Your nerd "technical reasons" leave us no room for endless inflammatory arguments and trite gender sterotyping! How will we fill the empty silence now?
We could have general discussions about the treatment and oppression or lack thereof of men women and hermaphrodites in different settings, like for example among geeks, the free software community or in general.
It's about players of Magic the gathering, also a nerdy mostly male community. We could discuss the merits of that piece and how much of it would apply to the slashdot community. I think we could get some flames and stereotypes flying.
You can't understand how hard it is, growing up as a manbot pretending to be a manputer in a fembot's femputer's world!
Maybe I'm missing some references in my head or maybe your being a bit nonsensical. Either way, it amuses me.
What is the relationship between a bot and a puter? It seems a puter is the way to be, but then the whole world is a bots world... I get confused.
In the real world man is of course generally the norm and woman is the deviation, as with robots/fembots, for example. One doesn't often hear about manbots and manputers and mens hockey and so on.
I'm sure the EU can be perceived as an evil institute from a vantage point on the left too.
It could be characterized as a big fucking machine that can be used as tool for good, I guess, in opposition to other big fucking machines on this globe.
On the whole, I don't know if it's good or bad to have a big fucking machine like this. Good thing if we, the people, can wield it for democracy and good in the world, but really really bad if power is taken further away from the people and centralized to a big boot to pin us down. We'll see.
Y'all are missing the point. The key word here is anywhere. That means it will work inside the core of the sun (or whichever part is the hottest). Now that's an achievement!
That is the lie that has been pulled over your eyes.
Admiring the rich, successful people and thinking you could make it too if only you work hard enough - and then most often inevitably blaming and loathing yourself when you don't, that's the great American swindle.
Ps. The minister of education I was referring to as an example is the Swedish one (whom I intellectually do not wish bodily or any other kind of harm).
True, that. But, you know, punishment is barbaric and didn't ever do anybody any good.
I know it is in our nature and for example I feel instinctively that want to punish our fascist minister of education with a kick in the penis and/or teeth whenever he lays down his old populist, military anti-academical/philosophical/human bullshit tripe, but punishment, however sweet, is not right. The wrongdoers can not help themselves. As a civilized society we should just prevent them from doing harm.
Punishment or revenge are not civilized things to do.
You may or may not be under the misconception that we don't also have lot's of people from all over here in Sweden (as an example).
The ratios of coordinates at which nearby persons parents (or parents parents and so on) initiated their chains of chemical reactions that resulted in the hominidae that are you and me and those around us may differ significantly (like I don't think I've met a Cuban in my hood), but this particular suburb of Stockholm, Sweden is very much diverse. Surely 100 or 150 plus national origins. Only about 15-20 or something % white traditional "Swedes", though.
Majority/minority culture is interesting. They/we as whites/cityslickers/Americans don't know about the plight of colored/hicks/anyone.
I'll just go ahead and end this comment right about here.
I'll just go ahead and reply to myself regarding possible ambiguities in my above post:
By the comparison to the Aitmatov (?) quote, I didn't mean to imply that he came from a poor background, because I don't know about that and since his name is actually Donald Duckishly aristocratic to a swede. What I meant was that I felt he is (or at least was) true to his... roots as an information freedom-fighter.
Also, I didn't just happen by him once, but a few times - on the streets of the "ghetto" (as far as we have them) and on the u-bahn.
Anyway. Histories of current persons in bodies, while perhaps titillating, are not more important than the ideas they put forth. So, you know, whatever.
If the founder in question here was making huge numbers off TPB a few years ago (2008, maybe), it didn't show in his wardrobe, hairstyle or choice of place to crash or his mode of transportation.
I saw him staying with friends in one of the socio-economically crappiest suburbs of Stockholm and taking the subway wherever he was going.
I'm not saying he wasn't a millionaire, but if he was, it was like some character said in some (iirc) Tzingiz Aitmatov story: "I'm just a poor person with lots of money".
I think this person is a principled person. I might be wrong, but this is the vibe I got from happening to pass him by on the street a few years ago.
>[M]ost people prefer low cost above all else. Blame consumers, not Apple.
That's a very convenient way for the rich and powerful to view the world. Blame the little guy who really is in charge while the billionaires and multinational megacorps are merely humbly doing our bidding. It's not like there is lobbying or advertising to pervert the system of consumerist power...
Facebook is a de facto standard. You also don't need ears or a voice. It's just helluva lot easier and more convenient to communicate if you have these things, depending on your surroundings.
Myself, I've so far resisted signing up, but it has meant I don't hear or get heard as easily among facebooking peers, of which there are plenty among friends, family and acquaintances.
I'd say there is an unfair balance of power between facebook and the little person, which will lead to the little person being coerced into accepting unfavorable terms, as the alternative of being an outsider may feel even worse.
>Hate is best directed at ideas and, if you want to personify it, the leaders who promulgate them.
Agreed. And one could even consider that the leaders are the way they are because of their nature and nurture, neither of which they are to blame for. I mean, take for example GWB. Talk about a bad upbringing. He was practically helpless before his fate of becoming president of the US and bombing Iraqis.
As that guy with the long hair and the blue car said: "Forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing", or something.
Exactly. Money indirectly does buy happiness to the poor person, because the poor person has money troubles which cause unhappiness. Take away that unhappiness and relative happiness goes up. More money than is required for getting out of money troubles doesn't buy happiness, or buys a lot less of it.
Mathematically, I can also show that the best "value" to society is to take your car and house and give them to other people who will use them better. Are you willing to give them up now?
I think there are plenty of situations like this. Example: people shouldn't have to pay for concert tickets, movie tickets, Las Vegas shows, clubs, etc etc.
I don't have a car or house. You have points, but I wasn't talking about forcefully taking tangible things from the rich and giving them to the poor (and I'm not saying we should or shouldn't, but that's not what my argument is about). The difference between what you talk about - a house, car or even a concert on the one hand and digital information and culture on the other hand, is that you can copy the digital stuff.
Who do you fund? How do you decide what's worth funding and what isn't? What guarantees do you have of a quality result? How do you get the best stuff out to people (if this seems like a silly question, go wandering through the free apps in the Android market store - there's some great stuff off in the depths, but can you be bothered finding it)?
Talking about living wage for everyone, I meant to refer to "basic income". Sorry about the confusion. What I meant was that if society provided unconditional basic income that would cover basic necessities, then passionate people could devote themselves to their art.
With basic income, the question whether the number of people wanking off in front of their Internet all day instead of being productive members of society and earning a better living standard for themselves would be too high need answering beforehand, of course. So, we should perhaps move towards a model of basic income in small increments.
Mathematically, we should pirate the shit out of things.
See, a good movie or song has value - it enriches a persons life. The cost of copying these things is negligible. So, essentially for free, we can create enormous value in form of good feeling, learning, culture and stuff for billions of humans.
Now, of course the poor starving movie execs will loose, but they're free to get a job at McD.
All the artists and craftspersons that are actually required should of course get by. If copying was legal, art would probably increasingly be crowd-funded before creation, but a meager living wage for everyone would really let artist just about not starve and enable passionate people to keep doing their art.
The value from copying will be far greater than the loss of value from it. I'm not gonna worry my pretty little head trying to calculate numbers, but I'm sure the math is solid.
If we can give something good to everyone for free, it would be the right thing to do.
This is not the service providers doing. Apparently it's sony ericssons custom shenanigans for the x10 mini (pro). I was miffed at the non-freedom out of the gate.
It's not my phone and I only had a few minutes with it. Maybe I'll look into the possibility of removing the icons at some point. After a quick glance at the Internet, alternative firmware seems sub-optimal for the device in question at this point in time.
My point was poorly made, but while my example of unremovable icons is not an example of the non-freedom of Android, that problem still exists, doesn't it? Maybe it's just that the gpl v2 of linux allows tivoization? Or is Android worse protecting our freedoms than gnu/linux in general?
>Uh, probably because you're not a super user. So you can't do everything (just like gnu/Linux, wow!) . Critical thinking is tough.
Maybe you misunderstood. I wrote I had an encounter with Android. That is a bit vague.
More specifically, I fingered the phone of a non-techie friend for a few minutes. I installed a few useful free software apps and I noticed I was unable to remove unneeded icons.
I wasn't gonna go rooting it or installing alternative firmware in the few minutes I fingered the phone.
The reason I haven't touched Android until now is not that I'm not a "super user", it's that I chose a real gnu/linux phone for myself a few years ago and I'm perfectly happy with it.
Now tivoization jumped in my face and I felt compelled to comment on it, as slashdot happened to be at my fingertips.
You may well be right, but that's fucked up, of course. That would make my brain asplode. Come to think of it, that might be what my problem is - my brain might have asploded a few too many times at the fuckeduppedness of the world.
Sure, it sound like the opposite of open to cull features, but is this a question of even less software freedom or just about different non-free features?
I recently had my first encounter with Android and motherfuck! There were icons on the thing that I could not remove. That's not like any gnu/linux I've known.
Slashdot Mirror
Your nerd "technical reasons" leave us no room for endless inflammatory arguments and trite gender sterotyping! How will we fill the empty silence now?
We could have general discussions about the treatment and oppression or lack thereof of men women and hermaphrodites in different settings, like for example among geeks, the free software community or in general.
The piece linked in my sig could be a conversation starter. ( http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc/22786_To_My_Someday_Daughter.html )
It's about players of Magic the gathering, also a nerdy mostly male community. We could discuss the merits of that piece and how much of it would apply to the slashdot community. I think we could get some flames and stereotypes flying.
You can't understand how hard it is, growing up as a manbot pretending to be a manputer in a fembot's femputer's world!
Maybe I'm missing some references in my head or maybe your being a bit nonsensical. Either way, it amuses me.
What is the relationship between a bot and a puter? It seems a puter is the way to be, but then the whole world is a bots world... I get confused.
In the real world man is of course generally the norm and woman is the deviation, as with robots/fembots, for example. One doesn't often hear about manbots and manputers and mens hockey and so on.
The relevancy of my sig to your comment compelled me to reply. It's a great read about the geeky mans world of gaming and how it would be for a woman to fit in there: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc/22786_To_My_Someday_Daughter.html
How about "Rory Calhoun"?
I'm sure the EU can be perceived as an evil institute from a vantage point on the left too.
It could be characterized as a big fucking machine that can be used as tool for good, I guess, in opposition to other big fucking machines on this globe.
On the whole, I don't know if it's good or bad to have a big fucking machine like this. Good thing if we, the people, can wield it for democracy and good in the world, but really really bad if power is taken further away from the people and centralized to a big boot to pin us down. We'll see.
Or maybe the big explosion and all the deaths just felt like as if they cried out, when they in fact just died without screaming.
Y'all are missing the point. The key word here is anywhere. That means it will work inside the core of the sun (or whichever part is the hottest). Now that's an achievement!
That is the lie that has been pulled over your eyes.
Admiring the rich, successful people and thinking you could make it too if only you work hard enough - and then most often inevitably blaming and loathing yourself when you don't, that's the great American swindle.
Ps. The minister of education I was referring to as an example is the Swedish one (whom I intellectually do not wish bodily or any other kind of harm).
True, that. But, you know, punishment is barbaric and didn't ever do anybody any good.
I know it is in our nature and for example I feel instinctively that want to punish our fascist minister of education with a kick in the penis and/or teeth whenever he lays down his old populist, military anti-academical/philosophical/human bullshit tripe, but punishment, however sweet, is not right. The wrongdoers can not help themselves. As a civilized society we should just prevent them from doing harm.
Punishment or revenge are not civilized things to do.
You may or may not be under the misconception that we don't also have lot's of people from all over here in Sweden (as an example).
The ratios of coordinates at which nearby persons parents (or parents parents and so on) initiated their chains of chemical reactions that resulted in the hominidae that are you and me and those around us may differ significantly (like I don't think I've met a Cuban in my hood), but this particular suburb of Stockholm, Sweden is very much diverse. Surely 100 or 150 plus national origins. Only about 15-20 or something % white traditional "Swedes", though.
Majority/minority culture is interesting. They/we as whites/cityslickers/Americans don't know about the plight of colored/hicks/anyone.
I'll just go ahead and end this comment right about here.
I'll just go ahead and reply to myself regarding possible ambiguities in my above post:
By the comparison to the Aitmatov (?) quote, I didn't mean to imply that he came from a poor background, because I don't know about that and since his name is actually Donald Duckishly aristocratic to a swede. What I meant was that I felt he is (or at least was) true to his ... roots as an information freedom-fighter.
Also, I didn't just happen by him once, but a few times - on the streets of the "ghetto" (as far as we have them) and on the u-bahn.
Anyway. Histories of current persons in bodies, while perhaps titillating, are not more important than the ideas they put forth. So, you know, whatever.
If the founder in question here was making huge numbers off TPB a few years ago (2008, maybe), it didn't show in his wardrobe, hairstyle or choice of place to crash or his mode of transportation.
I saw him staying with friends in one of the socio-economically crappiest suburbs of Stockholm and taking the subway wherever he was going.
I'm not saying he wasn't a millionaire, but if he was, it was like some character said in some (iirc) Tzingiz Aitmatov story:
"I'm just a poor person with lots of money".
I think this person is a principled person. I might be wrong, but this is the vibe I got from happening to pass him by on the street a few years ago.
>[M]ost people prefer low cost above all else. Blame consumers, not Apple.
That's a very convenient way for the rich and powerful to view the world. Blame the little guy who really is in charge while the billionaires and multinational megacorps are merely humbly doing our bidding. It's not like there is lobbying or advertising to pervert the system of consumerist power...
>No one needs Facebook.
Facebook is a de facto standard. You also don't need ears or a voice. It's just helluva lot easier and more convenient to communicate if you have these things, depending on your surroundings.
Myself, I've so far resisted signing up, but it has meant I don't hear or get heard as easily among facebooking peers, of which there are plenty among friends, family and acquaintances.
I'd say there is an unfair balance of power between facebook and the little person, which will lead to the little person being coerced into accepting unfavorable terms, as the alternative of being an outsider may feel even worse.
>Hate is best directed at ideas and, if you want to personify it, the leaders who promulgate them.
Agreed. And one could even consider that the leaders are the way they are because of their nature and nurture, neither of which they are to blame for. I mean, take for example GWB. Talk about a bad upbringing. He was practically helpless before his fate of becoming president of the US and bombing Iraqis.
As that guy with the long hair and the blue car said: "Forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing", or something.
Exactly. Money indirectly does buy happiness to the poor person, because the poor person has money troubles which cause unhappiness. Take away that unhappiness and relative happiness goes up. More money than is required for getting out of money troubles doesn't buy happiness, or buys a lot less of it.
Mathematically, I can also show that the best "value" to society is to take your car and house and give them to other people who will use them better. Are you willing to give them up now?
I think there are plenty of situations like this. Example: people shouldn't have to pay for concert tickets, movie tickets, Las Vegas shows, clubs, etc etc.
I don't have a car or house. You have points, but I wasn't talking about forcefully taking tangible things from the rich and giving them to the poor (and I'm not saying we should or shouldn't, but that's not what my argument is about). The difference between what you talk about - a house, car or even a concert on the one hand and digital information and culture on the other hand, is that you can copy the digital stuff.
Who do you fund? How do you decide what's worth funding and what isn't? What guarantees do you have of a quality result? How do you get the best stuff out to people (if this seems like a silly question, go wandering through the free apps in the Android market store - there's some great stuff off in the depths, but can you be bothered finding it)?
Talking about living wage for everyone, I meant to refer to "basic income". Sorry about the confusion. What I meant was that if society provided unconditional basic income that would cover basic necessities, then passionate people could devote themselves to their art.
With basic income, the question whether the number of people wanking off in front of their Internet all day instead of being productive members of society and earning a better living standard for themselves would be too high need answering beforehand, of course. So, we should perhaps move towards a model of basic income in small increments.
Mathematically, we should pirate the shit out of things.
See, a good movie or song has value - it enriches a persons life. The cost of copying these things is negligible. So, essentially for free, we can create enormous value in form of good feeling, learning, culture and stuff for billions of humans.
Now, of course the poor starving movie execs will loose, but they're free to get a job at McD.
All the artists and craftspersons that are actually required should of course get by. If copying was legal, art would probably increasingly be crowd-funded before creation, but a meager living wage for everyone would really let artist just about not starve and enable passionate people to keep doing their art.
The value from copying will be far greater than the loss of value from it. I'm not gonna worry my pretty little head trying to calculate numbers, but I'm sure the math is solid.
If we can give something good to everyone for free, it would be the right thing to do.
>if you are looking for a GNU/Linux phone, look elsewhere.
I did. About 3 years ago. I found the n900. It suits me fine still.
The phone with the icons I was complaining about wasn't mine, just a phone with Android I had an encounter with.
This is not the service providers doing. Apparently it's sony ericssons custom shenanigans for the x10 mini (pro). I was miffed at the non-freedom out of the gate.
It's not my phone and I only had a few minutes with it. Maybe I'll look into the possibility of removing the icons at some point. After a quick glance at the Internet, alternative firmware seems sub-optimal for the device in question at this point in time.
My point was poorly made, but while my example of unremovable icons is not an example of the non-freedom of Android, that problem still exists, doesn't it? Maybe it's just that the gpl v2 of linux allows tivoization? Or is Android worse protecting our freedoms than gnu/linux in general?
Anyway. Freedom good. Non-freedom bad.
eh.. sorry. I think I misunderstood.
You meant "super user" as in root, didn't you?
I took it as meaning "power user". Good thing I didn't go all in with the nerd rage. That would have been even more embarrassing.
>Uh, probably because you're not a super user. So you can't do everything (just like gnu/Linux, wow!) . Critical thinking is tough.
Maybe you misunderstood. I wrote I had an encounter with Android. That is a bit vague.
More specifically, I fingered the phone of a non-techie friend for a few minutes. I installed a few useful free software apps and I noticed I was unable to remove unneeded icons.
I wasn't gonna go rooting it or installing alternative firmware in the few minutes I fingered the phone.
The reason I haven't touched Android until now is not that I'm not a "super user", it's that I chose a real gnu/linux phone for myself a few years ago and I'm perfectly happy with it.
Now tivoization jumped in my face and I felt compelled to comment on it, as slashdot happened to be at my fingertips.
You may well be right, but that's fucked up, of course. That would make my brain asplode. Come to think of it, that might be what my problem is - my brain might have asploded a few too many times at the fuckeduppedness of the world.
Sure, it sound like the opposite of open to cull features, but is this a question of even less software freedom or just about different non-free features?
I recently had my first encounter with Android and motherfuck! There were icons on the thing that I could not remove. That's not like any gnu/linux I've known.