The FOSS movement can develop good applications and software; Gnome has quite a few good apps for example. The problem is that it most often takes a professional software company to step in and push the direction in a certain way.
However, that's fine; FOSS movement isn't just about the home hackers, it's an entire ecosystem consisting of companies AND enthusiasts. It's easy to focus on just the "community" part, but companies are part of that community, and they do quite a bit of contribution.:)
If this law was to remain, the USA as a superpower would be history for sure. Most of the rest of the world would distance themselves from the USA and say "You know what, fine. We're not interested in your shit anymore." Isolation makes it very hard to ignore.
And yeah, nukes? You seriously believe they'll fire nukes at us for refusing to take their shit? All that would do would serve to alienate us non-US:ers even more. It would be both counter-productive and stupid. Control by fear is never as effective as controlling with love and respect.
I think he is saying that there is more to this world than USA, and by allowing SOPA and PROTECT IP, USA will effectively isolate themselves from the rest of the world.
This in turn means that USA won't benefit from what Europe, Asia, Australia, South America and the rest of the world invents, which means the rest of the world will outrun USA when it comes to technology. In fifty years USA will still be stuck with 2010 tech while Europe etc will have 2060 tech. Both SOPA and PROTECT IP will drag down USA in the mud. Shame, really, since the US had some really great things going for it...
Regarding Skype alternatives though, there are two things you can try; either set up a teleconferencing SIP server (like asterisk), or wait for the XMPP Jingle protocol to get multiparty-support (a couple of years wait). We use the Asterisk option at my work and it works like a charm and is much better than Skype, but as always YMMV.
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Who finds it strange that you need stereoscopic vision goggles to look at what basicly is a 3D mesh of a human heart displayed on a 2D-screen? What's everyone so riled up about? Liek, srsly...
The only problem I see here is that the unrewritable loader is, well, unrewritable and is blessed by a CA.
I wouldn't mind a scheme where you could in fact replace the unrewritable loader to an Open Source one, but YOU generate the keys. It all comes down to what you trust. I trust myself. Sadly, that's not going to happen.:(
"Hey guys, we can make you some free profit. Not much, maybe 100-200k, but we need permission to use your old IP, we offer you $5 to each stick sold, how does that sound?"
So, they get the offer to basicly free money with no drawbacks. Sure you can turn the offer down, but dang they're stupid for doing so.:)
"However, when properly done, HTML-only, static content pages with minimal graphics still work well even on the slowest dial-up connection. Dynamic content proved to be overrated since--with the exception of some useful video clips--it's all ad crap and data collection crap."
Yes, and I can cut the grass in my lawn with a scythe. But when I can use a fricken' lawnmower, why bother? I do agree though that you should never use JavaScript excessively, and yes they are heavily abused today, but that doesn't make the tool evil, just their owners.
The examples *you* cite does not even take up five GB of data/month. That kind of bandwidth has been available for decades (56k can theoreticly download 20 GB in a month). The reason more bandwidth is neccessary is primarily because streaming technologies are starting to appear everywhere, en-masse. Or to put it bluntly; we need it for those 1080p porn streams!
Not to mention there are tools that help you with that, and most markup these days come from automated tools, like rich-content editors such as tinyMCE. Most pages should be possible to clean up in an automated fashion.
The problem with your argument is that there really are many instances where that 5 hours tomorrow never come. Adopting "XHTML6" in your interpretation would mean that nobody could save those 5 minutes, even if I'm just writing a hello world page.
The trouble is, you don't know on beforehand which of these will benefit, and which ones won't. If you make sure to validate your pages, you spend a little time fixing the errors in your code, then you often don't have to go back to touch it ever again. "Be liberal in what you accept, but strict in what you publish" - A principle that has been with us since the first webbrowser.
Solutions only need to be as complicated as the problem itself. One thing that XML failed miserably is keeping simple things simple. SGML is simple. XML (particularly the latter versions) is anything but that.
By XML I assume you're meaning XHTML? So you mean that the four extra rules over HTML - Close all your tags, make attributes and tags lowercase, proper nesting and can't have more than one html tag - is so unbelivably mind-boggingly complex and hard? Especially since you should do most of this stuff in SGML/HTML as well (though there it's strongly recommended, not mandated)? You need a proper document structure, but that's true for both XHTML and HTML. XHTML isn't hard, but yes, it's not as forgiving as HTML. But you know what? These days it doesn't have to! Hobbyists install Wordpress instead of handcoding, like back in the nineties.
Not to mention XHTML offers massive speed improvements when served with the proper MIME-type. I developed a Javascript-heavy site (around 2MB of JS, and yes that was compressed) recently. I tried switching on the application/xhtml+xml MIME type, and got a massive performance boost from it (0.5-1s faster load times, quite a lot since these pages usually load in 3-4s) since the DOM could be parsed faster as you now could assume the HTML to not be broken.
That actually exists. Check out SSNES which uses bsnes as a library and then has it's own shell wrapped around it. Pretty hardcore stuff, if you ask me.:)
However, we do need a better solution to online identity.
1. You must be allowed to have multiple online identities 2. These identities could have your real name or could be a pseudonym, that is irrelevant 3. Must be easy to plug in to existing systems (PAM-based module perhaps?)
OpenID is solving some of these problems, but is much too clunky and insecure. For one thing it's much suspectible to reverse DNS. XMPP is a better choice since address spoofing is much harder (but not impossible) and can easily be integrated to your IM client, trouble is you can't easily integrate it into the web like OpenID. It's possible even better protocols exist for this purpose but OpenID and XMPP are the most promising I've seen right now.
A few differences, the biggest being that services aren't started unless explicitly requested. You can read more on Upstarts limitations here (see "On upstart"): http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html
"It may on occasion be necessary to do so to gain a greater good, but it's still bad."
Of course it is. But that doesn't mean the entire new system is a PoS that needs to be replaced now does it?
While the transition period was indeed painful, PA today works just fine for me on latest Ubuntu (though now it's Unity and display drivers that mess up instead -_-;;), I get low-latency playback and it's great for all your consumer needs - and if you REALLY need to go a step further for "pro" use there's Jackd.
Systemd, likewise, does a great job of reducing and/or eliminating the kludges of SysV init (which Ubuntu also has abandoned in favor of Upstart, which isn't as good as Systemd). I don't say Systemd is neccessarily *the* answer, but when the *only* reason not to use it is "Because it'd break compatibility with the rest of Unixes", well, in that instance Poettering is right; why should we hold back?
I can't speak for all of these, but I do know that for ALSA Linux wanted something that didn't mix music in kernel space (like OSS did, and still does).
I'm pretty sure many other decisions follow the same lines. But we as end users rarely see this, we just see "WTF they broke my apps!"
And yes, poor documentation sucks major donkey balls. There should be a separate documentation team - with NO kernel devs - that ask and document the neccessary questions.
I know you jest, but seriously, Emacs has a *wonderful* editing tool for webpages called nxhtml. Why is it wonderful? Because it has a sane way of handling inline JS-, PHP and CSS code. This feature alone blows all other editors out of the water.
If you want a WYSIWYG, though, I'd have to reccommend KompoZer.
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No. However, Linus got inspired to write his own system because of Minix, and that system became Linux.
The FOSS movement can develop good applications and software; Gnome has quite a few good apps for example. The problem is that it most often takes a professional software company to step in and push the direction in a certain way.
However, that's fine; FOSS movement isn't just about the home hackers, it's an entire ecosystem consisting of companies AND enthusiasts. It's easy to focus on just the "community" part, but companies are part of that community, and they do quite a bit of contribution. :)
If this law was to remain, the USA as a superpower would be history for sure. Most of the rest of the world would distance themselves from the USA and say "You know what, fine. We're not interested in your shit anymore." Isolation makes it very hard to ignore.
And yeah, nukes? You seriously believe they'll fire nukes at us for refusing to take their shit? All that would do would serve to alienate us non-US:ers even more. It would be both counter-productive and stupid. Control by fear is never as effective as controlling with love and respect.
I think he is saying that there is more to this world than USA, and by allowing SOPA and PROTECT IP, USA will effectively isolate themselves from the rest of the world.
This in turn means that USA won't benefit from what Europe, Asia, Australia, South America and the rest of the world invents, which means the rest of the world will outrun USA when it comes to technology. In fifty years USA will still be stuck with 2010 tech while Europe etc will have 2060 tech. Both SOPA and PROTECT IP will drag down USA in the mud. Shame, really, since the US had some really great things going for it...
Sorry to hear it didn't work out for you. :(
Regarding Skype alternatives though, there are two things you can try; either set up a teleconferencing SIP server (like asterisk), or wait for the XMPP Jingle protocol to get multiparty-support (a couple of years wait). We use the Asterisk option at my work and it works like a charm and is much better than Skype, but as always YMMV.
These were my thoughts as well, but FTFA:
Who finds it strange that you need stereoscopic vision goggles to look at what basicly is a 3D mesh of a human heart displayed on a 2D-screen? What's everyone so riled up about? Liek, srsly...
This is very true. However, switching to Linux isn't hard. At all. Unless you're a gamer, chances are it's a minor step forward, instead of a major.
Then again, if you ARE a gamer, you will hate Linux with every fiber of your body. :P
The only problem I see here is that the unrewritable loader is, well, unrewritable and is blessed by a CA.
I wouldn't mind a scheme where you could in fact replace the unrewritable loader to an Open Source one, but YOU generate the keys. It all comes down to what you trust. I trust myself. Sadly, that's not going to happen. :(
Windows will be very hard to pirate properly now.
Why is this great news?
Because now people who can't pirate will switch to Linux instead! :D
They may very well own the games, but...
"Hey guys, we can make you some free profit. Not much, maybe 100-200k, but we need permission to use your old IP, we offer you $5 to each stick sold, how does that sound?"
So, they get the offer to basicly free money with no drawbacks. Sure you can turn the offer down, but dang they're stupid for doing so. :)
"However, when properly done, HTML-only, static content pages with minimal graphics still work well even on the slowest dial-up connection. Dynamic content proved to be overrated since--with the exception of some useful video clips--it's all ad crap and data collection crap."
Yes, and I can cut the grass in my lawn with a scythe. But when I can use a fricken' lawnmower, why bother? I do agree though that you should never use JavaScript excessively, and yes they are heavily abused today, but that doesn't make the tool evil, just their owners.
The examples *you* cite does not even take up five GB of data/month. That kind of bandwidth has been available for decades (56k can theoreticly download 20 GB in a month). The reason more bandwidth is neccessary is primarily because streaming technologies are starting to appear everywhere, en-masse. Or to put it bluntly; we need it for those 1080p porn streams!
Not to mention there are tools that help you with that, and most markup these days come from automated tools, like rich-content editors such as tinyMCE. Most pages should be possible to clean up in an automated fashion.
The trouble is, you don't know on beforehand which of these will benefit, and which ones won't. If you make sure to validate your pages, you spend a little time fixing the errors in your code, then you often don't have to go back to touch it ever again. "Be liberal in what you accept, but strict in what you publish" - A principle that has been with us since the first webbrowser.
By XML I assume you're meaning XHTML? So you mean that the four extra rules over HTML - Close all your tags, make attributes and tags lowercase, proper nesting and can't have more than one html tag - is so unbelivably mind-boggingly complex and hard? Especially since you should do most of this stuff in SGML/HTML as well (though there it's strongly recommended, not mandated)? You need a proper document structure, but that's true for both XHTML and HTML. XHTML isn't hard, but yes, it's not as forgiving as HTML. But you know what? These days it doesn't have to! Hobbyists install Wordpress instead of handcoding, like back in the nineties.
Not to mention XHTML offers massive speed improvements when served with the proper MIME-type. I developed a Javascript-heavy site (around 2MB of JS, and yes that was compressed) recently. I tried switching on the application/xhtml+xml MIME type, and got a massive performance boost from it (0.5-1s faster load times, quite a lot since these pages usually load in 3-4s) since the DOM could be parsed faster as you now could assume the HTML to not be broken.
Not to mention bsnes offers most of the things you want to configure in the GUI, and then I think there are a ton more options in the config file. :)
That actually exists. Check out SSNES which uses bsnes as a library and then has it's own shell wrapped around it. Pretty hardcore stuff, if you ask me. :)
However, we do need a better solution to online identity.
1. You must be allowed to have multiple online identities
2. These identities could have your real name or could be a pseudonym, that is irrelevant
3. Must be easy to plug in to existing systems (PAM-based module perhaps?)
OpenID is solving some of these problems, but is much too clunky and insecure. For one thing it's much suspectible to reverse DNS. XMPP is a better choice since address spoofing is much harder (but not impossible) and can easily be integrated to your IM client, trouble is you can't easily integrate it into the web like OpenID. It's possible even better protocols exist for this purpose but OpenID and XMPP are the most promising I've seen right now.
A few differences, the biggest being that services aren't started unless explicitly requested. You can read more on Upstarts limitations here (see "On upstart"): http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html
Gratz, then you are 0.000001% of the tiny minority that actually did so. Most of the rest of the comments QQ:ing about Systemd/Pulse have not.
"It may on occasion be necessary to do so to gain a greater good, but it's still bad."
Of course it is. But that doesn't mean the entire new system is a PoS that needs to be replaced now does it?
While the transition period was indeed painful, PA today works just fine for me on latest Ubuntu (though now it's Unity and display drivers that mess up instead -_-;;), I get low-latency playback and it's great for all your consumer needs - and if you REALLY need to go a step further for "pro" use there's Jackd.
Systemd, likewise, does a great job of reducing and/or eliminating the kludges of SysV init (which Ubuntu also has abandoned in favor of Upstart, which isn't as good as Systemd). I don't say Systemd is neccessarily *the* answer, but when the *only* reason not to use it is "Because it'd break compatibility with the rest of Unixes", well, in that instance Poettering is right; why should we hold back?
"Oh something new and shiny that breaks backwards compatibility! Therefore it must automaticly be bad!"
The rationale behind systemd is quite sound. Go and read it and then come back to complain.
I can't speak for all of these, but I do know that for ALSA Linux wanted something that didn't mix music in kernel space (like OSS did, and still does).
I'm pretty sure many other decisions follow the same lines. But we as end users rarely see this, we just see "WTF they broke my apps!"
And yes, poor documentation sucks major donkey balls. There should be a separate documentation team - with NO kernel devs - that ask and document the neccessary questions.
A sore thumb has been hit.
Protip; when you write a wall of text for this kind of attack you only validate it. In other word, you kind sir just pwned yourself.
Now laugh at your own stupidity and have a beer/cola/whatever! It's on the house! :D
Any country not part of the Berne/ACTA "treaties".
I know you jest, but seriously, Emacs has a *wonderful* editing tool for webpages called nxhtml. Why is it wonderful? Because it has a sane way of handling inline JS-, PHP and CSS code. This feature alone blows all other editors out of the water.
If you want a WYSIWYG, though, I'd have to reccommend KompoZer.