Re:Intellectual Property
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DOJ vs NSI
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· Score: 3
The whois data *is* intellectual property. Specifically, it is the property of the registrants. My employer owns the information regarding its registration; this is why we are allowed to edit or destroy it.
If NSI owned our whois entry, then they could sue us if we changed our contact addresses to false or nonexistent ones, because we would thereby be damaging their property. However, since the entry is in fact ours, we are allowed to.
Furthermore, if NSI owned that information, then we would have to agree to surrender our registry information to their ownership. Obviously we didn't do that.
That's not a customer list; it's a database of other people's information. It was so before NSI maintained it, and it will remain so after they no longer maintain it.
Actually, the Cato Institute is not a right-wing group, but rather a libertarian group. Not to repeat what everyone's probably already heard a few times by now, but libertarianism combines economic conservatism with social liberalism: supporting limited government which keeps its hands off both the economy and people's private lives.
This should be distinguished from the right-wing (across-the-board conservative or Republican) viewpoint, which supports government meddling in "morals" issues. Republicans support prayer in schools, the War on (Some) Drugs, and immigration restrictions (just for instance), all of which Libertarians oppose.
In fact, the Republican Party supports far more government meddling in the economy than Libertarians do. Republicans support increased government spending on the military-industrial complex, as well as on corporate welfare. Libertarians oppose both: the government should, we claim, neither help (as the Republicans would have) nor oppose (as Democrats and Socialists would have) corporations, except in cases where corporations violate individual rights. (For instance, Libertarians oppose the use of violence to support corporate interests (e.g. union-busting, colonialist wars (the Gulf War, e.g.), and so forth.)
Actually, "evolution" does not imply that anything is getting better or more complicated. It is in fact contrary to the biological usage of the word to refer to something as "more highly evolved".
Evolution is simply the continued process of adaptation to a changing environment, through variable replication (i.e. mutation) and selection.
That's all.
It is not the triumphant ascent of mankind from the primordial goo. Humans are no more "highly evolved" than are the current population of bacteria or mosses or fish; we simply have evolved to fit a different ecological niche.
It seems to me that one of the things that the Net community is good at is spontaneously organizing to point out harmful bullshit. For instance, consider the exposure of the original Pentium division bug -- leaked all over USENET while Intel was still denying its existence. If it hadn't been for USENET, it probably never would have gotten any press: bullshit ("There is no bug, and besides, it's not a very big one") would have won. More recently, the Mindcraft scam, as with countless other Microsoft crimes, might not have been exposed if it weren't for the Net in general, and Slashdot (and similar forums) in particular.
So... can we mobilize this ability in defense of our geek (and goth, and punk) brethren (and sistren) in America's high schools? I think we can. All we need to do is mobilize something like the Slashdot Effect -- and target it on offending schools.
More than a few high schools now have their own Web pages. Lots of high school teachers and administrators have their own email addresses. (They're probably all on AOL, but that's no matter.) And every high school principal or headmaster, I'm sure, has a telephone.
So perhaps what we need is for geeks, goths, and other HS outsiders to tell their stories of harassment and abuse -- but to tell them with the names and email addresses of the offending administrators. When Mr. Jones says that "it's just part of growing up" to be beaten by classmates, or Ms. Brown suspends a student for wearing black, or Dr. Smith encourages students to mock and harass those who don't attend pep rallies -- Mr. Jones, Ms. Brown, and Dr. Smith should get mailboxes full of polite condemnation from educated, intelligent, and successful geeks.
It's just an idea... but it just might help. Sites like High School Underground, and forums like these on Slashdot, are a start -- but in order to actually change the world, we need to meet the offenders on their own ground, and get them the message that their behavior is intolerable.
*:login pourne That account has been temporarily turned off. Reason: Think of it as evolution in action. Any questions may be directed to USER-ACCOUNTS *
Read the changelogs. Better yet, dig up old versions and check them yourself. "Eric Conspiracy" has had an entry for a long time. In fact, the entry might even date back to GLS's editorship.
I think you missed my point. I was discussing the psychology of advocacy, not the long-term viability of Linux. However, I'll gladly opine on your topic as well.
You claim that "rabid advocates" cause prospective users to avoid Linux. I think this is unproven. For every user who says, "Gee, those Linux people are a bunch of nuts!" there are probably several who say, "What do those people have that's so good they can brag about it so much? They mock Windows for crashing all the time -- is their system really that much stabler? Gee, I should check it out!" This is just as likely a reaction as the one you suggest -- though in my opinion there is no proof of either.
I am quite sick of hearing people say "Stop flaming! You'll scare the newbies away!" when all around us the newbies pile in like clowns into a VW Beetle. The fact of the matter is that nobody is scaring users away from Linux. Linux-based systems' user base is expanding constantly and with increasing speed -- and it is beyond the power of half-incoherent flamers to stop this growth. I'd just like to see them try!
One of the points where Linux-based systems differ from proprietary systems is that Linux, which largely lacks marketing and advertising power, is forced to rely on a much more primitive way of proving its worth: the truth. Even the commercial distros do not have the marketing funds to pull off the kind of Big Lies that Microsoft executes. Microsoft can lie and say that their OS is stabler or faster or more secure; we can come around and prove that ours is.
The amusing thing about this method is that while it's not hard at all to convert someone from a belief in a lie to a belief in a contrary lie, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to make someone who knows the truth accept a lie instead. Linux users don't get converted to Windows. It just doesn't happen. We don't need a monopoly position to force our users to stick with our OSes; our stuff actually is better.
The idea that the Internet is some sort of spiritual realm would be laughable, were it not so frightening that someone would come up with it.
In the ancient world, people resorted to spiritualistic explanations because they honestly did not know what caused the thunder, or the phases of the moon, or the seasons. They believed that there was no way that we could learn what "really" caused these phenomena, and so they ascribed the phenomena to the gods or spirits. As our knowledge of the world progressed, we learned that we can know what really causes all these things. We can formulate physical, material explanations of them all.
Thunder is not the wrath of Zeus or Jehovah; it is the explosion of the air caused by lightning, which is an electrostatic discharge. The phases of the moon are not caused by it being devoured and regurgitated by dragons, nor are they the menstrual cycle of a goddess; they are caused by the angle formed by the sun, moon, and earth. The seasons result from the tilt of the earth altering the exposure of the two hemispheres to the sun's rays.
The way we find out these explanations is called the scientific method: the method of observation, hypothesis, and experiment. The knowledge that results from the scientific method is properly called natural history or natural philosophy, though in this century we've slipped to simply calling it science or scientific knowledge. The uses to which we put this knowledge are called technology, and the method by which we create technology is called engineering.
Technology works because the scientific method works. The scientific method works because materialism -- the belief that the workings of the universe are physical and knowable, not mystical and unknowable -- is true.
To spiritualize technology is to invent an absurdity. However, worse than that, it is to demonstrate the very truth which distinguishes technology from mysticism: the fruits of technology are available even to those who do not understand the principles of science upon which engineering rests. The boons which science makes possible are useful even to people who do not believe in the scientific method.
(Contrast this with spiritualism, mysticism, and religion. Religionists are always after us to have Faith. If we do not have Faith, we cannot, they say, receive the blessings that religion has to offer. Televangelists reject the scientific method even as they use its fruits, the technology of radio broadcasting, to reach their gullible audiences. The ingratitude is astounding.)
The fact that people spiritualize and mystify the Internet is evidence that scientific education is failing. We cannot maintain our present level of technical advancement if our society slips into ignorance of science -- if we are deluded by spiritism. Already fundamentalists oppose the teaching of evolution in schools because it conflicts with their mystical, spiritual belief about the origins of life. If the idea that the Internet is a spiritual entity got into the general population, the next thing we know, the religionists would want to prohibit the masses from learning that it's really just a bunch of computers and wires. Electronic engineering would become the province of priests.
Now, class, go read "If This Goes On..." by Robert A. Heinlein.
Please read the article. "Obscene" speech has never been ruled protected, and in this particular case, the legality of "indecent" and "filthy" annoying speech was not denied.
Nothing has changed. Old obscenity laws would still have illegalized "obscene" email. The SCUSA is not about to rule "obscenity" legal. However, neither are they about to rule "indecency" illegal.
Mind you, "obscene" is a null phrase; it is a term in theology and in hysterics, not in the description of speech acts. Therefore, any law pertaining to regulate "obscene" speech is mad. However, such laws are not a new thing, nor does this case affect them.
Relax. If you want to have the freedom to speak in manners now considered "obscene", vote Libertarian. Meanwhile, speak fuckin' "indecently", you cocksuckin' motherfuckers.
There is a critical flaw in Mr. Thurrott's comparison of Linux advocacy and the advocacy of systems such as the Amiga and OS/2.
Both OS/2 and Amiga were dependent upon commercial success in order to remain useful for their users. Without commercial success, a proprietary system will fail to propagate; it will not be marketed or advertised; it will no longer be upgraded; most of its application development will cease; and, as the rest of the industry moves on as usual, it will fall behind technologically. (This last is true even if at its birth it was technologically superior to more commercially successful systems.) In short, it will not remain useful for the majority of its advocates, because they are dependent on circumstances outside their control for its viability.
Linux-based systems are not limited in this way. The vast, vast bulk of Linux's growth has not been due to commercial marketing. Because of the nature of free software, it is not dependent on any company's profit in order to keep being maintained and upgraded. Commercial success can be a benefit to Linux (though it can also be a peril -- see my post here) but commercial failure can never kill Linux.
How does this change the meaning of advocacy? In the case of a proprietary system (and this applies as strongly to the MacOS, which I favor, as to Amiga or OS/2) a significant portion of the advocate's motivation is to prevent his/her own investment in his/her favored system. This investment is not merely the amount of money the advocate has spent on software and equipment; his/her training and expertise as well as other forms of psychological investment (pride, for instance) also form important parts of it.
In psychology and sociology there is a concept known as cognitive dissonance. When a person has a large psychological investment in an idea or movement, that person does not want to see that idea disproven, or that movement fail, because it would mean that all his/her efforts and strivings for that idea or movement become worthless. The advocate's thinking is altered (not to say "blurred") by his/her interests. This is not a mental disorder; it is a part of our everyday thinking. We do not want our projects to fail because it would mean our effort has been wasted -- and so we work harder. We do not want our children to become drug addicts and criminals because it would mean that the love and care with which we have treated them has come to naught -- and so we love and care all the more, and teach all the better.
The advocate of Linux-based systems is not in this position. Linux cannot become wasted effort, because it is free. When we advocate Linux, we are doing it perhaps out of generosity (Let the rest of the world experience such a good system as I use!), perhaps out of abhorrence for lesser systems (Windows is so awful! Let's get rid of it!), or perhaps just out of desire to see our own work be more widely used (See what a good kernel patch I made!) -- but it is not out of fear that all our efforts will be wasted.
The proprietary-system advocate, on the other hand, is in a position even worse than that suggested above: Not only does s/he have to fear that his/her investments will be wasted, but because the system s/he favors is strictly under someone else's control -- that of its owner -- the advocate has very little influence over whether it succeeds or fails. The programmer of Windows applications may desire Windows to maintain its dominance on the desktop, but s/he can do little to ensure this. The Amiga users could do nothing to stop Commodore's mismanagement, and cannot guarantee that AmigaOS's present owners will do better.
Proprietary-system advocates can do three things: they can hope; they can beta-test; and they can raise a fuss. Open-system advocates can do so much more, that there's really no comparison.
I see a lot of people here saying they expect all manner of neat features in the 2.3.x experimental kernels. However, I don't see any inkling of what these neat features might be.
One thing I, for one, would like to see, is for the FreeS/WAN kernel patches to become part of the regular kernel distribution..
I see two problems with a Red-Hat-Linux-specific certification:
1) Certification changes for the worse the way skills are evaluated.
In the absence of certification, employers have no way to evaluate prospective employees' skills except the hard way. This may amount to probation periods for new hires, practical demonstrations of skill (fix this busted server and we'll hire you), or simply bringing trusted technical employees into the interview process.
In the presence of certification, employers tend to evaluate skills the easy way -- on the basis of certifications. This leads them to undervalue an employee who lacks certifications, and to overvalue one who has them. Both are errors, potentially grievous ones. The former harms both employee and employer; the latter mostly harms the employer.
Well-marketed certifications give employers the impression that they can safely rely on the certification as a credential, whether or not it is actually worthwhile. This is the nature of marketing -- just as ubiquitous marketing is able to make an inferior product such as Windows NT into "the standard", it is able to make an inferior or useless certification into "a standard". Naturally, once it is established as a "standard", employees are virtually required to obtain it.
The hazard for the certifying authority is this: if a certification can be made into a de-facto "standard", then the employment market for the relevant skillset becomes recursively dependent on that certification, and the certifying authority gets to ride the gravy train, while dragging the employment market through the dirt -- harming both employer and employee in the long run. This is arguably what Microsoft has done with the MCSE.
While there may seem to be little risk of such a degradation in the Linux employment market at present, it is certainly a possibility in the long run. To prevent this, it is in everyone's interest that employers get used to evaluating skills the hard way, even if they use certifications as part of this process. My recommendation is to bring trusted technical staff into the process of evaluating prospective hires. Who is better to tell you whether the candidate is qualified?
2) A Red-Hat-specific certification encourages, even without malice, Red Hat dominance.
Though Red Hat may have exactly zero imperialist or Microsoft-like intentions, it remains the case that if employers start accepting a Red Hat certification as a "standard" certification for Linux, it may be expected that they will follow this up by preferring Red Hat over other distributions. This will encourage software producers to fixate on Red Hat Linux as a "standard", as I have discussed elsewhere.
Further, because Red-Hat-specific skills will be expected of most people seeking Linux-related employment, a person seeking to maintain or develop skills on other distributions will be at a disadvantage, time-wise, to one who focuses solely on Red Hat Linux.
Finally, market dominance is in the business interests of any corporation; that's just what corporations do. "Every frustum longs to be a cone, and every vector dreams of matrices"* -- and every corporation wants to boost its stock value, even those which aren't publicly traded (yet). A certification may, in time, become another tool of this process -- again, with no hostile or imperialist intent on the part of the people at Red Hat.
Not to get down on maddog or anything, because this is really a pretty good expression of some concerns about Linux adoption -- but haven't we seen an awful lot of these recently?
It seems everyone is saying roughly the same thing:
1) The adoption of Linux-based OSes in a wider market is Good, provided it dilutes neither the freedom nor the hacker/geek appeal of the system.
2) Microsoft Office for Linux would cause wider Linux adoption, but this adoption would be too fast and reckless, and would damage both the freedom of the system (due to embrace-and-extend) and the cluefulness of the user base. A MS Linux distribution would be the same, but worse.
3) PHBs generally do not understand that the free-software model and the general attitude of openness and free exchange of information are what make Linux-based systems good, and if given the chance, may take steps that would damage this good.
To these commonly-observed points I would like to add a few, which I think have not been adequately addressed:
1) The Unintentional Hazard of Red Hat Linux
Red Hat may pose an unintentional hazard. While they clearly mean well, it is obvious by now that the mass media pay a great deal more attention to Red Hat than to other distributions, and that Red Hat, for tolerably obvious reasons, has no desire to change this fact. When they do notice other distros, the media tend to notice only other commercial distros, such as Caldera OpenLinux, and to ignore noncommercial ones such as Debian GNU/Linux and Slackware, even though Debian is presently the second-most-popular distribution, and has several arguable superiorities.
Red Hat may prove a hazard in that new programs, especially commercial applications, may be released in forms only suitable for use on Red Hat Linux. Besides being issued in RPM form -- which is not too much of a problem, but is an inconvenience, especially for new users -- they may be tailored to the set of libraries and other features present in the current Red Hat release, and possibly without testing for compatibility with other Linux-based operating systems.
In the case of free software releases this is not likely to pose a problem, because (for instance) the Debian maintainers could easily repackage the software in a Debian-compatible form. However, in the case of proprietary software, it is a serious problem, as proprietary-software houses are not as a rule interested in others repackaging their releases. While heavily political free-software advocates may not care whether proprietary software is available for their favorite noncommercial distro, such differences can clearly have an effect on the supportable user base of each these distributions.
2) Again, the Security Issue
As I have noted before, one issue critical to the good performance of Linux-based systems is security. As evidenced by the frequency with which newbie Linux users are rooted or otherwise cracked, security is being traded off for ease of use. This Must Stop.
We should expect that Linux-based systems will get easier to use, simply because so many people are now putting effort into that direction -- see the various documentation efforts, as well as the LUIGUI project. What we must be sure of, however, is that security is not sacrificed in this pursuit. Newbies and end-users need more help, not less, in securing their systems than do advanced users or sysadmins. Distros need to have default configurations that favor network security over network openness -- ftpd and the like being disabled or limited by default; ssh or SSLTelnet being preferred over Telnet; etc.
Another element of this point is that updating is one function which also needs to be made accessible to the end-user and the newbie. Keeping one's system up to date is an essential part of protecting it from attacks. One of our boasting-points is the fact that security patches for Linux systems are available quicker than patches for, say, NT -- but if these patches are not applied, the effort is wasted. In my mind, Debian has done the best job in making updating easy -- apt-get update ; apt-get upgrade is all the user need do, and even this could in theory be automated further. (One possibility would be to have an option which updates only packages whose installation requires no user interaction, and running this update every day in cron.daily.)
In any case, security must not be neglected in favor of wider adoption or ease of use, or the benefits of Linux-based systems will be severely hampered.
3) The Hacker/Geek Arrogance Factor.
Several people here have expressed views in common with Pablo Averbuj's Letter to Debian about Friendliness, whose "Executive Summary" read as follows:
1. Stupid Users are Bad. 2. Stupid Users are Bad for Debian. therefore: 3. Stupid Users should be ignored.
While it's not fair at all to dismiss M. Averbuj's position as one of simple hacker/geek arrogance, there has been no end of arrogant hackers and geeks who have rallied behind a very similar position: namely than Linux is For Geeks Only, and that no effort should be made to popularize it.
The problem I have with this position is that it leads its followers to marginalize themselves, and I suspect that if followed long enough and in the face of mounting popularization, it will lead to the formation of a faction with a bunker mentality: self-identified "hardcore" Linux hackers who want nothing to do with anything like ease of use or popularization, and who decry all such efforts as misuse or misappropriation of the True Hackerly Linux.
Such an exodus, of course, would only reduce the cluefulness of any popularized Linux. It would also lead to more bogus political infighting of the kind we already see too much of. This would be Bad, not only because it would make us all look like flamers, but because it would reduce the amount of productive cooperation in the whole effort.
Please don't call it World War III. "World War III" has traditionally referred to a nuclear exchange between superpowers, while the present situation would more likely lead to a fully-informed air- and ground-forces escalation than to the panicked, uninformed, "get them before they get us" escalation to nuclear exchange of the classic WWIII scenario.
Given the political importance in the present conflict of international bodies such as NATO and the UN, as well as ethnic and political factions within nation-states, it seems like the present situation would more likely escalate into something resembling a global civil war.
Besides, "Global Civil War" is what it was called in Robotech. Maybe the "asteroid" is really the SDF-1.:)
Don't go to college to learn to be a better geek. Academic computer science won't turn you into a system administrator, Web designer, or Perl hacker. You won't learn how to optimize a kernel configuration, recover files from a crashed disk, build a fast database, or tell your boss nicely that his ideas about information technology are stupid or violate the laws of physics. You may learn a lot of good theory -- but you could pick that up elsewhere, too.
Go to college to learn about culture, or history, or philosophy, or literature. Go to college to sit up late nights screaming at your best friends about what an idiot Rene Descartes was. Go to college to watch your best friends do the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Go to college to find out what the hell this postmodernism thing is that Larry Wall's always on about. Go to college to refute postmodernism, and to be called postmodern for doing it. Go to college to meet people who will be impressed with your intelligence instead of thinking of it as threatening.
Don't go to an easy college, and don't go to a place that lets you get by doing nothing but technical stuff. Go to a place that makes you do a lot of heavy reading and writing. Take tough courses. Learn to write well; not only will it help when your boss asks you to document your project, but it'll also help you sound better on Slashdot and USENET. Don't scorn "well-roundedness" or "communications skills"; the stars of geek culture are no bunch of illiterates.
Study music. Music, as Pythagoras demonstrated, is a form of mathematics, and musicians, like hackers, keep pounding on their work in search of the Right Thing. Study psychology and sociology. They represent our attempts to figure out how the systems called the human mind and human society work, so that we can make them work better.
Read Nietzsche. Refute your parents' religion. Then refute your refutation.
Get into politics. Which politics don't really matter -- be a socialist, or a libertarian, or even a Republican if you have to. Go to activist events. Take politics courses. Insist on bringing up free software in the middle of your classes. Derive the Debian Free Software Guidelines from the works of John Locke.
(Damn. I'm rambling. I sound like that fake Kurt Vonnegut graduation address email forward that whoever-it-was turned into a song. Use sunscreen.)
Yes, but when you're the guy with root, you have to think about these things. Would it be honest to post to Slashdot all day defending privacy from government intrusion, and then go to work and make it easy for your fundamentalist boss to scan everyone's email for "obscenity" and "blasphemy"? Or to rail against spam, and then, when Marketing asks you to give them the ability to send spam, to go along with it?
In any profession where power can be abused --- in other words, in any profession --- people need to think about ethics. Doctors and lawyers do it all the time, and a person can have his/her license to practice medicine or law revoked if s/he violates the ethical standards of his/her professional organization.
System administration is no different really. Saying that just because your employer owns the computers that you are ethically justified in following any order they give you regarding the computer is to create a moral vacuum.
Libertarianism is neither socialism nor plutocracy
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Al Gore Buzzword Bingo
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· Score: 2
> They stand for people with money buying what > they damn well please with it.
How do you wish to restrict what people with money buy? Would you prefer that we (I say "we" because both of us, I assume, have money) not be allowed to buy tobacco? Or fur coats? The present regime in the U.S. thinks we should not be allowed to buy Cuban cigars or domestically-produced hemp products. Do you think these are reasonable restrictions on our property rights? I don't.
> I'm considering it, but I'm also considering > their use of the Pinkertons and other private, > "free-enterprise" thugs.
A libertarian government, concerned with protecting the people from force, threat of force, and fraud, would by no means have ignored such abuses. "Libertarian government" does not mean "no government"; it means a government whose sole concern is the protection of individual liberties from violation by (once again the refrain) force, threat of force, or fraud. If the bosses hire thugs to attack union leaders, then the thugs are guilty of assault and battery, and the bosses complicit.
> Don't get economic systems mixed up with > political systems. That's something that really > bugs me about the U.S.; people think > "capitalism", "free market", "democracy", and > "freedom" are all synonymns. They're not.
I never mentioned democracy.:) I for one think that libertarians would do better to refer to (and support) "the free market" over "capitalism". The first, after all, refers to a way of doing trade; the second refers to a system of investment. It is trade, not investment, which is presently subject to more freedom-infringing restrictions.
We've gotten where we are without political "leaders".
The kind of leadership that free software calls for is technical leadership --- that exemplified by Linus and Alan's work on the kernel, or Larry Wall's on Perl.
If free software achieves world domination, it will be because of the leadership of technical leaders like Linus and Alan --- making free software into the best damn code that's ever been written --- and not from the proclamations and denouncements emitted by politicians.
I'm a system administrator. It is not because of a political proclamation that I choose to use Debian GNU/Linux on the systems I run. It's because of the code. It's because the software is good. No amount of politicking will make a system stabler, a kernel faster, or a GUI friendlier.
As you may recall, many of the worst excesses of "capitalism" have stemmed from big government aiding industry, often in a corrupt fashion. Consider for instance the use of police and National Guard troops to attack striking workers, or the continued corruption of the military-industrial complex, or the continued federal support of Big Tobacco through subsidies (even as with the other hand the government prosecutes the tobacco companies).
Libertarians do not stand for government support and subsidy of industry. Libertarians do not stand for government being used as the tool of the rich against the working class.
Libertarians stand for the government having one purpose and one purpose alone: the protection of individuals against violent force, threat of force, and fraud.
There is nothing in Libertarianism that speaks against labor unions, cooperatives, worker-owned businesses, and other forms of empowerment of the working class. Libertarianism allows for whatever steps a person may take to improve his/her position in the market --- including unionizing or cooperating with others --- as long as those steps do not involve the use of force. The market competition which libertarianism supports permits cooperation within a competitive framework --- whereas the forced, pseudo-cooperative framework which socialism mandates does not permit competition.
Socialism would end oppression by placing all power in the hands of the government, which is presently the largest source of oppression on the planet --- "whitewashing a wall by painting it black", to quote Hagbard Celine. Libertarianism, by directly undercutting this oppressive force, is in a sense more true to the intentions of socialism than socialism itself is.
I agree wholeheartedly. While I usually find myself agreeing with what ESR says in re FS/OSS, and I have rarely found anything to object to in the works of the other signators, I find it very troublesome that they would consent to the ascription of their views to "the Open Source Community". ESR and Larry Wall are geniuses; the others at least have their hearts in the right place; but none of them have the authority to speak for us all, because nobody can have that authority.
How can you "speak for" a bazaar? How can you "speak for" a "community" where the only thing we really have in common is the code? It's a nonsensical proposition, but one that's bound to confuse the press and piss people off. It reminds me of animal-rights activists who claim to speak for deer, or trees, or mink --- as good as their intentions may be, they're hallucinating their authority.
To ESR --- as much as we may agree with you most of the time, you do not speak for "the Open Source Community". Nobody, no matter how wizardly, no matter how eloquent, can do that --- because the group so labeled is neither homogenous nor even entirely self-identified as such. There are people whom you don't like and don't agree with, and who don't like or agree with you, who are yet users and writers of free software just as legitimately as you are.
Speak, if you will, for yourself or for groups which actually are capable of appointing you to speak for them. Speak for OSI. But please don't claim to speak for everyone who uses the software; all it does is mislead the media, agitate the worried to paranoia, and the paranoids to flaming.
This is just one of several bugs I caught in browsing the new entries (and some others). Here's the text of a message I sent to esr on the subject:
It's great to see a new Jargon File out there. However, in browsing through the HTML version I found more than a few bugs... some technical, some content, and some rather fiddly. These are listed in order of the afflicted entry, since I'm writing them as I go through it. I'm not reading every entry, so I'll probably miss more than a few...
1. In the entry for 'Borg'... the show was 'Star Trek: The Next Generation', not 'The New Generation'.
2. The link to the Acronymphomania FAQ, in the entry for 'C|N>K', is broken.
3. (Not a bug, but an addition) The 'dogcow' also appears in several other Mac printer drivers besides the LaserWriter, notably including the (discontinued) StyleWriters.
4. I have generally heard 'exploit' used to refer not to a security hole itself, but to a program or routine which makes use of the hole. Hence, CERT publishes information about holes; www.rootshell.com publishes exploits.
5. There is an entry for 'fandango' (between 'fan' and 'fandango on core') but no definition within it.
6. (Marginal) A 'forum' may be on the Web.
7. (More marginal) 'Gweep' is still very live jargon. One vector for its spread out of WPI is the anime fanfic saga "Undocumented Features", written by a group of WPI students and their friends. http://www.eyrie.net/uf/
8. (Not sure if this is a bug or intentional self-reference) The index to the 'I' section is indexed within itself, under 'index'.
9. The links from 'intro' to 'screen' aren't.
10. The index listing for 'M' references the entry for 'M$'.
11. There is a stray <p> in the entry for 'patch pumpkin'.
12. The link to Slashdot in the entry for 'slashdot effect' is broken in the same way as the link to Acronymphomania. Slashdot itself might someday deserve an entry.
13. Same with the 'tracking spamhausen' link on 'spamhaus'. This seems to be a common problem with external links.
14. '404 compliant' should be under [^A-Za-z], not Z. Though at least it is self-documenting.
Okay, enough bugs for now.:) Thanks again for the new jargon!
Is there a reason that character entities aren't getting translated in preview (and possibly in posting)? < > should be angle brackets.
Simple really. Get a good job, make a lot of money, live on the cheap so you can save a lot, put it all in mutual funds, and retire in a few years. Presto -- unemployment.
Slashdot Mirror
The whois data *is* intellectual property. Specifically, it is the property of the registrants. My employer owns the information regarding its registration; this is why we are allowed to edit or destroy it.
If NSI owned our whois entry, then they could sue us if we changed our contact addresses to false or nonexistent ones, because we would thereby be damaging their property. However, since the entry is in fact ours, we are allowed to.
Furthermore, if NSI owned that information, then we would have to agree to surrender our registry information to their ownership. Obviously we didn't do that.
That's not a customer list; it's a database of other people's information. It was so before NSI maintained it, and it will remain so after they no longer maintain it.
Actually, the Cato Institute is not a right-wing group, but rather a libertarian group. Not to repeat what everyone's probably already heard a few times by now, but libertarianism combines economic conservatism with social liberalism: supporting limited government which keeps its hands off both the economy and people's private lives.
This should be distinguished from the right-wing (across-the-board conservative or Republican) viewpoint, which supports government meddling in "morals" issues. Republicans support prayer in schools, the War on (Some) Drugs, and immigration restrictions (just for instance), all of which Libertarians oppose.
In fact, the Republican Party supports far more government meddling in the economy than Libertarians do. Republicans support increased government spending on the military-industrial complex, as well as on corporate welfare. Libertarians oppose both: the government should, we claim, neither help (as the Republicans would have) nor oppose (as Democrats and Socialists would have) corporations, except in cases where corporations violate individual rights. (For instance, Libertarians oppose the use of violence to support corporate interests (e.g. union-busting, colonialist wars (the Gulf War, e.g.), and so forth.)
Actually, "evolution" does not imply that anything is getting better or more complicated. It is in fact contrary to the biological usage of the word to refer to something as "more highly evolved".
Evolution is simply the continued process of adaptation to a changing environment, through variable replication (i.e. mutation) and selection.
That's all.
It is not the triumphant ascent of mankind from the primordial goo. Humans are no more "highly evolved" than are the current population of bacteria or mosses or fish; we simply have evolved to fit a different ecological niche.
It seems to me that one of the things that the Net community is good at is spontaneously organizing to point out harmful bullshit. For instance, consider the exposure of the original Pentium division bug -- leaked all over USENET while Intel was still denying its existence. If it hadn't been for USENET, it probably never would have gotten any press: bullshit ("There is no bug, and besides, it's not a very big one") would have won. More recently, the Mindcraft scam, as with countless other Microsoft crimes, might not have been exposed if it weren't for the Net in general, and Slashdot (and similar forums) in particular.
... can we mobilize this ability in defense of our geek (and goth, and punk) brethren (and sistren) in America's high schools? I think we can. All we need to do is mobilize something like the Slashdot Effect -- and target it on offending schools.
... but it just might help. Sites like High School Underground, and forums like these on Slashdot, are a start -- but in order to actually change the world, we need to meet the offenders on their own ground, and get them the message that their behavior is intolerable.
So
More than a few high schools now have their own Web pages. Lots of high school teachers and administrators have their own email addresses. (They're probably all on AOL, but that's no matter.) And every high school principal or headmaster, I'm sure, has a telephone.
So perhaps what we need is for geeks, goths, and other HS outsiders to tell their stories of harassment and abuse -- but to tell them with the names and email addresses of the offending administrators. When Mr. Jones says that "it's just part of growing up" to be beaten by classmates, or Ms. Brown suspends a student for wearing black, or Dr. Smith encourages students to mock and harass those who don't attend pep rallies -- Mr. Jones, Ms. Brown, and Dr. Smith should get mailboxes full of polite condemnation from educated, intelligent, and successful geeks.
It's just an idea
"This Pournelle guy" also can't write decent SF yet gets his name on a lot of Larry Niven books.
Apparently, he also was kicked off ARPANET, back in the day:
MIT Maximum Confusion PDP-10
MC ITS.1488. PWORD.2632.
TTY 57
16. Lusers, Fair Share = 86%
*:login pourne
That account has been temporarily turned off.
Reason:
Think of it as evolution in action.
Any questions may be directed to USER-ACCOUNTS
*
Read the changelogs. Better yet, dig up old versions and check them yourself. "Eric Conspiracy" has had an entry for a long time. In fact, the entry might even date back to GLS's editorship.
I think you missed my point. I was discussing the psychology of advocacy, not the long-term viability of Linux. However, I'll gladly opine on your topic as well.
You claim that "rabid advocates" cause prospective users to avoid Linux. I think this is unproven. For every user who says, "Gee, those Linux people are a bunch of nuts!" there are probably several who say, "What do those people have that's so good they can brag about it so much? They mock Windows for crashing all the time -- is their system really that much stabler? Gee, I should check it out!" This is just as likely a reaction as the one you suggest -- though in my opinion there is no proof of either.
I am quite sick of hearing people say "Stop flaming! You'll scare the newbies away!" when all around us the newbies pile in like clowns into a VW Beetle. The fact of the matter is that nobody is scaring users away from Linux. Linux-based systems' user base is expanding constantly and with increasing speed -- and it is beyond the power of half-incoherent flamers to stop this growth. I'd just like to see them try!
One of the points where Linux-based systems differ from proprietary systems is that Linux, which largely lacks marketing and advertising power, is forced to rely on a much more primitive way of proving its worth: the truth. Even the commercial distros do not have the marketing funds to pull off the kind of Big Lies that Microsoft executes. Microsoft can lie and say that their OS is stabler or faster or more secure; we can come around and prove that ours is.
The amusing thing about this method is that while it's not hard at all to convert someone from a belief in a lie to a belief in a contrary lie, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to make someone who knows the truth accept a lie instead. Linux users don't get converted to Windows. It just doesn't happen. We don't need a monopoly position to force our users to stick with our OSes; our stuff actually is better.
The idea that the Internet is some sort of spiritual realm would be laughable, were it not so frightening that someone would come up with it.
In the ancient world, people resorted to spiritualistic explanations because they honestly did not know what caused the thunder, or the phases of the moon, or the seasons. They believed that there was no way that we could learn what "really" caused these phenomena, and so they ascribed the phenomena to the gods or spirits. As our knowledge of the world progressed, we learned that we can know what really causes all these things. We can formulate physical, material explanations of them all.
Thunder is not the wrath of Zeus or Jehovah; it is the explosion of the air caused by lightning, which is an electrostatic discharge. The phases of the moon are not caused by it being devoured and regurgitated by dragons, nor are they the menstrual cycle of a goddess; they are caused by the angle formed by the sun, moon, and earth. The seasons result from the tilt of the earth altering the exposure of the two hemispheres to the sun's rays.
The way we find out these explanations is called the scientific method: the method of observation, hypothesis, and experiment. The knowledge that results from the scientific method is properly called natural history or natural philosophy, though in this century we've slipped to simply calling it science or scientific knowledge. The uses to which we put this knowledge are called technology, and the method by which we create technology is called engineering.
Technology works because the scientific method works. The scientific method works because materialism -- the belief that the workings of the universe are physical and knowable, not mystical and unknowable -- is true.
To spiritualize technology is to invent an absurdity. However, worse than that, it is to demonstrate the very truth which distinguishes technology from mysticism: the fruits of technology are available even to those who do not understand the principles of science upon which engineering rests. The boons which science makes possible are useful even to people who do not believe in the scientific method.
(Contrast this with spiritualism, mysticism, and religion. Religionists are always after us to have Faith. If we do not have Faith, we cannot, they say, receive the blessings that religion has to offer. Televangelists reject the scientific method even as they use its fruits, the technology of radio broadcasting, to reach their gullible audiences. The ingratitude is astounding.)
The fact that people spiritualize and mystify the Internet is evidence that scientific education is failing. We cannot maintain our present level of technical advancement if our society slips into ignorance of science -- if we are deluded by spiritism. Already fundamentalists oppose the teaching of evolution in schools because it conflicts with their mystical, spiritual belief about the origins of life. If the idea that the Internet is a spiritual entity got into the general population, the next thing we know, the religionists would want to prohibit the masses from learning that it's really just a bunch of computers and wires. Electronic engineering would become the province of priests.
Now, class, go read "If This Goes On..." by Robert A. Heinlein.
Please read the article. "Obscene" speech has never been ruled protected, and in this particular case, the legality of "indecent" and "filthy" annoying speech was not denied.
Nothing has changed. Old obscenity laws would still have illegalized "obscene" email. The SCUSA is not about to rule "obscenity" legal. However, neither are they about to rule "indecency" illegal.
Mind you, "obscene" is a null phrase; it is a term in theology and in hysterics, not in the description of speech acts. Therefore, any law pertaining to regulate "obscene" speech is mad. However, such laws are not a new thing, nor does this case affect them.
Relax. If you want to have the freedom to speak in manners now considered "obscene", vote Libertarian. Meanwhile, speak fuckin' "indecently", you cocksuckin' motherfuckers.
There is a critical flaw in Mr. Thurrott's comparison of Linux advocacy and the advocacy of systems such as the Amiga and OS/2.
Both OS/2 and Amiga were dependent upon commercial success in order to remain useful for their users. Without commercial success, a proprietary system will fail to propagate; it will not be marketed or advertised; it will no longer be upgraded; most of its application development will cease; and, as the rest of the industry moves on as usual, it will fall behind technologically. (This last is true even if at its birth it was technologically superior to more commercially successful systems.) In short, it will not remain useful for the majority of its advocates, because they are dependent on circumstances outside their control for its viability.
Linux-based systems are not limited in this way. The vast, vast bulk of Linux's growth has not been due to commercial marketing. Because of the nature of free software, it is not dependent on any company's profit in order to keep being maintained and upgraded. Commercial success can be a benefit to Linux (though it can also be a peril -- see my post here) but commercial failure can never kill Linux.
How does this change the meaning of advocacy? In the case of a proprietary system (and this applies as strongly to the MacOS, which I favor, as to Amiga or OS/2) a significant portion of the advocate's motivation is to prevent his/her own investment in his/her favored system. This investment is not merely the amount of money the advocate has spent on software and equipment; his/her training and expertise as well as other forms of psychological investment (pride, for instance) also form important parts of it.
In psychology and sociology there is a concept known as cognitive dissonance. When a person has a large psychological investment in an idea or movement, that person does not want to see that idea disproven, or that movement fail, because it would mean that all his/her efforts and strivings for that idea or movement become worthless. The advocate's thinking is altered (not to say "blurred") by his/her interests. This is not a mental disorder; it is a part of our everyday thinking. We do not want our projects to fail because it would mean our effort has been wasted -- and so we work harder. We do not want our children to become drug addicts and criminals because it would mean that the love and care with which we have treated them has come to naught -- and so we love and care all the more, and teach all the better.
The advocate of Linux-based systems is not in this position. Linux cannot become wasted effort, because it is free. When we advocate Linux, we are doing it perhaps out of generosity (Let the rest of the world experience such a good system as I use!), perhaps out of abhorrence for lesser systems (Windows is so awful! Let's get rid of it!), or perhaps just out of desire to see our own work be more widely used (See what a good kernel patch I made!) -- but it is not out of fear that all our efforts will be wasted.
The proprietary-system advocate, on the other hand, is in a position even worse than that suggested above: Not only does s/he have to fear that his/her investments will be wasted, but because the system s/he favors is strictly under someone else's control -- that of its owner -- the advocate has very little influence over whether it succeeds or fails. The programmer of Windows applications may desire Windows to maintain its dominance on the desktop, but s/he can do little to ensure this. The Amiga users could do nothing to stop Commodore's mismanagement, and cannot guarantee that AmigaOS's present owners will do better.
Proprietary-system advocates can do three things: they can hope; they can beta-test; and they can raise a fuss. Open-system advocates can do so much more, that there's really no comparison.
I see a lot of people here saying they expect all manner of neat features in the 2.3.x experimental kernels. However, I don't see any inkling of what these neat features might be.
One thing I, for one, would like to see, is for the FreeS/WAN kernel patches to become part of the regular kernel distribution..
What other features do we need/want in a kernel?
I see two problems with a Red-Hat-Linux-specific certification:
1) Certification changes for the worse the way skills are evaluated.
In the absence of certification, employers have no way to evaluate prospective employees' skills except the hard way. This may amount to probation periods for new hires, practical demonstrations of skill (fix this busted server and we'll hire you), or simply bringing trusted technical employees into the interview process.
In the presence of certification, employers tend to evaluate skills the easy way -- on the basis of certifications. This leads them to undervalue an employee who lacks certifications, and to overvalue one who has them. Both are errors, potentially grievous ones. The former harms both employee and employer; the latter mostly harms the employer.
Well-marketed certifications give employers the impression that they can safely rely on the certification as a credential, whether or not it is actually worthwhile. This is the nature of marketing -- just as ubiquitous marketing is able to make an inferior product such as Windows NT into "the standard", it is able to make an inferior or useless certification into "a standard". Naturally, once it is established as a "standard", employees are virtually required to obtain it.
The hazard for the certifying authority is this: if a certification can be made into a de-facto "standard", then the employment market for the relevant skillset becomes recursively dependent on that certification, and the certifying authority gets to ride the gravy train, while dragging the employment market through the dirt -- harming both employer and employee in the long run. This is arguably what Microsoft has done with the MCSE.
While there may seem to be little risk of such a degradation in the Linux employment market at present, it is certainly a possibility in the long run. To prevent this, it is in everyone's interest that employers get used to evaluating skills the hard way, even if they use certifications as part of this process. My recommendation is to bring trusted technical staff into the process of evaluating prospective hires. Who is better to tell you whether the candidate is qualified?
2) A Red-Hat-specific certification encourages, even without malice, Red Hat dominance.
Though Red Hat may have exactly zero imperialist or Microsoft-like intentions, it remains the case that if employers start accepting a Red Hat certification as a "standard" certification for Linux, it may be expected that they will follow this up by preferring Red Hat over other distributions. This will encourage software producers to fixate on Red Hat Linux as a "standard", as I have discussed elsewhere.
Further, because Red-Hat-specific skills will be expected of most people seeking Linux-related employment, a person seeking to maintain or develop skills on other distributions will be at a disadvantage, time-wise, to one who focuses solely on Red Hat Linux.
Finally, market dominance is in the business interests of any corporation; that's just what corporations do. "Every frustum longs to be a cone, and every vector dreams of matrices"* -- and every corporation wants to boost its stock value, even those which aren't publicly traded (yet). A certification may, in time, become another tool of this process -- again, with no hostile or imperialist intent on the part of the people at Red Hat.
* Stanslaw Lem, Cyberiad.
Not to get down on maddog or anything, because this is really a pretty good expression of some concerns about Linux adoption -- but haven't we seen an awful lot of these recently?
It seems everyone is saying roughly the same thing:
1) The adoption of Linux-based OSes in a wider market is Good, provided it dilutes neither the freedom nor the hacker/geek appeal of the system.
2) Microsoft Office for Linux would cause wider Linux adoption, but this adoption would be too fast and reckless, and would damage both the freedom of the system (due to embrace-and-extend) and the cluefulness of the user base. A MS Linux distribution would be the same, but worse.
3) PHBs generally do not understand that the free-software model and the general attitude of openness and free exchange of information are what make Linux-based systems good, and if given the chance, may take steps that would damage this good.
To these commonly-observed points I would like to add a few, which I think have not been adequately addressed:
1) The Unintentional Hazard of Red Hat Linux
Red Hat may pose an unintentional hazard. While they clearly mean well, it is obvious by now that the mass media pay a great deal more attention to Red Hat than to other distributions, and that Red Hat, for tolerably obvious reasons, has no desire to change this fact. When they do notice other distros, the media tend to notice only other commercial distros, such as Caldera OpenLinux, and to ignore noncommercial ones such as Debian GNU/Linux and Slackware, even though Debian is presently the second-most-popular distribution, and has several arguable superiorities.
Red Hat may prove a hazard in that new programs, especially commercial applications, may be released in forms only suitable for use on Red Hat Linux. Besides being issued in RPM form -- which is not too much of a problem, but is an inconvenience, especially for new users -- they may be tailored to the set of libraries and other features present in the current Red Hat release, and possibly without testing for compatibility with other Linux-based operating systems.
In the case of free software releases this is not likely to pose a problem, because (for instance) the Debian maintainers could easily repackage the software in a Debian-compatible form. However, in the case of proprietary software, it is a serious problem, as proprietary-software houses are not as a rule interested in others repackaging their releases. While heavily political free-software advocates may not care whether proprietary software is available for their favorite noncommercial distro, such differences can clearly have an effect on the supportable user base of each these distributions.
2) Again, the Security Issue
As I have noted before, one issue critical to the good performance of Linux-based systems is security. As evidenced by the frequency with which newbie Linux users are rooted or otherwise cracked, security is being traded off for ease of use. This Must Stop.
We should expect that Linux-based systems will get easier to use, simply because so many people are now putting effort into that direction -- see the various documentation efforts, as well as the LUIGUI project. What we must be sure of, however, is that security is not sacrificed in this pursuit. Newbies and end-users need more help, not less, in securing their systems than do advanced users or sysadmins. Distros need to have default configurations that favor network security over network openness -- ftpd and the like being disabled or limited by default; ssh or SSLTelnet being preferred over Telnet; etc.
Another element of this point is that updating is one function which also needs to be made accessible to the end-user and the newbie. Keeping one's system up to date is an essential part of protecting it from attacks. One of our boasting-points is the fact that security patches for Linux systems are available quicker than patches for, say, NT -- but if these patches are not applied, the effort is wasted. In my mind, Debian has done the best job in making updating easy -- apt-get update ; apt-get upgrade is all the user need do, and even this could in theory be automated further. (One possibility would be to have an option which updates only packages whose installation requires no user interaction, and running this update every day in cron.daily.)
In any case, security must not be neglected in favor of wider adoption or ease of use, or the benefits of Linux-based systems will be severely hampered.
3) The Hacker/Geek Arrogance Factor.
Several people here have expressed views in common with Pablo Averbuj's Letter to Debian about Friendliness, whose "Executive Summary" read as follows:
1. Stupid Users are Bad.
2. Stupid Users are Bad for Debian.
therefore:
3. Stupid Users should be ignored.
While it's not fair at all to dismiss M. Averbuj's position as one of simple hacker/geek arrogance, there has been no end of arrogant hackers and geeks who have rallied behind a very similar position: namely than Linux is For Geeks Only, and that no effort should be made to popularize it.
The problem I have with this position is that it leads its followers to marginalize themselves, and I suspect that if followed long enough and in the face of mounting popularization, it will lead to the formation of a faction with a bunker mentality: self-identified "hardcore" Linux hackers who want nothing to do with anything like ease of use or popularization, and who decry all such efforts as misuse or misappropriation of the True Hackerly Linux.
Such an exodus, of course, would only reduce the cluefulness of any popularized Linux. It would also lead to more bogus political infighting of the kind we already see too much of. This would be Bad, not only because it would make us all look like flamers, but because it would reduce the amount of productive cooperation in the whole effort.
Please don't call it World War III. "World War III" has traditionally referred to a nuclear exchange between superpowers, while the present situation would more likely lead to a fully-informed air- and ground-forces escalation than to the panicked, uninformed, "get them before they get us" escalation to nuclear exchange of the classic WWIII scenario.
:)
Given the political importance in the present conflict of international bodies such as NATO and the UN, as well as ethnic and political factions within nation-states, it seems like the present situation would more likely escalate into something resembling a global civil war.
Besides, "Global Civil War" is what it was called in Robotech. Maybe the "asteroid" is really the SDF-1.
Which of the proprietary Unix vendors is doing the best right now?
Which of the proprietary Unix vendors is the only one which doesn't also sell NT boxes?
(Hint. Three letters. They have a rather well-recognized, square, purple logo. And they aren't about to change it.)
Well said, dria!
It's the code that is our representative.
Flamewars happen. I think I'll go recompile a kernel or two.
And I suppose UNaltered DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED?
Don't go to college to learn to be a better geek. Academic computer science won't turn you into a system administrator, Web designer, or Perl hacker. You won't learn how to optimize a kernel configuration, recover files from a crashed disk, build a fast database, or tell your boss nicely that his ideas about information technology are stupid or violate the laws of physics. You may learn a lot of good theory -- but you could pick that up elsewhere, too.
Go to college to learn about culture, or history, or philosophy, or literature. Go to college to sit up late nights screaming at your best friends about what an idiot Rene Descartes was. Go to college to watch your best friends do the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Go to college to find out what the hell this postmodernism thing is that Larry Wall's always on about. Go to college to refute postmodernism, and to be called postmodern for doing it. Go to college to meet people who will be impressed with your intelligence instead of thinking of it as threatening.
Don't go to an easy college, and don't go to a place that lets you get by doing nothing but technical stuff. Go to a place that makes you do a lot of heavy reading and writing. Take tough courses. Learn to write well; not only will it help when your boss asks you to document your project, but it'll also help you sound better on Slashdot and USENET. Don't scorn "well-roundedness" or "communications skills"; the stars of geek culture are no bunch of illiterates.
Study music. Music, as Pythagoras demonstrated, is a form of mathematics, and musicians, like hackers, keep pounding on their work in search of the Right Thing. Study psychology and sociology. They represent our attempts to figure out how the systems called the human mind and human society work, so that we can make them work better.
Read Nietzsche. Refute your parents' religion. Then refute your refutation.
Get into politics. Which politics don't really matter -- be a socialist, or a libertarian, or even a Republican if you have to. Go to activist events. Take politics courses. Insist on bringing up free software in the middle of your classes. Derive the Debian Free Software Guidelines from the works of John Locke.
(Damn. I'm rambling. I sound like that fake Kurt Vonnegut graduation address email forward that whoever-it-was turned into a song. Use sunscreen.)
Yes, but when you're the guy with root, you have to think about these things. Would it be honest to post to Slashdot all day defending privacy from government intrusion, and then go to work and make it easy for your fundamentalist boss to scan everyone's email for "obscenity" and "blasphemy"? Or to rail against spam, and then, when Marketing asks you to give them the ability to send spam, to go along with it?
In any profession where power can be abused --- in other words, in any profession --- people need to think about ethics. Doctors and lawyers do it all the time, and a person can have his/her license to practice medicine or law revoked if s/he violates the ethical standards of his/her professional organization.
System administration is no different really. Saying that just because your employer owns the computers that you are ethically justified in following any order they give you regarding the computer is to create a moral vacuum.
> They stand for people with money buying what
> they damn well please with it.
How do you wish to restrict what people with money buy? Would you prefer that we (I say "we" because both of us, I assume, have money) not be allowed to buy tobacco? Or fur coats? The present regime in the U.S. thinks we should not be allowed to buy Cuban cigars or domestically-produced hemp products. Do you think these are reasonable restrictions on our property rights? I don't.
> I'm considering it, but I'm also considering
> their use of the Pinkertons and other private,
> "free-enterprise" thugs.
A libertarian government, concerned with protecting the people from force, threat of force, and fraud, would by no means have ignored such abuses. "Libertarian government" does not mean "no government"; it means a government whose sole concern is the protection of individual liberties from violation by (once again the refrain) force, threat of force, or fraud. If the bosses hire thugs to attack union leaders, then the thugs are guilty of assault and battery, and the bosses complicit.
> Don't get economic systems mixed up with
> political systems. That's something that really
> bugs me about the U.S.; people think
> "capitalism", "free market", "democracy", and
> "freedom" are all synonymns. They're not.
I never mentioned democracy.
We've gotten where we are without political "leaders".
The kind of leadership that free software calls for is technical leadership --- that exemplified by Linus and Alan's work on the kernel, or Larry Wall's on Perl.
If free software achieves world domination, it will be because of the leadership of technical leaders like Linus and Alan --- making free software into the best damn code that's ever been written --- and not from the proclamations and denouncements emitted by politicians.
I'm a system administrator. It is not because of a political proclamation that I choose to use Debian GNU/Linux on the systems I run. It's because of the code. It's because the software is good. No amount of politicking will make a system stabler, a kernel faster, or a GUI friendlier.
As you may recall, many of the worst excesses of "capitalism" have stemmed from big government aiding industry, often in a corrupt fashion. Consider for instance the use of police and National Guard troops to attack striking workers, or the continued corruption of the military-industrial complex, or the continued federal support of Big Tobacco through subsidies (even as with the other hand the government prosecutes the tobacco companies).
Libertarians do not stand for government support and subsidy of industry. Libertarians do not stand for government being used as the tool of the rich against the working class.
Libertarians stand for the government having one purpose and one purpose alone: the protection of individuals against violent force, threat of force, and fraud.
There is nothing in Libertarianism that speaks against labor unions, cooperatives, worker-owned businesses, and other forms of empowerment of the working class. Libertarianism allows for whatever steps a person may take to improve his/her position in the market --- including unionizing or cooperating with others --- as long as those steps do not involve the use of force. The market competition which libertarianism supports permits cooperation within a competitive framework --- whereas the forced, pseudo-cooperative framework which socialism mandates does not permit competition.
Socialism would end oppression by placing all power in the hands of the government, which is presently the largest source of oppression on the planet --- "whitewashing a wall by painting it black", to quote Hagbard Celine. Libertarianism, by directly undercutting this oppressive force, is in a sense more true to the intentions of socialism than socialism itself is.
I agree wholeheartedly. While I usually find myself agreeing with what ESR says in re FS/OSS, and I have rarely found anything to object to in the works of the other signators, I find it very troublesome that they would consent to the ascription of their views to "the Open Source Community". ESR and Larry Wall are geniuses; the others at least have their hearts in the right place; but none of them have the authority to speak for us all, because nobody can have that authority.
How can you "speak for" a bazaar? How can you "speak for" a "community" where the only thing we really have in common is the code? It's a nonsensical proposition, but one that's bound to confuse the press and piss people off. It reminds me of animal-rights activists who claim to speak for deer, or trees, or mink --- as good as their intentions may be, they're hallucinating their authority.
To ESR --- as much as we may agree with you most of the time, you do not speak for "the Open Source Community". Nobody, no matter how wizardly, no matter how eloquent, can do that --- because the group so labeled is neither homogenous nor even entirely self-identified as such. There are people whom you don't like and don't agree with, and who don't like or agree with you, who are yet users and writers of free software just as legitimately as you are.
Speak, if you will, for yourself or for groups which actually are capable of appointing you to speak for them. Speak for OSI. But please don't claim to speak for everyone who uses the software; all it does is mislead the media, agitate the worried to paranoia, and the paranoids to flaming.
This is just one of several bugs I caught in browsing the new entries (and some others). Here's the text of a message I sent to esr on the subject:
... some technical, some content, and some rather fiddly. These are listed in order of the afflicted entry, since I'm writing them as I go through it. I'm not reading every entry, so I'll probably miss more than a few ...
... the show was 'Star Trek: The Next Generation', not 'The New Generation'.
:) Thanks again for the new jargon!
It's great to see a new Jargon File out there. However, in browsing through the HTML version I found more than a few bugs
1. In the entry for 'Borg'
2. The link to the Acronymphomania FAQ, in the entry for 'C|N>K', is broken.
3. (Not a bug, but an addition) The 'dogcow' also appears in several other Mac printer drivers besides the LaserWriter, notably including the (discontinued) StyleWriters.
4. I have generally heard 'exploit' used to refer not to a security hole itself, but to a program or routine which makes use of the hole. Hence, CERT publishes information about holes; www.rootshell.com publishes exploits.
5. There is an entry for 'fandango' (between 'fan' and 'fandango on core') but no definition within it.
6. (Marginal) A 'forum' may be on the Web.
7. (More marginal) 'Gweep' is still very live jargon. One vector for its spread out of WPI is the anime fanfic saga "Undocumented Features", written by a group of WPI students and their friends. http://www.eyrie.net/uf/
8. (Not sure if this is a bug or intentional self-reference) The index to the 'I' section is indexed within itself, under 'index'.
9. The links from 'intro' to 'screen' aren't.
10. The index listing for 'M' references the entry for 'M$'.
11. There is a stray <p> in the entry for 'patch pumpkin'.
12. The link to Slashdot in the entry for 'slashdot effect' is broken in the same way as the link to Acronymphomania. Slashdot itself might someday deserve an entry.
13. Same with the 'tracking spamhausen' link on 'spamhaus'. This seems to be a common problem with external links.
14. '404 compliant' should be under [^A-Za-z], not Z. Though at least it is self-documenting.
Okay, enough bugs for now.
Is there a reason that character entities aren't getting translated in preview (and possibly in posting)? < > should be angle brackets.
Simple really. Get a good job, make a lot of money, live on the cheap so you can save a lot, put it all in mutual funds, and retire in a few years. Presto -- unemployment.