The guys been playing "Marathon and Wolfenstein 3D", of course Halo is going to look revolutionary. Though I doubt it plays very well on his 486DX-66.:p
Think. For yourself. Mostly not get caught up in the popular media driven reasons for why the world goes round as it does.
But I put that tag in at the end as a joke. It's a stupid statement in itelf because it ignores the middle part, which is the work that needs to be done in order to "get along".
But then you choose to ignore the rest of my post and latch on to that, which is dissapointing and I should have known better than to add a release valve.
Before reasonable debate about respect can be had we first need to understand the other sides point of view. Ignoring point of view is something that both sides may be guilty of. I know the USA has made it official policy to ignore point of view issues.
For example, from the Arab point of view much of the current trouble in the Middle East is the result of the Wests tampering with local affairs. The history of the West in the Middle East has been one of racism, division, and exploitation. This has gone on for generations. The hostility that could lead to the burning of embassies is not related so much to pictures but to a very long and tragic history.
"The reason the Danish newspaper decided to publish insulting cartoons was to demonstrate that the growing muslim immigrants were a threat to freedom of speech. Burning embassies because of a freaking picture pretty much proves their point."
From what the parent post explained, it sounds like the newspaper printed the photos to stir up shit and get a rise out of people. They were successful.
"And if the West is expected to be so respectful of islam, why does Al Jazeera show videos of hostages heads being cut off?"
Should the "West" be taking it's queues from Al Jazeera as to what is acceptable and what is not exceptable from an ethical and moral standpoint?
One thing "Western" media is quite good at is knowing what buttons to push to get a certain result. Freedom of speech might also include the Freedom to be an ass. Just don't expect me to back you up.
As for violent outbursts like burning down embassies, I would'nt be so quick to point the finger. Just because the West goes to other countries to inflict violence doesn't mean it's hands are clean because it enjoys a level of domestic tranquility.
I think the main point is that this interpritation of the law goes to far. The RIAA wants to make everyone a criminal so that it can more easily pick and choose who to sue and otherwise make it's job easier. But a law that makes a criminal out of someone based on where they put files on _their_ computer is extreme. There are already plenty of laws that protect copyright holders and the RIAA is having no trouble using them. The trouble they are having is mostly in identifying who to sue. But the laws making identification difficult are also the laws that are protecting peoples privacy and should not be mutable.
I think the previous poster understands your point, as do I. It just so happens that in this case it would be very bad for the RIAA to get it's way.
There are criminal and civil laws and then there are more natural laws, like those of economics. The RIAA created the black market for music by price fixing. Back in the day it was difficult to copy and share black market music on a mass scale so the economic pressures were in the RIAA's favor. What happened almost overnight was that those counter pressures vanished and the black market, that the RIAA created through *admittedly* illiegal price fixing, exploded onto the seen. Big oops. This is like a slaves revolt except this time it is for the emancipation of our culture. And with the spectre of DRM looming in the future I don't think that that is to dramatic a way to put it. With regards to laws, whenever you have so many people breaking the law on such a massive scale, society will always need to take another look at the law and likely modify it as to reduce the criminality of the behavour. We are the people, after all. This is our country.
What I am saying with regards to the hypothetical super-being is that something inherent in "intelligence" may be a big fat totally subjective ego. Man has declined from supernatural being created by God to just another animal. I could see the next distinction to fall would be between life and "other matter". I guess my question is, where does consciousness come from and where does it go given that (currently) nothing can ultimately be created or destroyed in the Universe?
My questioning is based on wondering where consciousness was before life existed, given that the atomic decay rates of elements means we are using mostly the same atoms that were around before consciousness asked the question.
You may well have an argument I am not seeing, though I would like to. I may also just be being an idiot. My argument is banishing a useful distinction between "life" and "not life", sort of like the somewhat useful distinction between "natural" and "not natural/man made". I agree with you that there is nothing unnatural in the Universe.
Again, I don't think the rarity of life or any process matters here.
The percentage of life in the Universe and the conditions for it's making are not relevant. There are many things in the Universe that only exist under (supposed) rare and specific conditions. The point is that in whatever state matter is in, fundamentally it is unchanged. Therefore whatever expression of observable complexity presents itself to watchful human eyes must be inherent in the matter itself.
A super advanced intelligence may not see much difference between a snowflake blowing in the wind and a human going about there day. Except perhaps that one is frozen H20 and the other is a more complex arrangement of molecules that utilizes the energy of the sun to motivate it's actuators.
"The natural state of matter is not consciousness."
What is consciousness then? Is it a highlevel interaction of complex molocules? Molocules can be simulated, so it would seem that conciusness could be simulated as well by your definition. Even slowed down and sped up. If conciousness is not inherent in matter, that is.
I don't see how it could not be inherent in matter though. Everything is build from the elements. Or are you saying there is such a thing as a soul?
Clinton did much less? Clinton already had the special forces in Afghanistan looking for terrorists in the 90's. Clinton revamped the US military such that it would be more capable of fighting the types of quick asymmetric battles we are now finding ourselves in. The Bush administration po-pohed the whole notion of Bin Laden and terrorism being a threat, until they attacked NYC. Even still, Bush fought his wars with Clinton's military.
I am not a Clinton fan boy by any stretch but to claim he did less to fight terrorism is just absurd and is Bush apologism at it's upmost worst. It is clear from very recent history that the Bush administration is dangerously disohnest and clueless as to how to protect America, not "American Interests".
What drives me nuts about the whole issue is that the so called "Western World" cries like babies about software "piracy" in the so called 3rd world when they have literally pirated riches from these people for centuries. I say don't only pirate the software, give them the finger and smile while your doing it! Or better yet, just join the Free software world as you say is already happening.
"Music, information, entertainment should be free!... If the owner of said item wants it to be."
You misunderstand this statement. What "information wants to be free" is refering to is that it takes a lot more work to keep information proprietary then it does to let it be free. Therefore the natural state of information is to be free. Anything else is against Nature and makes baby Jesus cry. It has nothing to do with what the "owner" wants.
Bill Gates doesn't care about African people, or US people, or Europiens or anyone who is not whole heartedly feeding his corporate empire. I wasn't aware that this was still an argument.
"article is about lack of expertise"
The article is pointless. Building a countries infrastructure on proprietary software is dumb enough. Building a country on another countries proprietary software is national suicide. Witness just about the entire worlds realization of this as they invest heavily in Linux localization and application development. Whats right for the first world isn't appariently right for the so called third world?
The lack of expertise argument is one that could be solved very easily if Bill Gates simply donated a few million to educating people in Africa about OSS. But then Bill really doesn't give a scandisk about people now, does he?
If a volcanoe can have such dramatic effect on global tempratures then I suspect the hundreds of millions of cars driven daily will have an effect as well.
I can't figure out why people are so enamored with LTSP as a thin client solution. I have used it extensivley and find it to be horribly awkward, hard to package up, hard to manage, insecure and uses NFS for Gads sakes! I stumbled on Thinstation about a year ago and have not looked back.
But please do tell me why everyone is so retarded for LTSP, maybe I'm missing something.
"Am I supposed to stop that because they are popular now?"
And here in lies the problem that StarOffice is up against. But I digress, let me get to the real issue...
You damn Yankees fans! How can you even tell if your a real fan or not? You guys have had it so easy for the past, well, longer than I've been alive! Even the name "Yankees" is just an insult! You guys are not part of New England, you are not "Yankees". Please change your team name ASAP. I suggest "Yonkers", which is at least actually in NY.
Can you believe the standings? They must engineer this stuff. See you guys in Fenway, budy.:^P
The problem is getting racist people to stop being racist, which is giving them to much power and you'll likely be waiting a very long time. AA is an anti-racist force in a racist society. It is helping people who have real obsitcles put in fron of them because of the color of their skin. It is a balancing factor against very real racist attitudes. As for the complaining white people, you can find someone to complain about anything. White people are not disproportionaly disadvantaged versus black people though. AA is tipping the scale back to a more balanced position until racism is no longer a factor in employment and opportunity, in other words, until your dream comes true.
When society is not racist we will no longer need anti-racist policies like AA. Until then it is not right to expect people who are being discriminated against to suffer until the racist elite see the light.
Considering the project would be paid by their tax dollars, they are investing their own money. Their just trying to invest it wisely so that they don't have to pay 10 times the cost for a less desireable solution, as the poster mentioned. But then they have voted for the project 4 times already, so maybe you should be telling the minority to invest their own money in the light rail project.
AA does not need to be liked, especialy by white people. It is making things harder for them. What AA is about is economic redistribution of wealth and opportunity. You will always be able to find some corner case where someone got something they did not deserve because of any policy, including AA. Hell, I know plenty of white people who got jobs they have no clue how to perform even without the benefit of AA. However, AA and policies like AA are breaking the next bastion of racism in America which is access to opportunity. Time does not heal anything. It's people who are dedicated and make sacrifices in the name of what is right that bring the healing.
Racism is real and it is hurting America. We will all be much better off when we face the challange of defeating it within ourselves and within society. It is not something you can simply sit back and wait for.
I'm not going to argue with you that things are hard all over. And all things being equal we really need to be focused on the issues you raise, education, working poor, etc. But all things are not equal and they have not been equal for hundreds of years. I'm sure white people who did not directly benefit from slavery were upset when a freed slave suddenly took their coal mining job. It's not easy undoing Great Injustice and unfortunately the remedy can hurt people who were not directly involved, like me for example. Affirmative action is doing nothing for me if all I care about is whether or not I get the job. But I'm not an island and I live in a society that is filled with people from all sorts of backgrounds. It just so happens that the people with my color set up a system that benefited whites. White people benefit from that system everyday even though they don't see it. If we could just erase racism from every ones collective minds then we would not need Affirmative Action type policies. But we can not and racism persists and Affirmative Action sucks because racism sucks. But we/are/ curing society and it is working because things are slowly getting better. We have come a long way from slavery to today. Nobody really likes Affirmative Action, whites and minorities alike. But minorities dislike racism more, and frankly, so do I.
You can't eliminate the issue of racism by lumping it in with a bunch of other issues, like class. It is distinct and requires specific effort to undo. The wrongs being commited against whites in the name of AA pale in comparison to what Black people had to endure in the form of slavery and overt racism for so long and to this day. It's also telling that white people are so upset about AA as it highlights their sense of entitlement, which they may not even recognise they have.
As for who is doing what with regards to racism or poverty, Republican or Democrat, I personally can't tell one fat-cat whitey from another.
I also grew up in a poor section of town and was harassed for being white. Please don't think I'm some rich white guy who just wants to do good and "make a difference". No policy is going to help everyone equally. Some policies are going to hurt some while helping others. Having no policy on racist hiring practices or a "why can't we all just get along policy" definitely is not going to work because racism exists. If white people think it's hard getting a job because of Affirmative action they should try getting a job while being Black. I'm not saying that it is fair. It's not meant to be fair, it's meant to undo real damage that persists and will continue to persist if it is not directly addressed. It's also not a problem most white people perceive as white people do not see the doors that are open to them (and closed to minorities).
Affirmative action is not perfect but it is closer to perfect than any proposal I have seen and having no proposal is not an option because racism exists.
You can't lump all the problems of society together in order to bleach out the racism problem. Class in America is a huge problem and the working poor need better opportunities to educate themselves and other wise prepare to take a larger slice of the American Pie. But class and race, while often played against each other, are two separate issues that require different remedies. Believe me when I tell you that people engaging in anti-racism work understand the class problem that effects all people and are also fighting on that front too. If you can just accept that racism is a real problem that needs specific remedies then you will find yourself in good company on all these other issues as well.
The reason minorities and women are given preference in our current society is to undo hundreds of years of social and economic repression (please finish reading even if your knee just jerked). Racism against non-whites and sexism against women is still very much alive in America. The disenfranchisement of black Americans goes back to slavery, about as bleak a start as you can get. We just had the civil rights amendment in our own lifetimes. Do you think everyone in America who opposed desegregation and the women's movement simply gave up? There is a strong anti-non-white sentiment in America that manifests itself as complacency and an underlying acceptance of "white" being "normal" and "safe".
Affirmative action programs are not racist, they are anti-racist, as in, undoing the historical damage of racism. To give just one example, after WWII, white GI's were able to get affordable loans for homes and education, minorities were not. This allowed whites to accumulate home equity as well as knowledge which has disproportionally dispensed the nations wealth into their hands. Children of minority families today still feel the economic repercussions of racism and they would even if today's society was completely devoid of racism, which it is not. I norder for things to get better they are going to have to get a little harder for white poeple. This is because white people already have to much material wealth and control and so only stand to loose. Thankfully, we also stand to gain in our humanity so it should all balance out in the end.
I used to think about racism in similar ways to you I suspect. But then I actually did some research and discovered how little I actually understood racism and its effects.
White people do not notice the doors that are not closed to them.
A work in question may go into public domain in one form or another, meaning print or some other non-DRM'd format. This would satisfy the Constitutional requirements while still allowing various copies to be DRM locked. I mean, the Movie studios might cliam that the film reels are not DRM and so constitute "release" even though the primary market has DRM DVD's. I can invision many smarmy ways around the need to satisfy releasing to the public domain.
Read Sven's posts in the link you provided to find out why he is concerned that GIMPShop is a step backwards for the whole GIMP project. He is worried that GIMPshop will confuse the little bit of momentum GIMP proper has been recieving lately in the form of Books, tutorials, press and other contributions by hundreds of people. He wants Scott to join the team, not diffuse the focus. It's clear Scott can not properly handle the magnitude of the fork on his own and will have no choice but to create a parallel and incompatible branch if GIMP. Horrible indeed!
From the parent link Sven says:
"[...] Changing menus in GIMP is not something that should be taken easily. It affects the user manual, tutorials and breaks all translations. Any change here affects the work of dozens of contributors. Still, I have always encouraged people to help to improve the menus. Bill has lately asked for volunteers to form a small team that is working on a proposal for changes to the menu structure and menu labels. That is a very welcomed effort and I hope that we can incorporate these changes soon. I have asked Scott to join this effort instead of working on this on his own. What else can I do?"
Slashdot Mirror
The guys been playing "Marathon and Wolfenstein 3D", of course Halo is going to look revolutionary. Though I doubt it plays very well on his 486DX-66. :p
Think. For yourself. Mostly not get caught up in the popular media driven reasons for why the world goes round as it does.
But I put that tag in at the end as a joke. It's a stupid statement in itelf because it ignores the middle part, which is the work that needs to be done in order to "get along".
But then you choose to ignore the rest of my post and latch on to that, which is dissapointing and I should have known better than to add a release valve.
Kind Regards
Before reasonable debate about respect can be had we first need to understand the other sides point of view. Ignoring point of view is something that both sides may be guilty of. I know the USA has made it official policy to ignore point of view issues.
For example, from the Arab point of view much of the current trouble in the Middle East is the result of the Wests tampering with local affairs. The history of the West in the Middle East has been one of racism, division, and exploitation. This has gone on for generations. The hostility that could lead to the burning of embassies is not related so much to pictures but to a very long and tragic history.
But hey, why can't we all just get along?
Kind Regards
"The reason the Danish newspaper decided to publish insulting cartoons was to demonstrate that the growing muslim immigrants were a threat to freedom of speech. Burning embassies because of a freaking picture pretty much proves their point."
From what the parent post explained, it sounds like the newspaper printed the photos to stir up shit and get a rise out of people. They were successful.
"And if the West is expected to be so respectful of islam, why does Al Jazeera show videos of hostages heads being cut off?"
Should the "West" be taking it's queues from Al Jazeera as to what is acceptable and what is not exceptable from an ethical and moral standpoint?
One thing "Western" media is quite good at is knowing what buttons to push to get a certain result. Freedom of speech might also include the Freedom to be an ass. Just don't expect me to back you up.
As for violent outbursts like burning down embassies, I would'nt be so quick to point the finger. Just because the West goes to other countries to inflict violence doesn't mean it's hands are clean because it enjoys a level of domestic tranquility.
Kind Regards
I think the main point is that this interpritation of the law goes to far. The RIAA wants to make everyone a criminal so that it can more easily pick and choose who to sue and otherwise make it's job easier. But a law that makes a criminal out of someone based on where they put files on _their_ computer is extreme. There are already plenty of laws that protect copyright holders and the RIAA is having no trouble using them. The trouble they are having is mostly in identifying who to sue. But the laws making identification difficult are also the laws that are protecting peoples privacy and should not be mutable.
I think the previous poster understands your point, as do I. It just so happens that in this case it would be very bad for the RIAA to get it's way.
There are criminal and civil laws and then there are more natural laws, like those of economics. The RIAA created the black market for music by price fixing. Back in the day it was difficult to copy and share black market music on a mass scale so the economic pressures were in the RIAA's favor. What happened almost overnight was that those counter pressures vanished and the black market, that the RIAA created through *admittedly* illiegal price fixing, exploded onto the seen. Big oops. This is like a slaves revolt except this time it is for the emancipation of our culture. And with the spectre of DRM looming in the future I don't think that that is to dramatic a way to put it. With regards to laws, whenever you have so many people breaking the law on such a massive scale, society will always need to take another look at the law and likely modify it as to reduce the criminality of the behavour. We are the people, after all. This is our country.
Kind Regards
What I am saying with regards to the hypothetical super-being is that something inherent in "intelligence" may be a big fat totally subjective ego. Man has declined from supernatural being created by God to just another animal. I could see the next distinction to fall would be between life and "other matter". I guess my question is, where does consciousness come from and where does it go given that (currently) nothing can ultimately be created or destroyed in the Universe?
My questioning is based on wondering where consciousness was before life existed, given that the atomic decay rates of elements means we are using mostly the same atoms that were around before consciousness asked the question.
You may well have an argument I am not seeing, though I would like to. I may also just be being an idiot. My argument is banishing a useful distinction between "life" and "not life", sort of like the somewhat useful distinction between "natural" and "not natural/man made". I agree with you that there is nothing unnatural in the Universe.
Again, I don't think the rarity of life or any process matters here.
Kind Regards
"Don't be an idiot."
:)
That's what I say to myself every morning.
The percentage of life in the Universe and the conditions for it's making are not relevant. There are many things in the Universe that only exist under (supposed) rare and specific conditions. The point is that in whatever state matter is in, fundamentally it is unchanged. Therefore whatever expression of observable complexity presents itself to watchful human eyes must be inherent in the matter itself.
A super advanced intelligence may not see much difference between a snowflake blowing in the wind and a human going about there day. Except perhaps that one is frozen H20 and the other is a more complex arrangement of molecules that utilizes the energy of the sun to motivate it's actuators.
Kind Regards
"The natural state of matter is not consciousness."
What is consciousness then? Is it a highlevel interaction of complex molocules? Molocules can be simulated, so it would seem that conciusness could be simulated as well by your definition. Even slowed down and sped up. If conciousness is not inherent in matter, that is.
I don't see how it could not be inherent in matter though. Everything is build from the elements. Or are you saying there is such a thing as a soul?
Kind Regards
Clinton did much less? Clinton already had the special forces in Afghanistan looking for terrorists in the 90's. Clinton revamped the US military such that it would be more capable of fighting the types of quick asymmetric battles we are now finding ourselves in. The Bush administration po-pohed the whole notion of Bin Laden and terrorism being a threat, until they attacked NYC. Even still, Bush fought his wars with Clinton's military.
I am not a Clinton fan boy by any stretch but to claim he did less to fight terrorism is just absurd and is Bush apologism at it's upmost worst. It is clear from very recent history that the Bush administration is dangerously disohnest and clueless as to how to protect America, not "American Interests".
Kind Regards
Rent "Living Out Loud" to see Devito in a romantic role. A great movie, btw.
-X
What drives me nuts about the whole issue is that the so called "Western World" cries like babies about software "piracy" in the so called 3rd world when they have literally pirated riches from these people for centuries. I say don't only pirate the software, give them the finger and smile while your doing it! Or better yet, just join the Free software world as you say is already happening.
Kind Regards
"Music, information, entertainment should be free! ... If the owner of said item wants it to be."
You misunderstand this statement. What "information wants to be free" is refering to is that it takes a lot more work to keep information proprietary then it does to let it be free. Therefore the natural state of information is to be free. Anything else is against Nature and makes baby Jesus cry. It has nothing to do with what the "owner" wants.
Kind Regards
Bill Gates doesn't care about African people, or US people, or Europiens or anyone who is not whole heartedly feeding his corporate empire. I wasn't aware that this was still an argument.
"article is about lack of expertise"
The article is pointless. Building a countries infrastructure on proprietary software is dumb enough. Building a country on another countries proprietary software is national suicide. Witness just about the entire worlds realization of this as they invest heavily in Linux localization and application development. Whats right for the first world isn't appariently right for the so called third world?
The lack of expertise argument is one that could be solved very easily if Bill Gates simply donated a few million to educating people in Africa about OSS. But then Bill really doesn't give a scandisk about people now, does he?
Kind Regards
If a volcanoe can have such dramatic effect on global tempratures then I suspect the hundreds of millions of cars driven daily will have an effect as well.
Kind Regards
I can't figure out why people are so enamored with LTSP as a thin client solution. I have used it extensivley and find it to be horribly awkward, hard to package up, hard to manage, insecure and uses NFS for Gads sakes! I stumbled on Thinstation about a year ago and have not looked back.
But please do tell me why everyone is so retarded for LTSP, maybe I'm missing something.
Kind Regards
"Am I supposed to stop that because they are popular now?"
:^P
And here in lies the problem that StarOffice is up against. But I digress, let me get to the real issue...
You damn Yankees fans! How can you even tell if your a real fan or not? You guys have had it so easy for the past, well, longer than I've been alive! Even the name "Yankees" is just an insult! You guys are not part of New England, you are not "Yankees". Please change your team name ASAP. I suggest "Yonkers", which is at least actually in NY.
Can you believe the standings? They must engineer this stuff. See you guys in Fenway, budy.
Kind Regards
The problem is getting racist people to stop being racist, which is giving them to much power and you'll likely be waiting a very long time. AA is an anti-racist force in a racist society. It is helping people who have real obsitcles put in fron of them because of the color of their skin. It is a balancing factor against very real racist attitudes. As for the complaining white people, you can find someone to complain about anything. White people are not disproportionaly disadvantaged versus black people though. AA is tipping the scale back to a more balanced position until racism is no longer a factor in employment and opportunity, in other words, until your dream comes true.
Kind Regards
When society is not racist we will no longer need anti-racist policies like AA. Until then it is not right to expect people who are being discriminated against to suffer until the racist elite see the light.
Kind Regards
Considering the project would be paid by their tax dollars, they are investing their own money. Their just trying to invest it wisely so that they don't have to pay 10 times the cost for a less desireable solution, as the poster mentioned. But then they have voted for the project 4 times already, so maybe you should be telling the minority to invest their own money in the light rail project.
Kind Regards
AA does not need to be liked, especialy by white people. It is making things harder for them. What AA is about is economic redistribution of wealth and opportunity. You will always be able to find some corner case where someone got something they did not deserve because of any policy, including AA. Hell, I know plenty of white people who got jobs they have no clue how to perform even without the benefit of AA. However, AA and policies like AA are breaking the next bastion of racism in America which is access to opportunity. Time does not heal anything. It's people who are dedicated and make sacrifices in the name of what is right that bring the healing.
Racism is real and it is hurting America. We will all be much better off when we face the challange of defeating it within ourselves and within society. It is not something you can simply sit back and wait for.
Kind Regards
" First, thanks for the reply."
;)
/are/ curing society and it is working because things are slowly getting better. We have come a long way from slavery to today. Nobody really likes Affirmative Action, whites and minorities alike. But minorities dislike racism more, and frankly, so do I.
Heh, I was cringing when I opened your reply
I'm not going to argue with you that things are hard all over. And all things being equal we really need to be focused on the issues you raise, education, working poor, etc. But all things are not equal and they have not been equal for hundreds of years. I'm sure white people who did not directly benefit from slavery were upset when a freed slave suddenly took their coal mining job. It's not easy undoing Great Injustice and unfortunately the remedy can hurt people who were not directly involved, like me for example. Affirmative action is doing nothing for me if all I care about is whether or not I get the job. But I'm not an island and I live in a society that is filled with people from all sorts of backgrounds. It just so happens that the people with my color set up a system that benefited whites. White people benefit from that system everyday even though they don't see it. If we could just erase racism from every ones collective minds then we would not need Affirmative Action type policies. But we can not and racism persists and Affirmative Action sucks because racism sucks. But we
You can't eliminate the issue of racism by lumping it in with a bunch of other issues, like class. It is distinct and requires specific effort to undo. The wrongs being commited against whites in the name of AA pale in comparison to what Black people had to endure in the form of slavery and overt racism for so long and to this day. It's also telling that white people are so upset about AA as it highlights their sense of entitlement, which they may not even recognise they have.
As for who is doing what with regards to racism or poverty, Republican or Democrat, I personally can't tell one fat-cat whitey from another.
Kind Regards
I also grew up in a poor section of town and was harassed for being white. Please don't think I'm some rich white guy who just wants to do good and "make a difference". No policy is going to help everyone equally. Some policies are going to hurt some while helping others. Having no policy on racist hiring practices or a "why can't we all just get along policy" definitely is not going to work because racism exists. If white people think it's hard getting a job because of Affirmative action they should try getting a job while being Black. I'm not saying that it is fair. It's not meant to be fair, it's meant to undo real damage that persists and will continue to persist if it is not directly addressed. It's also not a problem most white people perceive as white people do not see the doors that are open to them (and closed to minorities).
Affirmative action is not perfect but it is closer to perfect than any proposal I have seen and having no proposal is not an option because racism exists.
You can't lump all the problems of society together in order to bleach out the racism problem. Class in America is a huge problem and the working poor need better opportunities to educate themselves and other wise prepare to take a larger slice of the American Pie. But class and race, while often played against each other, are two separate issues that require different remedies. Believe me when I tell you that people engaging in anti-racism work understand the class problem that effects all people and are also fighting on that front too. If you can just accept that racism is a real problem that needs specific remedies then you will find yourself in good company on all these other issues as well.
Kind Regards
The reason minorities and women are given preference in our current society is to undo hundreds of years of social and economic repression (please finish reading even if your knee just jerked). Racism against non-whites and sexism against women is still very much alive in America. The disenfranchisement of black Americans goes back to slavery, about as bleak a start as you can get. We just had the civil rights amendment in our own lifetimes. Do you think everyone in America who opposed desegregation and the women's movement simply gave up? There is a strong anti-non-white sentiment in America that manifests itself as complacency and an underlying acceptance of "white" being "normal" and "safe".
Affirmative action programs are not racist, they are anti-racist, as in, undoing the historical damage of racism. To give just one example, after WWII, white GI's were able to get affordable loans for homes and education, minorities were not. This allowed whites to accumulate home equity as well as knowledge which has disproportionally dispensed the nations wealth into their hands. Children of minority families today still feel the economic repercussions of racism and they would even if today's society was completely devoid of racism, which it is not. I norder for things to get better they are going to have to get a little harder for white poeple. This is because white people already have to much material wealth and control and so only stand to loose. Thankfully, we also stand to gain in our humanity so it should all balance out in the end.
I used to think about racism in similar ways to you I suspect. But then I actually did some research and discovered how little I actually understood racism and its effects.
White people do not notice the doors that are not closed to them.
Kind Regards
A work in question may go into public domain in one form or another, meaning print or some other non-DRM'd format. This would satisfy the Constitutional requirements while still allowing various copies to be DRM locked. I mean, the Movie studios might cliam that the film reels are not DRM and so constitute "release" even though the primary market has DRM DVD's. I can invision many smarmy ways around the need to satisfy releasing to the public domain.
Kind Regards
Read Sven's posts in the link you provided to find out why he is concerned that GIMPShop is a step backwards for the whole GIMP project. He is worried that GIMPshop will confuse the little bit of momentum GIMP proper has been recieving lately in the form of Books, tutorials, press and other contributions by hundreds of people. He wants Scott to join the team, not diffuse the focus. It's clear Scott can not properly handle the magnitude of the fork on his own and will have no choice but to create a parallel and incompatible branch if GIMP. Horrible indeed!
From the parent link Sven says:
"[...] Changing menus in GIMP is not something that should be taken easily. It affects the user manual, tutorials and breaks all translations. Any change here affects the work of dozens of contributors. Still, I have always encouraged people to help to improve the menus. Bill has lately asked for volunteers to form a small team that is working on a proposal for changes to the menu structure and menu labels. That is a very welcomed effort and I hope that we can incorporate these changes soon. I have asked Scott to join this effort instead of working on this on his own. What else can I do?"
Kind Regards