He is not wrong to call GP out on his ignorance. Just about everything in that post was completely wrong. If someone continues to post stuff that is factually wrong and trivially provable, theres very little point spending the time to prove it in every post; telling them to "shut up and sit down" is not a fallacy.
BZZZT, Wrong. Schools do not need a warrant to search their own property (it is owned by the school, even if the money came from taxpayers), and the supreme court has ruled that during the schoolday, several of the Bill of Rights protections do NOT apply to school children.
Not sure where you got your law degree, but maybe you should take a refresher course.
Desk phones are more reliable, almost never drop calls, and have a lot of features that either dont exist or suck on cellphones like transfer, hold, conference.
Sometimes you do want all traffic on a work computer being sent through the VPN. There are a number of security reasons why it would be important to know that, for example, a user is connected to bittorrent simultaneously with being connected to corporate resources. Theres also a good reason for it to be against company policy.
At the very least, looking for another job on company time is a waste of company time / resources. Yes, just about everyone goofs off @ work from time to time, but doing it to benefit yourself at the expense of your company is adding insult to injury.
Seriously, wait till you get home, theres really no justification for it.
An employee who doesnt expect it needs a reality check.
Heres some more shockers, from an IT consultant:
* Your firewall / IDS is probably proxying all of your connections.
* SSL is probably being intercepted to. You ever check who issues the SSL certs of your favorite sites?
* DNS lookups may well be monitored.
The biggest shocker: Its not your machine, or your network, or your electricity. Its not your time, either. Their job, their rules: Get over it. Of course, you generally do have the freedom to walk out if you dont like the whole "not your resources" angle, smaller companies tend to do this less.
Sometimes the question is dumb and asking to do the wrong thing. There isnt a good answer to "how do I avoid software bugs" other than "avoid software", and not the answer that is wanted.
How would that be better if it was proprietary closed source?
The point of source code IMO isnt to be shared but to be compiled, and used as a software tool. Sharing it is great, but only because that code will be compiled wherever it is shared and thus become useful. Otherwise it is simply a learning tool-- and the point of learning how to code is, once again, to produce compiled output that can perform tasks.
I would rather have proprietary software to make X task easier than to have no software at all.
This sounds like a no true scotsman. Youre defining "open source" and "linux" based on whether it works exactly like your n900.
Android is inarguably Linux, Open Source, and supports repositories. It uses Java by default (though Im pretty sure you can add non-android packages), and theres no reason gnu utilities cannot be ported. Su was ported, busybox was ported etc etc.
That is also not a sane default. 99.9% of users have no need for it, and the point of repositories is that you can add them as needed-- kind of like you can do with android.
Right, but a lot of copyleft proponents insist that its the "freest license" when its pretty far from it. In just about every sense BSD is "freer" as it imposes essentially no restrictions.
I understand why people use GPL, but they need to stop overselling what it is.
This is the very debate. GPL isnt about producing useful code, its about trying to ensure that software doesnt get created that doesnt match the GPL ideology. Obviously it cannot achieve that goal, but it tries, making sure that people have to reinvent the wheel if the wheel was invented under the GPL.
Which i guess is great, if your goal in life isnt to be productive but to fight these sort of battles.
Obviously its the author's choice how he wants to license his code, but the GPL really is not "the most free license"; its incredibly restrictive.
Its not about being scared. If any of my code is "derivative" of the GPL'd code, then my code must be GPL'd as well. Even if there are possible loopholes, all of a sudden you need to involve legal counsel and higher ups. Starts to get a real PITA whenever i want to modify my code and need approval from legal dept.
Dont act like you understand workplace bureaucracy just because you dont have to deal with it.
If my code uses bits from that GPL software, Im in a bit of a legal quagmire. My company owns rights to the code I wrote, but the code requires it being GPL'd. Company may simply throw it out as "not worth it".
Clearly that benefits everyone though, right? Instead of "more software, but some of it is closed" we just get "noone wants to polish that GPL software because they cant monetize it". YAY, but at least we preserved our ideals!
RMS doesnt have a job and doesnt have to interact with any sort of industry. Hes free to live in a fantasy land and talk about ideals.
In the rest of the world, copyleft has done some good things but its basically a massive nuisance to anyone who may want to do business with it. If I were to see a cool copyleft program, id have to talk with my boss before using it because I dont actually own the code I write, and cannot legally make a decision about how to license it.
The comparison with Communism is that like with eugenics its basically a couple of ivory tower intellectuals deciding that for the good of humankind a bunch of people have to take one for the team. Eugenics is quite a bit worse because in this case "take one for the team" isnt "work harder than the rest", its "get sterilized and/or liquidated as inferior".
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He is not wrong to call GP out on his ignorance. Just about everything in that post was completely wrong. If someone continues to post stuff that is factually wrong and trivially provable, theres very little point spending the time to prove it in every post; telling them to "shut up and sit down" is not a fallacy.
BZZZT, Wrong. Schools do not need a warrant to search their own property (it is owned by the school, even if the money came from taxpayers), and the supreme court has ruled that during the schoolday, several of the Bill of Rights protections do NOT apply to school children.
Not sure where you got your law degree, but maybe you should take a refresher course.
Desk phones are more reliable, almost never drop calls, and have a lot of features that either dont exist or suck on cellphones like transfer, hold, conference.
Sometimes you do want all traffic on a work computer being sent through the VPN. There are a number of security reasons why it would be important to know that, for example, a user is connected to bittorrent simultaneously with being connected to corporate resources. Theres also a good reason for it to be against company policy.
You are not correct. AFAIK "expectation of privacy" is a legal term, and you DO have such an expectation at home.
I know its fun and all to throw hyperbole out there on slashdot, but lets try to stay in the realm of reality.
At the very least, looking for another job on company time is a waste of company time / resources. Yes, just about everyone goofs off @ work from time to time, but doing it to benefit yourself at the expense of your company is adding insult to injury.
Seriously, wait till you get home, theres really no justification for it.
An employee who doesnt expect it needs a reality check.
Heres some more shockers, from an IT consultant:
* Your firewall / IDS is probably proxying all of your connections.
* SSL is probably being intercepted to. You ever check who issues the SSL certs of your favorite sites?
* DNS lookups may well be monitored.
The biggest shocker: Its not your machine, or your network, or your electricity. Its not your time, either. Their job, their rules: Get over it. Of course, you generally do have the freedom to walk out if you dont like the whole "not your resources" angle, smaller companies tend to do this less.
Sometimes the question is dumb and asking to do the wrong thing. There isnt a good answer to "how do I avoid software bugs" other than "avoid software", and not the answer that is wanted.
How would that be better if it was proprietary closed source?
The point of source code IMO isnt to be shared but to be compiled, and used as a software tool. Sharing it is great, but only because that code will be compiled wherever it is shared and thus become useful. Otherwise it is simply a learning tool-- and the point of learning how to code is, once again, to produce compiled output that can perform tasks.
I would rather have proprietary software to make X task easier than to have no software at all.
This sounds like a no true scotsman. Youre defining "open source" and "linux" based on whether it works exactly like your n900.
Android is inarguably Linux, Open Source, and supports repositories. It uses Java by default (though Im pretty sure you can add non-android packages), and theres no reason gnu utilities cannot be ported. Su was ported, busybox was ported etc etc.
That is also not a sane default. 99.9% of users have no need for it, and the point of repositories is that you can add them as needed-- kind of like you can do with android.
Right, but a lot of copyleft proponents insist that its the "freest license" when its pretty far from it. In just about every sense BSD is "freer" as it imposes essentially no restrictions.
I understand why people use GPL, but they need to stop overselling what it is.
And it is your opinion that lighthttpd on an android phone constitutes a "sane default", is it?
Android has a terminal, and ssh, and all of that other stuff, just not by default.
Youre arguing that its "not linux" because the defaults dont match your preferences? Good grief. Real insightful.
Android is open source. Its also linux.
Hint: That link isnt a press release, its the source code.
This is the very debate. GPL isnt about producing useful code, its about trying to ensure that software doesnt get created that doesnt match the GPL ideology. Obviously it cannot achieve that goal, but it tries, making sure that people have to reinvent the wheel if the wheel was invented under the GPL.
Which i guess is great, if your goal in life isnt to be productive but to fight these sort of battles.
Obviously its the author's choice how he wants to license his code, but the GPL really is not "the most free license"; its incredibly restrictive.
Last I heard he was essentially squatting on a campus (wikipedia indicates that may still be the case), with no steady income.
Its not about being scared. If any of my code is "derivative" of the GPL'd code, then my code must be GPL'd as well. Even if there are possible loopholes, all of a sudden you need to involve legal counsel and higher ups. Starts to get a real PITA whenever i want to modify my code and need approval from legal dept.
Dont act like you understand workplace bureaucracy just because you dont have to deal with it.
If my code uses bits from that GPL software, Im in a bit of a legal quagmire. My company owns rights to the code I wrote, but the code requires it being GPL'd. Company may simply throw it out as "not worth it".
Clearly that benefits everyone though, right? Instead of "more software, but some of it is closed" we just get "noone wants to polish that GPL software because they cant monetize it". YAY, but at least we preserved our ideals!
RMS doesnt have a job and doesnt have to interact with any sort of industry. Hes free to live in a fantasy land and talk about ideals.
In the rest of the world, copyleft has done some good things but its basically a massive nuisance to anyone who may want to do business with it. If I were to see a cool copyleft program, id have to talk with my boss before using it because I dont actually own the code I write, and cannot legally make a decision about how to license it.
How is it "freedom" that it imposes restrictions so onerous that Microsoft wouldnt ever considering touching software thats copyleft?
Oh no, I just sparked another BSD / GPL debate....
Pretty sure this is the approach the Noveau project uses, as well as the Wine devs, as well as a ton of other FOSS folks.
Its not new, its pretty standard. Its called clean-room design / reverse engineering.
At least he's realistic about what it takes to bring these to market.
Theres already a linux phone on the market. Its open source, and there are several projects based on said source.
But reinventing the wheel is something that Canonical is particularly good at, so I guess we'll see.
The comparison with Communism is that like with eugenics its basically a couple of ivory tower intellectuals deciding that for the good of humankind a bunch of people have to take one for the team. Eugenics is quite a bit worse because in this case "take one for the team" isnt "work harder than the rest", its "get sterilized and /or liquidated as inferior".