It is a lot easier to port Linux programs to Windows than it is to port Windows programs to Linux. Also, I am just starting to learn GUI programming in C++ and I find some of the graphical toolkits for Linux much easier to use than MFC and the Win32 API. For the functional part of the program, the code (assuming C++) is primarily the same on both platforms.
Two years ago, I worked for an organization that purchased 200 shrink-wrapped copies of Windows 95 because the volume price of the shrink-wrapped versions was significantly cheaper than just the licenses. Two people worked for 8 hours to open each box, remove the license, and throw everything else (including the non-biodegradable CD) away.
The funny part is that they consider their recycling efforts to be better-than-average! I would tell you the name of the organization, but they made me sign a ******* NDA.
The lengths to which some people will go to "protect" their children from information that they are seeking is incredible. It is unfathomable to me that this is even necessary. Nude pictures do not just appear in the absence of any context! What type of pornographic web site would this image-recognition algorithm block, that a simple text-parsing engine would not.
Maybe this is going to be used to protect children from the "flesh tones" that are part of the color scheme on a liberal web site. Go figure.
It would be far better if people concentrated on creating new, innovative, software rather than simply maintaining age-old software. The only major benefit of a service like this is that the authors can have the satisfaction of seeing others work on their projects when they no longer want to. Nonetheless, I see little potential for the projects that will come out of this.
It would be an interesting test to take two people who have never used a computer before and see if they can more easily learn MS Office or StarOffice. You could use the results of that test to improve the interface of whatever product performed worse. My point is that these big, bloated office suites are becoming indistiguishable from one another.
Somebody should write an emacs-style editor with advanced Tex-style formatting features and WYSIWYG support. It should be able to import DOC, RTF, WPD and other popular formats. Just my $.02.
1) Price (this is a no-brainer), both the up-front cost and the bandwidth charges.
2) Connectivity: who does the host peer with and what is the quality of his connections.
3) Quality of Service: you do not want to travel to the colocation facility in order to handle basic administration tasks. What is their customer service record and are they providing you with rudimentaty system administration or just rack space?
4) Security: some premium web providers are popping up that offer additional security and support as value added services. If you want to colocate a mission critical system, this option might be for you--but be ready to pay through your nose for it.
5) Reliability: what is the host's track record? Would you be comfortable trusting your business to them?
BeOS was designed from the ground up to be a multimedia OS. Linux added OpenGL support seemingly as an afterthought and Windows OpenGL performance is pitiful (possibly because MS wants to promote the use of DirectX on Windows platforms).
It would be interesting to see how Be's and SGI's implementations of OpenGL are different from Windows' and Linux's. I'm also curious as to how extensive Be's graphics card driver support is and the quality of the drivers used. I'm sure tha part of the blame rests with the graphics card manufacturers for writing poor OpenGL drivers. Naturally those included with an OS that is designed for 3D/Multimedia would be superior to the manufacturer's "we cannot ship without drivers" variety.
YES! Now it will take only half as long to crash a $150 million probe into Mars! This is a real breakthrough! We can disperse twice as much debris on the Martian surface in the same amount of time!
>Non-free only include "free of charge" packages, >but non DFSG compliant. You are offering non-monetary compensation by agreeing to more restrictive or non-standard license agreements. For instance UWash likes people to "register" pine so as to keep a count of how many people are using their software (which will help them get grants), etc.
>>OSS community >It's about Free Software Community & Debian >Users here, not Open Source or whatever I use the terms interchangably (much to the scorn of purists) because the people who are committed to producing free software and participate in forums like/. will generally make the code available.
Sure, I appreciate when softare is distributed free of charge, but I also recognize that it can coexist with other software. In the competitive marketplace, there are some commercial packages (or packages that are offered free, but with limited licenses) that are superior to their free counterparts (if there are any). Bundling this software with Debian helps increase the value of the OS and, as long as it is made clear which packages can be distributed freely or compiled into GPL programs, etc. than there are no problems with the inclusion of said software.
I think that the OSS community has taken the position that software *should* be free, and there is an ethical imperative to use free software (courtesy of RMS). However, I believe that there is an ethical imperative to use the *best* software for a given task, so as to support the innovators, whether they release the software free or not.
The fact is that free software would not exist without commercial sofware. Throughout history, the greatest artistic products were developed by people who could be confident in their survival because of their financial position. If people capable of developing quality software were forced to work three jobs in order to eek out a living, they would not have the time or energy to devote to free software. Since the software industry has produced hundreds of thousands of developers that are capable of living a comfortable lifestyle, they can offer their time to develop free software of high quality.
Both free and commercial software have their place. It is best to offer users the option of using the best software for the task they want completed, whether commercial or free, as long as they are aware which is which. Debian current distribution style is good. Leave it alone.
I'm in MD, just a few miles away from DC. Unless you have a large amount of imcluded minutes, the per-minute charges are very high. I have a speical rate with ATT that costs only $13.95/month, includes all premium features except text messaging, and inludes 20 minutes (more during the promotional period) and unlimited nights and weekends. It is not one of the one-rate national plans, but the "local" area extends into upper-state NY. Additional miuntes are as high as $.25/each depending on the time of day.
BTW, I would never use an analog phone. The connection quality is terrible, either the phones are heavier or the batteries need to be recharged more often, etc. I think that cell-phones will not be the method of choice for data transmission. New dedicated wireless data providers like Ricochet ($40/month unlimited access, up to 128k, including modem rental) will control that market. The problem is that they do not have connection points in many cities, yet.
As expensive as mobile airtime is now, how useful really is this feature? I cannot imagine a parent allowing their kid to spend 30 minutes on a cell to play games. Cool, but a little ahead of its time (at least in the US).
I understand that your entire Internet connection consists of a single satellite uplink. Which ISPs are you peering with so as to ensure that no single nation/or national alliance can sever your Internet connection?
Perhaps I was naive to think that counter-culture Internet media outlets would seek to maintain their independence from the corporate influence that plagues traditional media at all costs. Please excuse my naivete.
Lenny
P.S. That was a pretty good offer you got from VA. Furthermore, since Andover.net has little chance of becoming profitable in the near future, VA's support can sustain it for longer than it could sustain itself. So, maybe this is a good thing.
It's articles like this that make me happy that I leave my Katz filter off. As I mentioned in an earlier post, he has an excellent analytical ability and a fluid, narrative, writing style, but he tends towards sensationalism and sometimes seems like he is fishing for stories. This time, he reels in one of the most interesting and unique elements of Internet culture. He is trying to define an entire culture (which is a precarious practice) but his analysis is insightful and well-presented. I guess its fillet for all!
That being said, I think the most interesting questions that are raised by the gaming culture is the psychology of role-playing. While Katz points out that people take their fantasy "lives" very seriously (as evidenced by Ebay's Everquest auctions), he does not approach the question of the relationship between gamers' fantasy lives and their reality.
Do people turn to gaming as a way to express inner desires or attributes that cannot be expressed in the real world? Does this fantasy experience allow people to integrate what they learn about themselves into their real-world persona? Or, is gaming simply an escape from life's troubles that does not allow one to truly confront their problems in any meaningful way? While the answers to these questions will vary by individual, society will ultimately need to deal with a mainstream culture that is raised on video games, that will embody all of these characteristics to varying degrees.
As games become more immersive, I think it will become more difficult for people to balance their real and fantasy lives. If the fantasy and reality are disconnected, or if the fantasy is used simply an escape from a reality that is difficult to cope with, then is gaming really a productive activity? Perhaps the graph of immersiveness to benefits is somewhat like a bell-curve, where games that are not immersive have no positive effect on its players while those that are too immersive isolate their players from reality and prevent them from integrating what they learn about themselves in the game into their real lives.
Another interesting question is why people turn to games, and when they spend more/less time in these fantasy worlds.
I play multiplayer games only, and unfortunately I can only play for a few hours a week. I find playing against computer opponents to be exceedingly boring after I beat a game, as their behavior becomes predictable. But then again, perhaps the same can be said about human opponents (I once played a person in Quake, where, almost without fail, I would drop a grenade into certain empty rooms in a large level and he would enter the room and run into the grenade before it exploded), which brings up the other interesting issues about how peoples' style of play is an expression of their personality.
I was wondering if any "hardcore" gamers could lend some insight.
The difference between CNet and DoubleClick is that CNet only tracks your usage on sites *that they own.* Not that I'm defending even this practice (let alone the overall issue of net patents).
Lenny
Disclosure: I do own a couple shares of CNet. If they try to enforce this patent, you could own a couple shares of CNet:-)
I am afraid that your board will only make the job of PR employees that much easier. For instance, Al Gore has a large group of publicists. For the sake of argument, let's assume that you do find a way to "verify that each individual is unique while maintaining their anonymity" and your board becomes popular. All these publicists have to do is sign up as a group, moderate each other's posts up, encourage their supporters to join the board and voice their opinion by moderating their posts up, etc.
The only difference is that instead of having money be the currency of power, you have volume (please do not flame me explaining "democracy"). Since the board is not likely to represent an accurate cross-section of society, the "majority" or "consensus" formed will not represent the community at large.
I have also thought about creating a similar forum, but have the nagging feeling that general-interest political boards will not be likely to have much influence in the overall political spectrum.
Instead, I think that the Internet is the ideal forum for special interests that would not necessarily have a significant influence in a general-interest forum. Slashdot is a perfect example; it caters to a particular segment of the population and does not presume to be an accurate cross section of society. By aggregating a limited number of people with similar interests, they are able to draw attention to issues of interest to their community that would otherwise go unnoticed. Through collective action that is organized by such a forum, the members can influence the community at-large on the issues that matter to them. In my mind, that is the real power of the Internet to influence American politics.
Sorry, that did not come out right. I meant to say that it would prevent a third-party OSS develop using the initial OSS developers' code (assuming it is released under the GPL) to extend the functionality of the program to include Motif libraries.
The GPL prevents subsequent developers from releasing code that is not free/OSS if the code that it is based on is licensed under the GPL. So, if I have an OSS application that includes some code from another OSS application, I cannot use the Motif libraries in my code at all because I could not release the full code (including the Motif libraries) to the OSS community. This *is* a "limitation" and not a "permission." Sorry for the confusion.
Even though the developers of Motif attempt to meet Stallman halfway by releasing their software for use by the open source community while ensuring their right to sell the software to makers of closed systems, Stallman refuses to accept their position. In addition, he uses the GPL as leverage by refusing to allow the developers who wrote software and released it under the GPL (as the GPL is non-revokable) to compile their programs for use with Motif. That is precisely why I will use proprietary licenses and avoid the GPL; I simply cannot entrust my code to Stallman.
The terms of the Motif license could actually *benefit* the Linux community. By releasing their software as open source only for specific OSs (like Linux), they add value to that operating system. Somebody might think twice before paying for Motif on another platform and use Linux in order to get it for free. Nonetheless, Stallman's cavalier attitude prevents him from seeing this tangible benefit to the OSS community.
Do not get me wrong; he is an excellent programmer and has nothing but good intentions for the software community. Nonetheless, his uncompromising nature makes him very difficult for people to deal with. If this is the response that Motif gets for making a gesture to the OSS community, do you think that they will make another?
Diplomacy will be key to gaining acceptance for free/OS software. The attitude that Stallman brings to the table will prevent people from recognizing the legitimacy of the OSS movement from a business perspective in addition to an ideological one.
After the market correction, I think that many tech companies will be reevaluating their position in the marketplace--especially B2C companies that offer expensive loss-leaders. Earlier in the year, Netpliance alienated an entire community of people interested in their product simply because it did not fit their original business plan.
Now that the market has made it clear that even tech companies must be profitable, Netpliance is trying to reach out to OSS developers who would be willing to either pay a premium for their machines or develop free applications that could make the I-Opener an even more valuable platform.
As indicated by the chargebacks without customer consent made in March, Netpliance's realationship with its own customers is shaky. They seem to be motivated only by an overriding sense of self-interest even at the complete expense of customer satisfaction. I foresee a major culture clash in their interactions with the OSS community that will ultimately not be beneficial for either party. It's too bad, though, they make a cool product.
What amazes me is the number of posts from people who go into the intracacies of libel law, as though they are legal scholars, instead of addressing the very plain and clear human issues that involve basic concepts of right and wrong. The law is an arse, and lawyers are arseholes. Trying to defend what is unpalatable and inexcusable in that way is beneath contempt. ------------------------------------- I simply do not understand how we as a community can speak out against those who torment fellow students with vicious and unsubstantiated remarks while defending the kid in this case. It is almost like saying that somebody who privately torments a student should be chastised while somebody who stands in the middle of Times Square and publicly shouts those same remarks is not deserving of the same judgment.
I think the problem that we have is that our past victimization has led us to always identify with those who are experiencing similar treatment--regardless of their actions.
I hated people in high school and I'm glad that I'm going going 300 miles away to college in August. Nonetheless, stooping to their level and justifying my response by claiming that I'm just responding to my tormenters' attacks in kind is infantile. I'm not an "apologist"; I do not think that the magnitude of the administrators' response was appropriate. Nonetheless, we need to recognize that the individual we are identifying with *did do something wrong* by the same "basic principles" that you acknowledge.
While we can rage against "this corporate fascist right-wing police state" all day and all night, I think that we should not be afraid to look critically at *ourselves* and those who we identify with, first. Only through introspection can we grow as individuals and as a community. Blindly lashing out at those who we are viscerally or emotionally drawn to dislike is not productive, in and of itself.
I appreciate your criticism and look forward to your response.
Slashdot Mirror
Cygwin
It is a lot easier to port Linux programs to Windows than it is to port Windows programs to Linux. Also, I am just starting to learn GUI programming in C++ and I find some of the graphical toolkits for Linux much easier to use than MFC and the Win32 API. For the functional part of the program, the code (assuming C++) is primarily the same on both platforms.
Two years ago, I worked for an organization that purchased 200 shrink-wrapped copies of Windows 95 because the volume price of the shrink-wrapped versions was significantly cheaper than just the licenses. Two people worked for 8 hours to open each box, remove the license, and throw everything else (including the non-biodegradable CD) away.
The funny part is that they consider their recycling efforts to be better-than-average! I would tell you the name of the organization, but they made me sign a ******* NDA.
The lengths to which some people will go to "protect" their children from information that they are seeking is incredible. It is unfathomable to me that this is even necessary. Nude pictures do not just appear in the absence of any context! What type of pornographic web site would this image-recognition algorithm block, that a simple text-parsing engine would not.
Maybe this is going to be used to protect children from the "flesh tones" that are part of the color scheme on a liberal web site. Go figure.
It would be far better if people concentrated on creating new, innovative, software rather than simply maintaining age-old software. The only major benefit of a service like this is that the authors can have the satisfaction of seeing others work on their projects when they no longer want to. Nonetheless, I see little potential for the projects that will come out of this.
It would be an interesting test to take two people who have never used a computer before and see if they can more easily learn MS Office or StarOffice. You could use the results of that test to improve the interface of whatever product performed worse. My point is that these big, bloated office suites are becoming indistiguishable from one another.
Somebody should write an emacs-style editor with advanced Tex-style formatting features and WYSIWYG support. It should be able to import DOC, RTF, WPD and other popular formats. Just my $.02.
1) Price (this is a no-brainer), both the up-front cost and the bandwidth charges.
2) Connectivity: who does the host peer with and what is the quality of his connections.
3) Quality of Service: you do not want to travel to the colocation facility in order to handle basic administration tasks. What is their customer service record and are they providing you with rudimentaty system administration or just rack space?
4) Security: some premium web providers are popping up that offer additional security and support as value added services. If you want to colocate a mission critical system, this option might be for you--but be ready to pay through your nose for it.
5) Reliability: what is the host's track record? Would you be comfortable trusting your business to them?
BeOS was designed from the ground up to be a multimedia OS. Linux added OpenGL support seemingly as an afterthought and Windows OpenGL performance is pitiful (possibly because MS wants to promote the use of DirectX on Windows platforms).
It would be interesting to see how Be's and SGI's implementations of OpenGL are different from Windows' and Linux's. I'm also curious as to how extensive Be's graphics card driver support is and the quality of the drivers used. I'm sure tha part of the blame rests with the graphics card manufacturers for writing poor OpenGL drivers. Naturally those included with an OS that is designed for 3D/Multimedia would be superior to the manufacturer's "we cannot ship without drivers" variety.
YES! Now it will take only half as long to crash a $150 million probe into Mars! This is a real breakthrough! We can disperse twice as much debris on the Martian surface in the same amount of time!
Lenny
>Non-free only include "free of charge" packages, >but non DFSG compliant.
/. will generally make the code available.
You are offering non-monetary compensation by agreeing to more restrictive or non-standard license agreements. For instance UWash likes people to "register" pine so as to keep a count of how many people are using their software (which will help them get grants), etc.
>>OSS community
>It's about Free Software Community & Debian >Users here, not Open Source or whatever
I use the terms interchangably (much to the scorn of purists) because the people who are committed to producing free software and participate in forums like
Sure, I appreciate when softare is distributed free of charge, but I also recognize that it can coexist with other software. In the competitive marketplace, there are some commercial packages (or packages that are offered free, but with limited licenses) that are superior to their free counterparts (if there are any). Bundling this software with Debian helps increase the value of the OS and, as long as it is made clear which packages can be distributed freely or compiled into GPL programs, etc. than there are no problems with the inclusion of said software.
I think that the OSS community has taken the position that software *should* be free, and there is an ethical imperative to use free software (courtesy of RMS). However, I believe that there is an ethical imperative to use the *best* software for a given task, so as to support the innovators, whether they release the software free or not.
The fact is that free software would not exist without commercial sofware. Throughout history, the greatest artistic products were developed by people who could be confident in their survival because of their financial position. If people capable of developing quality software were forced to work three jobs in order to eek out a living, they would not have the time or energy to devote to free software. Since the software industry has produced hundreds of thousands of developers that are capable of living a comfortable lifestyle, they can offer their time to develop free software of high quality.
Both free and commercial software have their place. It is best to offer users the option of using the best software for the task they want completed, whether commercial or free, as long as they are aware which is which. Debian current distribution style is good. Leave it alone.
That should have been "your posts" not "you posts."
Your little ditty
Was not clever or witty
So I called it crap
You posts as a lot
Are as jumbled as a knot
Some good and some not
You are most unique
But your poems I critique
When they are awful
I reserve my praise
And wait for your better days
Enjoy them I shall
I'm in MD, just a few miles away from DC. Unless you have a large amount of imcluded minutes, the per-minute charges are very high. I have a speical rate with ATT that costs only $13.95/month, includes all premium features except text messaging, and inludes 20 minutes (more during the promotional period) and unlimited nights and weekends. It is not one of the one-rate national plans, but the "local" area extends into upper-state NY. Additional miuntes are as high as $.25/each depending on the time of day.
BTW, I would never use an analog phone. The connection quality is terrible, either the phones are heavier or the batteries need to be recharged more often, etc. I think that cell-phones will not be the method of choice for data transmission. New dedicated wireless data providers like Ricochet ($40/month unlimited access, up to 128k, including modem rental) will control that market. The problem is that they do not have connection points in many cities, yet.
As expensive as mobile airtime is now, how useful really is this feature? I cannot imagine a parent allowing their kid to spend 30 minutes on a cell to play games. Cool, but a little ahead of its time (at least in the US).
I understand that your entire Internet connection consists of a single satellite uplink. Which ISPs are you peering with so as to ensure that no single nation/or national alliance can sever your Internet connection?
Perhaps I was naive to think that counter-culture Internet media outlets would seek to maintain their independence from the corporate influence that plagues traditional media at all costs. Please excuse my naivete.
Lenny
P.S. That was a pretty good offer you got from VA. Furthermore, since Andover.net has little chance of becoming profitable in the near future, VA's support can sustain it for longer than it could sustain itself. So, maybe this is a good thing.
It's articles like this that make me happy that I leave my Katz filter off. As I mentioned in an earlier post, he has an excellent analytical ability and a fluid, narrative, writing style, but he tends towards sensationalism and sometimes seems like he is fishing for stories. This time, he reels in one of the most interesting and unique elements of Internet culture. He is trying to define an entire culture (which is a precarious practice) but his analysis is insightful and well-presented. I guess its fillet for all!
That being said, I think the most interesting questions that are raised by the gaming culture is the psychology of role-playing. While Katz points out that people take their fantasy "lives" very seriously (as evidenced by Ebay's Everquest auctions), he does not approach the question of the relationship between gamers' fantasy lives and their reality.
Do people turn to gaming as a way to express inner desires or attributes that cannot be expressed in the real world? Does this fantasy experience allow people to integrate what they learn about themselves into their real-world persona? Or, is gaming simply an escape from life's troubles that does not allow one to truly confront their problems in any meaningful way? While the answers to these questions will vary by individual, society will ultimately need to deal with a mainstream culture that is raised on video games, that will embody all of these characteristics to varying degrees.
As games become more immersive, I think it will become more difficult for people to balance their real and fantasy lives. If the fantasy and reality are disconnected, or if the fantasy is used simply an escape from a reality that is difficult to cope with, then is gaming really a productive activity? Perhaps the graph of immersiveness to benefits is somewhat like a bell-curve, where games that are not immersive have no positive effect on its players while those that are too immersive isolate their players from reality and prevent them from integrating what they learn about themselves in the game into their real lives.
Another interesting question is why people turn to games, and when they spend more/less time in these fantasy worlds.
I play multiplayer games only, and unfortunately I can only play for a few hours a week. I find playing against computer opponents to be exceedingly boring after I beat a game, as their behavior becomes predictable. But then again, perhaps the same can be said about human opponents (I once played a person in Quake, where, almost without fail, I would drop a grenade into certain empty rooms in a large level and he would enter the room and run into the grenade before it exploded), which brings up the other interesting issues about how peoples' style of play is an expression of their personality.
I was wondering if any "hardcore" gamers could lend some insight.
The difference between CNet and DoubleClick is that CNet only tracks your usage on sites *that they own.* Not that I'm defending even this practice (let alone the overall issue of net patents).
:-)
Lenny
Disclosure: I do own a couple shares of CNet. If they try to enforce this patent, you could own a couple shares of CNet
Seems like they are ruling the net with an IronFist.com
How much do you want to bet that they are planning to release an "official" fansite and do not want any of these sites stealing its traffic?
I am afraid that your board will only make the job of PR employees that much easier. For instance, Al Gore has a large group of publicists. For the sake of argument, let's assume that you do find a way to "verify that each individual is unique while maintaining their anonymity" and your board becomes popular. All these publicists have to do is sign up as a group, moderate each other's posts up, encourage their supporters to join the board and voice their opinion by moderating their posts up, etc.
The only difference is that instead of having money be the currency of power, you have volume (please do not flame me explaining "democracy"). Since the board is not likely to represent an accurate cross-section of society, the "majority" or "consensus" formed will not represent the community at large.
I have also thought about creating a similar forum, but have the nagging feeling that general-interest political boards will not be likely to have much influence in the overall political spectrum.
Instead, I think that the Internet is the ideal forum for special interests that would not necessarily have a significant influence in a general-interest forum. Slashdot is a perfect example; it caters to a particular segment of the population and does not presume to be an accurate cross section of society. By aggregating a limited number of people with similar interests, they are able to draw attention to issues of interest to their community that would otherwise go unnoticed. Through collective action that is organized by such a forum, the members can influence the community at-large on the issues that matter to them. In my mind, that is the real power of the Internet to influence American politics.
Sorry, that did not come out right. I meant to say that it would prevent a third-party OSS develop using the initial OSS developers' code (assuming it is released under the GPL) to extend the functionality of the program to include Motif libraries.
The GPL prevents subsequent developers from releasing code that is not free/OSS if the code that it is based on is licensed under the GPL. So, if I have an OSS application that includes some code from another OSS application, I cannot use the Motif libraries in my code at all because I could not release the full code (including the Motif libraries) to the OSS community. This *is* a "limitation" and not a "permission." Sorry for the confusion.
Even though the developers of Motif attempt to meet Stallman halfway by releasing their software for use by the open source community while ensuring their right to sell the software to makers of closed systems, Stallman refuses to accept their position. In addition, he uses the GPL as leverage by refusing to allow the developers who wrote software and released it under the GPL (as the GPL is non-revokable) to compile their programs for use with Motif. That is precisely why I will use proprietary licenses and avoid the GPL; I simply cannot entrust my code to Stallman.
The terms of the Motif license could actually *benefit* the Linux community. By releasing their software as open source only for specific OSs (like Linux), they add value to that operating system. Somebody might think twice before paying for Motif on another platform and use Linux in order to get it for free. Nonetheless, Stallman's cavalier attitude prevents him from seeing this tangible benefit to the OSS community.
Do not get me wrong; he is an excellent programmer and has nothing but good intentions for the software community. Nonetheless, his uncompromising nature makes him very difficult for people to deal with. If this is the response that Motif gets for making a gesture to the OSS community, do you think that they will make another?
Diplomacy will be key to gaining acceptance for free/OS software. The attitude that Stallman brings to the table will prevent people from recognizing the legitimacy of the OSS movement from a business perspective in addition to an ideological one.
After the market correction, I think that many tech companies will be reevaluating their position in the marketplace--especially B2C companies that offer expensive loss-leaders. Earlier in the year, Netpliance alienated an entire community of people interested in their product simply because it did not fit their original business plan.
Now that the market has made it clear that even tech companies must be profitable, Netpliance is trying to reach out to OSS developers who would be willing to either pay a premium for their machines or develop free applications that could make the I-Opener an even more valuable platform.
As indicated by the chargebacks without customer consent made in March, Netpliance's realationship with its own customers is shaky. They seem to be motivated only by an overriding sense of self-interest even at the complete expense of customer satisfaction. I foresee a major culture clash in their interactions with the OSS community that will ultimately not be beneficial for either party. It's too bad, though, they make a cool product.
What amazes me is the number of posts from people who go into the intracacies of libel law, as though they are legal scholars, instead of addressing the very plain and clear human issues that involve basic concepts of right and wrong. The law is an arse, and lawyers are arseholes. Trying to defend what is unpalatable and inexcusable in that way is beneath contempt.
-------------------------------------
I simply do not understand how we as a community can speak out against those who torment fellow students with vicious and unsubstantiated remarks while defending the kid in this case. It is almost like saying that somebody who privately torments a student should be chastised while somebody who stands in the middle of Times Square and publicly shouts those same remarks is not deserving of the same judgment.
I think the problem that we have is that our past victimization has led us to always identify with those who are experiencing similar treatment--regardless of their actions.
I hated people in high school and I'm glad that I'm going going 300 miles away to college in August. Nonetheless, stooping to their level and justifying my response by claiming that I'm just responding to my tormenters' attacks in kind is infantile. I'm not an "apologist"; I do not think that the magnitude of the administrators' response was appropriate. Nonetheless, we need to recognize that the individual we are identifying with *did do something wrong* by the same "basic principles" that you acknowledge.
While we can rage against "this corporate fascist right-wing police state" all day and all night, I think that we should not be afraid to look critically at *ourselves* and those who we identify with, first. Only through introspection can we grow as individuals and as a community. Blindly lashing out at those who we are viscerally or emotionally drawn to dislike is not productive, in and of itself.
I appreciate your criticism and look forward to your response.