you dont starve. Slashdot has a disproportionately high number of libertarian freaks. Lemme tell you libert. kids about your messed up ideas - IT WONT WORK. Not only is it impractical, it is completely selfish, bigoted, and immoral. How the fuck can you expect people to pay ONLY FOR THEIR OWN STUFF? I can show you a little example by analogy: Canada V. THe United States. THE US is more libertarian than Canada - lets work from there.
In Canada, people go to work at 9:00 and come home at 5:00. They pay high taxes (Very high), but the majority of people's living standard is high. In Canada, the average family can hope to send their kids to a good school without being in debt for the rest of their lives. I know this because I have lived in the US for 9 years and have Just moved to canada. In the US, my parents and I would have had to pretty much pay off my university debts for the rest of out lives. ONLY after we came to canada were we able to afford a house, and a decent life. Being immigrants from India, the US treated us like SHIT. My dad, who went to college for no money because of his academic skill, and who worked from 9:00 in the morning to 11:00 at night every day, earned $24000 a year, just about enough for us to rent a crappy apartment and get through 1 year. Can you believe that shit? In Canada, we get taxed about 3 times as much - but our lifestyle is twice as good. Explain that. Your annoying freakish libertarian arguments are BULLSHIT. I have no great love for canada - it's not the cream of the crop by any means - and yes the US has some good things about it too. But the crazy notion that an individual has absolutely no obligation to the rest of mankind is completely selfish and fascist. I dont mind more taxes, if it helps run government. I didnt like paying taxes in the US however, because it went more toward funding private companies than it did to helping people.
If the libertarian party ever wins the majority vote, I swear the US will have withing it a 3rd world nation, and a elite-nation - much like 1984's proles and the civil workers - except it wont be the government, it'll be the capitalists and the labourers. Read "The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat" if you want to get an Idea of what a libertarian society will be like.
This is not a flame, I just wanted to get my views out on this horrible horrible "libertarian" idea.
um.. I think you've misunderstood me.. I think Linux is great. I also think socialism is great. I wasnt pulling a McCarthy. It's just that I try to convince people that Linux/GNU is socialist and they start blabbering about "freedom" and all that crap, pushing some bullshit. I should take more care when posting...
This just clarifies the point again. GPL and business do not mix. Why? because Linux/GNU/FSF is SOCIALIST in nature. All you libertarian and capitalist freaks out there freak out and scream "GPL is about FREEDOM!". The GPL is not about freedom. The GPL embodies the ideal of socialism within the rules of a capitalist structure. The GPL actually restricts freedom. Nobody can "sell" a GPL product. Nobody can "sell" the linux kernel to somebody else (I dont mean selling an individual copy, I'm talking about selling the rights). This goes against the most fundamental tenets of capitalist structure - which protects the right to property and the right of sale. Even if you dont recognize it, the FSF/OSS/GNU/Linux phenomenon is socialist in nature.
I can understand RMS' point. Think about it, after so long toiling for his ideals for a completely "free" system, a finnish guy comes and steals pretty much all the momentum from it. When people think of Linux, they think of Linus, but most of them dont realize the millions of lines of code in the OS BESIDE the kernel - they associate the whole OS - utilities, compiler, and all - with Linus. Now, Linus is a very nice guy - very humble and everything, but it is true that he does not really care for the kind of ideology that Stallman holds. Look at it, Linus has said pretty much openly that he doesnt mind non-free programs on linux, and even non-free code in the kernel. This must be RMS' nightmare. It's a knee jerk reaction for him - facing the fact that all that he worked for might go down the tube. Look at it - big businesses are jumping in bed like crazy with linux. Soon, the screws will start turning for the "Linux" system to give the companies more and more "freedom" to make money. RMS' just sees his dream being threatened. He might have an ego, and he is frank enough to state it: Unlike many of you hypocritical bastards here.
I respect RMS' ideology - except for the fact that he only follows it when it comes to software. I think this sort of ideology should be followed across the board. Microsoft is just one example of thousands of companies that are ripping the average man to shreds today - and I dont know how you can simply state "free code" and stop at that.
Oh yeah - too all of you "commie-bastard" flamers, just because you can repeat a '50s "bad word" doesnt make you right.
-Laxative Dont just free software - free the individual
The potential for computers in India is amazing, but the extreme poverty there really puts a limit on this. Being an Indian myself (I am still a citizen of India), I really want this technology to come to India. But if you want any kind of computer penetration, you need to do it very very cheaply. I estimate that at most, a computer sold in india can cost RS10000 to be a viable choice for middle-high income houses and small-medium-large businesses. But RS10000 is a little more than $200. The $50 for MS operating systems is a helluva lot of money back there. A cheapbytes $2 CD is the best solution. Furthermore, assuming a $50 for a basic 14" old monitor, you'd need to fit MB, HD, CPU, MEM, VID, and everything else into $150.
If you manage to build a system like that, pretty much the only use for them would be in businesses. You could probably set up a nice little PostGreSQL database for them to keep track of finances, inventory, and lookup. But then, the other major problem is, considering the amount of underhand dealing and wheeling that happens, most people DONT WANT clean records for their businesses, especially when it comes to big businesses.
Of course, you could probably build a cheap system with about 300MB HD with linux/gcc on it and sell it as a tool which families of children in CompSci can buy to help their kids along, but I am doubtful about the prospect of this actually selling anything.
'Cause raster is a nut who really doesnt care about the people using it. This is in no way supposed to be derogatory. I just dont think raster designs E with a great desire to see people all over the world use it and live peacefully and prosper. He's just playing around with nifty features and challenging himself. That's one of the reasons I dont use E, it's not designed with a user in mind. You can use WindowMaker with gnome though. I personally use FVWM 1.0 - the sweetest wm to ever come out. It's small, fast, doesnt try to be some ultra-super-duper-cool-WM, and it's pager kicks E ass. E has some really nice features to it though. To each his own, this is why there are different wm-s.
-Laxative A million monkeys jumping on a million keyboards for a million years will eventually create Shakespeare's Hamlet.
100 monkeys jumping on 100 keyboards for 20 days will produce the source code for Windows'95
Fahrenheight 451 had nothing to do with book burning. Book burning was a plot element to illustrate bradbury's point. The point was, individual free thought and the right to criticize (part of the right to free speech) was supressed for the sake of "non-offensiveness". The reason books were being burned was because any book offended somebody - had a point of view that some minority or majority group disagreed with. The book was about the abolition of diversity to perserve the 'unity' of a community.
Slashdot Mirror
Overall, very nice article katz.. I have to say your social commentary is tenfold better than your analysis of the so-called "linux/geek community"
I have read a lot of the comments here, and have to say that the biggest thing I see going is a synchronized "passing of the buck" to somebody else.. or at least, rejecting one particular factor.
The gun enthusiasts say that it wasnt guns which did this. "Guns dont kill people, people kill people," and other inane phrases can be heard. No, it wasnt the guns which "caused" this incident, but then, there was no one thing that "caused" this incident - it was an unfortunate situation caused by a number of circumstances. One of those circumstances was the easy availability of guns. It plays a role, and a significant role at that.. two kids are not going to be able to kill 15 people in a school with a butter knife - at least, it would be a lot harder.
The "internet pundits" ( who are usually the gun pundits also ), say that it wasnt the internet which did this. The Internet too was a factor. The availability of easy communications channels helped these kids. For me however, the internet is quite a different case from guns because the internet's sole purpose is not to kill - unlike guns.
The gaming enthusiasts say that it is not the horrific and completely ghastly needless violence and lack of imagination present in modern 3d shooters which caused this incident. The games too played a role. One can argue wether the kids were psychotic because they played doom, or played doom because they were psychotic, but I dont think the cause-effect distinction is very meaningful here. The point is, these games reinforce generally violent tendencies in children. Some times it spills over, most of the time it doesnt.
People also blame the parents - and it's true that the parents did have a lot to do with it. So did the community. These kids are smart. Reading their website, I find it witty, in a very rabid, violent and extreme manner. They knew what they were doing and they knew what it would accomplish. They didnt give a shit about the people they killed because they beleived that the community around them didnt really give a shit about them. They just didnt care. If they were in heaven (or hell) now, they'd be laughing at our wonderful psychoanalysis of them, saying to each other "we really showed those fucks, didnt we?"
Anyway - all the above-mentioned items went into this tragedy. If we take the advice of most of the posts here, we'd just leave all of them, and incinerate the parents for what their children did (that's the impression I get anyway). Something should be done for ALL the above-mentioned subjects.. The availability of guns should be dealt with, the prescense of web-sites should be noticed, the ubiquitousness of needlessly violent 3d-shooters should be curbed, parents should be made to care, and the community should be educated.
Dont pass the buck.
-Laxative
I'll tell you why the internet is not "the new jerusalem".
The new jerusalem is heaven. If you sit down and think really hard about what heaven would be like, you come to the inevitable conclusion that it would be REALLY REALLY REALLY BORING. If you take a close look at christianity, pretty much everything that is enjoyable is sinful in one way or the other. The internet is WAY too much fun to be heaven.
-Laxative
While free distribution is a great marketing tool (think about all those samples you get in the mail), what does it say about the product itself? Frankly, it says that the product (or the effort that went into making the product) has no value. Is that what you software engineers out there want?
What is free has no value. That statement should be framed and put up on a wall. Excuse me? BiND, Apache - half-the-internet. Guess this software has no value then...? Let's all just switch to MS Visual DNS Pro 4.0 SP3 - it costs more, it MUST be worth more!
If, however, you gave away all software, how would you pay the creators of that software? You destroy the subtle motives that only cash can bring--motives such as food on the table, a warm place to sleep, and so forth. What you're left with is a bunch of amateur coders who need to have real jobs to make ends meet. Are these the type of people you want developing the software products your business depends on?
This whole statement assumes that the programmer's product is released by somebody else who needs to pay for this programmers time. One difference in paradigm of the Free Software Movement is that it is the PROGRAMMER who owns the code, and releases it. In other words - the labourer controls the means of production (Damn red commie ratfinks!). Look, no-one is going to design a multi-million dollar specialized application for your company specifically for free. Free Software is about providing a good piece of software that can be used by everyone. It is not about making everything free. It's about making the fundamental operations needed to be provided by a computer, available to the masses, and not concentrated in the hands of highway robbers to take money from you for things that you MUST do. "ls" is free. "gcc" is free. "Molecular Modeler 3.13 by Fictitious Software (tm)" is NOT FREE. It's about people providing a service to a community, and (cover your children's eyes people) DONATING IT.
Ironically, these folks are sowing the seeds of their own destruction. If they actually succeed in making software free, no one will be willing to employ them to create a product with no value. Soon, students will stop studying software development in college since there won't be a way to make a career out of it.
How so? There will always be jobs that the average student programmer cant handle by himself. And one HAS to ask the question - if there is a programming task that can be completed by a student in college - then WHERE do you get off charging exorbitant prices for it? If Apache can provide a better solution for half the servers on the net, and it is created by a bunch of college students - WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU ABOUT THE COMPANY WHICH PROVIDES THE SAME (OR WORSE) PRODUCT, AT A HIGHER PRICE??
If intellectual property isn't property, then just what is property? Why not just give away cars, houses, and everything else?
When person A gives person B a car, person A does not have the car anymore. When person A gives person B a copy of the blueprints of the car, person A loses NOTHING. This is the difference between "material" property, and "intellectual" property. There are circumstances where "intellectual" property should be protected, but in the LARGE majority of cases, it is used in a selfish and bigoted way, which does very few people any good, except perhaps the peron "owning" the intellectual property.
If software is free, why does it matter who takes credit for it? After all, aren't we all just one big, happy family contributing to a great, shared codebase for all of humankind? Why should it matter that someone uses some code from someone else? The way I see it, "credit," better known as fame, is just another method of payment. If the big kahuna of the FSF wants free software, he shouldn't demand the payment of fame for its use.
Fame is different from money. If an author writes an article for a magazine, and gets paid to write that magazine, he has NOT SOLD THE RIGHTS FOR THE CONTENT HE WROTE. Fame and money are not mutually substitutable. Stallman's push behind GNU/LINUX is not as much for personal fame (though that could be factor), but to gain a spotlight for a movement that played a major part in the success of Linux. He wants his idea, and products based on his idea, to succeed. He is pushing his ideology, not demanding "payment" for his software. The argument made here is VERY VERY childish.
In short, I'm not against software being given away. I just want the folks who write that software to be paid--and paid handsomely--for writing it. That is the proper model for the industry. So the next time you think about using some free software, consider its cost to the software industry.
Thank you for standing up for poor programmers everywhere, downtrodden upon by the cruel selfish bastards of the Open Source and Free Software. Let us all start a REVOLUTION against our Open Source oppressors!
You know, I really dont give a SHIT about the software industry if it provides bad products at high prices. If FS should be considered anything, it should be that it is the BEST competitor to come along in a LONG time - and just hope that it will jumpstart an industry stagnated with the likes of Microsoft, who rely more on glitz than real work and good products. Linux,GNU,FSF is here because there was a need, and it fulfilled that need. Those in power, those who were growing fat on their bad software, are now apprehensive that this movement might actually FORCE THEM TO MAKE BETTER PRODUCTS (What a travesty of justice and capitalism THAT would be!).
The arguments made in this article are not even worthy to be read - except for the fact that they give you a glimpse into the fears of the software giants as they exist today.
-Laxative
That's not the right analogy to use. You see, there are just about as much "stupid" users who use cars as there were 60 or 70 years ago. The factor is that the CARS have changed. Earlier, you had to have a knowledge of the engine and how the car worked to be able to fix and maintain it. With time, service centers developed, cars got easier to use - simpler. Have you tried driving a '59 ford truck? It's fun as hell, but you gotta pull a hell of lot of cranks and levers to keep the thing going. You have to know about the internals of the truck to actually get some use out of it.
In short, the people havnt changed, the product has. Thus, in the future, there will STILL be a lot of so-called "stupid users", but they will have products that are designed well so that they cant really mess it up unless they do something really bad - like spilling coffee on their monitor - something which could be compared to a car crash.
The state of the market right now is far from it. People still havnt started demanding stability from the software, like they did from their cars. The difference is - if they lose control of their cars, they might lose their life - but if they lose control of their computer, they simply lose some documents and their 'spice girl pics'.
-Laxative
This article is plain bullshit, and the growing trend that it signifies is also bullshit.
Now that a lot of people have heard of Linux, and they've all heard how "snazzy" it is, the trend they are pushing at is to make Linux "easy to use". The mainstream is gently chiding the Linux user-base and developer-base for not providing a "user friendly" product. This is absolute crap.
I ask - what is the big deal with user friendlyness? Linux is (for most purposes) UNIX. UNIX is a developer's system. It is not a happy system where you can "get on the web easily and surf for spice girl pics," as Salon puts it. But should it be like that?
The power of a Linux system in the Command Line. No decent Linux user runs X without running an x-term (rxvt, kvt, etc..).
A lot of you say though - that the both can co-exist. There can be the command line for the geeks and a nice pretty gui for the newbies. Sure, I can accept that - but look at what the attempts have produced so far: GNOME - a graphical user interface system that is in reality very little more than a pretty pixel pusher. Same for KDE. Is there anything you can do in GNOME that you cant do on the command line faster and with more power? (except for picture-viewers/editors, but that is a special case). It's redundant effort.
I can immediately spot command line application for most GNOME apps.
text editor? vi/emacs
irc client? what else - BitchX
web browser? lynx counts, unless you want pics
file browser? um.. bash, csh, mc
calculator? bc
ide? emacs, and there are tons of text ones
Almost all GNOME/KDE apps are just pretty covers on top of the real power of the console utils.
I'm not saying that nodoby needs a graphics interface. For some applications, GUI are essential - you just cant conceptualize them on a command line - eg. Office suite with WYSIWYG, Graphic modelers, etc.
If people really want to develop easy to use applications. That's fine. If they feel the need to really create a seamless easy-to-use intuitive graphical interface for the layman - it's cool with me. But dont do it because you feel a need to "justify" Linux or GNU to the majority. Linux has nothing to prove - and you can see this even in Linus's personality.
If it keeps going like this, it will come to even more "chidings" and requests.
'Its a shame that rm -r / just deletes the whole hard drive without telling you.. would it be possible to maybe print out "YOU ARE ABOUT TO DELETE ALL THE FILES AND DIRECTORIES ON YOUR ROOT DIRECTORY, AND ALL OTHER DIRECTORES WHICH BELONG IN THIS DIRECTORY. ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO THIS? YES/NO?" '
-Laxative
So far it looks like an even spread. 2 for "less than 1000" and 2 for "1000-1500".
I think most people here would be in the "less than 1000", including me. Of course, if you count all the lines of code that 1 line of python code leverages.. I guess you could argue that I wrote more than 1000.
And I'm sure some guy out there will just run vi (or emacs for the sorry vi-challenged people), type one ' printf("wheee") ', and then yank and paste 'till the sun comes up, and legitimately call it his 1000 (or 1000000) line program...
lotsa loopholes.
-Laxative
I know a lot of you here are fraggers, so would object to what I have to say.
This is expectable. When you get games, where the sole purpose is to go around shooting people, what the hell is supposed to happen? If you sit and play these games too long, it really warps your mind. In what the fuck kind of game do you go around and shoot things for no fucking reason? "But it's just a game," you say. Hell, let's all grab some shotguns, and go out to the fields, and start trying to blow each other's heads off.. what cool special effects we can have - wont that be a wonderful game?
"But it's different because it's on a computer, and not for real," you whine. With the graphics nowadays it's gettting pretty fucking real enough. This is the great use that humanity has found for computers - drawing flying bloody body parts fast enough so that it seems smooth to the human eye. Sure YOU may know the line between computer and reality, but do kids?
Third, what is the fucking point of these games? Sure, the graphics woo me too, they're nice. But how can people even play these things for more than 2 minutes? Where is the skill? Do people go around bragging about their skills in controlling their keyboard arrow keys? If there is a certain skill in that, wouldnt it be comparable to the skill involved in jacking off or some similar inconsequential activity?
Anyway, conclusion time. These games should be restricted from children. There is a reason why people below 18 are not allowed to vote. There is a reason why people below 18 cannot have sex with people above 18, without the older person going to jail. There is a reason people below 21 can't drink. It all reflects a general concencus that you need to attain a certain age before which you are not fit to make concious, sound decesions regarding certain subjects - and this is one of them. I think games should have ratings which segregate them to certain age levels.
I can hear all you libertarians shouting - "Freedom!." But for certain things, freedom shoul d be restricted. 10 year olds do not have the freedom to have intercourse with an adult. This is because they are not deemed mentally fit to make such a decesion. Violent games fall into the same catergory.
-Laxative
This article makes some really good arguments that, at face value, seem valid, but really dont lead anywhere.
Essentially, the article tries to psychoanalyze Nader's reasons for going after Microsoft. Here, they identify "open source", and "free software" as the ideological stance that Nader is purusing, and then go on to try to discredit "open source" and "free software" concepts. At the end of their article, they state, very curtly and without any previous justificiation of their statements, that Microsoft is right and Nader is wrong. In short, their argument has nothing to do with their conclusion.
The point here isn't wether or not the OSS concept is bad or good, but wether Microsoft has been a fair competitor in the "market". The article never mentions technical superiority, but bases it's arguments on the assumption that most people prefer Microsoft software over OSS, and declares that as a failing of the OSS paradigm. In making these arguments, it ignores a key point:
The OSS community does not spend millions in advertising their products, while Microsoft is shameless in it's plight to assure customers that they are actually getting something of value forthe $97 they pay for the latest upgrade of their software.
Consumers do not make choices in a vacuum, but in an environment pervased with advertisement and promotion.
Furthermore, they do not even try to refute Nader's accusations of predatory licence practices, and simply make a reference to "property rights", and expect their argument to be fulfilled. Microsoft's licencing practices have created an environment where the average person cannot easily come in contact with alternative products. How can a person decide if he or she wants to use Linux or BeOS or BSD if he/she does not even know it exists?
This article is essentially a bypass of the real issues put forth by Nader and the DOJ. They make an unsuccessful feint of the arguments made against Microsoft.
-Laxative
I disagree with you there. You cant just going bombing places because there is violence there. The capacity for indiscriminate violence exists everywhere. IT exists in the US to a large extent. Given the right situation, the people of the US WILL comming terrible crimes - genocides. This is true of ALL countries. The common factor in all these situations is this: change approaches and a large section of the population is left behind, disenfranchised by the change. This is true of the serbs today. It was true of the Germans during Hitler's time. IT is true when you look at white supremacist extremism in the northern US. It is true even in my home country of India, where the dominant hindus are extremely bitter about their situation and are taking it out on the christian population there. Annihilation is not a solution. If that is the only solution you can think of, I hope I will never see the day that anybody like you will ever hold any position of power. In this situation, my anger is more toward NATO than Milosovech. You will always have madmen, they are a dime a dozen. It is up to the "intelligent" and "rational" to deal with them in a responsible way. NATO is not dealing with this situation in a responsible way at all. I even question the RIGHT of NATO to do this. The UN is where the decesion to attack must be made, if it is made at all. The UN might at least be considered half-way impartial and not completely under the sway of the doctrines of the United States. The NATO decesion is a unilateral decesion, which I am very wary of.
By It's rash actions, NATO has significantly worsened the situation in Kosovo. I keep saying NATO, but that is a misnomer. We all know who the big guy is here: the United States of Glorious America. NATO is just a front organization for legitimizing the US's actions as "valid" in the eyes of the international community.
This is going to be messy. People are going to die - and it could have been prevented. It is the US's (NATO's) irresponsibility that has caused the death of these people. Tribal hatred cannot be dealt with by using bombs.
-Laxative
The us government deserves all that it is getting, and I hope that they get all thats coming to them. After all, their utterly STUPID, RASH, IRRESPONSIBLE move has pretty much caused the ethnic cleansing of a people. Dont get me wrong, I'm no Serb apologist - I know full well what's going on in Kosovo, and I personally compare Milosovech to a less-rabid Hitler. But the thing that really irks me is: Did NATO think for 1 minute before attacking? Does NATO care one ounce for the Albanians? NO they dont. The NATO campaign has FAILED MISERABLY, but everyone is too proud to admit it. They bring pictures of weapon silos and say "Look at how we bomb them. Look at how precisely our bombs hit their targets. Look at the big explosions. Are they not nifty?????". While NATO is busy bombing away, sporting their full fledged penile erection, more and more people are being killed.
What do you do when you have a madman holding a country hostage - go in and start shooting indiscriminately? Make that another botch-up for the U.S. and their merry men.
Remember this: NATO (Mainly the US and UK) is at least HALF as responsible for the slaughter going on in Kosovo as Milosovech. It showed absolutely NO responsibility in it's planning, it showed absolutely NO consideration for the situation in Kosovo, and NO consideration for what might happen if it went in and started playing the US's trademarked -COWBOY POLITICS-.
Fuck the US. Fuck clinton. Fuck blair. Fuck milosovech.
-Laxative
Look mom! It's a paranoid McCarthyist!
Oh no! What if the russians get a hold on this technology! Worse! What if the Chinese get a hold of it, the United State's leading position as the pure, uncorrupt leader of the free world will be threatened, and disenfranchised people all over the world will lose their voice for freedom!!!
Watch out, it might just be the time to bring out little-boy and fat-man again.
Weak minded paranoid reactionist. Excuse me while I finish my taco.
-Laxative
Just lust, easier sussed, true love makes me untrue
It's hard to make a stew when the meat keeps looking up at you
-Elastica
Ok, this is half-farcical, half-serious.
With all the new customization features going on in slashdot, has anyone thought of...
themes?
customized colors
customized page layouts based on XML layout files stored on the server
customized icons
take it with a grain of salt, but give it a good munching
-Laxative
Um, I'm a student in university in Canada. I didnt even hear of theos before this. I'm not plugging. I have no special interest in this case. I'm not saying theos has a claim to theos.com, I'm just saying that he should be a nice guy - maybe negotiate a higher monetary payment. The right thing to do is just give theos the domain.
theos is not behaving childishly at all, their e-mail is very polite, and they offer what they think is a good enough monetary compensation. If "theo" does not like that, he should negotiate. Of course, it is entirely his choice to not even talk to theos, but then it will be HE who will be behaving childishly. Theos is not one of those big bad guys that is trying to bully the little guys. They just want the "obvious" website for their product. Nothing wrong with that.
Dont get offended too easily.
-Laxative
I dont have a big problem with "theos" asking for "www.theos.com". Of course, the "we-re gonna sue yor pants off" rhetoric is not very cool, but it's how these guys work. For them, it's messed up if someone actually does something just because you asked nicely. As for the $35, just be happy they arent jumping up and down like little brats saying - "my lawer will show YOU!".
This is not close at all to "archie -> veronica" or "toyrus -> *rus". I think whoever owns "theos" should just a nice person and give it.
Just my 2 cents
-Laxative
I dont know if you people watch C-SPAN very often, but I do every once in a while. Let me tell you gingrich is one bag of hot air. The so called "futurist" just repeats outlandish suggestions to make people think what he says is really worth something. Example? Of course...
One happy afternoon while watching c-span I happened to tune in on one of gringrich's wonderful speeches, where he was talking about education funding. This was his idea: You can decrease education spending, and increase tax-cuts, so that people can get internet access at home. His hypothesis: After about age 5, "kids can learn all they want from the Internet!". He actually said this. I spent the next week and a half fucking laughing my head off. That statement ranks up there along with gore's "I created the internet."
Politicians can talk sweeter than a jock on prom night, but it doesnt mean shit.
-Laxative
Well, from the past 5 comments.. I can see the linux defense guns coming up and aiming. "FUD" they scream. Step back and take a look people, I think this article has some valid points.
This sort of situation is really inevitable. When companies get involved, they are going to pursue their bottom line, and they really dont give a shit about anything else. They dont give a shit about freedom, open source, or the community unless it is really advantageous for them. There is no advantage for RH in LSB. Why should they advocate something that might take people away from their platform?
"Look at gnome.. rpm," you say. There's a difference. Gnome is different because I believe redhat sees a financial advantage right now about keeping it's contribution open source. Furthermore, they cant close-source it because it's based on GTK, which is OSS. They know that if they could close-it, and they did, everyone would stop using RH, pretty much, so they dont.
RPM is a different problem altogether. RPM was created by RH when linux was still quite a small deal. Since then, RH has grown by leaps and bounds, and so has Linux.
The thing to know about companies is, they are NOT human. After a certain critical mass, they retain NO human qualities. RPM was released when RH was still run by humans, and humans who cared somewhat for the linux community. Furthermore, Linux itself was a very small platform back then, and all developments had to be shared if it had any chance of hitting the big time. Now it has.
There's just one more thing I'd like to point out. There are tons of people out there who have absolutely no problem with Linux getting in bed with the big guys - IBM, SUN, SGI, Dell, Compaq, etc. I just ask, has anyone noticed how far Linux has come WITHOUT any business help? Were the businesses here when kernel 1.2.13 became 2.0.0? Why do people attatch such a big significance to "market share"? Is "market share" going to make Linux inherently better? Is the worth of an operating system decided by how many people use it, or it's technical features? What is the worth of an OS if it is used by everybody, but technically lacking? What price is this community willing to pay to gain widespread acceptance in the world?
Big business did not help Linux 1 iota in it's development - and they wont help either unless they see a very direct way for them to profit from it. And greedy profit-seeking, in this case, is very very bad.
The feeling now is something akin to "look mom, I build my own race-car and it won the indy-500, and now all these nice rich people want me to wear their shoes and clothing, and they say they'll give me lots of money for it too.. gee whiz". Big business has a way of leaving everything it touches in a state of decrepid waste. Watch out.
-Laxative
Ok. I'll make a calm rational agument:
Take a look at the wonderful south-east asian tigers, which the U.S. just LOVES, despite that tricky little problem of dictators. Take your pick: Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand. The economies there, until recently, were skyrocketing. Do you think it reflected on the living status of the people? What happened after so many years of a skyrocketing economy in south-east asia?? crash - call it Asia's black tuesday. Where are the people of south-east asia now after so many years of such a good fucking economy? They're starving and working in sweatshops. This panacea you call "a better economy" seems only to work for the rich - what a pity.
Lets take an example closer to home. In the US, the days of the highest economic growth was when the most companies were downsizing the fastest (as in early '90s). Isnt that ironic? The most people are losing their job, but the economy is doing great!
There is only one thing that a "good" economy veritably does: it makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.
Sorry for calling your personal example a sob story by the way.. coffee is just wearing off.
I'll use my personal example. I moved to canada 6 months ago. Even though the economy here is not as good as the economy in the US, it is a better place to live. You pay a lot to the government, but you also get a lot back. Everyone gets a lot back. Canadian society is healthier than US society. A good economy does not mean anything if the people dont do well. The original assumption behind capitalism was that a better economy means a healthier society. This is simply not true.
-Laxative
Give me a break with your sob story. Do you know it actually costs money to run a government? It's not free, people dont volunteer.
You mention the industrial revolution. Sure the industrial revolution was great, but there were a LOT of things about it that sucked. LIKE:\
the black slaves in the south used to supply the
textiles with raw material so the industrial revolution could happen
the exploitation of millions of workers and farmers by large businesses.
THe cause of the great depression
What the hell does an "economy" matter if the people arent taken care of. What is this god "economy" we must all pay homage to? You think you can just say that one word and expect everyone to say "OH, JEEZ, guess you are right, because it affects the economy". An economy does not matter SHIT if the people in that economy are treated like crap. Indonesia had a fucking good economy the last 20 or so years.. you think it's worth a lot? Where do you draw the line between an economy and working in a sweatshop for $100+ shoes from Nike??? Buzzwords do not make good arguments.
-Laxative
Ok, I'm gonna go fucking psycho now. This whole anti-tax thing about, "I should not be taxed and all my money should be my own and no-one should mess with it" is completely hypocratic. You dont realize one fucking iota of government and organization works, and go shooting your mouth off.
Taxes are necessary. THey are not evil. If you dont have taxes, you dont live in a nice society where you are protected from bad people and where it is made sure that you dont starve. Slashdot has a disproportionately high number of libertarian freaks. Lemme tell you libert. kids about your messed up ideas - IT WONT WORK. Not only is it impractical, it is completely selfish, bigoted, and immoral. How the fuck can you expect people to pay ONLY FOR THEIR OWN STUFF? I can show you a little example by analogy: Canada V. THe United States. THE US is more libertarian than Canada - lets work from there.
In Canada, people go to work at 9:00 and come home at 5:00. They pay high taxes (Very high), but the majority of people's living standard is high. In Canada, the average family can hope to send their kids to a good school without being in debt for the rest of their lives. I know this because I have lived in the US for 9 years and have Just moved to canada. In the US, my parents and I would have had to pretty much pay off my university debts for the rest of out lives. ONLY after we came to canada were we able to afford a house, and a decent life. Being immigrants from India, the US treated us like SHIT. My dad, who went to college for no money because of his academic skill, and who worked from 9:00 in the morning to 11:00 at night every day, earned $24000 a year, just about enough for us to rent a crappy apartment and get through 1 year. Can you believe that shit? In Canada, we get taxed about 3 times as much - but our lifestyle is twice as good. Explain that. Your annoying freakish libertarian arguments are BULLSHIT. I have no great love for canada - it's not the cream of the crop by any means - and yes the US has some good things about it too. But the crazy notion that an individual has absolutely no obligation to the rest of mankind is completely selfish and fascist. I dont
mind more taxes, if it helps run government. I didnt like paying taxes in the US however, because it went more toward funding private companies than it did to helping people.
If the libertarian party ever wins the majority vote, I swear the US will have withing it a 3rd world nation, and a elite-nation - much like 1984's proles and the civil workers - except it wont be the government, it'll be the capitalists and the labourers. Read "The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat" if you want to get an Idea of what a libertarian society will be like.
This is not a flame, I just wanted to get my views out on this horrible horrible "libertarian" idea.
-Laxative
um.. I think you've misunderstood me.. I think Linux is great. I also think socialism is great. I wasnt pulling a McCarthy. It's just that I try to convince people that Linux/GNU is socialist and they start blabbering about "freedom" and all that crap, pushing some bullshit.
I should take more care when posting...
-Laxative
This just clarifies the point again. GPL and business do not mix. Why? because Linux/GNU/FSF is SOCIALIST in nature. All you libertarian and capitalist freaks out there freak out and scream "GPL is about FREEDOM!". The GPL is not about freedom. The GPL embodies the ideal of socialism within the rules of a capitalist structure. The GPL actually restricts freedom. Nobody can "sell" a GPL product. Nobody can "sell" the linux kernel to somebody else (I dont mean selling an individual copy, I'm talking about selling the rights). This goes against the most fundamental tenets of capitalist structure - which protects the right to property and the right of sale. Even if you dont recognize it, the FSF/OSS/GNU/Linux phenomenon is socialist in nature.
-Laxative
I can understand RMS' point. Think about it, after so long toiling for his ideals for a completely "free" system, a finnish guy comes and steals pretty much all the momentum from it. When people think of Linux, they think of Linus, but most of them dont realize the millions of lines of code in the OS BESIDE the kernel - they associate the whole OS - utilities, compiler, and all - with Linus. Now, Linus is a very nice guy - very humble and everything, but it is true that he does not really care for the kind of ideology that Stallman holds. Look at it, Linus has said pretty much openly that he doesnt mind non-free programs on linux, and even non-free code in the kernel. This must be RMS' nightmare. It's a knee jerk reaction for him - facing the fact that all that he worked for might go down the tube. Look at it - big businesses are jumping in bed like crazy with linux. Soon, the screws will start turning for the "Linux" system to give the companies more and more "freedom" to make money. RMS' just sees his dream being threatened. He might have an ego, and he is frank enough to state it: Unlike many of you hypocritical bastards here.
I respect RMS' ideology - except for the fact that he only follows it when it comes to software. I think this sort of ideology should be followed across the board. Microsoft is just one example of thousands of companies that are ripping the average man to shreds today - and I dont know how you can simply state "free code" and stop at that.
Oh yeah - too all of you "commie-bastard" flamers, just because you can repeat a '50s "bad word" doesnt make you right.
-Laxative
Dont just free software - free the individual
The potential for computers in India is amazing, but the extreme poverty there really puts a limit on this. Being an Indian myself (I am still a citizen of India), I really want this technology to come to India. But if you want any kind of computer penetration, you need to do it very very cheaply. I estimate that at most, a computer sold in india can cost RS10000 to be a viable choice for middle-high income houses and small-medium-large businesses. But RS10000 is a little more than $200. The $50 for MS operating systems is a helluva lot of money back there. A cheapbytes $2 CD is the best solution. Furthermore, assuming a $50 for a basic 14" old monitor, you'd need to fit MB, HD, CPU, MEM, VID, and everything else into $150.
If you manage to build a system like that, pretty much the only use for them would be in businesses. You could probably set up a nice little PostGreSQL database for them to keep track of finances, inventory, and lookup. But then, the other major problem is, considering the amount of underhand dealing and wheeling that happens, most people DONT WANT clean records for their businesses, especially when it comes to big businesses.
Of course, you could probably build a cheap system with about 300MB HD with linux/gcc on it and sell it as a tool which families of children in CompSci can buy to help their kids along, but I am doubtful about the prospect of this actually selling anything.
-Laxative - just some rambling
'Cause raster is a nut who really doesnt care about the people using it. This is in no way supposed to be derogatory. I just dont think raster designs E with a great desire to see people all over the world use it and live peacefully and prosper. He's just playing around with nifty features and challenging himself. That's one of the reasons I dont use E, it's not designed with a user in mind. You can use WindowMaker with gnome though. I personally use FVWM 1.0 - the sweetest wm to ever come out. It's small, fast, doesnt try to be some ultra-super-duper-cool-WM, and it's pager kicks E ass. E has some really nice features to it though. To each his own, this is why there are different wm-s.
-Laxative
A million monkeys jumping on a million keyboards for a million years will eventually create Shakespeare's Hamlet.
100 monkeys jumping on 100 keyboards for 20 days will produce the source code for Windows'95
Fahrenheight 451 had nothing to do with book burning. Book burning was a plot element to illustrate bradbury's point. The point was, individual free thought and the right to criticize (part of the right to free speech) was supressed for the sake of "non-offensiveness". The reason books were being burned was because any book offended somebody - had a point of view that some minority or majority group disagreed with. The book was about the abolition of diversity to perserve the 'unity' of a community.
-Laxative