"the amount of wealth a person has is generally inversely proportional to how hard they've worked for it. The richest people are mostly the ones who inherited it and didn't work for it at all."
Even if this were true, it wouldn't be a valid justification for the use of force to redistribute this wealth. The parents/grandparents/etc of these people have the right to do what they wish with the wealth that they earned with the fruits of their labor. Why are you so special that you are able to declare that they are no longer able to do what they wish with the fruits of their labor?
What makes you so special that you have the right to take what someone else earned / bought with the fruits of their labor? An underlying principle of any free society is that people have the rights to their labor and its fruits. The only way the State can treat all people equally is to simply protect these rights. As soon as they begin selectively enforcing or even directly violating (as with redistribution programs) these rights they are unjustly treating people differently - people are no longer equal under the law.
My experience discussing free software at an Apple store in Las Vegas (where I live) was exactly the opposite of his. The genius I talked to knew exactly what I was talking about and was happy to demonstrate the similarities between gnu/linux and OS X, allowing me to open up the terminal and even experiment for myself (I only ran a few cd's and ls's for the fun of it). My only problem was that the genius (sort-of) tried to convince me that OS X is open source (or at least very open).
We already are; have you read ubuntuforums.org lately? Half the threads sound like they were posted by 12 year old AOL children, acronyms and horrid grammar included.
Luckily when there are hundreds of threads on the same exact problem it generally gets fixed in the next version of ubuntu. (Case in point - you hardly ever see "I can't fix my screen resolution" or "X won't start on my ATI card after a fresh install" threads anymore.)
This probably has to do with the goals & philosophies of the different distros. Debian's goal isn't to create the most marketshare for desktop linux as possible; ubuntu's is (sort of - see ubuntu launchpad bug #1).
My mom, dad, and sister all use ubuntu far more successfully than they used windows. After my parents got their new dell with windows installed, they destroyed it within one month because one of them has this habit of opening unknown attachments.
The problem here is that GTK and QT apps are not supposed to look the same. There has been some effort to integrate them so that you can reasonably use a QT app in gnome and (imo more effectively) vice versa.
The entire point of his comment was that the doomsday scenario you're predicting won't happen. One thing all doomsday predictors in history have had in common is that they've all been dead wrong.
Egg McMuffins have a marginal cost (price of inputs + labor). Digital music (and movies, software, etc) has no marginal cost. Creating an additional unit of output costs $0. Therefore the only thing that a producer of such a product could conceivably charge money for is the right to use their "intellectual property," which we all know doesn't exist.
Three of my closest friends are CS majors and all disdain programming in windows. They all use ubuntu full time, but especially for programming.
This is from someone who knows nothing about programming.
Your entire comment is true. It also describes exactly the reason why I will never again purchase a product from ATI, broadcom, phoenix, etc, and why I encourage my friends (several of whom use linux full time anyway) to do the same.
I feel like everyone on slashdot should know this, but I'll repeat it once again. Not having support for various wireless/video/etc cards is not the fault of linux or the kernel developers. It is the fault of the vendors for not providing proper drivers and/or documentation. This will only improve with time as the popularity of linux grows and greater pressure is put on vendors to provide the aforementioned drivers & documentation.
The point is that the user wins because there are so many distributions from which to choose. The user is not stuck with whatever crap a large corporation decides to shovel to him/her.
I agree. If corporations want to give their name a positive connotation, they should get involved in foreign aid and poverty elimination, C.K. Prahalad style. This will help them and the poor.
You're making the assumption that the arts are better funded by government. Yes, I realize the Founders of the U.S. made provision for the "useful" Arts in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution, but that is what is known as the "Copyright Clause" and says nothing of funding. I see no reason for government to become involved in funding the arts, especially when there is more than enough private capital readily available.
"Of course" is always two words. "Midnight" is always one. The only time words are written together is when they combine to form a compound word like "bookkeeper" or "beehive."
"Anyway" depends on the usage. You could say: "The price of a mac doesn't matter to me because I would never buy one anyway." You could also say "I don't know any way out of this cave."
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Doesn't "desktop" refer to the "desktop metaphor" not the fact that the monitor is sitting on the top of a desk?
"the amount of wealth a person has is generally inversely proportional to how hard they've worked for it. The richest people are mostly the ones who inherited it and didn't work for it at all." Even if this were true, it wouldn't be a valid justification for the use of force to redistribute this wealth. The parents/grandparents/etc of these people have the right to do what they wish with the wealth that they earned with the fruits of their labor. Why are you so special that you are able to declare that they are no longer able to do what they wish with the fruits of their labor?
What makes you so special that you have the right to take what someone else earned / bought with the fruits of their labor? An underlying principle of any free society is that people have the rights to their labor and its fruits. The only way the State can treat all people equally is to simply protect these rights. As soon as they begin selectively enforcing or even directly violating (as with redistribution programs) these rights they are unjustly treating people differently - people are no longer equal under the law.
My experience discussing free software at an Apple store in Las Vegas (where I live) was exactly the opposite of his. The genius I talked to knew exactly what I was talking about and was happy to demonstrate the similarities between gnu/linux and OS X, allowing me to open up the terminal and even experiment for myself (I only ran a few cd's and ls's for the fun of it). My only problem was that the genius (sort-of) tried to convince me that OS X is open source (or at least very open).
Nothing's cooler than camping outside waiting for new technology releases!
We already are; have you read ubuntuforums.org lately? Half the threads sound like they were posted by 12 year old AOL children, acronyms and horrid grammar included.
Luckily when there are hundreds of threads on the same exact problem it generally gets fixed in the next version of ubuntu. (Case in point - you hardly ever see "I can't fix my screen resolution" or "X won't start on my ATI card after a fresh install" threads anymore.)
This probably has to do with the goals & philosophies of the different distros. Debian's goal isn't to create the most marketshare for desktop linux as possible; ubuntu's is (sort of - see ubuntu launchpad bug #1).
I don't think there is one sentence in your entire post that is truthful.
Wow, I've never seen an authoritarian pro-censorship post get dominated so badly by an advocate of freedom in my life.
My mom, dad, and sister all use ubuntu far more successfully than they used windows. After my parents got their new dell with windows installed, they destroyed it within one month because one of them has this habit of opening unknown attachments.
The problem here is that GTK and QT apps are not supposed to look the same. There has been some effort to integrate them so that you can reasonably use a QT app in gnome and (imo more effectively) vice versa.
The entire point of his comment was that the doomsday scenario you're predicting won't happen. One thing all doomsday predictors in history have had in common is that they've all been dead wrong.
Egg McMuffins have a marginal cost (price of inputs + labor). Digital music (and movies, software, etc) has no marginal cost. Creating an additional unit of output costs $0. Therefore the only thing that a producer of such a product could conceivably charge money for is the right to use their "intellectual property," which we all know doesn't exist.
Three of my closest friends are CS majors and all disdain programming in windows. They all use ubuntu full time, but especially for programming. This is from someone who knows nothing about programming.
Your entire comment is true. It also describes exactly the reason why I will never again purchase a product from ATI, broadcom, phoenix, etc, and why I encourage my friends (several of whom use linux full time anyway) to do the same.
I feel like everyone on slashdot should know this, but I'll repeat it once again. Not having support for various wireless/video/etc cards is not the fault of linux or the kernel developers. It is the fault of the vendors for not providing proper drivers and/or documentation. This will only improve with time as the popularity of linux grows and greater pressure is put on vendors to provide the aforementioned drivers & documentation.
... for the tough-to-beat price of a $2000 computer.
The point is that the user wins because there are so many distributions from which to choose. The user is not stuck with whatever crap a large corporation decides to shovel to him/her.
Too bad there's no xorg.conf on a server because X isn't even installed.
Good point. I guess I was assuming that the corporation isn't evil to begin with, which isn't always the case.
I agree. If corporations want to give their name a positive connotation, they should get involved in foreign aid and poverty elimination, C.K. Prahalad style. This will help them and the poor.
You're making the assumption that the arts are better funded by government. Yes, I realize the Founders of the U.S. made provision for the "useful" Arts in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution, but that is what is known as the "Copyright Clause" and says nothing of funding. I see no reason for government to become involved in funding the arts, especially when there is more than enough private capital readily available.
In openoffice you can move the toolbars around (and dock them on the sides) to suit your liking.
"Of course" is always two words. "Midnight" is always one. The only time words are written together is when they combine to form a compound word like "bookkeeper" or "beehive." "Anyway" depends on the usage. You could say: "The price of a mac doesn't matter to me because I would never buy one anyway." You could also say "I don't know any way out of this cave."
He meant that "no one" is two words, not one. "Noon" means 12pm.