This might be cynical of me but what happened to that installer?
It has been orphaned, like half the debian packages. (I can be just a cynical.:-))
< rant > Sorry, I'm a little down on debian right now since scsidev seg faults with any 2.2.x kernel (yes, even the one from potato), thus making cdrecord and numerious gui front-ends for cd burning useless (xcdroast does work, however). Slink has been showing its age for quite some time, to the point where it is getting painful. Although we've been using debian for quite a while where I work, the long turnaround between releases and updates has forced us to take a hard look at other Distributions such as Suse, RedHat, and Mandrake, even though all of us are (or in several cases were) debian fans. (No, running unstable releases aren't an option. Unstable means just that, sometimes with severe consiquences.)
I do not think Debian at all qualifies as "most improved product" since it has been a year and there is no new stable release yet, although if potato comes out before the awards are final perhaps this would change. I would vote for SPI for the "deserves to win $2000" award without hesitation, however, as they are the only fully open reference Linux distribution (that I am aware of) and do deserve our support (all frustrations on my part aside). </rant >
You are free to nominate it yourself (and you should). Documentation writers are all too often overlooked. Although my vote is for Linux DVD, I think your proposal is also very worthy (I've already made my nomination, obviously).
I like your comment about the LinuxOne IPO. How to lose money on an IPO, tarnish the Linux community's reputation, and behave like an ass before the world all at once! I'd love to turn a couple of dominatrix friends of mine loose on the CEO of LinuxOne for a few days, armed with rusty razer blades... but I digress.:-)
My vote for "most improved open source projec" is for Linux DVD.
The entire project has gone from being a pipe dream to allowing one to play movies under Linux, whether or not they've been encrypted with css, in an amazingly short time, both in software and with some hardware (e.g. DXR2, Matrox G400).
Furthermore, DVD playback is a feature that is very important if Linux is to ever be a serious desktop contender against Windows (which I believe it to be -- we use it on our desktops at work and at home). The project still has allot of work ahead of it to allow my grandmother to play DVDs under Linux without being a UNIX guru, but its strides to date have been very remarkable.
Finally, the project is under ongoing attack by legal thugs at the behest of the DVD Forum in much the same way DeCSS is (the author of css-auth, the utility which allows Livid's Linux DVD utilities to play back encrypted movies, was forced to hand off the project to someone else after being threatened with legal action in the UK). In a "bang for buck" analysis I like the return to the Open Source community, especially the Linux and FreeBSD communities, from a donation to this project deserves consideration:
Help with legal defense of developers when required
Hardware for developers to work on (new DVD players, decoder cards, etc.)
While not the only deserving project by any means, DVD playback is an important one, and IMHO worthy of consideration.
NOTE: I am not affiliated with Livid in any way, except as an enthusiastic user who enjoys watching DVD's on his Linux box. I guess that would make me a "consumer"/"beta-tester" for the project, at most.
"Most improved" != "Earliest started project" or "Most Calendar Months requried to Develop"
The improvements in DVD, going from virtually non-existent to almost fully functional in a phenominally short amount of time are IMHO greater than the improvements of Mozilla (though also significant) during the past year
Both are much improved products and worthy of nominations, but I disagree with your logic that the one deserves more attention simply because it was started sooner, and/or has required more man-hours to get to where it is, while the other project has had less time in which to achieve its successes. If anything, the speed with which Linux DVD has made its improvements ought to swing the verdict the other way.
I wish both projects great success, but do not think Mozilla is as worthy as Livid is of "Most Improved Open Source Project" -- there are several other candidates in addition to Livid I would personally rank higher at this time.
On the Patomic there was appointed a real doofus Who ran the Patent Office to screw us A perversion it seemed The most trivial "inventions" not screened A Patent on the alphabet to rape us
It's surprising that the domain didn't get grabbed for a porn site first, though!
[Puts on his best imitation old-man voice] Back in the day, when the X consortium hadn't sold out to misleadingly named Open Software Foundation and were able to register the one-letter x.org domain, then the Internet was a much kinder, gentler, and above all, smarter place:
USENET was a usable, indeed friendly and invaluable, discussion forum
SPAM was unheard of and flamed mercilessly (and for quite some time successfully) out of existence
The internic existed for the good of the net, not its own sleazy pocketbook.
porn was limited to the appropriate USENET groups. In the early days of the web porn sights didn't hijack your browser and fill your screen with a borderless window showing two men sucking cock (or some other equally offensive thing you had absolutely no interest in seeing) with the sole means of getting out of it to exit the browser altogether (if you're lucky and don't have to exit the windowing system altogether). I don't know who to flame more for the current state of affairs, the porn fucks who do this or netscape's asinine extentions to html (javascript and the like) that gave them the means[1]. Both suck much like the image I described earlier, but I digress.
The average IQ of the netizen was a three digit numeral, rather than the one to two digits we see today.
Standards were defined in a technically reasoned and well thought out means via the IETF, rather than having them imposed by large companies (Netscape, M$) or sleazy OSI committees who have sold themselves like cheap whores to various corporate special interests.
[1]For the record, disabling javascript does not prevent this behavior. Don't type in whitehouse.com by mistake...
Since it has long since been obvious that banks and businesses will pay the blackmail rather than alert law enforcement, in order to preserve their own reputations and customer base (CitiBank was a notable exception and paid dearly for doing the "right thing"), the best way to make blackmail unworkable, and to put these creeps out of business for good, is to put the fear of the law into the person being blackmailed if they go along with it.
If paying the blackmailer were to come with sufficient legal ramifications (huge fines, jail time, etc.), and actively prosecuted, companies and individuals will be more likely to cooperate with law enforcement rather than criminals. In a contest of jail vs. embarressment, or fine+public knowledge vs. public knowledge alone, the blackmailer will almost always lose. Without victims willing to pay, the blackmailer must fine another line of work if they don't have the human decency to simply starve instead.
BTW -- keep up the boycott. Financial pressure is a reasonable tool to discourage this sort of behavior as well.
While I am excited that Debian has come out with a GNU/Hurd, and would be even more delighted if they came out with a GNU/*BSD Distribution as well, I wish they would have waited to dilute their efforts until they were able to release Linux distributions more often than once every year. The Debian distribution is hands down one of the best if not the best in terms of completeness, organization, and stability, but the price tag is using libraries and versions of software that are over a year old (or running the "unstable" version which, trust me, can be very unstable at times).
It is their distro and they can do as they like, but as a longtime Debian user (and hence "debugger") I wonder if diversifying their distribution like this wasn't putting the cart before the horse. Potato (the 2.2.x based release) will likely come out about the same time as the 2.4.x kernel, and I fear it will be another year before Woody (presumably 2.4.x based) will be released, about the time 2.6.x or even 2.8.x comes out.
Don't get me wrong, I like the long-term direction of having similar releases of dissimilar Open Source/Free OSes. I just wish the issue of timely releases had been adequately dealt with first, before so much effort was divided in so many directions.
As Linus Torvalds commented not too long ago, the starting point of the western calendar has a margin of error much greater than the one year we are all quibbling over (estimates of Christ's birth range from 7 BC to 6 AD depending on who you listen to), so calling 2000 the millenium, or 2001 the millenium, or 1994 the millenium are all equally correct, and equally incorrect.
However, you are right. 2001 will be the 2000th year since year 1, and there (stupidly) was never a year 0... the monks in the dark ages setting up the Julian (and later the Gregorian) calendar didn't really get whole numbers, else they never would have stuck year 1 right after year -1, with no zero in between. We should dump the whole mess anyway and go to 13 months with 28 days each, and use the extra day as a holiday.
In any event I will celibrate the start of the 3rd Millenium AD a second time in 2001 and get two great parties out of it...
If Suse were made aware of the situtation through numerous angry but polite letters, they might well reconsider doing business with that entity. The taint of LunuxTech's reputation could easilly spread to Suse in that region, undermining Suse's ability to sell their product via any vendor. This is something Suse has an interest in preventing, and they might be able to exert some pressure on LinuxTech to behave in a manner more appropriate to the Linux community.
Of course, legal and "out-legal" action should continue in parallel.
Has anyone considered a "rating" page for Linux companies? Something that would let the unititiated, or someone who has been on vacation for three weeks, know how well a particular entity is behaving vis-a-vis the Linux community? This would be less... harsh... than a blacklist, and would have the advantages of rewarding the good players rather than only punishing the vultures. This begs a whole series of questions, such as who would be doing the rating and how, and how complaints like this would be processed, how to avoid improper "astroturf" complaints by competitors against one another, etc.
Thoughts?
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BTW: thanks for a coherent argument (even if you don't think mine is), this is why I read/.
Same here! I enjoyed arguing the point with you as well. BTW - I didn't find your arguments incoherent at all, I merely disagree strongly with them and found many of the words you put into my mouth to be inaccurate. An intelligent debate is always fun, no matter how strongly one disagrees with their opponent.:-)
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You are arguing against a means that has created what you believe to be a justifiable ends.
No, I am not. You are making unwarrented and absurd extrapolations (which are not in the least bit logically defensible) from my comments. I am arguing againt ongoing repression and murder in China. In fact, my initial comments to which you responded didn't even argue that... I was merely commenting that while I disagreed with some policies of China's government, I agree with their alleged stance on Linux.
However, I would assume that you would like to see China become more like the U.S politically (at least from a human rights perspective), yet how can they get there without pulling the same B.S. that our forefathers did to gain the raw materials and power necessary to accomplish that goal?
As to your absurd notion that social progress requires injustice, I respectfully disagree. Not repressing minorities does not require a history of repressing minorities, nor does it require might, power, or wealth. It merely requires that you not repress others. Democracy does not require power.might, or wealth (whether gained honorably or by repressing others), it merely requires adherence to democratic principles. Nor does respect for human rights require might, power, or material wealth. For that matter, even if material wealth were a consideration, obtaining such wealth does not require the violation of human rights or the various other myrid injustices to which you allude.
Your logic is flawed, your arguments are flawed, and IMHO your entire stance on the issue is flawed. What China did at Tiannamin Square was criminal. What the American Army did at Wounded Knee was criminal. Whatever "moral authority" I have is no less than that any other individual has irrespective of where they come from or what the country whos government claims authority over me has done in the past. My moral authority comes from the fact that I have never taken a human life and that I will speak out against against injustice anywhere I see it, at home or abroad, as is my constitutional right and IMHO my moral obligation. As an aside, I and anyone else of good conscience, would have that same moral obligation even if my past were sullied through personal wrongdoing -- one is hardly excused from opposing wrong today simply because one has done wrong in the past.
Injustice must be opposed, however imperfect those opposing it may be, and however sullied a nation's (people's, or world's) past may be. The alternative is a future even more rife with abuses and injustice than the past we all so laboriously bemoan.
What source, specifically, in the Chinese government does Reuters quote? I couldn't find it in the link supplied. As far as I can tell the Reuter's story has no more inherent "facts" than the slashdot link, with both quoting "unnamed" government officials of unknown, and unconfirmed, authority. The only certainty is that Microsoft is denying this, which is hardly surprising.
It is also interesting to note Reuter's reference to the Microsoft Big Brother Feature as a "coding mistake" which was later fixed, rather than a policy Microsoft only backed away from in the face of public outrage. This is contrary to known fact, and implies a suspicious bias of the article as a whole.
Finally, it is obvious from both articles that the Chinese government is moving away from MS as a platform toward independent, home-grown solutions, and that the government is hardly unanimous in its direction as to how to do this, or whether to do it at all.
Both articles appear equally biased, from diametrically opposed points of view. The reality appears to be somewhere in the middle, probably along the lines of some ministries or departments having mandated the use of Red Flag Linux, while others (probably most) have not. Apparently all are being quietly encouraged to look at alternatives, of which I suspect Red Flag Linux is just one. The lack of named sources for information on both sides is highly irritating, however, and precludes forming any hard and fast opinion about exactly what policies are being followed.
Point well taken, although the word "piracy" is so entrenched I think its moot at this point. I don't know anyone who associates software piracy with kidnap and rape.
The other points, regarding "theft" in particular, are much more relevant IMHO. Still, every little bit helps -- I'll try and refer to it as "unauthorized copying" instead, as it is in many ways a war of words and there's no reason to give the oligopolists any more ammunition than they already have.
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I agree with your sentiment. I would state, however, that:
1) My ancester's actions are not my actions. My hands are not dirty simply because theirs were. In fact, I repudiate the actions of my culture then, as well as those now which perpetuate such injustices. That being said, I will not be silent when I see injustice, either here or abroad. If that offends someones sensibilities or their national pride, tough shit.
2) In mentioning (as an aside) the atrocities on Tiannamin Square and Tibet, I did not in any way seek to downplay or "hide" the dark past of my own culture, or to imply we hadn't wronged numerous people, including Native Americans, early Asian settlers, and black folk. Our ancestors did, it was evil, wrong, repugnant, and as far as I'm concerned has been woefully underaddressed by our current society. However, the subject was China's alleged embracing of Linux, not America's past, be it savory or otherwise.
3) My problem with comments such as Wah's isn't the airing of our dirty laundry at all. Quite the opposite, I think it of critical importance to speak openly, publicly, and loudly of our culture's past crimes, lest they be repeated. My problem is that, nearly every "he who is without sin" argument that is put forward, with some example from the dark past of the orignal commenter's culture, is done in order to silence the criticism itself, or in some way dilute it, by implying that a historical wrong by one country somehow makes it inappropriate for any citizen of that country, however personally innocent they may be, from speaking out against ongoing, contemporary injustice elsewhere in the world, or that somehow their criticism counts for less because of what someone's ancestors did. It also implies that historical injustice which no one can do anything about (short of inventing time travel), is equivelent to onging injustice which can be stopped. The result of such reasoning, if taken at all seriously, is obvious: no one has the moral authority to speak out against anything and injustice can run rampent without opposition, spoken or otherwise. This is why I fundamentally and vehemently reject such reasoning, as well as such trite "your granddaddy was bad so you shut up!" arguments.
I think your suggestion on visiting a local tribal meeting is brilliant. I had no idea such were open to non-Indians. Could you post some links or additional info on this? I'm in Illinois and don't have any local reservation I can stop by (that I'm aware of), but I'm a pilot with a small airplane, so flying a few hundred miles to take you up on your suggestion is something I'm very open to doing. My range for an evening is probably about 3-4 hours one way, or about 500 miles.
Has anyone actually been able to look at Red Flag Linux. Are there ISO images available online? Source trees? A web page? Actually seeing the product might resolve or at least alleviate some of the concerns that this could a hoax, or simply a misinformed beaurocrat.
In the (hopefully very unlikely) event that the Chinese government were to make a proprietary knockoff of Linux, in direct violation of the GPL, what exactly could any of us do about it? I don't see the Clinton Administration (or any administration, for that matter) risking a trade confrontation on behalf of free software, more's the pity.
I guess I feel like being a troublemaker today...
"Let him without sin..." = Conspiracy of Silence
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*cough*American Indians*cough*
You are absolutely right. Our forfather's treatment of Native Americans, not to mention blacks and early Asian settlers, was beyond reprehensible. That Indians still live on reservations to this day is appalling, to say the least. Nevertheless...
Let he who is without sin, shoot the first missile.
This is foolish. Christ was referring to physical stones killing a woman for adultery, not words of criticism against an injustice. We are all with sin, so to speak. There isn't a culture on the planet that hasn't wronged another at one time or another. If we are all therefor precluded from speaking out against injustice when we see it, all we end up with is a world locked into a conspiracy of silence, with injustice even more rampent than it is today, with not a word spoken in opposition.
What they are doing is entirely appropriate!
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The Chinese government isn't imposing Linux in the private sector, nor is it banning Windows 2000 from retail shelves in China. It is banning its use in government ministries and mandating the use of a free alternative that is more secure, more stable, less expensive, and more capable of developing local programming talent by virtue of the fact that the end user has access to the source code. The private sector is free to continue pirating^H^H^H^H^H^H purchasing Windows for its use.
It is entirely appropriate for a body to mandate what its internal software standards are. Our government does this all the time, as does any large corporation. In fact, our government has been known to mandate to contractors and subcontractors what products they may, or may not use, on more than one occasion, which is far more intrusive into the "free" market than what China is presently doing.
It is nice to see, for once, that such a mandate actually has a grain of intelligence and thoughtfulness behind it, something that is all too often lacking. It is very, very ironic indeed that a government as draconian and reactionary as that of China would be one of the first to be open minded enough to evaluate and then embrace Open software (if, in fact, that is actually what they are doing).
I should probably have prefaced my pessimistic last sentance with the fact that (a) I'm sick, so optimism isn't in the cards today and (b) just because they're looking at Linux doesn't mean they won't dump it for a proprietary alternative (such as a closed-source derivitive of *BSD) if the government sees a profit in it.
I will be very, very interested to see if the Chinese government adheres to an open source approach, as it is in many ways antithetical to how they have operated in the past. On the other hand, perhaps this is the beginning of a Great Thaw?
While I am not a fan of China's draconian governmental policies, which have given us the bloodshet of Tiannamin Square and have nearly killed several cultures (c.f Tibet among others), the principal behind what they are doing -- encouraging indigineous industry and experties and not pouring their money into another country's pockets, is a sound one.
I suspect if the used FreeBSD or Linux, they would quickly develop a remarkable level of local talent and expertise, having the source to hack on and improve. It would be truly ironic if a government like China's were to become an outspoken advocate of Open Source software. Not the spokesman I would choose, certainly, but a billion new Linux users in Asia wouldn't be all bad, either.:-)
Alas, I suspect some home-grown, proprietary system will be what is standardized on, rather than an international collaborative project like Linux and FreeBSD.
This isn't about your privacy or mine. The Feds, the Spy agencies for our own and foreign governments, even many industrial "security" arms (I suspect) will not have their access to such tools hampered in the least by closing down hobby shops like this. Nor, I suspect, will so-called terrorists have much trouble locating such equipment on the black market, perhaps at a price less competive than one pays on the web.
This is about keeping the individual from violating the "privacy" of the government. Imagine their horror if individuals or reporters were to listen in on private city council meetings, committee meetings in congress, or congressmen in their offices obtaining campaign contributions. This is about covering up the dirty laundry of those who purport to be serving us in public office, not about stopping crime, terrorism, or protecting our civil liberties in the least.
Not to mention that alienating.edu people is bad karma cuz after being falsely accused, they're most likely NEVER going to want to work for you.
In the late 80's, early 90's, when I was studying EE at the University of Illinois, nearly all of the decent EE jobs were for contractors or subcontractors of the defense industry. Not all, mind you, but the majority of them. Fortunately for me, my interests took me to Computer Hardware Engineering, then on to Computer Science, where opportunities abounded in numerous, shall we say, less ethically suspect areas of endeavor. Though I made the decision to never work for the government or a company beholden to them in such a way at a time when I thought it would carry with it a significant cost to my carrier, I was fortunate enough not to have had to pay the price I thought I would. Still, I doubt I would have regretted the decision for a moment had it had the negative impact on my carrier I expected at the time -- some things (like personal ethics and being able to sleep at night) are more important than the bottom line financially.
This decision was made long before such Brazil-esque (the movie, not the country) visits from the Feds had become so commonplace. One doesn't have to be directly affected by jack-booted (or black-suited) thugs to decide never to put their talents to work for the government. Reading about such events from a safe distance suffices. For me, seeing Reagan and Busch's foreign policies of the 1980's was a sufficient motivation. Alas though, for every technically savvy person who does chose not to serve such entities there is generally at least one misguided soul who mistakes love of government for love of countryt. And even when there aren't enough misguided people to fill all the job slots, there's always at least one cynical sellout who will do the job (however unsavory) with full knowledge of what they are doing and absolutely no compunction about it.
It is sometimes discouraging to think our hesitation or unwillingness to work for such entities doesn't translate into hiring difficulties for such organizations, but it is important to remember that we make these decisions, or should be making them, for our own peace of mind, and that while we can influence what others do, we cannot force anyone else to necessarilly make the same decisions we have, no matter how strongly we may feel about it. We can, however, at least look at ourselves in the mirror without self loathing and sleep soundly at night -- at least until the jack-booted thugs show up. I suspect if more of us took that approach to our careers, entities like the Feds might actually find themselves with a few recruiting challenges, without our even having given it a second thought, much less organized anything so formal as a "boycott."
OSHA may just be trying to maintain its relevance in the face of a changing workplace, where less and less people are required to actually be present on company property in order to work. In a world where we are all wired to our wearables, able to work while walking down the street muttering subvocally to our wrist-PCs, OSHA may not have any mission, unless it redefines its own. This may be some of what this is about.
In any event, this entire thing has some disturbing connations, yet should not be dismissed out of hand. For one thing, does this give OSHA the authority to MANDATE what kind of furniture I have in my home. What if it clashes with what the interior decorator did? What if I simply don't want to wear a hard hat in the bathroom? Although toung in cheek, it should be lost on none of us that this is a rather aggressive extention of governmental authroity into our own homes, and I do not recall even being consulted about it, much less inviting them in.
Another rather grim ramification may be the chilling effect this has on telecommuting altogether. It is a daunting task for an employer to be responsible for safety and ergonomic comfort on their own premisis -- to require the same safety standards in all of the homes of each telecommuniter is simply untenable. Sorry, you'll have to risk the 40 minute drive through snow into the office -- we cannot be held responsible for the unsavory working conditions of your bed-room, which hasn't been cleaned in years.
Furthermore, it invites, even mandates, a rather intrusive involvement of the employer in the employee's homelife (in addition to yet another government beaurocracy). And what of the kid fresh out of college, living in a small rundown apartment which could not meet any standards to speak of? Disemploy them? Force them to move?
On the other hand, the danger of an employer using telecommuting as a way of dodging their own responsibility for maintaining a safe working environment, or putting the onus of such on the employee, cannot be entirely discounted either.
A few weeks ago there was some MS-Led agitation for an MS friendly section on slashdot, which to those of us who've been hanging out here since the early days sounds akin to Satanists demanding a chapel for ritual human sacrifice in the Vatican. All Microsoft financed astroturfing aside, has corporate ownership increased pressures for this kind of thing, or made more acute the temptation to chase the profits mass markets unpopular or antithetical to the open source movement might offer? If so, what specific strategies do you employ to minimize its impact and keep slashdot true to its open source roots?
Slashdot Mirror
This might be cynical of me but what happened to that installer?
:-))
/rant >
It has been orphaned, like half the debian packages. (I can be just a cynical.
< rant >
Sorry, I'm a little down on debian right now since scsidev seg faults with any 2.2.x kernel (yes, even the one from potato), thus making cdrecord and numerious gui front-ends for cd burning useless (xcdroast does work, however). Slink has been showing its age for quite some time, to the point where it is getting painful. Although we've been using debian for quite a while where I work, the long turnaround between releases and updates has forced us to take a hard look at other Distributions such as Suse, RedHat, and Mandrake, even though all of us are (or in several cases were) debian fans. (No, running unstable releases aren't an option. Unstable means just that, sometimes with severe consiquences.)
I do not think Debian at all qualifies as "most improved product" since it has been a year and there is no new stable release yet, although if potato comes out before the awards are final perhaps this would change. I would vote for SPI for the "deserves to win $2000" award without hesitation, however, as they are the only fully open reference Linux distribution (that I am aware of) and do deserve our support (all frustrations on my part aside).
<
You are free to nominate it yourself (and you should). Documentation writers are all too often overlooked. Although my vote is for Linux DVD, I think your proposal is also very worthy (I've already made my nomination, obviously).
... but I digress. :-)
I like your comment about the LinuxOne IPO. How to lose money on an IPO, tarnish the Linux community's reputation, and behave like an ass before the world all at once! I'd love to turn a couple of dominatrix friends of mine loose on the CEO of LinuxOne for a few days, armed with rusty razer blades
The entire project has gone from being a pipe dream to allowing one to play movies under Linux, whether or not they've been encrypted with css, in an amazingly short time, both in software and with some hardware (e.g. DXR2, Matrox G400).
Furthermore, DVD playback is a feature that is very important if Linux is to ever be a serious desktop contender against Windows (which I believe it to be -- we use it on our desktops at work and at home). The project still has allot of work ahead of it to allow my grandmother to play DVDs under Linux without being a UNIX guru, but its strides to date have been very remarkable.
Finally, the project is under ongoing attack by legal thugs at the behest of the DVD Forum in much the same way DeCSS is (the author of css-auth, the utility which allows Livid's Linux DVD utilities to play back encrypted movies, was forced to hand off the project to someone else after being threatened with legal action in the UK). In a "bang for buck" analysis I like the return to the Open Source community, especially the Linux and FreeBSD communities, from a donation to this project deserves consideration:
Help with legal defense of developers when required
Hardware for developers to work on (new DVD players, decoder cards, etc.)
While not the only deserving project by any means, DVD playback is an important one, and IMHO worthy of consideration.
NOTE: I am not affiliated with Livid in any way, except as an enthusiastic user who enjoys watching DVD's on his Linux box. I guess that would make me a "consumer"/"beta-tester" for the project, at most.
I disagree.
"Most improved" != "Most man hours worked on"
furthermore,
"Most improved" != "Earliest started project" or "Most Calendar Months requried to Develop"
The improvements in DVD, going from virtually non-existent to almost fully functional in a phenominally short amount of time are IMHO greater than the improvements of Mozilla (though also significant) during the past year
Both are much improved products and worthy of nominations, but I disagree with your logic that the one deserves more attention simply because it was started sooner, and/or has required more man-hours to get to where it is, while the other project has had less time in which to achieve its successes. If anything, the speed with which Linux DVD has made its improvements ought to swing the verdict the other way.
I wish both projects great success, but do not think Mozilla is as worthy as Livid is of "Most Improved Open Source Project" -- there are several other candidates in addition to Livid I would personally rank higher at this time.
On the Patomic there was appointed a real doofus
Who ran the Patent Office to screw us
A perversion it seemed
The most trivial "inventions" not screened
A Patent on the alphabet to rape us
The subject says it all.
I and other are too far away to give any "on-site" support, but would like to help out if we can.
Aside from joining the EFF (done), what if anything can those of us too far away to attend the hearing do to help out?
[Puts on his best imitation old-man voice]
Back in the day, when the X consortium hadn't sold out to misleadingly named Open Software Foundation and were able to register the one-letter x.org domain, then the Internet was a much kinder, gentler, and above all, smarter place:
USENET was a usable, indeed friendly and invaluable, discussion forum
SPAM was unheard of and flamed mercilessly (and for quite some time successfully) out of existence
The internic existed for the good of the net, not its own sleazy pocketbook.
porn was limited to the appropriate USENET groups. In the early days of the web porn sights didn't hijack your browser and fill your screen with a borderless window showing two men sucking cock (or some other equally offensive thing you had absolutely no interest in seeing) with the sole means of getting out of it to exit the browser altogether (if you're lucky and don't have to exit the windowing system altogether). I don't know who to flame more for the current state of affairs, the porn fucks who do this or netscape's asinine extentions to html (javascript and the like) that gave them the means[1]. Both suck much like the image I described earlier, but I digress.
The average IQ of the netizen was a three digit numeral, rather than the one to two digits we see today.
Standards were defined in a technically reasoned and well thought out means via the IETF, rather than having them imposed by large companies (Netscape, M$) or sleazy OSI committees who have sold themselves like cheap whores to various corporate special interests.
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[1]For the record, disabling javascript does not prevent this behavior. Don't type in whitehouse.com by mistake
Since it has long since been obvious that banks and businesses will pay the blackmail rather than alert law enforcement, in order to preserve their own reputations and customer base (CitiBank was a notable exception and paid dearly for doing the "right thing"), the best way to make blackmail unworkable, and to put these creeps out of business for good, is to put the fear of the law into the person being blackmailed if they go along with it.
If paying the blackmailer were to come with sufficient legal ramifications (huge fines, jail time, etc.), and actively prosecuted, companies and individuals will be more likely to cooperate with law enforcement rather than criminals. In a contest of jail vs. embarressment, or fine+public knowledge vs. public knowledge alone, the blackmailer will almost always lose. Without victims willing to pay, the blackmailer must fine another line of work if they don't have the human decency to simply starve instead.
BTW -- keep up the boycott. Financial pressure is a reasonable tool to discourage this sort of behavior as well.
While I am excited that Debian has come out with a GNU/Hurd, and would be even more delighted if they came out with a GNU/*BSD Distribution as well, I wish they would have waited to dilute their efforts until they were able to release Linux distributions more often than once every year. The Debian distribution is hands down one of the best if not the best in terms of completeness, organization, and stability, but the price tag is using libraries and versions of software that are over a year old (or running the "unstable" version which, trust me, can be very unstable at times).
It is their distro and they can do as they like, but as a longtime Debian user (and hence "debugger") I wonder if diversifying their distribution like this wasn't putting the cart before the horse. Potato (the 2.2.x based release) will likely come out about the same time as the 2.4.x kernel, and I fear it will be another year before Woody (presumably 2.4.x based) will be released, about the time 2.6.x or even 2.8.x comes out.
Don't get me wrong, I like the long-term direction of having similar releases of dissimilar Open Source/Free OSes. I just wish the issue of timely releases had been adequately dealt with first, before so much effort was divided in so many directions.
As Linus Torvalds commented not too long ago, the starting point of the western calendar has a margin of error much greater than the one year we are all quibbling over (estimates of Christ's birth range from 7 BC to 6 AD depending on who you listen to), so calling 2000 the millenium, or 2001 the millenium, or 1994 the millenium are all equally correct, and equally incorrect.
... the monks in the dark ages setting up the Julian (and later the Gregorian) calendar didn't really get whole numbers, else they never would have stuck year 1 right after year -1, with no zero in between. We should dump the whole mess anyway and go to 13 months with 28 days each, and use the extra day as a holiday.
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However, you are right. 2001 will be the 2000th year since year 1, and there (stupidly) was never a year 0
In any event I will celibrate the start of the 3rd Millenium AD a second time in 2001 and get two great parties out of it
Suse is their supplier.
... harsh ... than a blacklist, and would have the advantages of rewarding the good players rather than only punishing the vultures. This begs a whole series of questions, such as who would be doing the rating and how, and how complaints like this would be processed, how to avoid improper "astroturf" complaints by competitors against one another, etc.
If Suse were made aware of the situtation through numerous angry but polite letters, they might well reconsider doing business with that entity. The taint of LunuxTech's reputation could easilly spread to Suse in that region, undermining Suse's ability to sell their product via any vendor. This is something Suse has an interest in preventing, and they might be able to exert some pressure on LinuxTech to behave in a manner more appropriate to the Linux community.
Of course, legal and "out-legal" action should continue in parallel.
Has anyone considered a "rating" page for Linux companies? Something that would let the unititiated, or someone who has been on vacation for three weeks, know how well a particular entity is behaving vis-a-vis the Linux community? This would be less
Thoughts?
BTW: thanks for a coherent argument (even if you don't think mine is), this is why I read /.
:-)
Same here! I enjoyed arguing the point with you as well. BTW - I didn't find your arguments incoherent at all, I merely disagree strongly with them and found many of the words you put into my mouth to be inaccurate. An intelligent debate is always fun, no matter how strongly one disagrees with their opponent.
You are arguing against a means that has created what you believe to be a justifiable ends.
... I was merely commenting that while I disagreed with some policies of China's government, I agree with their alleged stance on Linux.
No, I am not. You are making unwarrented and absurd extrapolations (which are not in the least bit logically defensible) from my comments. I am arguing againt ongoing repression and murder in China. In fact, my initial comments to which you responded didn't even argue that
However, I would assume that you would like to see China become more like the U.S politically (at least from a human rights perspective), yet how can they get there without pulling the same B.S. that our forefathers did to gain the raw materials and power necessary to accomplish that goal?
As to your absurd notion that social progress requires injustice, I respectfully disagree. Not repressing minorities does not require a history of repressing minorities, nor does it require might, power, or wealth. It merely requires that you not repress others. Democracy does not require power.might, or wealth (whether gained honorably or by repressing others), it merely requires adherence to democratic principles. Nor does respect for human rights require might, power, or material wealth. For that matter, even if material wealth were a consideration, obtaining such wealth does not require the violation of human rights or the various other myrid injustices to which you allude.
Your logic is flawed, your arguments are flawed, and IMHO your entire stance on the issue is flawed. What China did at Tiannamin Square was criminal. What the American Army did at Wounded Knee was criminal. Whatever "moral authority" I have is no less than that any other individual has irrespective of where they come from or what the country whos government claims authority over me has done in the past. My moral authority comes from the fact that I have never taken a human life and that I will speak out against against injustice anywhere I see it, at home or abroad, as is my constitutional right and IMHO my moral obligation. As an aside, I and anyone else of good conscience, would have that same moral obligation even if my past were sullied through personal wrongdoing -- one is hardly excused from opposing wrong today simply because one has done wrong in the past.
Injustice must be opposed, however imperfect those opposing it may be, and however sullied a nation's (people's, or world's) past may be. The alternative is a future even more rife with abuses and injustice than the past we all so laboriously bemoan.
What source, specifically, in the Chinese government does Reuters quote? I couldn't find it in the link supplied. As far as I can tell the Reuter's story has no more inherent "facts" than the slashdot link, with both quoting "unnamed" government officials of unknown, and unconfirmed, authority. The only certainty is that Microsoft is denying this, which is hardly surprising.
It is also interesting to note Reuter's reference to the Microsoft Big Brother Feature as a "coding mistake" which was later fixed, rather than a policy Microsoft only backed away from in the face of public outrage. This is contrary to known fact, and implies a suspicious bias of the article as a whole.
Finally, it is obvious from both articles that the Chinese government is moving away from MS as a platform toward independent, home-grown solutions, and that the government is hardly unanimous in its direction as to how to do this, or whether to do it at all.
Both articles appear equally biased, from diametrically opposed points of view. The reality appears to be somewhere in the middle, probably along the lines of some ministries or departments having mandated the use of Red Flag Linux, while others (probably most) have not. Apparently all are being quietly encouraged to look at alternatives, of which I suspect Red Flag Linux is just one. The lack of named sources for information on both sides is highly irritating, however, and precludes forming any hard and fast opinion about exactly what policies are being followed.
Point well taken, although the word "piracy" is so entrenched I think its moot at this point. I don't know anyone who associates software piracy with kidnap and rape.
The other points, regarding "theft" in particular, are much more relevant IMHO. Still, every little bit helps -- I'll try and refer to it as "unauthorized copying" instead, as it is in many ways a war of words and there's no reason to give the oligopolists any more ammunition than they already have.
I agree with your sentiment. I would state, however, that:
1) My ancester's actions are not my actions. My hands are not dirty simply because theirs were. In fact, I repudiate the actions of my culture then, as well as those now which perpetuate such injustices. That being said, I will not be silent when I see injustice, either here or abroad. If that offends someones sensibilities or their national pride, tough shit.
2) In mentioning (as an aside) the atrocities on Tiannamin Square and Tibet, I did not in any way seek to downplay or "hide" the dark past of my own culture, or to imply we hadn't wronged numerous people, including Native Americans, early Asian settlers, and black folk. Our ancestors did, it was evil, wrong, repugnant, and as far as I'm concerned has been woefully underaddressed by our current society. However, the subject was China's alleged embracing of Linux, not America's past, be it savory or otherwise.
3) My problem with comments such as Wah's isn't the airing of our dirty laundry at all. Quite the opposite, I think it of critical importance to speak openly, publicly, and loudly of our culture's past crimes, lest they be repeated. My problem is that, nearly every "he who is without sin" argument that is put forward, with some example from the dark past of the orignal commenter's culture, is done in order to silence the criticism itself, or in some way dilute it, by implying that a historical wrong by one country somehow makes it inappropriate for any citizen of that country, however personally innocent they may be, from speaking out against ongoing, contemporary injustice elsewhere in the world, or that somehow their criticism counts for less because of what someone's ancestors did. It also implies that historical injustice which no one can do anything about (short of inventing time travel), is equivelent to onging injustice which can be stopped. The result of such reasoning, if taken at all seriously, is obvious: no one has the moral authority to speak out against anything and injustice can run rampent without opposition, spoken or otherwise. This is why I fundamentally and vehemently reject such reasoning, as well as such trite "your granddaddy was bad so you shut up!" arguments.
I think your suggestion on visiting a local tribal meeting is brilliant. I had no idea such were open to non-Indians. Could you post some links or additional info on this? I'm in Illinois and don't have any local reservation I can stop by (that I'm aware of), but I'm a pilot with a small airplane, so flying a few hundred miles to take you up on your suggestion is something I'm very open to doing. My range for an evening is probably about 3-4 hours one way, or about 500 miles.
I guess I feel like being a troublemaker today
*cough*American Indians*cough*
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You are absolutely right. Our forfather's treatment of Native Americans, not to mention blacks and early Asian settlers, was beyond reprehensible. That Indians still live on reservations to this day is appalling, to say the least. Nevertheless
Let he who is without sin, shoot the first missile.
This is foolish. Christ was referring to physical stones killing a woman for adultery, not words of criticism against an injustice. We are all with sin, so to speak. There isn't a culture on the planet that hasn't wronged another at one time or another. If we are all therefor precluded from speaking out against injustice when we see it, all we end up with is a world locked into a conspiracy of silence, with injustice even more rampent than it is today, with not a word spoken in opposition.
The Chinese government isn't imposing Linux in the private sector, nor is it banning Windows 2000 from retail shelves in China. It is banning its use in government ministries and mandating the use of a free alternative that is more secure, more stable, less expensive, and more capable of developing local programming talent by virtue of the fact that the end user has access to the source code. The private sector is free to continue pirating^H^H^H^H^H^H purchasing Windows for its use.
It is entirely appropriate for a body to mandate what its internal software standards are. Our government does this all the time, as does any large corporation. In fact, our government has been known to mandate to contractors and subcontractors what products they may, or may not use, on more than one occasion, which is far more intrusive into the "free" market than what China is presently doing.
It is nice to see, for once, that such a mandate actually has a grain of intelligence and thoughtfulness behind it, something that is all too often lacking. It is very, very ironic indeed that a government as draconian and reactionary as that of China would be one of the first to be open minded enough to evaluate and then embrace Open software (if, in fact, that is actually what they are doing).
I should probably have prefaced my pessimistic last sentance with the fact that (a) I'm sick, so optimism isn't in the cards today and (b) just because they're looking at Linux doesn't mean they won't dump it for a proprietary alternative (such as a closed-source derivitive of *BSD) if the government sees a profit in it.
I will be very, very interested to see if the Chinese government adheres to an open source approach, as it is in many ways antithetical to how they have operated in the past. On the other hand, perhaps this is the beginning of a Great Thaw?
While I am not a fan of China's draconian governmental policies, which have given us the bloodshet of Tiannamin Square and have nearly killed several cultures (c.f Tibet among others), the principal behind what they are doing -- encouraging indigineous industry and experties and not pouring their money into another country's pockets, is a sound one.
:-)
I suspect if the used FreeBSD or Linux, they would quickly develop a remarkable level of local talent and expertise, having the source to hack on and improve. It would be truly ironic if a government like China's were to become an outspoken advocate of Open Source software. Not the spokesman I would choose, certainly, but a billion new Linux users in Asia wouldn't be all bad, either.
Alas, I suspect some home-grown, proprietary system will be what is standardized on, rather than an international collaborative project like Linux and FreeBSD.
This isn't about your privacy or mine. The Feds, the Spy agencies for our own and foreign governments, even many industrial "security" arms (I suspect) will not have their access to such tools hampered in the least by closing down hobby shops like this. Nor, I suspect, will so-called terrorists have much trouble locating such equipment on the black market, perhaps at a price less competive than one pays on the web.
This is about keeping the individual from violating the "privacy" of the government. Imagine their horror if individuals or reporters were to listen in on private city council meetings, committee meetings in congress, or congressmen in their offices obtaining campaign contributions. This is about covering up the dirty laundry of those who purport to be serving us in public office, not about stopping crime, terrorism, or protecting our civil liberties in the least.
Not to mention that alienating .edu people is bad karma cuz after being falsely accused, they're most likely NEVER going to want to work for you.
In the late 80's, early 90's, when I was studying EE at the University of Illinois, nearly all of the decent EE jobs were for contractors or subcontractors of the defense industry. Not all, mind you, but the majority of them. Fortunately for me, my interests took me to Computer Hardware Engineering, then on to Computer Science, where opportunities abounded in numerous, shall we say, less ethically suspect areas of endeavor. Though I made the decision to never work for the government or a company beholden to them in such a way at a time when I thought it would carry with it a significant cost to my carrier, I was fortunate enough not to have had to pay the price I thought I would. Still, I doubt I would have regretted the decision for a moment had it had the negative impact on my carrier I expected at the time -- some things (like personal ethics and being able to sleep at night) are more important than the bottom line financially.
This decision was made long before such Brazil-esque (the movie, not the country) visits from the Feds had become so commonplace. One doesn't have to be directly affected by jack-booted (or black-suited) thugs to decide never to put their talents to work for the government. Reading about such events from a safe distance suffices. For me, seeing Reagan and Busch's foreign policies of the 1980's was a sufficient motivation. Alas though, for every technically savvy person who does chose not to serve such entities there is generally at least one misguided soul who mistakes love of government for love of countryt. And even when there aren't enough misguided people to fill all the job slots, there's always at least one cynical sellout who will do the job (however unsavory) with full knowledge of what they are doing and absolutely no compunction about it.
It is sometimes discouraging to think our hesitation or unwillingness to work for such entities doesn't translate into hiring difficulties for such organizations, but it is important to remember that we make these decisions, or should be making them, for our own peace of mind, and that while we can influence what others do, we cannot force anyone else to necessarilly make the same decisions we have, no matter how strongly we may feel about it. We can, however, at least look at ourselves in the mirror without self loathing and sleep soundly at night -- at least until the jack-booted thugs show up. I suspect if more of us took that approach to our careers, entities like the Feds might actually find themselves with a few recruiting challenges, without our even having given it a second thought, much less organized anything so formal as a "boycott."
OSHA may just be trying to maintain its relevance in the face of a changing workplace, where less and less people are required to actually be present on company property in order to work. In a world where we are all wired to our wearables, able to work while walking down the street muttering subvocally to our wrist-PCs, OSHA may not have any mission, unless it redefines its own. This may be some of what this is about.
In any event, this entire thing has some disturbing connations, yet should not be dismissed out of hand. For one thing, does this give OSHA the authority to MANDATE what kind of furniture I have in my home. What if it clashes with what the interior decorator did? What if I simply don't want to wear a hard hat in the bathroom? Although toung in cheek, it should be lost on none of us that this is a rather aggressive extention of governmental authroity into our own homes, and I do not recall even being consulted about it, much less inviting them in.
Another rather grim ramification may be the chilling effect this has on telecommuting altogether. It is a daunting task for an employer to be responsible for safety and ergonomic comfort on their own premisis -- to require the same safety standards in all of the homes of each telecommuniter is simply untenable. Sorry, you'll have to risk the 40 minute drive through snow into the office -- we cannot be held responsible for the unsavory working conditions of your bed-room, which hasn't been cleaned in years.
Furthermore, it invites, even mandates, a rather intrusive involvement of the employer in the employee's homelife (in addition to yet another government beaurocracy). And what of the kid fresh out of college, living in a small rundown apartment which could not meet any standards to speak of? Disemploy them? Force them to move?
On the other hand, the danger of an employer using telecommuting as a way of dodging their own responsibility for maintaining a safe working environment, or putting the onus of such on the employee, cannot be entirely discounted either.
A few weeks ago there was some MS-Led agitation for an MS friendly section on slashdot, which to those of us who've been hanging out here since the early days sounds akin to Satanists demanding a chapel for ritual human sacrifice in the Vatican. All Microsoft financed astroturfing aside, has corporate ownership increased pressures for this kind of thing, or made more acute the temptation to chase the profits mass markets unpopular or antithetical to the open source movement might offer? If so, what specific strategies do you employ to minimize its impact and keep slashdot true to its open source roots?