Noedigs should go a visiting and disseminate Humanist (or even athiest) literature, just to keep the playing field level. Of course, the name is unfortunate... after all, one goes to a hotel specifically because one is looking for Digs... at least for the night.
But seriously, if a group is going to be distributing a core component of one of the more virilant forms of communicable mental illness (religion), it would behoove humanity to form another group using a similiar vector to disseminate an antidote.
(I wonder how people would feel if fundamentalist muslims were running around putting Korans in hotels, or Mormons putting Books of Mormon in hotels. Keep this up and there won't be any drawer space left for stationary and pens, much less useful literature such as nearby restaurants.)
I'd love to see the FBI enforce this one! If you thought our government was in Wall Street's pocket now, well, wait until they try to take all computers away from the Fortune 500:-)
They aren't going to take a single PC away from any of the fortune 500 (and probably none of the fortune 1000).
Like every other unjust, unconstitutional law on the books (e.g. the war on drugs, etc.), the laws will only be selectively enforced.
Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, and a bunch of the rest of us will have our equipment seized without due process and with no possiblity of recovery (and perhaps be banned from ever writing software again) because our software empowers people, and that in the eyes of our hopelessly corrupt government of governments (the UN) and its hopelessly corrupt constituents (the governments of the world, most of whom routinely and ruthlessly repress their populations) that is a cardinal sin.
They're just looking to put the mechanism in place to legitimize this process, and the media monopolies have given them just the political cover they need.
I would not be surprised if, within ten years, there is not a single "free" person left on this earth, even by the loose definition for freedom we generally use today.
The future is ugly, and it is bearing down hard on us all.
Sadly, that's not the bottom 5% of the userbase. In the last three months, I've had to fix six home user computers...
I was faced with a similiar onslaught of extracurricular work. I talked two people into buying Apple OS X machines (they were looking at getting a new laptop anyway), and eight others I converted over to GNU/Linux and Openoffice.
None of them, and I mean none, have any interest in ever touching a Windows box again. Not because of any evangelism on my part (beyond showing them that an alternative exists that doesn't get every promiscuous virus or worm traversing the Internet), but because they are so delighted with machines that, in both cases (OS X and GNU/Linux) are easier to use and more reliable than Windows. Yes, even the Linux boxes are considered by their users (who are not by any stretch of the imagination technology savvy) to be much easier to use than windows. Why? Because, like OS X and unlike windows, they behave predictably and do not mysteriously break or change behavior for no apparent reason. This alone, in the words of my 14 year old niece, made learning Linux worth its while. Not randomly losing her homework to Microsoft crashes or spywar induced bugs helped solidify that opinion.
Most people are more than ready to dump Microsoft like a bad crack habit... they just need to be shown the way, and shown they can do the work they need to do in a safer, friendlier, freer environment. The remaining fringe that absolutely must use some proprietary, niche software that runs only on Windows can remain with Microsoft and continue to enjoy the sorts of pleasures Korgo and its ilk, in conjunction with Microsoft's criminal incompetence, bestows upon them. Based upon my experience, this could very well be a tiny portion of the market in five to ten years.
Unless, of course, software patents carry the day, in which case we can write off the entire industry for the medium-term future.
Apologies for this offtopic post (soon to be modded -99 by those Republicans with moderator priveleges no doubt), but this comment, and the toxic meme it propogates, needs to be addressed.
The USA would be a lot better place if you Democratic nutjobs would just let go
No, it wouldn't.
And I say this as one who did not vote for Gore, and who votes the issues, not the party (which means I vote as often Republican as I do Democratic... although after this past four years that could very well change).
Most people did what you advocated, and the results for America have been disasterous. We have overextended our military, spent ourselves into a deficit we may never recover from, lost virtually all of our world prestige, the vast majority of our close allies (alliances that had lasted more than half a century burned up in just four years of GW Bush's rule), and all of our credibility in the rest of the world. The list goes on, but I think you probably get the point.
Indeed, the USA would be a better place if people had taken to the streets or risen up in outright revolt after the Republicans stole the election and discarded the expressed will of the American people, as it was cast at the ballot office (including Florida, which a full statewide recount sponsored by the media demonstrated conclusively that Gore had won. As an aside, it is interesting how the domestic media then unreported and spun their own study to favor Bush, while their overseas collegues reported it more accurately. Go figure.)
Undermining the democratic process, as the Republicans and their supreme court appointees did in 2000, is terribly destructive irrespective of the qualifications of the usurpur who governs thereafter. The damage to our institutions is quite severe and will be quite long lasting, not least of which because the last branch of our government that had, to all appearances, remained somewhat unsullied by politics, namely the Judicial, has shown itself at its highest levels to be more interested in paying back political favors than ruling sensibly on constitutional law. (Yes, I've actually read their decision. Have you? It is the most convulated series of transparent justifications for violating the intent and will of the constitution and the American voters I've ever read... and that is saying a lot.)
Of course, in this case we've ended up with an incompetent usurpur to boot, who used his artificially inflated legitimacy post 9/11 to prosecute an unrelated war against his family's enemy in Iraq, thereby overextending the US military and quite possibly costing us a victory in the real war we should be fighting, namely the War on Terror (hint: Afghanistan, NOT Iraq, although Bush's activities have certainly made Iraq from an inhospitable secular environment for Al Q'aide into a veritable breeding ground and ideal staging area... thanks Mr. President).
- lose the rhetoric and actually address issues people are concerned about. If that had actually happened in 2000 Al Gore would be president right now.
"People" are concerned about the economy and how much gasoline for the SUVs costs. We have very systematically and very effectively dumbed down our population, to the point where an election can be stolen out from under their noses and their main concern will be "but will this preempt my Saturday afternoon sports, Friends, or Everybody Loves Raymond?"
Gore wasn't my choice, and had I been selecting the party nominee Kerry probably wouldn't have been my choice either. Both are vastly more competent than the current usurpur, however, but more importantly than that, we need a return to constitutional law in this country.
That means an end to midnight raids on people's homes, an end to detention without due process, an end to dismissing and violating the Geneva conventions, an end to operating concentration camps of any kind, including Guantanamo, even if it is aimed at scum like
Until I can carry every version of every document/song/movie/computer program ever made in the history of mankind in my pocket, in lossless formats, no amount of storage on any device will ever be too much.
Indeed. I require a device so small it will fit between the molecular strands of my spinal column near the base of my skull, and be able to make the world's knowledge (as well as natural language skills, mathematical intuition, and the aggregate creativity of humankind) available in response to a single, unspoken, thought-driven command.
I require that the device expand in capacity as needed, offer limitless (and instant) transportation capabilities (the "teleportation" module), as well as imparting upon me perfect health, immortality, and eternal youth.
I'm sure I've missed a few features (non-crackability, the "self defense feature that outperforms national militaries" module, and whatnot), but those specs should do for starters.
[ The sad thing is, I say this only party in gest. I really do want such a device. ]
Clicking on the "to enter the site click here" link, we find that the site (and the project) is up and running just fine.
Software patents will either be recinded, or software development will come to a screeching halt and ALL free software will be killed, not just this project.
In which case we can all just pack up and find another profession, or move somewhere other than the US and the EU (if current legislative trends continue). After the IT economy has been destroyed and innovation has moved to India and China, perhaps the US (and possibly EU) beurocrats and politicians will get their heads out of their asses and ban software patents... assuming the West doesn't just bully the Chinese and the Indians into adopting similiar measures and crippling their own tech industries as well.
I am quite frankly amazed at the EU's stupidity in this, as it clearly benefits Microsoft and other big American firms, to the detriment of European startups such as Suse, Mandrake, et. al. But that is neither here nor there.
I will continue to develop and use free software (including this project) until such a time as $un, Micro$oft, or one of their stooges ($CO) kills free software dead, or reform occurs.
At which point I will continue to use and develop free software, until such a time as their thugs pry my keyboard from my cold, dead fingers...but that is a rant for another day.
I apologize for my horrid use of the word 'virii', and accept the standard and proper word, 'viruses'.
As others have pointed out, the language, and slang in particular, is constantly evolving. You were using common slang in an informal forum, pendants seeking to impose their notion of linguistic orthodoxy notwithstanding.
Had you been an anchor on the television, or submitting a serious scientific article for peer review, it might have been an issue. This is slashdot... feel free to use whatever slang you like.
Must not have had enough coffee when I submitted that...
Well, I for one have had plentii of coffeeii, enough to consider writing some antiibodiies for the virii others feel the need to wriite.:-)
This bill puts Federal prosecutors in charge of the filing of the civil suits, making it look like a government action. It's fairly nifty. If this passes, file sharing in the US will die, mostly because of the deterrent factor of having the government enforce it.
File sharing will die the way drug use died when the government began waging its (now 30-year-old and ailing) war on drugs.
I.E. Not at all.
35 year olds with a sense of their own mortality may be dissuaded, but teenagers with their sense of immortality and their firm belief that "it will never happen to me" will not be dissuaded in the least.
In fact, if anything, this law will enhance the "coolness" factor of downloading music illegally.
I won't go on a rant about how the government will be reducing itself (even further) in becoming stron-arm thugs-for-hire for an industry that has already been convicted numerous times of price fixing, extortion, ties with organized crime, drug trafficking, and assorted other crimes if this legislation passes. Others will no doubt illuminate those points quite well.
The bottom line here is that, when the carnage is done and the hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of lives have been destroyed, this will have done nothing but fill our prisons and our courts even more, and file sharing will probably be relatively unaffected by the whole process.
Did you miss the little bit under the animations?? Both Flash and Real are available for Linux, if you don't want to use them, don't complain because the option is there.
Not on my 64-bit dual opteron GNU/Linux installation they're not. Nor are they on my PPC GNU/Linux laptop.
Legacy 32-bit Intel GNU/Linux is only a subset GNU/Linux... and a depricated one at that.
So neurologists often compare the brain to a hard disk, storing data, etc. So how long until you think we get sued for listening to music and remembering it (illegal copying to another media). God forbid we try and hum a bit of it to a friend, or playing a song for a friend, because then we're guilty of transferring an unlicensed copy to another party.
Copyright law is completely out of touch with physical reality, technology, and our culture (and indeed it actively stifles the latter two).
An example of how rediculous copyright law is, and how artists as well as the industry have grown used to double dipping. It isn't enough to cell the CD, they want to get paid every time it is played in a restaraunt or bar. It is even illegal to play the radio in a restaurant or bar... never mind that the radio station has not only paid for the CD, they've also paid for the right to "broadcast" it -- that's twice the RIAA has now been paid for the legacy work, now the restaurant gets to pay then a third time for the same medium, and the restaurant down the road a fourth time, etc. ad nauseum!
But, what is often unremarked about these absurd laws, is that a person humming a copyrighted tune as they walk down the street is technically breaking the same law, giving a "public performance" without a license. As is the busker on the corner, the teenage garage band when they perform at their local high school, etc.
It really is past the time when we as a society should have repudiated the very notion that one can "own" ideas (patents) or their expressions (copyright). A far less draconian mechanism for reimbursing artists for their work needs to be devised, something that insures them a portion of the profits made without imposing restrictions on how the work may be incorporated into other aspects of our culture, but most of all, unlike copyright a mechanism that favors artists and culture rather than publishers and middlemen.
A quick example of one of the many such alternatives that have been proposed: a tax on works sold, with a set percentage (say 50%) going directly to the original artist. Anyone can publish your book (and you can't stop them) but you get half the proceeds. As an artist or author you have no control, but you are generously compensated financially.
It really is time we as a society started thinking outside the box on this issue, if we wish to have any kind of viable, free society left in the information age, and wish to do so in a manner that benefits artists and fans, rather than consortia of parasitical middlemen such as the RIAA (and more to the point, their attorneys).
the riaa tends to be trying to kill a swarm by swatting at individual bees. for every one they swat, a new one is bred. they'll have to sue for a long time for them to get their desired results, and by that time people will have moved on to better distribution channels....one of which is right here:
www.allofmp3.com completely thwarts the RIAA while still paying the artists a modest sum (probably comparable to what the RIAA pays them).
$0.01 / megabyte download (pennies per song, less than $0.50 per album), perfectly legal (all RIAA propoganda and misinformation aside), and none of the money goes to fund these lawsuits. Even better, a portion goes to the actual artists directly -- a requirement of Russian copyright law.
Legal, so cheap it is almost free, and it absolutely thwarts the RIAA's ability to even think about suing anyone.
Great. Now, instead of the whole company being held responsible for the actions of employees, the company will instead be able to throw a couple of those employees to the lions and go on with what they were doing. How much do you want to bet it will never be high-level management that takes the fall for this kind of thing
Well, if the Abu Ghraib prison scandal is any indication, that is already the norm in government circles. As the west has largely degenerated into a corporatist state (this includes the EU... just look at the history of software patents in Europe if there was any doubt... but the decay is significantly further along in the US), it is reasonable to expect the same from corporate criminals as well.
Until the public rises up and demands accountability from brazen criminals like Bill Gates, GW Bush, and Rumsfeld, they will continue to brazen it out while their pawns take the fall. As long as we as a people quietly acquiesce to such nonsense, it will not only continue, it will continue to get significantly worse.
If Robert Novak can continue to avoid naming his source in the CIA Officer identity leak, then Bev should have no problem. Plus what she's doing bears a much greater resemblance to journalism than whatever Novak spews.
The key difference is that Robert Novak was doing the administration's dirty work in outing the CIA operative as payback for comments critical of the administration. Any investigation of Navak is going to be for show... any investigation of Bev is likely to resemble a search and destroy mission.
Bev was exposing a weakness in the voting system the administration could have used to steal another election, may well have been planning to use for just such purposes (remember Diebold's promise to "deliver Ohio" to Bush?), and quite possibly used during the last election (remember the 80,000 votes that disapppeared from Diebold machines in Florida and were never accounted for?).
This is standard Bush administration intimidation tactics, using the tried and true method of unleashing the FBI's overly broad investigative authority (even pre-9/11 it was overbroad, now it is doubly so) to harrass, intimidate, and even destroy the lives of troublesome pests who still insist on democracy in Bush's America.
While she should get the best lawyer possible, I suspect we are seeing the full weight of the federal government come down on her not because her web site might have been used by someone breaking into another server, but because she shined the light of publicity on one of their dirty little secrets. In the current environment, no amount of legalese is going to protect someone from an administration with a demonstrated willingness to step outside the law whenever it suits them.
Now cue the neo-con right's accusations of tin-foil hats and weeping democrats sore of having an election stolen from them (HINT: I didn't vote for Gore last time around, but that doesn't change the shameful facts of the 2000 election one bit).
well we already have one difficult partner... Russia... who can't put a single thing into orbit within 3 years of when it's supposed to be there...
Pot, meet Kettle.
Uh, yeah. Like the space shuttle you mean?
Yes, that's right. Currently Russia is the only nation in a position to launch manned spacecraft. Without them we would already have abandoned the IIS and it would likely have already plummeted to the earth.
Meanwhile we can't even save Hubble, and it remains to be seen if we ever get our fleet back off the ground again.
Although FUD needs to be constantly and consistently fought in corporations by knowledgable IT employees, FUD is a legitimate marketing technique. It ~works~. Few, if any, businessmen knew who SCO was 2 years ago, but now they have almost universal brand-name recognition.
So, full marks for their marketing and communications strategy.
Murder works. Someone competing for the affections of the same girl as you? Someone competing against you in the workplace a little too successfully? A competitor gobbling up too much marketshare that is rightfully yours?
Off the bastard. Kill 'em dead.
Murder is by far the most effective way of dealing with unwanted competition and conflict, particularly if you are reasonably clever about it (it is an ugly, dirty little secret of our 'justic' system that most murders go unsolved, and most murderers thus get away with their crime).
By your logic, murder is a legitimate tool of competition.
I beg to differ. No amount of success justifies, much less legitimizes, a despicable methodology.
FUD and disinformation are unethical and despicable in the extreme, and their use is not legitimate, no matter how successful they are.
The courts would agree. It wasn't so long ago that IBM got seriously slapped down by the courts for exactly that sort of illegitimate, successful behavior.
SCO, Darl, and their sponsors (Microsoft and Sun Microsystems) should face similiar sanctions for engaging in this illegitimate, and quite possibly illegal, behavior.
(And lest you think defamation and libel are legal, check again. It may be hard to win convictions, but that doesn't make the act any less illegal, or any less illigetimate, and FUD, by its very definition, is libelous).
Agree or disagree with the author, there is one thing he shows quite clearly: Many Linux users would rather attack than help.
I disagree (rather strongly) with your use of the word "most." It isn't "most" users, it is the "loudest" users. There is an important difference.
Any crowd has its bullies, and the RTMFYDMF ("read the fucking articile you dumb mother-fucker") crowd rears its ugly head in almost every community of sufficient size (I've seen variations on that in the MSFT support groups, the FreeBSD groups, and plenty of others).
Unfortunately, while the RMTFYDMF crowd is a tiny minority, it tends to be the loudest subgroup by far, while other, helpful, normal people tend to be quieter (as they are not looking for the first opportunity to put someone down... they are too busy leading real lives, be they on-line or in meat-space).
Most Linux users and enthusiasts can take criticism reasonably well, just as most OS X enthusiasts, *BSD enthusiasts, Blender enthusiasts, etc. can. Those who cannot unfortunately scream the loudest and get the most attention, emberrassing the rest of us (I have been moderated into oblivion and flamed to hell for posting rather mild criticism of Apple on this site a time or two... and I'm a fan of Apple who owns one of their high-end laptops).
I disagree with several of the points in the original article (and agree with others), but I shudder to think of the rude flames the guy probably received from the RTFMYDMF crowd.
It isn't helpful, nor is it an accurate representation of our community. It is, however, the most often seen (or heard) group because of its loud obnoxiousness, and there are certain parties that no doubt would be perfectly happy to enhance that loudness to the detriment of us all (and to their PR advantage).
While I disagree with the current article's posits (commercial Linux distros remain significantly less expensive than their commercial equivelents, particularly Microsofts) and believe it based on too few data points (RedHat is the glaring exception to the above), the author does seem to have tempered his response to what must have been some aggrivating flamage from the more boistrous, and generally more anti-social, parts of the peanut gallary.
Hopefully more reasoned and enlightened disagreement (where appropriate) will prevail in response to this article, instead of some of the knee-jerk flamage that so often gets shouted from the rooftops by an undiplomatic few.
Apple has already accomplished this with BSD and OS X. Looking at the Java Desktop System, I think that this is Sun's endgame as well. For now they'll leverage everything Linux, then slowly replace all programs with Java ones, and the Desktop with Java Looking Glass. It's hard to say how it will work out, but I wish them the best.
I don't.
It is exactly this sort of shit that nearly killed UNIX in the 1980s and allowed Microsoft the opportunity to supplant technically superior systems with their shoddy software and then leverage that toehold into a desktop monopoly.
Fragmentation is bad for everyone. Sun, HP, et. al. made this mistake before. If they insist on repeating it (and I believe Sun is perfectly capable of repeating acts of inane stupidity perpetually, as they really do seem to have difficulty learning from past mistakes -- remember sunview, openwindows, etc.) they will meet the same fate as before, this time with no one to rescue them.
Apple is different, in that they have always had their own OS and their own niche, and have used their underlying BSD system to actually broaden that platform some. What you are describing for Sun et. al. is a narrowing of their (Linux) platform, and undermining one of the great values of Linux... that it is a defacto standard system that runs the same basic flavor of *NIX on multiple hardware platforms, irrespective of distribution, CPU type, 32-bit vs. 64-bit, 1-way vs. N-way processors, etc.
Lose that and your right back to the state of UNIX circa 1990, and that wasn't a pretty picture (or a viable state of affairs, with every hardware manufacturer's proprietary system incompatible with everyone elses).
Fragmentation is bad, and I do not "wish the best" for anyone trying to fragment the free software world in general and Linux in particular. Quite the opposite: I hope any such efforts fail miserably and teach a lesson certain parties seem quite challenged to learn, no matter how often they burn themselves trying.
Microsoft should send XP SP2 CD-ROM to everyone that has registered Windows XP. After user installs and visits some web site, they enter into Microsoft award contest. 100 random users that install XP SP2 receive 50.000$ award each. I guess everyone would upgrade if they could receive an award.
For $50 I wouldn't bother registering a product (and risking the reams of junk mail that will almost certainly entail). I've blown off cell phone rebates of more than that because they weren't worth the time or trouble.
Now, $500,000.00 (or even $500.00) would probably change my mind...but I don't see Billy Boy offering that to his victims ^H^H^H^H^H customers anytime soon.
Small price for Microsoft, great effect on security.
Probably not small enough for Microsoft to remain popular, but you are right, it would fix the problem, and if it makes Microsoft unprofitable, so much the better.:-)
Linus was an intern at Bell Labs during his time developing the Linux Kernel. A lot of (early) kernel code has a striking resemblance to old AT&T unix kernel code.
FUD FUD and more FUD.
Or, more siccinctly: nonsense.
The only "resemblence" Linux bears to old AT&T unix code is that which also, coincidentally, bears a resemblence to FreeBSD code: i.e. that which is either in the public domain, released under the FreeBSD license, and/or published in common textbooks. The only other resemblences are those which impliment published standards (such as header file constant declarations).
And that "resemblence" didn't enter the code base until months (and in most cases, years) after Linux's initial release.
No coincidences, no suspicious anomolies, to anyone who does even a modicum of research and, yet again, one who doesn't have a specfic, anti-free software agenda, spin and FUD they are trying to disseminate.
You are assuming that there is a direct profit. This is a wrong assumption. The book and the report are least likely to break even. The profit will come from several well known companies (not just MSFT) which finance this institution and will not appear on the books as a product of this "research"
That is quite likely true. Nevertheless, financially bankrupting the author for his libellous actions would discourage others from throwing themselves on the grenade for MSFT and friends...which is exactly how the law is intended to function in these cases.
I would frankly nail the libellous sons-of-bitches to the wall, profit or no.
Linux started out as a Minix clone. Though it is more than that now, it's roots lie much closer to Andy Tannenbaum than they do to the Finn.
There is nothing to "admit." Linus wrote Linux as a i386 replacement for MINIX (which only ran on 80286 machines) because he wanted a UNIX he could use and play with on his hardware. He wrote the entire thing from scratch... not using a single line of Tannenbaum's available, but not open source or free, source code.
Anyone looking at the old Tannenbaum book (which has the source code to MINIX in it) and the early Linux kernel code can easily tell they were written independently of each other. Anyone, that is, without an anti-free software agenda and ax to grind...
Calling Linux a MINIX clone is about as accurate as calling Linux an AT&T Sys V or generic UNIX clone... that is to say, partially true, but also not really correct, and an overall mischaracterization of the effort (an OS written completely from scratch, not copied from another) and the goal (a usable, free UNIX-clone, not a usable, free, specific-UNIX-implimentation clone).
Esp about Star Wars. It's well known that SDI wasn't a serious program, but a big straw man program that scared the Soviets into building up their own program
Uh huh.
So then, why did Baby Bush feel compelled to withdraw formally from the ABM treaty and resurrect this "strawman" after his appointment to the white house?
To scare the terrorists into persuing a matching program, driving Osama bin Laden and the other extremists to bankrupcy?
Star wars wasn't a strawman or a joke... though it should have been.
Linus Torvalds should sue the author for libel and defamation of character (and extend it to slander if the author is making oral statements publicly).
This is not only obviously false (and easilly provable), it is likely that it can be shown that anyone purporting to write a book on the subject (free software) should have had enough brain cells to rub together to do a modicum of background research that conclusively demonstrates what they are saying is false (groklaw for starters, fsf, eff, etc.).
Any profits from this libelous publication should go to the injured parties: Linus, whose professional reputation has been viciously besmirched.
Slashdot Mirror
Noedigs should go a visiting and disseminate Humanist (or even athiest) literature, just to keep the playing field level. Of course, the name is unfortunate ... after all, one goes to a hotel specifically because one is looking for Digs ... at least for the night.
But seriously, if a group is going to be distributing a core component of one of the more virilant forms of communicable mental illness (religion), it would behoove humanity to form another group using a similiar vector to disseminate an antidote.
(I wonder how people would feel if fundamentalist muslims were running around putting Korans in hotels, or Mormons putting Books of Mormon in hotels. Keep this up and there won't be any drawer space left for stationary and pens, much less useful literature such as nearby restaurants.)
I'd love to see the FBI enforce this one! If you thought our government was in Wall Street's pocket now, well, wait until they try to take all computers away from the Fortune 500 :-)
They aren't going to take a single PC away from any of the fortune 500 (and probably none of the fortune 1000).
Like every other unjust, unconstitutional law on the books (e.g. the war on drugs, etc.), the laws will only be selectively enforced.
Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, and a bunch of the rest of us will have our equipment seized without due process and with no possiblity of recovery (and perhaps be banned from ever writing software again) because our software empowers people, and that in the eyes of our hopelessly corrupt government of governments (the UN) and its hopelessly corrupt constituents (the governments of the world, most of whom routinely and ruthlessly repress their populations) that is a cardinal sin.
They're just looking to put the mechanism in place to legitimize this process, and the media monopolies have given them just the political cover they need.
I would not be surprised if, within ten years, there is not a single "free" person left on this earth, even by the loose definition for freedom we generally use today.
The future is ugly, and it is bearing down hard on us all.
Sadly, that's not the bottom 5% of the userbase. In the last three months, I've had to fix six home user computers ...
... they just need to be shown the way, and shown they can do the work they need to do in a safer, friendlier, freer environment. The remaining fringe that absolutely must use some proprietary, niche software that runs only on Windows can remain with Microsoft and continue to enjoy the sorts of pleasures Korgo and its ilk, in conjunction with Microsoft's criminal incompetence, bestows upon them. Based upon my experience, this could very well be a tiny portion of the market in five to ten years.
I was faced with a similiar onslaught of extracurricular work. I talked two people into buying Apple OS X machines (they were looking at getting a new laptop anyway), and eight others I converted over to GNU/Linux and Openoffice.
None of them, and I mean none, have any interest in ever touching a Windows box again. Not because of any evangelism on my part (beyond showing them that an alternative exists that doesn't get every promiscuous virus or worm traversing the Internet), but because they are so delighted with machines that, in both cases (OS X and GNU/Linux) are easier to use and more reliable than Windows. Yes, even the Linux boxes are considered by their users (who are not by any stretch of the imagination technology savvy) to be much easier to use than windows. Why? Because, like OS X and unlike windows, they behave predictably and do not mysteriously break or change behavior for no apparent reason. This alone, in the words of my 14 year old niece, made learning Linux worth its while. Not randomly losing her homework to Microsoft crashes or spywar induced bugs helped solidify that opinion.
Most people are more than ready to dump Microsoft like a bad crack habit
Unless, of course, software patents carry the day, in which case we can write off the entire industry for the medium-term future.
Apologies for this offtopic post (soon to be modded -99 by those Republicans with moderator priveleges no doubt), but this comment, and the toxic meme it propogates, needs to be addressed.
... although after this past four years that could very well change).
... and that is saying a lot.)
... thanks Mr. President).
The USA would be a lot better place if you Democratic nutjobs would just let go
No, it wouldn't.
And I say this as one who did not vote for Gore, and who votes the issues, not the party (which means I vote as often Republican as I do Democratic
Most people did what you advocated, and the results for America have been disasterous. We have overextended our military, spent ourselves into a deficit we may never recover from, lost virtually all of our world prestige, the vast majority of our close allies (alliances that had lasted more than half a century burned up in just four years of GW Bush's rule), and all of our credibility in the rest of the world. The list goes on, but I think you probably get the point.
Indeed, the USA would be a better place if people had taken to the streets or risen up in outright revolt after the Republicans stole the election and discarded the expressed will of the American people, as it was cast at the ballot office (including Florida, which a full statewide recount sponsored by the media demonstrated conclusively that Gore had won. As an aside, it is interesting how the domestic media then unreported and spun their own study to favor Bush, while their overseas collegues reported it more accurately. Go figure.)
Undermining the democratic process, as the Republicans and their supreme court appointees did in 2000, is terribly destructive irrespective of the qualifications of the usurpur who governs thereafter. The damage to our institutions is quite severe and will be quite long lasting, not least of which because the last branch of our government that had, to all appearances, remained somewhat unsullied by politics, namely the Judicial, has shown itself at its highest levels to be more interested in paying back political favors than ruling sensibly on constitutional law. (Yes, I've actually read their decision. Have you? It is the most convulated series of transparent justifications for violating the intent and will of the constitution and the American voters I've ever read
Of course, in this case we've ended up with an incompetent usurpur to boot, who used his artificially inflated legitimacy post 9/11 to prosecute an unrelated war against his family's enemy in Iraq, thereby overextending the US military and quite possibly costing us a victory in the real war we should be fighting, namely the War on Terror (hint: Afghanistan, NOT Iraq, although Bush's activities have certainly made Iraq from an inhospitable secular environment for Al Q'aide into a veritable breeding ground and ideal staging area
- lose the rhetoric and actually address issues people are concerned about. If that had actually happened in 2000 Al Gore would be president right now.
"People" are concerned about the economy and how much gasoline for the SUVs costs. We have very systematically and very effectively dumbed down our population, to the point where an election can be stolen out from under their noses and their main concern will be "but will this preempt my Saturday afternoon sports, Friends, or Everybody Loves Raymond?"
Gore wasn't my choice, and had I been selecting the party nominee Kerry probably wouldn't have been my choice either. Both are vastly more competent than the current usurpur, however, but more importantly than that, we need a return to constitutional law in this country.
That means an end to midnight raids on people's homes, an end to detention without due process, an end to dismissing and violating the Geneva conventions, an end to operating concentration camps of any kind, including Guantanamo, even if it is aimed at scum like
Until I can carry every version of every document/song/movie/computer program ever made in the history of mankind in my pocket, in lossless formats, no amount of storage on any device will ever be too much.
Indeed. I require a device so small it will fit between the molecular strands of my spinal column near the base of my skull, and be able to make the world's knowledge (as well as natural language skills, mathematical intuition, and the aggregate creativity of humankind) available in response to a single, unspoken, thought-driven command.
I require that the device expand in capacity as needed, offer limitless (and instant) transportation capabilities (the "teleportation" module), as well as imparting upon me perfect health, immortality, and eternal youth.
I'm sure I've missed a few features (non-crackability, the "self defense feature that outperforms national militaries" module, and whatnot), but those specs should do for starters.
[ The sad thing is, I say this only party in gest. I really do want such a device. ]
Clicking on the "to enter the site click here" link, we find that the site (and the project) is up and running just fine.
... assuming the West doesn't just bully the Chinese and the Indians into adopting similiar measures and crippling their own tech industries as well.
Software patents will either be recinded, or software development will come to a screeching halt and ALL free software will be killed, not just this project.
In which case we can all just pack up and find another profession, or move somewhere other than the US and the EU (if current legislative trends continue). After the IT economy has been destroyed and innovation has moved to India and China, perhaps the US (and possibly EU) beurocrats and politicians will get their heads out of their asses and ban software patents
I am quite frankly amazed at the EU's stupidity in this, as it clearly benefits Microsoft and other big American firms, to the detriment of European startups such as Suse, Mandrake, et. al. But that is neither here nor there.
I will continue to develop and use free software (including this project) until such a time as $un, Micro$oft, or one of their stooges ($CO) kills free software dead, or reform occurs.
At which point I will continue to use and develop free software, until such a time as their thugs pry my keyboard from my cold, dead fingers...but that is a rant for another day.
I apologize for my horrid use of the word 'virii', and accept the standard and proper word, 'viruses'.
... feel free to use whatever slang you like.
:-)
As others have pointed out, the language, and slang in particular, is constantly evolving. You were using common slang in an informal forum, pendants seeking to impose their notion of linguistic orthodoxy notwithstanding.
Had you been an anchor on the television, or submitting a serious scientific article for peer review, it might have been an issue. This is slashdot
Must not have had enough coffee when I submitted that...
Well, I for one have had plentii of coffeeii, enough to consider writing some antiibodiies for the virii others feel the need to wriite.
This bill puts Federal prosecutors in charge of the filing of the civil suits, making it look like a government action. It's fairly nifty. If this passes, file sharing in the US will die, mostly because of the deterrent factor of having the government enforce it.
File sharing will die the way drug use died when the government began waging its (now 30-year-old and ailing) war on drugs.
I.E. Not at all.
35 year olds with a sense of their own mortality may be dissuaded, but teenagers with their sense of immortality and their firm belief that "it will never happen to me" will not be dissuaded in the least.
In fact, if anything, this law will enhance the "coolness" factor of downloading music illegally.
I won't go on a rant about how the government will be reducing itself (even further) in becoming stron-arm thugs-for-hire for an industry that has already been convicted numerous times of price fixing, extortion, ties with organized crime, drug trafficking, and assorted other crimes if this legislation passes. Others will no doubt illuminate those points quite well.
The bottom line here is that, when the carnage is done and the hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of lives have been destroyed, this will have done nothing but fill our prisons and our courts even more, and file sharing will probably be relatively unaffected by the whole process.
Did you miss the little bit under the animations?? Both Flash and Real are available for Linux, if you don't want to use them, don't complain because the option is there.
... and a depricated one at that.
Not on my 64-bit dual opteron GNU/Linux installation they're not. Nor are they on my PPC GNU/Linux laptop.
Legacy 32-bit Intel GNU/Linux is only a subset GNU/Linux
So neurologists often compare the brain to a hard disk, storing data, etc. So how long until you think we get sued for listening to music and remembering it (illegal copying to another media). God forbid we try and hum a bit of it to a friend, or playing a song for a friend, because then we're guilty of transferring an unlicensed copy to another party.
... never mind that the radio station has not only paid for the CD, they've also paid for the right to "broadcast" it -- that's twice the RIAA has now been paid for the legacy work, now the restaurant gets to pay then a third time for the same medium, and the restaurant down the road a fourth time, etc. ad nauseum!
Copyright law is completely out of touch with physical reality, technology, and our culture (and indeed it actively stifles the latter two).
An example of how rediculous copyright law is, and how artists as well as the industry have grown used to double dipping. It isn't enough to cell the CD, they want to get paid every time it is played in a restaraunt or bar. It is even illegal to play the radio in a restaurant or bar
But, what is often unremarked about these absurd laws, is that a person humming a copyrighted tune as they walk down the street is technically breaking the same law, giving a "public performance" without a license. As is the busker on the corner, the teenage garage band when they perform at their local high school, etc.
It really is past the time when we as a society should have repudiated the very notion that one can "own" ideas (patents) or their expressions (copyright). A far less draconian mechanism for reimbursing artists for their work needs to be devised, something that insures them a portion of the profits made without imposing restrictions on how the work may be incorporated into other aspects of our culture, but most of all, unlike copyright a mechanism that favors artists and culture rather than publishers and middlemen.
A quick example of one of the many such alternatives that have been proposed: a tax on works sold, with a set percentage (say 50%) going directly to the original artist. Anyone can publish your book (and you can't stop them) but you get half the proceeds. As an artist or author you have no control, but you are generously compensated financially.
It really is time we as a society started thinking outside the box on this issue, if we wish to have any kind of viable, free society left in the information age, and wish to do so in a manner that benefits artists and fans, rather than consortia of parasitical middlemen such as the RIAA (and more to the point, their attorneys).
the riaa tends to be trying to kill a swarm by swatting at individual bees. for every one they swat, a new one is bred. they'll have to sue for a long time for them to get their desired results, and by that time people will have moved on to better distribution channels. ...one of which is right here:
www.allofmp3.com completely thwarts the RIAA while still paying the artists a modest sum (probably comparable to what the RIAA pays them).
$0.01 / megabyte download (pennies per song, less than $0.50 per album), perfectly legal (all RIAA propoganda and misinformation aside), and none of the money goes to fund these lawsuits. Even better, a portion goes to the actual artists directly -- a requirement of Russian copyright law.
Legal, so cheap it is almost free, and it absolutely thwarts the RIAA's ability to even think about suing anyone.
"Hey, it looks like you need to spell check!"
:-)
emerge aspell
Great. Now, instead of the whole company being held responsible for the actions of employees, the company will instead be able to throw a couple of those employees to the lions and go on with what they were doing. How much do you want to bet it will never be high-level management that takes the fall for this kind of thing
... just look at the history of software patents in Europe if there was any doubt ... but the decay is significantly further along in the US), it is reasonable to expect the same from corporate criminals as well.
Well, if the Abu Ghraib prison scandal is any indication, that is already the norm in government circles. As the west has largely degenerated into a corporatist state (this includes the EU
Until the public rises up and demands accountability from brazen criminals like Bill Gates, GW Bush, and Rumsfeld, they will continue to brazen it out while their pawns take the fall. As long as we as a people quietly acquiesce to such nonsense, it will not only continue, it will continue to get significantly worse.
If Robert Novak can continue to avoid naming his source in the CIA Officer identity leak, then Bev should have no problem. Plus what she's doing bears a much greater resemblance to journalism than whatever Novak spews.
... any investigation of Bev is likely to resemble a search and destroy mission.
The key difference is that Robert Novak was doing the administration's dirty work in outing the CIA operative as payback for comments critical of the administration. Any investigation of Navak is going to be for show
Bev was exposing a weakness in the voting system the administration could have used to steal another election, may well have been planning to use for just such purposes (remember Diebold's promise to "deliver Ohio" to Bush?), and quite possibly used during the last election (remember the 80,000 votes that disapppeared from Diebold machines in Florida and were never accounted for?).
This is standard Bush administration intimidation tactics, using the tried and true method of unleashing the FBI's overly broad investigative authority (even pre-9/11 it was overbroad, now it is doubly so) to harrass, intimidate, and even destroy the lives of troublesome pests who still insist on democracy in Bush's America.
While she should get the best lawyer possible, I suspect we are seeing the full weight of the federal government come down on her not because her web site might have been used by someone breaking into another server, but because she shined the light of publicity on one of their dirty little secrets. In the current environment, no amount of legalese is going to protect someone from an administration with a demonstrated willingness to step outside the law whenever it suits them.
Now cue the neo-con right's accusations of tin-foil hats and weeping democrats sore of having an election stolen from them (HINT: I didn't vote for Gore last time around, but that doesn't change the shameful facts of the 2000 election one bit).
well we already have one difficult partner... Russia... who can't put a single thing into orbit within 3 years of when it's supposed to be
there...
Pot, meet Kettle.
Uh, yeah. Like the space shuttle you mean?
Yes, that's right. Currently Russia is the only nation in a position to launch manned spacecraft. Without them we would already have abandoned the IIS and it would likely have already plummeted to the earth.
Meanwhile we can't even save Hubble, and it remains to be seen if we ever get our fleet back off the ground again.
Although FUD needs to be constantly and consistently fought in corporations by knowledgable IT employees, FUD is a legitimate marketing technique. It ~works~. Few, if any, businessmen knew who SCO was 2 years ago, but now they have almost universal brand-name recognition.
So, full marks for their marketing and communications strategy.
Murder works. Someone competing for the affections of the same girl as you? Someone competing against you in the workplace a little too successfully? A competitor gobbling up too much marketshare that is rightfully yours?
Off the bastard. Kill 'em dead.
Murder is by far the most effective way of dealing with unwanted competition and conflict, particularly if you are reasonably clever about it (it is an ugly, dirty little secret of our 'justic' system that most murders go unsolved, and most murderers thus get away with their crime).
By your logic, murder is a legitimate tool of competition.
I beg to differ. No amount of success justifies, much less legitimizes, a despicable methodology.
FUD and disinformation are unethical and despicable in the extreme, and their use is not legitimate, no matter how successful they are.
The courts would agree. It wasn't so long ago that IBM got seriously slapped down by the courts for exactly that sort of illegitimate, successful behavior.
SCO, Darl, and their sponsors (Microsoft and Sun Microsystems) should face similiar sanctions for engaging in this illegitimate, and quite possibly illegal, behavior.
(And lest you think defamation and libel are legal, check again. It may be hard to win convictions, but that doesn't make the act any less illegal, or any less illigetimate, and FUD, by its very definition, is libelous).
Oops, my bad.
You are correct. The point I made stands (it's a tiny minority) but I should have proofread my comment better.
Mae culpa.
Agree or disagree with the author, there is one thing he shows quite clearly: Many Linux users would rather attack than help.
... they are too busy leading real lives, be they on-line or in meat-space).
... and I'm a fan of Apple who owns one of their high-end laptops).
I disagree (rather strongly) with your use of the word "most." It isn't "most" users, it is the "loudest" users. There is an important difference.
Any crowd has its bullies, and the RTMFYDMF ("read the fucking articile you dumb mother-fucker") crowd rears its ugly head in almost every community of sufficient size (I've seen variations on that in the MSFT support groups, the FreeBSD groups, and plenty of others).
Unfortunately, while the RMTFYDMF crowd is a tiny minority, it tends to be the loudest subgroup by far, while other, helpful, normal people tend to be quieter (as they are not looking for the first opportunity to put someone down
Most Linux users and enthusiasts can take criticism reasonably well, just as most OS X enthusiasts, *BSD enthusiasts, Blender enthusiasts, etc. can. Those who cannot unfortunately scream the loudest and get the most attention, emberrassing the rest of us (I have been moderated into oblivion and flamed to hell for posting rather mild criticism of Apple on this site a time or two
I disagree with several of the points in the original article (and agree with others), but I shudder to think of the rude flames the guy probably received from the RTFMYDMF crowd.
It isn't helpful, nor is it an accurate representation of our community. It is, however, the most often seen (or heard) group because of its loud obnoxiousness, and there are certain parties that no doubt would be perfectly happy to enhance that loudness to the detriment of us all (and to their PR advantage).
While I disagree with the current article's posits (commercial Linux distros remain significantly less expensive than their commercial equivelents, particularly Microsofts) and believe it based on too few data points (RedHat is the glaring exception to the above), the author does seem to have tempered his response to what must have been some aggrivating flamage from the more boistrous, and generally more anti-social, parts of the peanut gallary.
Hopefully more reasoned and enlightened disagreement (where appropriate) will prevail in response to this article, instead of some of the knee-jerk flamage that so often gets shouted from the rooftops by an undiplomatic few.
Apple has already accomplished this with BSD and OS X. Looking at the Java Desktop System, I think that this is Sun's endgame as well. For now they'll leverage everything Linux, then slowly replace all programs with Java ones, and the Desktop with Java Looking Glass. It's hard to say how it will work out, but I wish them the best.
... that it is a defacto standard system that runs the same basic flavor of *NIX on multiple hardware platforms, irrespective of distribution, CPU type, 32-bit vs. 64-bit, 1-way vs. N-way processors, etc.
I don't.
It is exactly this sort of shit that nearly killed UNIX in the 1980s and allowed Microsoft the opportunity to supplant technically superior systems with their shoddy software and then leverage that toehold into a desktop monopoly.
Fragmentation is bad for everyone. Sun, HP, et. al. made this mistake before. If they insist on repeating it (and I believe Sun is perfectly capable of repeating acts of inane stupidity perpetually, as they really do seem to have difficulty learning from past mistakes -- remember sunview, openwindows, etc.) they will meet the same fate as before, this time with no one to rescue them.
Apple is different, in that they have always had their own OS and their own niche, and have used their underlying BSD system to actually broaden that platform some. What you are describing for Sun et. al. is a narrowing of their (Linux) platform, and undermining one of the great values of Linux
Lose that and your right back to the state of UNIX circa 1990, and that wasn't a pretty picture (or a viable state of affairs, with every hardware manufacturer's proprietary system incompatible with everyone elses).
Fragmentation is bad, and I do not "wish the best" for anyone trying to fragment the free software world in general and Linux in particular. Quite the opposite: I hope any such efforts fail miserably and teach a lesson certain parties seem quite challenged to learn, no matter how often they burn themselves trying.
Microsoft should send XP SP2 CD-ROM to everyone that has registered Windows XP. After user installs and visits some web site, they enter into Microsoft award contest. 100 random users that install XP SP2 receive 50.000$ award each. I guess everyone would upgrade if they could receive an award.
:-)
For $50 I wouldn't bother registering a product (and risking the reams of junk mail that will almost certainly entail). I've blown off cell phone rebates of more than that because they weren't worth the time or trouble.
Now, $500,000.00 (or even $500.00) would probably change my mind...but I don't see Billy Boy offering that to his victims ^H^H^H^H^H customers anytime soon.
Small price for Microsoft, great effect on security.
Probably not small enough for Microsoft to remain popular, but you are right, it would fix the problem, and if it makes Microsoft unprofitable, so much the better.
Linus was an intern at Bell Labs during his time developing the Linux Kernel. A lot of (early) kernel code has a striking resemblance to old AT&T unix kernel code.
FUD FUD and more FUD.
Or, more siccinctly: nonsense.
The only "resemblence" Linux bears to old AT&T unix code is that which also, coincidentally, bears a resemblence to FreeBSD code: i.e. that which is either in the public domain, released under the FreeBSD license, and/or published in common textbooks. The only other resemblences are those which impliment published standards (such as header file constant declarations).
And that "resemblence" didn't enter the code base until months (and in most cases, years) after Linux's initial release.
No coincidences, no suspicious anomolies, to anyone who does even a modicum of research and, yet again, one who doesn't have a specfic, anti-free software agenda, spin and FUD they are trying to disseminate.
You are assuming that there is a direct profit. This is a wrong assumption. The book and the report are least likely to break even. The profit will come from several well known companies (not just MSFT) which finance this institution and will not appear on the books as a product of this "research"
That is quite likely true. Nevertheless, financially bankrupting the author for his libellous actions would discourage others from throwing themselves on the grenade for MSFT and friends...which is exactly how the law is intended to function in these cases.
I would frankly nail the libellous sons-of-bitches to the wall, profit or no.
Linux started out as a Minix clone. Though it is more than that now, it's roots lie much closer to Andy Tannenbaum than they do to the Finn.
... not using a single line of Tannenbaum's available, but not open source or free, source code.
... that is to say, partially true, but also not really correct, and an overall mischaracterization of the effort (an OS written completely from scratch, not copied from another) and the goal (a usable, free UNIX-clone, not a usable, free, specific-UNIX-implimentation clone).
There is nothing to "admit." Linus wrote Linux as a i386 replacement for MINIX (which only ran on 80286 machines) because he wanted a UNIX he could use and play with on his hardware. He wrote the entire thing from scratch
Anyone looking at the old Tannenbaum book (which has the source code to MINIX in it) and the early Linux kernel code can easily tell they were written independently of each other. Anyone, that is, without an anti-free software agenda and ax to grind...
Calling Linux a MINIX clone is about as accurate as calling Linux an AT&T Sys V or generic UNIX clone
Esp about Star Wars. It's well known that SDI wasn't a serious program, but a big straw man program that scared the Soviets into building up their own program
... though it should have been.
Uh huh.
So then, why did Baby Bush feel compelled to withdraw formally from the ABM treaty and resurrect this "strawman" after his appointment to the white house?
To scare the terrorists into persuing a matching program, driving Osama bin Laden and the other extremists to bankrupcy?
Star wars wasn't a strawman or a joke
Linus Torvalds should sue the author for libel and defamation of character (and extend it to slander if the author is making oral statements publicly).
This is not only obviously false (and easilly provable), it is likely that it can be shown that anyone purporting to write a book on the subject (free software) should have had enough brain cells to rub together to do a modicum of background research that conclusively demonstrates what they are saying is false (groklaw for starters, fsf, eff, etc.).
Any profits from this libelous publication should go to the injured parties: Linus, whose professional reputation has been viciously besmirched.