You seemed to have failed to grasp any of the basic points RMS made. Or perhaps you disagree with them, but instead of attacking his points you attack his style.
1. You have totally misunderstood the point about freedom and power. The freedom to deny other their freedom is not a freedom RMS wants to protect. It is a freedom he uses himself for pragmatic purposes, but it is not a freedom he wants to defend.
2. Newspeak is a powerful word. Apart from its semantic meaning, it has some strong ties which makes it have a build in conclusion. Namely that it is evil. Interlectual property is another such phrase. It is not quite as powerful, but it still leads to a build in conclusion. Being aware of what words means on multiple levels isn't "newsspeak", it is basic rhetoric (another negative word) necessary to communicate efficiencely (ah, finally a good positive word).
To a computer geek it would be nice if words in natural languages were like in programming languages, devoid of any meaning than the apparent. If you believe this, you have already lost the argument. Like other who knows how to debate, RMS knows how to select his words. Unlike others, he makes his choices openly.
It is not misleading, is is refuting a common scare tactic from the anti-GPL crowd, namely that the GPL is somehow "forcing" developers to release their own code under the GPL. It doesn't. Like all other code (under any license that allows redistribution), it offers developers a choice they hadn't before: Distribute our code under the conditions in our license. This is a *new choice* developers get, and thus it *increases* their freedom.
What the anti-GPL crowd could say, and stay honest, is that by releasing the code under the GPL you do not increase other developers freedom as much as if you e.g. released it under the MIT X11 license. Had the anti-GPL crowd been that honest, it would not have been necessary to explain basics like RMS does here.
Why don't you read the two pieces of text you cite?
- RMS is speaking of being in control of yourself.
- Webster is speaking of not being controled by another.
This is saying the same thing, when you are in control of yourself, you are not being controled by another, when you are being controled by another, you are not in control of yourself.
No, Linux is not going to replace MS Windows as long as Microsoft can continue to abuse their monopoly situation. The judge didn't say what would happen in a fair marketplace.
#18 is correct. A place like the school where I work, changing from Win95 to Linux would cost millions in retraining from the current win32 only applications, to the Linux equivalents. Also, it would be difficult for us to cooperate with other institutions, which expects files in MS proprietary formats.
#19 sounds weird, even discounting Linux there are plenty of server operating systems that works well on PC hardware. Like Netware, SCO or Solaris.
Hack was always the most humor-oriented of the rogues, perhaps for some at the expence of serious roleplaying.
Hack is bar far my favorite, allthough I have a soft spot for Larn, and the "mission to save your daughter". It was such a cute little game. There was some interesting playing techniques that could really abuse the game. We had a student who really mastered them, and used them to tease another player from the datacenter. Each time the datacenter guy made a new highscore, the student beat it (just a little), but with negative game time. Nice to know that he had the medicine ready even before his daughter went sick;-)
gcc doesn't get much mass-media attention, and that is (in my opponion) by far the most important piece of free software.
The reason should be obvious, Linux and Mozilla is easier for non-geeks to relate to. Most people have an OS and a Web browser on the computer they use.
I think this is fine, mass-media attention is nothing particularily desirable. If you want to be a star, free software isn't the smartest route to take. If you want to hack on cool code, the quite projects are fine. Your peers will know of your work, who cares that Joe Sixpack will never hear about it?
So just let Linus enjoy or suffer his fame. He is a nice representative for the whole free software world anyway.
Copyright law isn't that different. However, in EU reverse engineering is explicitly allowed. Norway is not a part of EU, but a part of EFTA, and as such likely to follow the same rules.
There is a huge problem socially, too. Censorship of mailing lists destroys those lists much faster than a few strong messages. Once you start down that slope, it is apparently impossible to draw a bright line describing where censorship ends.
Luckily, that happens not to be the case. Moderated forums works just fine. On Usenet, the moderated forums are often the only ones useful, the rest have been destroyed by trolls, kooks, and other lifeless people. Even the./ comment forums were close to being unusable (except for the zombies mentioned above) before moderation. The signal/noise was getting too low for people with a life.
However, I do believe that there should be unmoderated forums to match those that are moderated, in order for everybody to have a place to discuss, not matter the leval. Also, the./ solution is the best working I have seen.
Due to a loophole in the way things work, Yahoo can actually legally do this. So can Slashdot. Or CNN. Infact, any business can. But why? The simple answer is that constitutional rights only cover what the government can do.
That is not a loophole, that is an essential feature of a free country. The government has no right to prevent me from editing my own paper (or, nowadays, my own web-board). That would a gross violation of my personal freedom as well as the ownership of my private property, and of the rights of other people to choose to rely on my abilities as an editor.
> 10% of the voters thought that Windows was NOT > a buggy OS!!!
Incidentally, the/. pools have demonstrated that 10% of the voters consistently chooses the funny option, when one is available. Draw your own conclusion.
Let me understand this - in order to provide *community* focus, for free *liberated* software, we need a corporate sponsored group consisting of representatives from companies (Sun, MS) that have done thier damndest to enslave and bind thier users to thier corporate vision.
Someone else have already corrected you on the MS guy.
John Gillmore is a long term nerd and free software supporter, from way before the phenomen became mainstream with Linux and Mozilla. He was one of the people starting Sun, which made him a lot of money, but I doubt he is involved with that company anymore. He spend some of the money starting cygnus. He is also very interested in electronic rights, helped start EFF and have put a lot of work in the cypherpunks movement.
He is one of the people/.'ers should know and respect, but he is not really into self-promotion. I think he is ideal for the post.
But that doesn't mean that TeX is really all that sexy.
Hey, its a lot more sexy than e.g. a kernel (I mean, a kernel manages processes. What's sexy about that?) TeX produces beautiful documents and LaTeX allows you to concentrate on what you want to say, instead of how it is going to look. The combined result is incredibly sexy to intelligent people and to people interested in aestetics.
Stupid people with no taste will of course prefer WordPerfect or MS Word, but what are they doing here?
Joking aside, the place where you go wrong is calling these two dead entities for "humans". They weren't, they were spammers. Treating them as human beings would be unethical. The have the same relationship with the human species as cancer cells have with ordinary cells. And should be treated accordingly.
As I've said before, if your objective is to stop people from being harmed --- you should illegalize harming people, not each indevidual way in which people can be harmed, and each object capible of harming a person.
It was stupid when you said it before, and it is stupid now. Some people get seriously ill if they see or smell a bird. So, by having a bird in the window in my house, I might harm someone passing by. You simply can't make laws agoind something as vague as "harming other people". No nation has such a law.
What you can outlaw, and what all nations to some degree outlaw, is specific behaviour that are known to harm other people. Like hitting people in the face without their concent Or producing or distributing pictures of people having sex, who are unable to concent.
Yeah, right. Moderate this message down to show the world that geeks are loving and caring people, who knows that inside the most unscrupulous spammer and scammer, there live a good person who just have to be shown kindness and understanding to be let out.
It is important that we never let the public know that geeks are people who get angry when violated, and who are able hate the people who violate them repeatedly. Those are dark emotions which we should keep hidden.
> If you produce it using real children that's bad.
The definition of "child porn" varies. In Denmark, in means real pictures produced with real children ( 15 years) in real sexual situations involving other people, animals or objects. Pictures of "nakid kids" are not even considered pornographic (respectable newspapers will bring them to show that "now its summer").
So for me, it is quite easy to hate child porn. Producing it hurts real children.
>> and child porn spammers deserve an espcially >> painful death.
> Really? For what is death *deserved*?
He just said it. For spamming. The pain is extra for the child porn.
One of the first spams I received (before I learned that spammers are _always_ lying) started with "We found your name on a list of people with a special interest in child pornography...". If the spammer had been in reach my anger would have made his death far quicker than he deserved.
> Methinks thou trollest.
You wish. The existence of spammers are the prime arguments for the right to keep and bear arms.
What next? What's worse than destroying whole communities for personal gain, which is what spammers do?
Stopping spammers is simply self defence. Yes, it should be the job of the police to stop the spammers, not the individual victims. There are always problems involved when private citizens attempts to enforce justice. But until the law starts working, we really have no alternative.
I want spammers to know that, yes, spam is cheap advertizing. But spam hurts people. Even if the spammer is too stupid (or greedy) to see how spam can hurt. And some of the people hurt might take it personally. Very personally.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the total number of voters is still smaller than the total number of Microsoft employees...
You seemed to have failed to grasp any of the basic points RMS made. Or perhaps you disagree with them, but instead of attacking his points you attack his style.
1. You have totally misunderstood the point about freedom and power. The freedom to deny other their freedom is not a freedom RMS wants to protect. It is a freedom he uses himself for pragmatic purposes, but it is not a freedom he wants to defend.
2. Newspeak is a powerful word. Apart from its semantic meaning, it has some strong ties which makes it have a build in conclusion. Namely that it is evil. Interlectual property is another such phrase. It is not quite as powerful, but it still leads to a build in conclusion. Being aware of what words means on multiple levels isn't "newsspeak", it is basic rhetoric (another negative word) necessary to communicate efficiencely (ah, finally a good positive word).
To a computer geek it would be nice if words in natural languages were like in programming languages, devoid of any meaning than the apparent. If you believe this, you have already lost the argument. Like other who knows how to debate, RMS knows how to select his words. Unlike others, he makes his choices openly.
It is not misleading, is is refuting a common scare tactic from the anti-GPL crowd, namely that the GPL is somehow "forcing" developers to release their own code under the GPL. It doesn't. Like all other code (under any license that allows redistribution), it offers developers a choice they hadn't before: Distribute our code under the conditions in our license. This is a *new choice* developers get, and thus it *increases* their freedom.
What the anti-GPL crowd could say, and stay honest, is that by releasing the code under the GPL you do not increase other developers freedom as much as if you e.g. released it under the MIT X11 license. Had the anti-GPL crowd been that honest, it would not have been necessary to explain basics like RMS does here.
Why don't you read the two pieces of text you cite?
- RMS is speaking of being in control of yourself.
- Webster is speaking of not being controled by another.
This is saying the same thing, when you are in control of yourself, you are not being controled by another, when you are being controled by another, you are not in control of yourself.
No, Linux is not going to replace MS Windows as long as Microsoft can continue to abuse their monopoly situation. The judge didn't say what would happen in a fair marketplace.
#18 is correct. A place like the school where I work, changing from Win95 to Linux would cost millions in retraining from the current win32 only applications, to the Linux equivalents. Also, it would be difficult for us to cooperate with other institutions, which expects files in MS proprietary formats.
#19 sounds weird, even discounting Linux there are plenty of server operating systems that works well on PC hardware. Like Netware, SCO or Solaris.
Half the fun of a text based roguelike is hacking the source and sharing your enhancements. ADOM is not free software, and thus no fun.
Hack was always the most humor-oriented of the rogues, perhaps for some at the expence of serious roleplaying.
;-)
Hack is bar far my favorite, allthough I have a soft spot for Larn, and the "mission to save your daughter". It was such a cute little game. There was some interesting playing techniques that could really abuse the game. We had a student who really mastered them, and used them to tease another player from the datacenter. Each time the datacenter guy made a new highscore, the student beat it (just a little), but with negative game time. Nice to know that he had the medicine ready even before his daughter went sick
gcc doesn't get much mass-media attention, and that is (in my opponion) by far the most important piece of free software.
The reason should be obvious, Linux and Mozilla is easier for non-geeks to relate to. Most people have an OS and a Web browser on the computer they use.
I think this is fine, mass-media attention is nothing particularily desirable. If you want to be a star, free software isn't the smartest route to take. If you want to hack on cool code, the quite projects are fine. Your peers will know of your work, who cares that Joe Sixpack will never hear about it?
So just let Linus enjoy or suffer his fame. He is a nice representative for the whole free software world anyway.
Copyright law isn't that different. However, in EU reverse engineering is explicitly allowed. Norway is not a part of EU, but a part of EFTA, and as such likely to follow the same rules.
Luckily, that happens not to be the case. Moderated forums works just fine. On Usenet, the moderated forums are often the only ones useful, the rest have been destroyed by trolls, kooks, and other lifeless people. Even the
However, I do believe that there should be unmoderated forums to match those that are moderated, in order for everybody to have a place to discuss, not matter the leval. Also, the
> 10% of the voters thought that Windows was NOT
/. pools have demonstrated that 10% of the voters consistently chooses the funny option, when one is available. Draw your own conclusion.
> a buggy OS!!!
Incidentally, the
John Gillmore is a long term nerd and free software supporter, from way before the phenomen became mainstream with Linux and Mozilla. He was one of the people starting Sun, which made him a lot of money, but I doubt he is involved with that company anymore. He spend some of the money starting cygnus. He is also very interested in electronic rights, helped start EFF and have put a lot of work in the cypherpunks movement.
He is one of the people /.'ers should know and respect, but he is not really into self-promotion. I think he is ideal for the post.
I don't think the FSF can be "bought", not even in the public mind. RMS is far too politically incorrect for that.
However, by eliminating the middlemen, Red Hat will get more of the publicity and goodwill. Which I believe they deserve.
Hey, its a lot more sexy than e.g. a kernel (I mean, a kernel manages processes. What's sexy about that?) TeX produces beautiful documents and LaTeX allows you to concentrate on what you want to say, instead of how it is going to look. The combined result is incredibly sexy to intelligent people and to people interested in aestetics.
Stupid people with no taste will of course prefer WordPerfect or MS Word, but what are they doing here?
Joking aside, the place where you go wrong is calling these two dead entities for "humans". They weren't, they were spammers. Treating them as human beings would be unethical. The have the same relationship with the human species as cancer cells have with ordinary cells. And should be treated accordingly.
Some spammers put in other peoples adresses or phone numbers as revenge, typically against people who got them kicked out of their last ISP.
This is the _real_ reason you shouldn't try to get even with the spammers, you might hit the wrong people.
It was stupid when you said it before, and it is stupid now. Some people get seriously ill if they see or smell a bird. So, by having a bird in the window in my house, I might harm someone passing by. You simply can't make laws agoind something as vague as "harming other people". No nation has such a law.
What you can outlaw, and what all nations to some degree outlaw, is specific behaviour that are known to harm other people. Like hitting people in the face without their concent Or producing or distributing pictures of people having sex, who are unable to concent.
"A sexual situation" doesn't necessarily hurt a child, and isn't illegal. Not even in the US.
It is important that we never let the public know that geeks are people who get angry when violated, and who are able hate the people who violate them repeatedly. Those are dark emotions which we should keep hidden.
Gosh, my karma is going to suffer today.
> If you produce it using real children that's bad.
The definition of "child porn" varies. In Denmark, in means real pictures produced with real children ( 15 years) in real sexual situations involving other people, animals or objects. Pictures of "nakid kids" are not even considered pornographic (respectable newspapers will bring them to show that "now its summer").
So for me, it is quite easy to hate child porn. Producing it hurts real children.
>> and child porn spammers deserve an espcially
>> painful death.
> Really? For what is death *deserved*?
He just said it. For spamming.
The pain is extra for the child porn.
One of the first spams I received (before I learned that spammers are _always_ lying) started with "We found your name on a list of people with a special interest in child pornography...". If the spammer had been in reach my anger would have made his death far quicker than he deserved.
> Methinks thou trollest.
You wish. The existence of spammers are the prime arguments for the right to keep and bear arms.
What next? What's worse than destroying whole communities for personal gain, which is what spammers do?
Stopping spammers is simply self defence. Yes, it should be the job of the police to stop the spammers, not the individual victims. There are always problems involved when private citizens attempts to enforce justice. But until the law starts working, we really have no alternative.
I want spammers to know that, yes, spam is cheap advertizing. But spam hurts people. Even if the spammer is too stupid (or greedy) to see how spam can hurt. And some of the people hurt might take it personally. Very personally.