Free speech is a natural right. It is something anyone can do that can only be eliminated by state actions of the most oppressive and wasteful kinds. Nothing is more wasteful or oppressive than state efforts to identify and retaliate against people who say things the state does not like. Speech without anonymity is not free and states that make efforts to eliminate anonymity in speech are unAmerican.
Shame on the US for cooperating with China to eliminate free speech on the internet. Such a program would obviously violate the first amendment to the US Constition which bans all laws that infringe on freedom of speech and press.
Let me reword what you said to show how silly it is:
It occurs to me that they aren't going to do this because they love Windows. They would do it to make money and I'm willing to bet that if they make their own version it would be designed to be difficult to move to other systems. They won't want to develop something at any expense and have someone else under cut their prices. It might be nice to have the average user know what Windows is though.
Motives are less important than the freedoms provided. If HP offers the four software freedoms, I hope they make buckets of money. Good faith contribution and use are always welcome, both strengthen software freedom.
"Undercutting" in the free software world is as preposterous a notion as Windoze OEM installs that really don't transfer to other systems or run without permission. Software freedom is about cooperating to meet user needs. No one cares who provides the eventual solution and who profits from it because everyone wins anyway you look at it.
For all of that, I have to agree with your last assertion. It would be good if more people understood software freedom. When that is clear both GNU/Linux and Windows can be seen for what they are.
Why is Slashdot linking to stories that paint the network administrator as a bad guy when he's so obviously surrounded by morons? These are the same people who published all of their user names and passwords. That puts the cost of this "hijacking" into perspective. The cost of trusting their employee with the powers required to do the job was zero.
Cut to the chase. Big publishers purchased these bogus laws and are the root cause for all sorts of digital stupidity. Is there anything more anti-social than fighting sharing as a concept? Companies that can't exist in freedom don't deserve to exist.
A lawsuit against a company that's been Linux friendly and is an Intel competitor, coupled to an immediate stock price fall. See there, Vista's not a failure, Nvidia is. Want to bet on how long it takes to find out this lawsuit is some king of M$ proxy thing like SCO?
Republicans are supportive of Big Oil, which has a dual role in these dissasters. The first is the now obvious global warming, which makes for more intense storms. The second role is the destruction of marshes by salt water intrusion that comes from canals made to support drilling. They are indirectly responsible as direct beneficiaries of flood control efforts which eliminated marsh building in all but a few parts of the Louisiana coast.
There's been a lot written about how New Orleans was used as a laboratory for Republican crony programs, like state funded religious schools and homeland defense monkey business. It's true but it pales compared to poor planning in the first place and delays in spending in the aftermath. A prime example of that crime is something called the Road Home loans. After three years, barely 1/3 of the money had been distributed for the intended home rebuilding. The new Republican Governor, instead of firing the firm responsible for the delays, proclaimed they had acted in such haste they had given out too much money and promptly demanded tens of thousands of dollars from thousands of people lucky enough to have gotten anything.
Does race play a part in all of this? Yes and no. The destruction of New Orleans was an attack on a Democrat stronghold. Other places have been equally decimated and subsequently ignored regardless of race. That is why Baton Rouge now has some 700,000 people and New Orleans less than 300,000. Mobile and Houston has seen similar growth from the destruction of the entire Gulf Coast.
Democrats have been powerless or unwilling to do anything meaningful with their control of Congress, so guilt is now accumulating in both parties.
Even if you don't believe in Global Warming, you can't deny the destruction of wetlands due to drilling and flood control efforts. New Orleans is screwed because it no longer has a buffer between it and the Gulf of Mexico. The same thing is true for most of the Gulf Coast. Areas that were safe for hundreds of years are being lost, with their culture and industrial base.
Moving the people without solving the real problems only pushes off the problem for another day. Big oil is going to lose a large chunk of change as refineries and supporting plants from Texas to Mississippi are increasingly threatened.
People opposed to the destruction of your freedom love the US and the principles it stands for.
Technically, the US deserves a better network. Traffic flowing between the UK and China, for example, should be quicker through the US than it does through any other route. Every thing we do to monitor that traffic is money that should be spent on something else. It's not just a backbone issue. US last mile problems keep US citizens from participating and making money off a free network as much as it makes the US a low return market for the rest of the world.
As the article points out, a technically excellent network is not enough. Freedom and privacy trump speed at some point.
There's a vast cost to the little police state the mega corps have tried to inflict on the US. They think they have won a great prize, but it will melt in their hands. Prosperity depends on freedom and justice. People won't work without clear and just rewards. As the US economy consolidates to Soviet Union style ownership, it's output will shrink to a similar size.
Anyone who loves the US will be doing everything they can to insure the US has a strong and free internet. Without that, the US will plunge into an information dark age and take much of the rest of the world with it. Those of you outside of the US need should realize that your liberty and economy won't last long in a world dominated by the US, China and Russia as they exist today.
The phrase "computer virus" should have been "windows virus" the same way mosaic is a tobacco virus. The general public might not know that W32 stands for 32 bit Windows, and they should be told when a problem is Windows specific. Most Slashdot editors have happily replaced words in my stories.
True but sometimes they throw chairs. They walk and talk almost normally but tools more complicated than a stone axe or Windows 95 still frustrates them.
Your employer seems to be running out of money, thanks to foolish spending. $6 Billion sounds like a lot for a company that's about to blow its last $20 billion on stock buy backs, but that's just part of the great ongoing collapse. Got your total fuckwad resume polished up? It will do better than one that puts emphasis on any other M$ skillz when they are gone.
You should be able to do both with ogg theora. GNU/Linux has done streaming media well for ages. If you don't believe me contemplate the flexibility of MythTV front and back ends.
Now that multitouch is available from M$, we hear that it's cool, that's quite a turnaround but only from the M$ dominated technical press. Sure, there was a lot of hype about a very late to the party M$ table with second rate multitouch but then the negative press against iPhone has been constant and deafining. Most of it was recycled talking points from the effort to kill Palm, RIM and other worthy competitors. Yes, practical touch computing is that old and the screens have been as cheap as a $40 Zire. Yes, multitouch is a nice wrinkle on it. No, it does not solve the primary problem with tablet computers - they see where your hand rests as input that scrwes up handwringing recognition. It's nice to finally see a mainstream review that does not complain about iPhone in one way or another, but it the real difference is that it's from Dell on Vista. I'm not impressed.
This is where DPI and telco caches are going to be placed. You don't really think they need all of that box for routing do you? Welcome to your metered and spied on future. It's like cable TV that watches you, charges per byte rip off charges to service providers and you, and provides Uncle Same with a complete record of your calls, email and browsing. It's not ugly because it's cheap, it's ugly because of what it's going to do and cost.
I don't consider XP an improvement over 98. After three or four years, device install was easier but this was more than offset by bloat, product activation and no choice upgrades. There were no substantial changes to stability, security or ease of use. Red Hat and Debian provided real improvements in every area but use of Winmodems, dialing up AOL and other things everyone is better off without.
people use IE, because that's "the Internet" on their computer
Yes, there are those people. They are usually happy with this. Firefox becomes "the Internet", Pidgin their IM and so on and so forth. Most don't know the difference and think you have done a great job of fixing their computer. For harder cases, you can change the icons and backgrounds then tell them it's Vista. Ha ha.
We just filtered out the partisan crowd noise -- no mistake, this is a pro-Linux crowd -- and dug into that virtual mountain of legal documents. Everything was there, posted, transcribed, organized and searchable.
That's why we all picked up the ruling from Groklaw.
And that treasure trove of documents is how we know now that SCO is stick-a-fork-in-it done.
If, after looking at everything carefully, you conclude that the GNU/Linux people were right, how can you call what they say, "partisan crowd noise" ? Perhaps you need to remove that M$ beam from your eye. GNU/Linux people correctly identified the motives, facts and outcome of this trial in days. Then they meticulously documented every bluff, bluster and lie from the SCO/M$ PR people threw out over years in their criminal abuse of the judical system. How can anyone possibly hold the same level of credibility for M$/SCO and GNU/Linux advocates after all of that? This is only something you can do if you are a dedicated MicroSoftologist. It is completely irrational.
Jumping from Adobe's non free frying pan into M$'s well stoked fire is a laughably abortive thought, but watch out you will hear more of that kind of nonsense. With enough buzz, your clueless boss will start telling you to get into !Net because of Silverblight for a host of buzzword reasons. Overall, it's not funny.
M$'s crushing of Adobe would not be funny even if we had not seen the same joke hundreds of times before. The story of M$ raping their vassals to steal their "proffit center" is so old that there are hardly any left. M$'s obvious collusion with NBC is an Olympian sized trust violation, so the story is more obvious this time but so is the downside. Adobe is a huge company with obviously superior technology to M$. Their demise will dump thousands of IT workers onto an already crowded market, and advance M$'s network and media infection.
Adobe should be operating on Red Alert and looking for all the help they can get. M$ is going to blow them right off Winblows, no matter how badly they treat Mac and GNU/Linux users. It is time for them to find new friends because they have nothing left to lose.
Of course it's possible to implement Flash with free software, but that won't solve the problem. Free software is a powerful enough development method to overcome CSS, the Windows API, SMB, and DX. What task do you think is out of reach? The problem then is one of a legal framework that makes it impossible to distribute free software that works with broken media like DVDs and websites that use Flash. There are technical solutions but legal solutions are better. Software patents and the DMCA must go.
There are several technical solutions to broken media. One is for individuals to ignore bad laws and just get DeCSS. A better one is to code around YouTube like Clive does. You can also simply avoid non free media, after all the Internet Archive, Wikipedia and Creative Commons have multiple lifetimes worth of excellent entertainment and education. Most of these send a clear message that Flash, Silverlight and other non free media is broken. Competing technology and it's users are going to win.
Legal solutions are better. We would not have problems with broken media if people were allowed to share their solutions. Laws that prohibit people from sharing free software are always wrong and should never have passed. Modern copyright law is at odds with its purpose and must be reformed.
Slashdot Mirror
Free speech is a natural right. It is something anyone can do that can only be eliminated by state actions of the most oppressive and wasteful kinds. Nothing is more wasteful or oppressive than state efforts to identify and retaliate against people who say things the state does not like. Speech without anonymity is not free and states that make efforts to eliminate anonymity in speech are unAmerican.
Shame on the US for cooperating with China to eliminate free speech on the internet. Such a program would obviously violate the first amendment to the US Constition which bans all laws that infringe on freedom of speech and press.
you tell me
Let me reword what you said to show how silly it is:
Motives are less important than the freedoms provided. If HP offers the four software freedoms, I hope they make buckets of money. Good faith contribution and use are always welcome, both strengthen software freedom.
"Undercutting" in the free software world is as preposterous a notion as Windoze OEM installs that really don't transfer to other systems or run without permission. Software freedom is about cooperating to meet user needs. No one cares who provides the eventual solution and who profits from it because everyone wins anyway you look at it.
For all of that, I have to agree with your last assertion. It would be good if more people understood software freedom. When that is clear both GNU/Linux and Windows can be seen for what they are.
Why is Slashdot linking to stories that paint the network administrator as a bad guy when he's so obviously surrounded by morons? These are the same people who published all of their user names and passwords. That puts the cost of this "hijacking" into perspective. The cost of trusting their employee with the powers required to do the job was zero.
Cut to the chase. Big publishers purchased these bogus laws and are the root cause for all sorts of digital stupidity. Is there anything more anti-social than fighting sharing as a concept? Companies that can't exist in freedom don't deserve to exist.
A lawsuit against a company that's been Linux friendly and is an Intel competitor, coupled to an immediate stock price fall. See there, Vista's not a failure, Nvidia is. Want to bet on how long it takes to find out this lawsuit is some king of M$ proxy thing like SCO?
Republicans are supportive of Big Oil, which has a dual role in these dissasters. The first is the now obvious global warming, which makes for more intense storms. The second role is the destruction of marshes by salt water intrusion that comes from canals made to support drilling. They are indirectly responsible as direct beneficiaries of flood control efforts which eliminated marsh building in all but a few parts of the Louisiana coast.
There's been a lot written about how New Orleans was used as a laboratory for Republican crony programs, like state funded religious schools and homeland defense monkey business. It's true but it pales compared to poor planning in the first place and delays in spending in the aftermath. A prime example of that crime is something called the Road Home loans. After three years, barely 1/3 of the money had been distributed for the intended home rebuilding. The new Republican Governor, instead of firing the firm responsible for the delays, proclaimed they had acted in such haste they had given out too much money and promptly demanded tens of thousands of dollars from thousands of people lucky enough to have gotten anything.
Does race play a part in all of this? Yes and no. The destruction of New Orleans was an attack on a Democrat stronghold. Other places have been equally decimated and subsequently ignored regardless of race. That is why Baton Rouge now has some 700,000 people and New Orleans less than 300,000. Mobile and Houston has seen similar growth from the destruction of the entire Gulf Coast.
Democrats have been powerless or unwilling to do anything meaningful with their control of Congress, so guilt is now accumulating in both parties.
Even if you don't believe in Global Warming, you can't deny the destruction of wetlands due to drilling and flood control efforts. New Orleans is screwed because it no longer has a buffer between it and the Gulf of Mexico. The same thing is true for most of the Gulf Coast. Areas that were safe for hundreds of years are being lost, with their culture and industrial base.
Moving the people without solving the real problems only pushes off the problem for another day. Big oil is going to lose a large chunk of change as refineries and supporting plants from Texas to Mississippi are increasingly threatened.
Anyone have any doubts left about the importance of software freedom for all your devices?
People opposed to the destruction of your freedom love the US and the principles it stands for.
Technically, the US deserves a better network. Traffic flowing between the UK and China, for example, should be quicker through the US than it does through any other route. Every thing we do to monitor that traffic is money that should be spent on something else. It's not just a backbone issue. US last mile problems keep US citizens from participating and making money off a free network as much as it makes the US a low return market for the rest of the world.
As the article points out, a technically excellent network is not enough. Freedom and privacy trump speed at some point.
There's a vast cost to the little police state the mega corps have tried to inflict on the US. They think they have won a great prize, but it will melt in their hands. Prosperity depends on freedom and justice. People won't work without clear and just rewards. As the US economy consolidates to Soviet Union style ownership, it's output will shrink to a similar size.
Anyone who loves the US will be doing everything they can to insure the US has a strong and free internet. Without that, the US will plunge into an information dark age and take much of the rest of the world with it. Those of you outside of the US need should realize that your liberty and economy won't last long in a world dominated by the US, China and Russia as they exist today.
It's like they don't think they can sell Vista without breaking XP. Don't tell Steve Ballmer that people noticed.
The phrase "computer virus" should have been "windows virus" the same way mosaic is a tobacco virus. The general public might not know that W32 stands for 32 bit Windows, and they should be told when a problem is Windows specific. Most Slashdot editors have happily replaced words in my stories.
True but sometimes they throw chairs. They walk and talk almost normally but tools more complicated than a stone axe or Windows 95 still frustrates them.
I think the one in the middle says, HIV.
Your employer seems to be running out of money, thanks to foolish spending. $6 Billion sounds like a lot for a company that's about to blow its last $20 billion on stock buy backs, but that's just part of the great ongoing collapse. Got your total fuckwad resume polished up? It will do better than one that puts emphasis on any other M$ skillz when they are gone.
You should be able to do both with ogg theora. GNU/Linux has done streaming media well for ages. If you don't believe me contemplate the flexibility of MythTV front and back ends.
They are, at least bright enough to use Apache (Red Hat).
Now that multitouch is available from M$, we hear that it's cool, that's quite a turnaround but only from the M$ dominated technical press. Sure, there was a lot of hype about a very late to the party M$ table with second rate multitouch but then the negative press against iPhone has been constant and deafining. Most of it was recycled talking points from the effort to kill Palm, RIM and other worthy competitors. Yes, practical touch computing is that old and the screens have been as cheap as a $40 Zire. Yes, multitouch is a nice wrinkle on it. No, it does not solve the primary problem with tablet computers - they see where your hand rests as input that scrwes up handwringing recognition. It's nice to finally see a mainstream review that does not complain about iPhone in one way or another, but it the real difference is that it's from Dell on Vista. I'm not impressed.
This is where DPI and telco caches are going to be placed. You don't really think they need all of that box for routing do you? Welcome to your metered and spied on future. It's like cable TV that watches you, charges per byte rip off charges to service providers and you, and provides Uncle Same with a complete record of your calls, email and browsing. It's not ugly because it's cheap, it's ugly because of what it's going to do and cost.
I don't consider XP an improvement over 98. After three or four years, device install was easier but this was more than offset by bloat, product activation and no choice upgrades. There were no substantial changes to stability, security or ease of use. Red Hat and Debian provided real improvements in every area but use of Winmodems, dialing up AOL and other things everyone is better off without.
Vista is worse than XP in every way.
Software from the early 90's endorsed by a comedian from the early 90's. It's a perfect match, like wilted flowers on Vista's grave.
people use IE, because that's "the Internet" on their computer
Yes, there are those people. They are usually happy with this. Firefox becomes "the Internet", Pidgin their IM and so on and so forth. Most don't know the difference and think you have done a great job of fixing their computer. For harder cases, you can change the icons and backgrounds then tell them it's Vista. Ha ha.
If, after looking at everything carefully, you conclude that the GNU/Linux people were right, how can you call what they say, "partisan crowd noise" ? Perhaps you need to remove that M$ beam from your eye. GNU/Linux people correctly identified the motives, facts and outcome of this trial in days. Then they meticulously documented every bluff, bluster and lie from the SCO/M$ PR people threw out over years in their criminal abuse of the judical system. How can anyone possibly hold the same level of credibility for M$/SCO and GNU/Linux advocates after all of that? This is only something you can do if you are a dedicated MicroSoftologist. It is completely irrational.
Slashdot has news you did not know about. Isn't that what Slashdot is for?
The site itself sounds like a good idea, but it will be tough to guard against the gaming Slashdot itself has suffered.
Jumping from Adobe's non free frying pan into M$'s well stoked fire is a laughably abortive thought, but watch out you will hear more of that kind of nonsense. With enough buzz, your clueless boss will start telling you to get into !Net because of Silverblight for a host of buzzword reasons. Overall, it's not funny.
M$'s crushing of Adobe would not be funny even if we had not seen the same joke hundreds of times before. The story of M$ raping their vassals to steal their "proffit center" is so old that there are hardly any left. M$'s obvious collusion with NBC is an Olympian sized trust violation, so the story is more obvious this time but so is the downside. Adobe is a huge company with obviously superior technology to M$. Their demise will dump thousands of IT workers onto an already crowded market, and advance M$'s network and media infection.
Adobe should be operating on Red Alert and looking for all the help they can get. M$ is going to blow them right off Winblows, no matter how badly they treat Mac and GNU/Linux users. It is time for them to find new friends because they have nothing left to lose.
Of course it's possible to implement Flash with free software, but that won't solve the problem. Free software is a powerful enough development method to overcome CSS, the Windows API, SMB, and DX. What task do you think is out of reach? The problem then is one of a legal framework that makes it impossible to distribute free software that works with broken media like DVDs and websites that use Flash. There are technical solutions but legal solutions are better. Software patents and the DMCA must go.
There are several technical solutions to broken media. One is for individuals to ignore bad laws and just get DeCSS. A better one is to code around YouTube like Clive does. You can also simply avoid non free media, after all the Internet Archive, Wikipedia and Creative Commons have multiple lifetimes worth of excellent entertainment and education. Most of these send a clear message that Flash, Silverlight and other non free media is broken. Competing technology and it's users are going to win.
Legal solutions are better. We would not have problems with broken media if people were allowed to share their solutions. Laws that prohibit people from sharing free software are always wrong and should never have passed. Modern copyright law is at odds with its purpose and must be reformed.