If all those folks from Microsoft are as smart as they keep telling us they are, they'll have no problems finding jobs in a much smaller software market that's focused on free software. And as we all know, Microsoft's upper management and sales departments can move into comfy sales and monopoly-building positions at any number of large corporate behemoths. In short, I'm not worried about them.
Yes. For example, they're currently asking whether you like your job or not as part of a devious plot for VA Research^WLinux^WSoftware to employ all of you! Run for the hills!
It may not be a cruel dictatorship at the moment (I imagine devotees of Falun Gong would disagree with that, though). But if it's a dictatorship at all, then there is no guarantee that it will remain as benevolent as it has been. I don't think you can say that an authoritarian regime is "OK for now" - like all governments, the way that they interact with the citizenry will change depending on who is in power. From my viewpoint, at least in a democracy the citizen has some say in who is in power. Both kinds of government (really all kinds of government) are a loaded gun pointed at the citizen; the only question is whether the citizen gets to have some fingers on the trigger too.
I'm not sure that I wouldn't feel the same way that you describe if I were a Chinese peasant; I might be pretty partial to eating on a regular basis and happy for a government that was able to guarantee that. And I will agree that democracy is not a quick fix and is not likely to be as smooth a road (at least initially) as the current authoritarian rule is. But I still feel that people should be given the choice as to which system they prefer, and allowed to make their own mistakes, whether those are mistakes of the democratic or totalitarian nature.
I just don't like to see a bunch of well-off relatively Westernized geeks on the Internet, or even well-spoken pundits writing in The Atlantic, deciding that China isn't ready for democracy. The only people who should be deciding whether China is ready for democracy are her citizens. I don't think it is up to us to rule out democracy for them, or even to rule out the choice itself. The choice belongs to them and to every person, and every day that a person does not have such a choice is an affront to their humanity, in my admittedly Western view.
There's protection, and then there's "protection". As in, why not just pony up some licensing fees so that we don't bring your business to a halt for a couple weeks?
If they were just protecting starving coders that would be OK with me. But extortion tactics are not.
The difference between India and China is that Indians have a democracy with which to make their decisions between food and freedom. So far they aren't exactly forsaking either.
The Chinese have no chance to even make the choice. I don't mind if they prefer food, but I don't think we can say what's better for them based on what we think they would prefer. They have a right to self-determination, and if they choose to exercise it towards food rather than freedom, that's OK with me. But so far the exercise of this right has been throttled.
Oh, I'm not saying I'd prefer a dictatorship. Just that "war is a temporary thing" may no longer be a truism. For example, how 'bout that War on Drugs? Not much of a success (to put it mildly) but you don't see any end in sight, do you? And it's been what, 20 years long at this point?
I wouldn't be too confident in that 8 year limit either - it didn't always exist, it doesn't have to exist in the future if there is strong support for removing it, and I would argue that more important violations of the Constitution have already occurred as part of the War on Drugs / War on Terror.
The Court is free to make a judgement based on the pattern of action and the intention of Congress and of the Framers of the Constitution. They would be within their rights to say that the pattern of laws enacted in this regard by Congress is unconstitutional because of the overall impact of the whole assemblage of laws and extensions.
You wouldn't say that Jim Crow laws were legitimate if states in the South had passed them little by little in small, easily digestible pieces that were each in-and-of-themselves constitutional, would you? In fact, that's one of the ways that they worked - the poll tax was on its face a reasonable kind of law, but it was used solely to prevent black people from voting.
Thus it is with the copyright extension laws - just because each individual Congress passed part of them, even with the best intentions, doesn't shield the entire edifice from being unconstitutional.
Donald Rumsfeld (as heard on the radio this morning) was heard to say that the duration of the "War on Terrorism" would be indefinite, since of course we don't know when we've got the last of them.
I think the inconvenient problem that war is temporary has been solved quite nicely now...
I can accept that some people find food more important than speech. But I still hold to the position that it should be up to that people to make the decision for themselves. The Chinese people have never had the chance to decide what level of freedom versus security they are in favor of, short of the total choice of having a revolution (no, a real one this time).
You can't excuse the Chinese government by talking about different "values". I have yet to meet a man whose values emphatically include maintaining himself as a slave to another. Until the Chinese people have the choice of what sort of government they prefer, then all talk of their values is just hand-waving, because they are not free to truly express what they value.
If, having been offered more freedom with its attendant risk of instability, they turn it down, then I'll quit complaining. But until they are offered the choice, I refuse to agree that any self-appointed ruling cabal, no matter how well-intentioned (which they're not) or benevolent and effective (which they're not) has the right to deny a Chinese person their freedom for their own good.
Very funny, but morally indefensible. Every person should be the master of their fate. To say that a billion people are better off without control over their lives is to say that they are less than human. I'm not willing to feel superior to that large a chunk of humanity this morning.
I don't know what would be the best government for China as a whole - maybe western-style representative government isn't it. But the people of China, and in fact every person, deserve a government that allows the average citizen sufficient protection for their human rights. The current Chinese government is not it. Change could make things worse in China in some ways, but it could also make things whole lot better. Since we both know that the Marxian utopia is never going to happen in China, I say that there's no reason to wait much longer for change.
OK, even better. Like how most kde dotfiles end up under ~/.kde, for example. This would help a lot with apps like StarOffice that show all files, dot and otherwise, in the File|Open dialog.
Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't accept any votes from someone who hadn't contributed code. The choice of the license belongs to those who have contributed to the codebase and no one else. Those non-coders are welcome to voice their opinions, but only in a non-voting capacity.
Hmmm, I may stand corrected (depending on whether/.'s "Parent" link is working right today. Nope, it isn't:) Me, I have $HOME/.bin on the same theory - I don't want a lot of stuff in my directory listing that I don't need to see.
The config engine used by GnuCash already does most of this stuff in Scheme (looks like Lisp). Config file entries are actually bits of code that set appropriate options within the config schema. There are hooks to get/set config items from both the Scheme- and C-side code. There are specified types for each kind of configuration item which translate into both the code to get/set the config file item as well as the code to display the item in the GUI config screens. It's a pretty impressive system.
The downside is that it's complex enough that you can break it if you don't know what you're doing. Also, the ease with which it can be changed means that the config file format (in terms of the possible choices for each config setting) can be rather fluid.
You guys must never use dotfiles for anything, or you wouldn't totally miss the point of them. A dot file is a per-user set of config settings that can override the system-specified defaults in either/etc or the app-defaults file. The reason that we have dotfiles is (surprise!) all users don't want the app to work the same way. The only reason to put them in the user's home directory is so that they are more convenient to the user, and also because it makes the permissions setup a little easier.
Putting all config info in a centralized place for all users, whether it's/etc or the Registry, is a big mistake. You'd think Microsoft would've proven that sufficiently by now, but I guess not:) User-specific config info should be directly in the user's domain and under the user's control.
P.S. and yes,/usr/local/etc should be a symlink to/etc if you find the two directories to be one too many. A bigger question is between apps that use/usr/share or/usr/local/share rather than/etc for config files.
Slashdot Mirror
No way man, PAPERS is where it's at! Except that it's down at the moment :(
So, what you're saying is that you're unable to quantify how much it costs or costed. Thanks, you've been a big help.
If all those folks from Microsoft are as smart as they keep telling us they are, they'll have no problems finding jobs in a much smaller software market that's focused on free software. And as we all know, Microsoft's upper management and sales departments can move into comfy sales and monopoly-building positions at any number of large corporate behemoths. In short, I'm not worried about them.
Yes. For example, they're currently asking whether you like your job or not as part of a devious plot for VA Research^WLinux^WSoftware to employ all of you! Run for the hills!
No no, it's:
"You've got questions, we've got blank stares."
How many damn morons we got on this ship, anyway?
It may not be a cruel dictatorship at the moment (I imagine devotees of Falun Gong would disagree with that, though). But if it's a dictatorship at all, then there is no guarantee that it will remain as benevolent as it has been. I don't think you can say that an authoritarian regime is "OK for now" - like all governments, the way that they interact with the citizenry will change depending on who is in power. From my viewpoint, at least in a democracy the citizen has some say in who is in power. Both kinds of government (really all kinds of government) are a loaded gun pointed at the citizen; the only question is whether the citizen gets to have some fingers on the trigger too.
I'm not sure that I wouldn't feel the same way that you describe if I were a Chinese peasant; I might be pretty partial to eating on a regular basis and happy for a government that was able to guarantee that. And I will agree that democracy is not a quick fix and is not likely to be as smooth a road (at least initially) as the current authoritarian rule is. But I still feel that people should be given the choice as to which system they prefer, and allowed to make their own mistakes, whether those are mistakes of the democratic or totalitarian nature.
I just don't like to see a bunch of well-off relatively Westernized geeks on the Internet, or even well-spoken pundits writing in The Atlantic, deciding that China isn't ready for democracy. The only people who should be deciding whether China is ready for democracy are her citizens. I don't think it is up to us to rule out democracy for them, or even to rule out the choice itself. The choice belongs to them and to every person, and every day that a person does not have such a choice is an affront to their humanity, in my admittedly Western view.
There's protection, and then there's "protection". As in, why not just pony up some licensing fees so that we don't bring your business to a halt for a couple weeks?
If they were just protecting starving coders that would be OK with me. But extortion tactics are not.
Wait, he actually made money from spamming? How much? Was this just from selling spamming tools, or from the actual spam itself?
ClearCASE distributed builds do this, although I'm not sure if it's really the same technology underneath or not.
The difference between India and China is that Indians have a democracy with which to make their decisions between food and freedom. So far they aren't exactly forsaking either.
The Chinese have no chance to even make the choice. I don't mind if they prefer food, but I don't think we can say what's better for them based on what we think they would prefer. They have a right to self-determination, and if they choose to exercise it towards food rather than freedom, that's OK with me. But so far the exercise of this right has been throttled.
Oh, I'm not saying I'd prefer a dictatorship. Just that "war is a temporary thing" may no longer be a truism. For example, how 'bout that War on Drugs? Not much of a success (to put it mildly) but you don't see any end in sight, do you? And it's been what, 20 years long at this point?
I wouldn't be too confident in that 8 year limit either - it didn't always exist, it doesn't have to exist in the future if there is strong support for removing it, and I would argue that more important violations of the Constitution have already occurred as part of the War on Drugs / War on Terror.
Sez you :)
The Court is free to make a judgement based on the pattern of action and the intention of Congress and of the Framers of the Constitution. They would be within their rights to say that the pattern of laws enacted in this regard by Congress is unconstitutional because of the overall impact of the whole assemblage of laws and extensions.
You wouldn't say that Jim Crow laws were legitimate if states in the South had passed them little by little in small, easily digestible pieces that were each in-and-of-themselves constitutional, would you? In fact, that's one of the ways that they worked - the poll tax was on its face a reasonable kind of law, but it was used solely to prevent black people from voting.
Thus it is with the copyright extension laws - just because each individual Congress passed part of them, even with the best intentions, doesn't shield the entire edifice from being unconstitutional.
There are three kinds of untruth in the world: lies, statistics, and confusing charts that are marked without units in order to make a point.
Donald Rumsfeld (as heard on the radio this morning) was heard to say that the duration of the "War on Terrorism" would be indefinite, since of course we don't know when we've got the last of them.
I think the inconvenient problem that war is temporary has been solved quite nicely now...
Alert: Western viewpoint ahead :)
I can accept that some people find food more important than speech. But I still hold to the position that it should be up to that people to make the decision for themselves. The Chinese people have never had the chance to decide what level of freedom versus security they are in favor of, short of the total choice of having a revolution (no, a real one this time).
You can't excuse the Chinese government by talking about different "values". I have yet to meet a man whose values emphatically include maintaining himself as a slave to another. Until the Chinese people have the choice of what sort of government they prefer, then all talk of their values is just hand-waving, because they are not free to truly express what they value.
If, having been offered more freedom with its attendant risk of instability, they turn it down, then I'll quit complaining. But until they are offered the choice, I refuse to agree that any self-appointed ruling cabal, no matter how well-intentioned (which they're not) or benevolent and effective (which they're not) has the right to deny a Chinese person their freedom for their own good.
Wait, that's not how you spell "sombering"!
Wait, "sombering"'s not even a word!
Very funny, but morally indefensible. Every person should be the master of their fate. To say that a billion people are better off without control over their lives is to say that they are less than human. I'm not willing to feel superior to that large a chunk of humanity this morning.
I don't know what would be the best government for China as a whole - maybe western-style representative government isn't it. But the people of China, and in fact every person, deserve a government that allows the average citizen sufficient protection for their human rights. The current Chinese government is not it. Change could make things worse in China in some ways, but it could also make things whole lot better. Since we both know that the Marxian utopia is never going to happen in China, I say that there's no reason to wait much longer for change.
OK, even better. Like how most kde dotfiles end up under ~/.kde, for example. This would help a lot with apps like StarOffice that show all files, dot and otherwise, in the File|Open dialog.
All right, I'm convinced. Who's going to do it?
Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't accept any votes from someone who hadn't contributed code. The choice of the license belongs to those who have contributed to the codebase and no one else. Those non-coders are welcome to voice their opinions, but only in a non-voting capacity.
Hmmm, I may stand corrected (depending on whether /.'s "Parent" link is working right today. Nope, it isn't :) Me, I have $HOME/.bin on the same theory - I don't want a lot of stuff in my directory listing that I don't need to see.
So, you're comparing Linux to Christina Aguilera in the Moulin Rouge video? I really think she looked worse than that, but OK, if you say so...
The config engine used by GnuCash already does most of this stuff in Scheme (looks like Lisp). Config file entries are actually bits of code that set appropriate options within the config schema. There are hooks to get/set config items from both the Scheme- and C-side code. There are specified types for each kind of configuration item which translate into both the code to get/set the config file item as well as the code to display the item in the GUI config screens. It's a pretty impressive system.
The downside is that it's complex enough that you can break it if you don't know what you're doing. Also, the ease with which it can be changed means that the config file format (in terms of the possible choices for each config setting) can be rather fluid.
You guys must never use dotfiles for anything, or you wouldn't totally miss the point of them. A dot file is a per-user set of config settings that can override the system-specified defaults in either /etc or the app-defaults file. The reason that we have dotfiles is (surprise!) all users don't want the app to work the same way. The only reason to put them in the user's home directory is so that they are more convenient to the user, and also because it makes the permissions setup a little easier.
Putting all config info in a centralized place for all users, whether it's /etc or the Registry, is a big mistake. You'd think Microsoft would've proven that sufficiently by now, but I guess not :) User-specific config info should be directly in the user's domain and under the user's control.
P.S. and yes, /usr/local/etc should be a symlink to /etc if you find the two directories to be one too many. A bigger question is between apps that use /usr/share or /usr/local/share rather than /etc for config files.