RMS has blogged about the harm non free software will do to OLPC (summarized and linked to here). He's urging developers to come to Sugar's rescue and for OLPC to keep acting as an advocate of freedom. I'm afraid that OLPC will be soundly thrashed in the market if they fall for the obvious trap that a Windows port is.
Wow, that's a disturbing thread. I hope something good happens to this loser so he can do something better than this with his life. That does not make me John Marriot or anything like him. It makes me sad for people like him who waste their lives on hate.
The good news is that free culture will fix problems like that. The more people share, the less scarcity their is and that's good for everyone.
That's interesting but the result has been good anyway. Bottlenecks that lock out malice are very good to have. If one person has been good enough for the last 15 years, two should be enough for the next seven.
A fraud investigation is a good idea but that's not enough. There's a real possibility the companies involved can sleaze out of things because they have kept everything secret all along. Documenting the lack of evidence and lack of transparency is a good exercise on it's own because it will cast doubt on elections that use non free software and other impossible to verify mechanisms. The fact is they can't prove the election results are good or fair and that's unacceptable.
To decide how harmful something is, you need to consider the worst thing it will do. Obviously, the police don't need this cracker kit from the soft to boot knoppix and read your unencrypted cruft they want what you consider safe. That might be SatanicPuppy's kiddie porn but there's real potential for abuse here.
Without privacy, you get political and economic abuse. For instance, the people who kept Code Pink, aka political opposition, out of Canada by falsifying information in a database would also love to know who else to harm by reading their contacts at the border. Microsoft would love to read the business secrets or their competitors.
The bootom line is that Microsoft has just admitted it's systems are backdoored so that they can get passwords. Those systems and anything made by Microsoft is suspect - don't use it if you value your business, privacy or freedom.
The article itself is far more positive than the description. No one but the submitter is questioning Debian's future. The interview asked some pointed questions and was obviously impressed with the answers as the first paragraph or two show.
The Debian GNU/Linux operating system continues to generate interest from developers around the world, keen to sign up and contribute code to the open-source project now in its 15th year. But this popularity has been a mixed blessing. The project came under fire recently when programmers who wanted to get on board were unable to sign up and become registered participants.
So the big problem is too much participation? OMG, they are doomed! The bottom line is that Debian is community generated, excellent and growing. The interviewer presented this well, let's not spin it into something it's not.
The general intentions of non free software companies have concrete expressions that are antithecal to education. Everyone should read his explanation of how Microsoft and big publishers have a lot to lose when it comes to getting free textbooks to children. This is not "Fundamentalism" it's calling a vested interests out for bad practices and things that should be considered crimes.
The real question is the central point of copyright law, "What is the best way to share culture and knowledge?" Words like "piracy" have nothing to do with that question and are propaganda terms invented by companies that grew fat off government grants of spectrum in the 20th century. The internet allows people to bypass paper and broadcast publishing so those interests should be ignored. The best way to share culture and knowledge may be to allow limitless, non commercial reproduction by individuals and non profit organizations. It may be that there's much less money in publishing than there was when it was limited by scarce resources like spectrum and paper but it's better to live in freedom with abundant knowledge and culture than it is to preserve the companies that would profit by robbing us of those good things and the ability to share.
Don't bullshit me about the death of culture either. People will continue to amuse and educate each other without Sony, EMI, WB and their ilk. Live performances will regain their value as the scarce resource they really are. Nothing could be worse than current radio broadcasts. Textbooks will stabilize around real knowledge and lots of other good but unpredictable things will come out of free culture. It will be better than what we have known in the past.
The questions you ask lead us to policies like SoundExchange and other mechanisms of extending broadcast power over the internet. The question I've asked leads to freedom and justice. Which do you like better?
The only thing legal about any of this is abuse of process. What you are looking at is mass produced fraud that should result in disbarment of everyone involved and jail time for the ring leaders. They knew what they were going to do to "dolphins" like Anderson with their "drift net" tactics. They also thought they were aiming for a less sympathetic but more pliable target when they targeted "rich" college kids. In all cases, the victims were stripped of their life savings if they caved in and of everything now and forever if they fought. The RIAA music sharing cases are one of the most degraded abuse of the legal system by the rich and powerful ever.
It's time for a backlash. The emails and reports behind this fraud should be ripped open to expose the guilty at the big music publishers.
Get the word out and vote. Real change comes from knowledge. The Republicans are going to be run out of Washington on a rail but that won't matter if their replacements don't enforce the Bill of Rights. Vote for people who get it at every level of government, regardless of party affiliation. Write the representatives you already have and tell them what you think. People like RMS already have political action notes. Join or form your own civic group to get the word out and organize effective rights defense. There will always be people who attack your rights because it makes their lives easier but everyone is always better off when rights are protected. Make noise and the right kinds of things have a chance of happening.
Russia is moving to nothing but free software in their schools. This makes an interesting counterpoint to their heavily censored journalism, where the censorship includes murder of journalists. I would not trust the official state distribution but computers that can run one version of free software can run another that's really free. Good for them.
I have to thank all of you nutballs who have called me Twitter. I'd never have known who twitter was much less bother to read his journal otherwise.
Do you get a lot of use out of it without a matching earbud? My first thought was, "If I get a call I actually want to deal with, I'm going to have to pull the phone out anyway." An earbud would take care of that problem but that adds even more to the $400 cost of the watch. Was the $400 worth it to begin with?
Can you make it work with a Neo1973? The device is capable of much more than Sony gave it. It could do everything the Spot does and more if it would really talk to a smart phone. The Neo1973 also takes care of privacy issues - I'd never put my contact information into a non free phone hooked up to companies that are asking for immunity to wiretapping crimes.
Freedom is always best and only free culture allows the world to decide what storage solution is optimal. Windows and other binaries took up a considerable portion of every system I owned before I moved to free sotware eight years ago and that kind of waste is as intolerable as it was intentional. It comes from someone saying, "I own this and you can't make a copy." This guy has an interesting free culture angle that I thought of but did not express as well. Free software and culture offers economy that's only starting to be apparent.
There's a critical difference between access and access under your own control but the concept has played out in software repositories and my local media repositories. I don't need to have the entire distribution repository on my network when I know that a better version is available from people who have proved reliable. I don't need to duplicate my entire music and movie collection when I can stream it to myself with MythTV and other software. Still, large organizations would do well to have local repositories of both. GFS offers yet another option for local storage that blends computer and network storage.
Ugh. 20MB, 540MB, 5GB, soon 500GB all filled with binary crap over 25 years of use but free software changed all of that. I remember when 20MB seemed impossible to fill up. It was hard to do with nothing but text files but indeed adding a few games, AOL and a hand held scanner to a IBM XT clone cramped me for space. Then I remember when the 540 MB hard drive seemed like a vast space for text and images on a 486 box. It easily fit my old DOS stuff but then came Windows 95 and finally someone did me the "favor" of loaning me a copy of M$ Office so I could work with them and two 540MB drives was not enough. The same kind of cycle repeated itself with the next computer and a 5GB drive. Sooner than later it was filled with binary crap, starting with Windows 98. XP would have been impossible to run on the hardware and that's where I got off the treadmill. The same equipment has lasted to this day and was only replaced when I felt like having real hardware upgrades. Some of it, like a ten year old thinkpad, is still useful. It's also true that free software network storage has made it easier to get to the things I care about and drastically reduced my overall storage needs that way. Today, 500GB is way more than I need for my music and movies and I'll be able to buy a deeply discounted multi TB drive in a year or two when I feel pinched again.
It's easier to ride the backside of the upgrade wave than to be pushed and crushed in front of it.
I quoted the article. You would know that if you followed the link instead of flaming me. The author updated himself and quoted Bender quashing those stupid XP rumors.
If you were engaged in a discussion with a person and suddenly six others showed up to shill and agree with the original one, how would you like that?
Everytime I say something, I see a six or seven nutballs screaming Twitter. In this case the off topic thread is large and suspiciously well moderated. Oh well.
You won't be able to cut it down fast enough, even with your stupid hummer. The great plains could be replanted with native vegetation and we would all be better off.
Slashdot Mirror
RMS has blogged about the harm non free software will do to OLPC (summarized and linked to here). He's urging developers to come to Sugar's rescue and for OLPC to keep acting as an advocate of freedom. I'm afraid that OLPC will be soundly thrashed in the market if they fall for the obvious trap that a Windows port is.
The last time Slashdot talked about this, Bruce Perens presented an excellent technical explanation of how non free software would harm the core mission of the OLPC project.
Given all of these good reasons for avoiding non free software, how can anyone take Microsoft seriously?
Wow, that's a disturbing thread. I hope something good happens to this loser so he can do something better than this with his life. That does not make me John Marriot or anything like him. It makes me sad for people like him who waste their lives on hate.
The good news is that free culture will fix problems like that. The more people share, the less scarcity their is and that's good for everyone.
That's interesting but the result has been good anyway. Bottlenecks that lock out malice are very good to have. If one person has been good enough for the last 15 years, two should be enough for the next seven.
A fraud investigation is a good idea but that's not enough. There's a real possibility the companies involved can sleaze out of things because they have kept everything secret all along. Documenting the lack of evidence and lack of transparency is a good exercise on it's own because it will cast doubt on elections that use non free software and other impossible to verify mechanisms. The fact is they can't prove the election results are good or fair and that's unacceptable.
when someone else has your passwords.
To decide how harmful something is, you need to consider the worst thing it will do. Obviously, the police don't need this cracker kit from the soft to boot knoppix and read your unencrypted cruft they want what you consider safe. That might be SatanicPuppy's kiddie porn but there's real potential for abuse here.
Without privacy, you get political and economic abuse. For instance, the people who kept Code Pink, aka political opposition, out of Canada by falsifying information in a database would also love to know who else to harm by reading their contacts at the border. Microsoft would love to read the business secrets or their competitors.
The bootom line is that Microsoft has just admitted it's systems are backdoored so that they can get passwords. Those systems and anything made by Microsoft is suspect - don't use it if you value your business, privacy or freedom.
The article itself is far more positive than the description. No one but the submitter is questioning Debian's future. The interview asked some pointed questions and was obviously impressed with the answers as the first paragraph or two show.
So the big problem is too much participation? OMG, they are doomed! The bottom line is that Debian is community generated, excellent and growing. The interviewer presented this well, let's not spin it into something it's not.
zero credibility
That's what happens when you lie instead of fixing problems.
Everyone knows that M$ is teh most secure there is. Don't give us IT pros a bad name.
The general intentions of non free software companies have concrete expressions that are antithecal to education. Everyone should read his explanation of how Microsoft and big publishers have a lot to lose when it comes to getting free textbooks to children. This is not "Fundamentalism" it's calling a vested interests out for bad practices and things that should be considered crimes.
That's about the size of it. The real OLPC news site does not mention any of this BS.
Thanks, please keep up the good work.
A mashup of Metallica right before Metallica decides to go free. Free culture is winning!
The real question is the central point of copyright law, "What is the best way to share culture and knowledge?" Words like "piracy" have nothing to do with that question and are propaganda terms invented by companies that grew fat off government grants of spectrum in the 20th century. The internet allows people to bypass paper and broadcast publishing so those interests should be ignored. The best way to share culture and knowledge may be to allow limitless, non commercial reproduction by individuals and non profit organizations. It may be that there's much less money in publishing than there was when it was limited by scarce resources like spectrum and paper but it's better to live in freedom with abundant knowledge and culture than it is to preserve the companies that would profit by robbing us of those good things and the ability to share.
Don't bullshit me about the death of culture either. People will continue to amuse and educate each other without Sony, EMI, WB and their ilk. Live performances will regain their value as the scarce resource they really are. Nothing could be worse than current radio broadcasts. Textbooks will stabilize around real knowledge and lots of other good but unpredictable things will come out of free culture. It will be better than what we have known in the past.
The questions you ask lead us to policies like SoundExchange and other mechanisms of extending broadcast power over the internet. The question I've asked leads to freedom and justice. Which do you like better?
The only thing legal about any of this is abuse of process. What you are looking at is mass produced fraud that should result in disbarment of everyone involved and jail time for the ring leaders. They knew what they were going to do to "dolphins" like Anderson with their "drift net" tactics. They also thought they were aiming for a less sympathetic but more pliable target when they targeted "rich" college kids. In all cases, the victims were stripped of their life savings if they caved in and of everything now and forever if they fought. The RIAA music sharing cases are one of the most degraded abuse of the legal system by the rich and powerful ever.
It's time for a backlash. The emails and reports behind this fraud should be ripped open to expose the guilty at the big music publishers.
Get the word out and vote. Real change comes from knowledge. The Republicans are going to be run out of Washington on a rail but that won't matter if their replacements don't enforce the Bill of Rights. Vote for people who get it at every level of government, regardless of party affiliation. Write the representatives you already have and tell them what you think. People like RMS already have political action notes. Join or form your own civic group to get the word out and organize effective rights defense. There will always be people who attack your rights because it makes their lives easier but everyone is always better off when rights are protected. Make noise and the right kinds of things have a chance of happening.
Brazilian election link.
Free software voting in 2008.
Russia is moving to nothing but free software in their schools. This makes an interesting counterpoint to their heavily censored journalism, where the censorship includes murder of journalists. I would not trust the official state distribution but computers that can run one version of free software can run another that's really free. Good for them.
I have to thank all of you nutballs who have called me Twitter. I'd never have known who twitter was much less bother to read his journal otherwise.
I want my country and constitution back. These people have a lot of nerve to ask me for money to be able to read my private papers and correspondence.
Not bad, but a little expensive. According to this, the battery lasts a week and has it's own wall wart. I suppose you could charge it up at night, like you do your cell phone and the limited display area is responsible for that good battery life.
Do you get a lot of use out of it without a matching earbud? My first thought was, "If I get a call I actually want to deal with, I'm going to have to pull the phone out anyway." An earbud would take care of that problem but that adds even more to the $400 cost of the watch. Was the $400 worth it to begin with?
Can you make it work with a Neo1973? The device is capable of much more than Sony gave it. It could do everything the Spot does and more if it would really talk to a smart phone. The Neo1973 also takes care of privacy issues - I'd never put my contact information into a non free phone hooked up to companies that are asking for immunity to wiretapping crimes.
The answer is yes, when you consider the competition being advocated in it's place.
Freedom is always best and only free culture allows the world to decide what storage solution is optimal. Windows and other binaries took up a considerable portion of every system I owned before I moved to free sotware eight years ago and that kind of waste is as intolerable as it was intentional. It comes from someone saying, "I own this and you can't make a copy." This guy has an interesting free culture angle that I thought of but did not express as well. Free software and culture offers economy that's only starting to be apparent.
There's a critical difference between access and access under your own control but the concept has played out in software repositories and my local media repositories. I don't need to have the entire distribution repository on my network when I know that a better version is available from people who have proved reliable. I don't need to duplicate my entire music and movie collection when I can stream it to myself with MythTV and other software. Still, large organizations would do well to have local repositories of both. GFS offers yet another option for local storage that blends computer and network storage.
Ugh. 20MB, 540MB, 5GB, soon 500GB all filled with binary crap over 25 years of use but free software changed all of that. I remember when 20MB seemed impossible to fill up. It was hard to do with nothing but text files but indeed adding a few games, AOL and a hand held scanner to a IBM XT clone cramped me for space. Then I remember when the 540 MB hard drive seemed like a vast space for text and images on a 486 box. It easily fit my old DOS stuff but then came Windows 95 and finally someone did me the "favor" of loaning me a copy of M$ Office so I could work with them and two 540MB drives was not enough. The same kind of cycle repeated itself with the next computer and a 5GB drive. Sooner than later it was filled with binary crap, starting with Windows 98. XP would have been impossible to run on the hardware and that's where I got off the treadmill. The same equipment has lasted to this day and was only replaced when I felt like having real hardware upgrades. Some of it, like a ten year old thinkpad, is still useful. It's also true that free software network storage has made it easier to get to the things I care about and drastically reduced my overall storage needs that way. Today, 500GB is way more than I need for my music and movies and I'll be able to buy a deeply discounted multi TB drive in a year or two when I feel pinched again.
It's easier to ride the backside of the upgrade wave than to be pushed and crushed in front of it.
I quoted the article. You would know that if you followed the link instead of flaming me. The author updated himself and quoted Bender quashing those stupid XP rumors.
If you were engaged in a discussion with a person and suddenly six others showed up to shill and agree with the original one, how would you like that?
Everytime I say something, I see a six or seven nutballs screaming Twitter. In this case the off topic thread is large and suspiciously well moderated. Oh well.
You won't be able to cut it down fast enough, even with your stupid hummer. The great plains could be replanted with native vegetation and we would all be better off.