it could in turn free up consumers' dollars to support many more local and indie artists who, in my experience, often only seek to strike it big enough to make a decent living, not necessarily to win the virtual lottery of American Idol-atry.
Most artists want to make shitloads of money, not just enough to make a decent living. It sounds like you don't believe artists should be making lots of money.
local and indie artists don't make shit at bars/gigs. They make most of their money from CD and t-shirt sales, so I don't think your point really holds.
"If you're saying that the terms of the GPL are socialistic, bear in mind that the GPL's legal standing derives entirely from existing copyright law. If the GPL is communist, so are copyrights!"
Does the copyright require a person to release their changes to a piece of software? No. This is why it is still socialistic. It puts everyone at the same level.
"In fact, there are probably many in the free software community that would welcome the day that the GPL became unenforcible - because the government would then not be able to tell you what software you could and couldn't write. That actually sounds like the opposite of communism to me:)"
Then there will have to be a law against closed-source, because when there are no IP laws, companies and businesses will keep their software even more protected (Software will either be really expensive or the industry will become stagnant).
What many people don't realize is that the existance of money drives innovation. IP laws are there to protect a businesses investment (which isn't free). If you notice, the largest open source projects are all backed by corporations (apache, mysql, php, and even linux).
I think they laws need to be changed, but not completly abolished.
"You're missing the critical point where the comparison breaks down. One of the central principles behind the GPL is the premise that information, being infinitely replicable without diminishing, shouldn't be considered "property"."
My point still stands. Getting rid of property by default makes creates a mass ownership. IE: Because noone owns it, everyone does.
"A lot of capitalists are making a lot of money off Linux. I work for an Internet company that runs on a +2000 Linux cluster. We were recently sold for $4 billion. Linux is not about socialism, it's *not* anti-capitalist anymore than Google or IBM is"
Do you even know the meaning of socialism? Here it is (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/socialism) :
"a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole."
This would fit the definition of linux and the GNU, except for the fact that the Free Software foundation is at the top (many people give all of their IP rights to the GNU..as described in the license), so, this fits more in this definition:
"a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state"
Which is communism.
I guess you can decide which one applies to linux, but I feel it is somewhere in-between.
If I buy 2000 machines and put linux on them, will someone buy them for $4 billion? I didn't think so. The purchase for 4 billion had nothing to do with linux. It was more about your customers, IP, and work that was put into the company.
"The GPL has nothing to do with social equality. It's purpose is to ensure that great software will continue to evolve. The main restriction it places on a programmer is that he must ensure his code stays open for others to improve upon. He can sell and profit from writing code, and be as much a capitalist as he wants. The GPL doesn't prevent that in the least."
It's not about social equality, it's about software equality. A business does not want to put thousands of hours into R&D (which costs lots of money), sell a piece of software, and then allow anyone to sell it or give it away for free (without having to put any R&D into it). From this aspect, it does not make sense as a business model. It does, however, if the business selling it is not the original developer or they are using it to somehow save money in licensing fees.
When anyone can do something (or in our case, download it), the value of it starts approaching 0.
"Why is it bad? Because Novell ins't selling it's own products - it's trying to sell someone else's products apparantly in violation (or at least a creative interpretation) of the license agreement under which it was given rights to sell the software."
How are they violating the GPL?
The fsf website states that you are allowed to sell GNU software as long as you don't restrict usagem and either give out the source with binaries or give the source out upon request.
The FSF is using intellectual property to serve their own political agenda, which is interesting because they are the #1 organization against IP (or is it okay for the FSF only).
"I'm speaking from personal experience. A project I worked on went on to earn over $500 million. The people involved pocketed between nine and seven figures each. The cost was five years of their life. I left early in the piece, didn't get the money but am the happiest I have ever been in my life (IMO opinion happier than the rich guys, but I don't really know what their lives are like.) Looking from the outside it would seem that the nine figure guys almost lost their marriages over"
How does one have anything to do with another? It sounds like sour grapes to me.
"The problem isn't the money directly. It is the attempt that destroys you, whether it be successful or not. If you are successful you generally (there are exceptions) come out the other end a self centred bastard who only cares about "mine" and are deluded that people like you for reasons other than your money. Better to get on with what matters in life and if it happens to make you rich as a side effect then so be it, but don't go in with the aim of making money or it will destroy you"
It sounds like you are bitter from getting fucked over too many times (next time learn to watch out for people that could potentially take your money). Money nor the attempt destroys you. I feel that you can do what matters in life and make lots of money (when you have lots money you can do the following:
1) take as many vacations as you want 2) spend more time with your family 3) spend more time with your kids 4) spend more time with your wife
What you choose to do with your money is what matters..not the mere fact of making it.
working a regular 9-5 sucks the living soul out of a person.
"Suppose I make AnAwesomeProgram and distribute it freely under the BSD license, thus releasing it to the world uninhibited. SomeoneElse comes along, takes the code he didn't write, adds some trivial functionality, and resells for $$$$, but doesn't allow his customers the same rights he had (thou shalt not reverse engineer, thou shalt not decompile, thou shalt not redistribute, thou shalt worship only me and live)."
The original code is still there. Only the additions are not made available to others. You may see this as unacceptable, but to me, it seems like a restriction I do not want to have to deal with, which is why I prefer the BSD license.
Businesses are not going to deal with the FSF and stallman's antics much longer. The more restrictive the license, the less widespread usage.
"Really? And how do you know that mugging is bad? Because people have been mugged, and the lesson learned is "that is bad!" Some kids touch hot stoves and burn themselves, and the outcome now is parents who are more careful. Some kids stuck keys in outlets, and the outcome is very cheap outlet protectors (provided by the free market, not by some ridiculous one-size-fits-all government law)."
Are you serious?
There are certain things in life that are bad/harmful, but teach us a lesson (such as kids touching a stove). Other things we learn from others' bad experiences and should never have to go through ourselves (mugging, murder, rape, etc.).
"Microsoft could take a few lessons from these guys..."
There is no difference between a pirated microsoft product and the original. Unlike hardware companies like samsung, Microsoft would basically just be competing with themselves, which is why they now have the genuine advantage program and other protections.
"So, let me get this straight. The openSUSE developers are smart enough to work on openSUSE, smart enough to be welcome to other distros, but too stupid to realize they can work on another distro if they want to?"
Not stupid, just ignorant of other options. As long as he wasn't an asshole about it, I see it as fair.
It seems to me that many of the complaints here are due to fear. You are afraid people will actually take him up on the offer.
"With Ubuntu's questionable inclusion of non-GPL, "binary blob" and closed source drivers, maybe Shuttleworth should worry more about his own distro, and let the openSUSE developers worry about theirs."
What you don't realize is that this is the only way a linux distribution has a chance at competing with Windows. Shuttleworth is a (smart) businessman and knows this as well.
as an IT guy, you should be able to determine if a project is good for a particuler use PRIOR to going to your boss and asking to get it installed"
Okay, then that pretty much means not using open source at all.
"i've had EXCELLENT SUCCESS with php, apache, postgresql, a forms class, adodob... i've left some out. i'm AMAZED, STUNNED even, at how well these technologies all work together to enable a developer!"
Really good Open source projects are few and far between. You have pretty much listed them all. If you notice, most of these projects not only have great management (which is mentioned as a downfall for other OSS projects), but are backed by corporate entities.
"then again, i did my homework."
Sure doesn't look like it to me.
"firefox is great, too. open office, like msoffice, has some annoying bugs."
Firefox is better than IE in many respects (especially security). This is one project though.
"what programs let you down? vague complaining about open source is lame, imho - name names"
So is downplaying an obvious issue in the open source community. One only has to look at freshmeant and sourceforge to see proof of this overall trend. If the open source community ever wants to change and move to a higher level, they will look at these kinds of things and consider changing.
"It is easy to fly of the handle on things like terrorism, and that is the reaction that the US had. Invading over countries doesn't automatically stop terrorism, in fact it may create more terrorism. Simply because most over countries deal with it in a different way, isn't really a case of abjecting their responsibility."
This is a foolish way to get out of an agressive situation. Appease the terrorists. We see how well it works for canada. They have done nothing to directly hurt terrorist countries..and they are now being threatened with various attacks. What's next? Converting everyone to their religion so they don't attack us?
Another example of this is the many countries that were taken over by Hitler in WW2. They decided to have "peace talks" with germany..and got fucked over and attacked. The only thing that stopped a world take-over was a full-blown war...which worked very effectively.
What many people don't realize is that everyone doesn't act and think like they do. You cannot rationalize with an irrational leader/group. Sometimes, the only way to stop people like this is brute force.
The people of Iraq don't really deserve our help in the first place. We stopped a leader that was slaughtering his people in masses and most of our troops get shit upon.
A million more people might have needed to get slaughtered before the people of Iraq decided that they wanted freedom.
"The US is considered a bully because of the way they handled the events after the WTC attack. The US leaders had their own reasons for invading Iraq, and nothing to do with terrorism"
"At one time, the US had a "War Department" and a "Secretary of War". Sometime in history, we changed the name to "Department of Defense" and "Secretary of Defense". This happened about the time we stopped using the army for actual defense of the country and instead started using it to bully the rest of the world."
If you mean, bullying countries that are a direct threat to the world, then yes. The problem isn't that the U.S. is a bully..it's that no other country will step up to the plate.
If other countries and their leaders grew some balls, terrorism might not even be a viable threat.
"They can certainly try, but CentOS has been around for a while and Red Hat are still in business. If you wish to argue that Oracle are going to give better service than Red Hat, on products that only Red Hat control... then please pass the crack pipe around so everyone can have a toke"
CentOS is very small compared to redhat. When a large company comes onto the scene (especially one that makes its money with something other than open source) and has 10 or 20 times the resources, they should be worried.
Oracle has a lot more money that redhat and could easily hire many more developers if redhat ever went out of business.
now the question is: Will this help oracle get better marketshare? I don't really know.
"I wish the beat your competition into the ground monopolist attitude that some people have would just die. This is the open source revolution here. We don't need to have one guy win while the other guy loses. Red hat does plenty of other things besides working with Oracle. Its not about making the other guy lose, its about you winning. If there is no market, then you all lose"
Business don't care about the open source revolution. Businesses are there for one thing: to make money. Both Redhat and Oracle realize that they can do this without having to do all the work alone..in the end, the company with more market share and resources will win.
"That's what Ellison, the Oracle CEO, said in the announcement. They think that they're clever than anyone, that they can just copy the source code and make money at the expense of others."
Oracle can..and they probably will. This is why any business model based on open source is so difficult. Any company with more resources, power, and money can come along and start re-selling it. Even if they put redhat out of business..it won't be a problem because they can easily just hire programmers to start working on their distro.
"Red Hat bought Jboss and oracle thinks they can knock down any open source bussiness (they've warned that they may release support for suse aswell) just to avoid Red Hat & cia selling competitors for their Oracle closed product. I hope they fail."
Why do you want them to fail? They are not violating the GNU license.
"No sir, I feel sorry for everyone around you ; Your opinions are a drain on our society.
Just because it's a link to a norml page doesn't negate it validity. It's a recent article and it has a good point"
good or bad, it's biased, which means I have my doubts to it's validity. The people behind getting drugs legalized are mostly people that are recreational drug users themselves, which puts doubts in most peoples' minds right away.
Kind of like all of the smear campaigns you see on TV when it gets closer to elections. Would you believe an article about how blacks are taking down our society from a KKK website? If not, why not?
"The only reason his ideals wouldn't work in your "big, bad, real-world" is because it's full of ignorant fools like yourself. God created everyone equal"
I'm sorry, god created everyone equal, but there are clear differences in the world. Some people try harder than others and get ahead in life..others don't..and stay behind (some people are rich..others poor). This is why I enjoy living in a society that rewards my hard-work rather than keeping me "equal" with everyone else. There are a countless number of socialist/communist nations that have failed for just this reason.
"you flood hospitals and people that actually need care cannot get it" - WTF?? The reason people go to a hospital is to get care. It's called a hospital and you go there when you get sick. They should have told you that in school."
You are the one that needs to go back to school. A public health care system means over-taxed, over-worked, and not enough health care for the masses. A private one does not.
I would rather have the choice for good health care(with private health care) than be forced to have a shitty health care system (with public health care).
Hospitals take anyone now anyway (which is a good thing).
"No one has ever died because of the fact that they were a stoner."
ahh, so you need a history lesson too? Tell that to john belushi, jimi hendrix, chris farley, and Kurt cobain.
"The license suspension is eliminated as a possibility by the sheer number of smokers out there. The idea that pot smoking is limited to pre-driving age people is eliminated by numerous surveys; pot use is common among young people, certainly, but if you simply look for the information, you'll find there are many in other age groups who are users. I suggest a visit to NORML for more information. If, that is, you have any urge to replace your illusory preconceptions with actual facts."
I don't think so. Show me some evidence by a non-biased research group (not for the legalization of pot). Then I might start to listen to you.
"Oh, please. Are you telling me that you think people don't drive cars stoned? What planet do you live on? Do you even know what pot smells like? Do you even drive? Please -- try not to be absurd. The fact is, being stoned isn't much of an impediment to driving. I'm not saying it is advisable, any more than talking on a cell phone is advisable, but it certainly isn't a compromise on the same order as driving while drunk. In terms of personal experience, I've only observed perhaps a few tens of drunk drivers, but I couldn't even begin to count the number of times my schoolmates were out driving while stoned. And those are just the ones I know about"
Yes I do and I know people drive stoned. I just don't want people on speed or other harder drugs to be driving and kill me or my friends or family. When you make something more available, more people will be doing it.
"No. I direct you to the fact that the global (and American) illicit drug market is larger -- much larger -- than the global alcohol market, about 400 billion dollars last I looked it up. Illicit drug users are all around you. You're just blind to them, which is not surprising, because much illicit drug use isn't often very obvious, unlike alcohol use, which is very obvious"
You say this is the case, but I see no evidence/research to back this up.
"Thanks for your reply. It is always good to have someone trundle out incorrect and poorly reasoned arguments so they can be beaten down in public. You've done the community a service, and I, for one, thank you"
heh. So you tell me I look foolish in front of a bunch of stoners..and they agree because they don't agree with the fact that I don't want hard drugs legalized (I'm shocked!). hmm..I think you better look again at the current situation.
If you notice, the only people agreeing with you are also recreational drug users...which will never give you your drug laws passed in the United States. You are going to have do a better job convincing the american public as to why drugs should be legalized (which will never happen, because we can just look at our history..when it was legalized..and see all of the problems).
I think if we really want to help the american public, we should concentrate on using less drugs (anti-depressants are over-prescribed and have very bad side-effects) not allowing more.
"If we just legalize it, then I wouldn't need anything harder. The government is capable of making some really premo stuff. lol Besides, for me, harder stuff isn't for when pot won't cut it. It's for when I want to dance all night and get laid."
If you can't dance all night and get laid without drugs..I really feel sorry for you.
Advocating drug usage on a site built around "working to reform marijuana laws". How about a less biased example.
"But health care is the problem. We could build more hospitals. We can help people treat their problems instead of out casting them into an unwanted sub-culture which just gets worse every day. The big line for major surgery is not caused by Canada's relaxed views on drugs. Are you saying that your medical needs are to be put above everyone else's?"
"I envision a future where our children are free to make their own choices (as long as they don't hurt others or jeopardize the freedom of others) and where everyone is able to get equal medical attention when they really need it. Don't you see? You won't pay more in taxes because what you're paying for now requires a ridiculously large amount of taxpayer money and it obviously doesn't work"
Your ideals sound nice and sweet, but they just don't work in the big, bad, real-world. Because resources are limited, everyone cannot be equal.
It's not their drug laws. It's their public health care system. Resources are not unlimited, so there must be a choice on who gets what kind of care (either everyone gets shitty health care or some people get good care and some people get bad care..I would rather have the ability to have really good health care than never have the choice).
When you have a public health care system, you flood hospitals and people that actually need care cannot get it (my aunt could not get major surgery in canada because there was a 2 year waiting list. She got it in the U.S. in a matter of weeks).
"It sounds like you're implying that being a "stoner" is a bad thing. The big picture is that countries with relaxed drug laws traditionally have lower crime rates and lower drug usage among its citizens."
Seeing as everyone I have ever known that was a "stoner" didn't turn out to do much with their lives or died as a result(the drugs became the most important thing), yes.
"Public health care is something pretty much every other civilized country has and seems to work out pretty well for them I think you missed the point though, where did he talk about increasing taxes?"
Where do you think the money for public health care comes from?
Look at the amount of taxes that "every other civilized country" has to pay every year and get back to me.
"Why are you so against drug use that you would penalize your fellow man for his or her personal choices with no benefit to society?"
Because that personal choice endangers the rest of society.
Slashdot Mirror
it could in turn free up consumers' dollars to support many more local and indie artists who, in my experience, often only seek to strike it big enough to make a decent living, not necessarily to win the virtual lottery of American Idol-atry.
Most artists want to make shitloads of money, not just enough to make a decent living. It sounds like you don't believe artists should be making lots of money.
local and indie artists don't make shit at bars/gigs. They make most of their money from CD and t-shirt sales, so I don't think your point really holds.
Even though it is a little dated, I had windows95 running on a 386 DX 20 with 8mb of ram. It took half an hour to bootup.
"Value is a relative term"
that may be true, but you aren't going to make much money selling sand to someone that lives in the desert.
"If you're saying that the terms of the GPL are socialistic, bear in mind that the GPL's legal standing derives entirely from existing copyright law. If the GPL is communist, so are copyrights!"
:)"
Does the copyright require a person to release their changes to a piece of software? No. This is why it is still socialistic. It puts everyone at the same level.
"In fact, there are probably many in the free software community that would welcome the day that the GPL became unenforcible - because the government would then not be able to tell you what software you could and couldn't write. That actually sounds like the opposite of communism to me
Then there will have to be a law against closed-source, because when there are no IP laws, companies and businesses will keep their software even more protected (Software will either be really expensive or the industry will become stagnant).
What many people don't realize is that the existance of money drives innovation. IP laws are there to protect a businesses investment (which isn't free). If you notice, the largest open source projects are all backed by corporations (apache, mysql, php, and even linux).
I think they laws need to be changed, but not completly abolished.
"You're missing the critical point where the comparison breaks down. One of the central principles behind the GPL is the premise that information, being infinitely replicable without diminishing, shouldn't be considered "property"."
My point still stands. Getting rid of property by default makes creates a mass ownership. IE: Because noone owns it, everyone does.
"A lot of capitalists are making a lot of money off Linux. I work for an Internet company that runs on a +2000 Linux cluster. We were recently sold for $4 billion. Linux is not about socialism, it's *not* anti-capitalist anymore than Google or IBM is"
) :
Do you even know the meaning of socialism? Here it is (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/socialism
"a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole."
This would fit the definition of linux and the GNU, except for the fact that the Free Software foundation is at the top (many people give all of their IP rights to the GNU..as described in the license), so, this fits more in this definition:
"a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state"
Which is communism.
I guess you can decide which one applies to linux, but I feel it is somewhere in-between.
If I buy 2000 machines and put linux on them, will someone buy them for $4 billion? I didn't think so. The purchase for 4 billion had nothing to do with linux. It was more about your customers, IP, and work that was put into the company.
"The GPL has nothing to do with social equality. It's purpose is to ensure that great software will continue to evolve. The main restriction it places on a programmer is that he must ensure his code stays open for others to improve upon. He can sell and profit from writing code, and be as much a capitalist as he wants. The GPL doesn't prevent that in the least."
It's not about social equality, it's about software equality. A business does not want to put thousands of hours into R&D (which costs lots of money), sell a piece of software, and then allow anyone to sell it or give it away for free (without having to put any R&D into it). From this aspect, it does not make sense as a business model. It does, however, if the business selling it is not the original developer or they are using it to somehow save money in licensing fees.
When anyone can do something (or in our case, download it), the value of it starts approaching 0.
"Why is it bad? Because Novell ins't selling it's own products - it's trying to sell someone else's products apparantly in violation (or at least a creative interpretation) of the license agreement under which it was given rights to sell the software."
How are they violating the GPL?
The fsf website states that you are allowed to sell GNU software as long as you don't restrict usagem and either give out the source with binaries or give the source out upon request.
The FSF is using intellectual property to serve their own political agenda, which is interesting because they are the #1 organization against IP (or is it okay for the FSF only).
"I'm speaking from personal experience. A project I worked on went on to earn over $500 million. The people involved pocketed between nine and seven figures each. The cost was five years of their life. I left early in the piece, didn't get the money but am the happiest I have ever been in my life (IMO opinion happier than the rich guys, but I don't really know what their lives are like.) Looking from the outside it would seem that the nine figure guys almost lost their marriages over"
How does one have anything to do with another? It sounds like sour grapes to me.
"The problem isn't the money directly. It is the attempt that destroys you, whether it be successful or not. If you are successful you generally (there are exceptions) come out the other end a self centred bastard who only cares about "mine" and are deluded that people like you for reasons other than your money. Better to get on with what matters in life and if it happens to make you rich as a side effect then so be it, but don't go in with the aim of making money or it will destroy you"
It sounds like you are bitter from getting fucked over too many times (next time learn to watch out for people that could potentially take your money). Money nor the attempt destroys you. I feel that you can do what matters in life and make lots of money (when you have lots money you can do the following:
1) take as many vacations as you want
2) spend more time with your family
3) spend more time with your kids
4) spend more time with your wife
What you choose to do with your money is what matters..not the mere fact of making it.
working a regular 9-5 sucks the living soul out of a person.
"Suppose I make AnAwesomeProgram and distribute it freely under the BSD license, thus releasing it to the world uninhibited. SomeoneElse comes along, takes the code he didn't write, adds some trivial functionality, and resells for $$$$, but doesn't allow his customers the same rights he had (thou shalt not reverse engineer, thou shalt not decompile, thou shalt not redistribute, thou shalt worship only me and live)."
The original code is still there. Only the additions are not made available to others. You may see this as unacceptable, but to me, it seems like a restriction I do not want to have to deal with, which is why I prefer the BSD license.
Businesses are not going to deal with the FSF and stallman's antics much longer. The more restrictive the license, the less widespread usage.
"Really? And how do you know that mugging is bad? Because people have been mugged, and the lesson learned is "that is bad!" Some kids touch hot stoves and burn themselves, and the outcome now is parents who are more careful. Some kids stuck keys in outlets, and the outcome is very cheap outlet protectors (provided by the free market, not by some ridiculous one-size-fits-all government law)."
Are you serious?
There are certain things in life that are bad/harmful, but teach us a lesson (such as kids touching a stove). Other things we learn from others' bad experiences and should never have to go through ourselves (mugging, murder, rape, etc.).
"Microsoft could take a few lessons from these guys..."
There is no difference between a pirated microsoft product and the original. Unlike hardware companies like samsung, Microsoft would basically just be competing with themselves, which is why they now have the genuine advantage program and other protections.
"So, let me get this straight. The openSUSE developers are smart enough to work on openSUSE, smart enough to be welcome to other distros, but too stupid to realize they can work on another distro if they want to?"
Not stupid, just ignorant of other options. As long as he wasn't an asshole about it, I see it as fair.
It seems to me that many of the complaints here are due to fear. You are afraid people will actually take him up on the offer.
"With Ubuntu's questionable inclusion of non-GPL, "binary blob" and closed source drivers, maybe Shuttleworth should worry more about his own distro, and let the openSUSE developers worry about theirs."
What you don't realize is that this is the only way a linux distribution has a chance at competing with Windows. Shuttleworth is a (smart) businessman and knows this as well.
"what projects?
as an IT guy, you should be able to determine if a project is good for a particuler use PRIOR to going to your boss and asking to get it installed"
Okay, then that pretty much means not using open source at all.
"i've had EXCELLENT SUCCESS with php, apache, postgresql, a forms class, adodob... i've left some out. i'm AMAZED, STUNNED even, at how well these technologies all work together to enable a developer!"
Really good Open source projects are few and far between. You have pretty much listed them all. If you notice, most of these projects not only have great management (which is mentioned as a downfall for other OSS projects), but are backed by corporate entities.
"then again, i did my homework."
Sure doesn't look like it to me.
"firefox is great, too. open office, like msoffice, has some annoying bugs."
Firefox is better than IE in many respects (especially security). This is one project though.
"what programs let you down? vague complaining about open source is lame, imho - name names"
So is downplaying an obvious issue in the open source community. One only has to look at freshmeant and sourceforge to see proof of this overall trend. If the open source community ever wants to change and move to a higher level, they will look at these kinds of things and consider changing.
"Steal from 100 widows, support 1, collect humanitarian award."
and microsoft steals from widows.....how?
"It is easy to fly of the handle on things like terrorism, and that is the reaction that the US had. Invading over countries doesn't automatically stop terrorism, in fact it may create more terrorism. Simply because most over countries deal with it in a different way, isn't really a case of abjecting their responsibility."
This is a foolish way to get out of an agressive situation. Appease the terrorists. We see how well it works for canada. They have done nothing to directly hurt terrorist countries..and they are now being threatened with various attacks. What's next? Converting everyone to their religion so they don't attack us?
Another example of this is the many countries that were taken over by Hitler in WW2. They decided to have "peace talks" with germany..and got fucked over and attacked. The only thing that stopped a world take-over was a full-blown war...which worked very effectively.
What many people don't realize is that everyone doesn't act and think like they do. You cannot rationalize with an irrational leader/group. Sometimes, the only way to stop people like this is brute force.
The people of Iraq don't really deserve our help in the first place. We stopped a leader that was slaughtering his people in masses and most of our troops get shit upon.
A million more people might have needed to get slaughtered before the people of Iraq decided that they wanted freedom.
"The US is considered a bully because of the way they handled the events after the WTC attack. The US leaders had their own reasons for invading Iraq, and nothing to do with terrorism"
And your proof of this...is?
"At one time, the US had a "War Department" and a "Secretary of War". Sometime in history, we changed the name to "Department of Defense" and "Secretary of Defense". This happened about the time we stopped using the army for actual defense of the country and instead started using it to bully the rest of the world."
If you mean, bullying countries that are a direct threat to the world, then yes. The problem isn't that the U.S. is a bully..it's that no other country will step up to the plate.
If other countries and their leaders grew some balls, terrorism might not even be a viable threat.
"They can certainly try, but CentOS has been around for a while and Red Hat are still in business. If you wish to argue that Oracle are going to give better service than Red Hat, on products that only Red Hat control ... then please pass the crack pipe around so everyone can have a toke"
CentOS is very small compared to redhat. When a large company comes onto the scene (especially one that makes its money with something other than open source) and has 10 or 20 times the resources, they should be worried.
Oracle has a lot more money that redhat and could easily hire many more developers if redhat ever went out of business.
now the question is: Will this help oracle get better marketshare? I don't really know.
"What exactly is he guilty of? Generating a specific pattern of pixels on his screen, and enabling others to generate similar patterns of pixels?
"
Kind of like how printing your own money is printing specific patterns of ink on paper?
"john belushi, jimi hendrix, chris farley, and Kurt cobain did not die as a result of pot you moron"
who said anything about pot? "stoners" was the term used, which is not exclusive to pot use.
"I wish the beat your competition into the ground monopolist attitude that some people have would just die. This is the open source revolution here. We don't need to have one guy win while the other guy loses. Red hat does plenty of other things besides working with Oracle. Its not about making the other guy lose, its about you winning. If there is no market, then you all lose"
Business don't care about the open source revolution. Businesses are there for one thing: to make money. Both Redhat and Oracle realize that they can do this without having to do all the work alone..in the end, the company with more market share and resources will win.
"That's what Ellison, the Oracle CEO, said in the announcement. They think that they're clever than anyone, that they can just copy the source code and make money at the expense of others."
Oracle can..and they probably will. This is why any business model based on open source is so difficult. Any company with more resources, power, and money can come along and start re-selling it. Even if they put redhat out of business..it won't be a problem because they can easily just hire programmers to start working on their distro.
"Red Hat bought Jboss and oracle thinks they can knock down any open source bussiness (they've warned that they may release support for suse aswell) just to avoid Red Hat & cia selling competitors for their Oracle closed product. I hope they fail."
Why do you want them to fail? They are not violating the GNU license.
"No sir, I feel sorry for everyone around you ; Your opinions are a drain on our society.
Just because it's a link to a norml page doesn't negate it validity. It's a recent article and it has a good point"
good or bad, it's biased, which means I have my doubts to it's validity. The people behind getting drugs legalized are mostly people that are recreational drug users themselves, which puts doubts in most peoples' minds right away.
Kind of like all of the smear campaigns you see on TV when it gets closer to elections. Would you believe an article about how blacks are taking down our society from a KKK website? If not, why not?
"The only reason his ideals wouldn't work in your "big, bad, real-world" is because it's full of ignorant fools like yourself. God created everyone equal"
I'm sorry, god created everyone equal, but there are clear differences in the world. Some people try harder than others and get ahead in life..others don't..and stay behind (some people are rich..others poor). This is why I enjoy living in a society that rewards my hard-work rather than keeping me "equal" with everyone else. There are a countless number of socialist/communist nations that have failed for just this reason.
"you flood hospitals and people that actually need care cannot get it" - WTF?? The reason people go to a hospital is to get care. It's called a hospital and you go there when you get sick. They should have told you that in school."
You are the one that needs to go back to school. A public health care system means over-taxed, over-worked, and not enough health care for the masses. A private one does not.
I would rather have the choice for good health care(with private health care) than be forced to have a shitty health care system (with public health care).
Hospitals take anyone now anyway (which is a good thing).
"No one has ever died because of the fact that they were a stoner."
ahh, so you need a history lesson too? Tell that to john belushi, jimi hendrix, chris farley, and Kurt cobain.
Let me guess..you are a recreational drug user?
"The license suspension is eliminated as a possibility by the sheer number of smokers out there. The idea that pot smoking is limited to pre-driving age people is eliminated by numerous surveys; pot use is common among young people, certainly, but if you simply look for the information, you'll find there are many in other age groups who are users. I suggest a visit to NORML for more information. If, that is, you have any urge to replace your illusory preconceptions with actual facts."
I don't think so. Show me some evidence by a non-biased research group (not for the legalization of pot). Then I might start to listen to you.
"Oh, please. Are you telling me that you think people don't drive cars stoned? What planet do you live on? Do you even know what pot smells like? Do you even drive? Please -- try not to be absurd. The fact is, being stoned isn't much of an impediment to driving. I'm not saying it is advisable, any more than talking on a cell phone is advisable, but it certainly isn't a compromise on the same order as driving while drunk. In terms of personal experience, I've only observed perhaps a few tens of drunk drivers, but I couldn't even begin to count the number of times my schoolmates were out driving while stoned. And those are just the ones I know about"
Yes I do and I know people drive stoned. I just don't want people on speed or other harder drugs to be driving and kill me or my friends or family. When you make something more available, more people will be doing it.
"No. I direct you to the fact that the global (and American) illicit drug market is larger -- much larger -- than the global alcohol market, about 400 billion dollars last I looked it up. Illicit drug users are all around you. You're just blind to them, which is not surprising, because much illicit drug use isn't often very obvious, unlike alcohol use, which is very obvious"
You say this is the case, but I see no evidence/research to back this up.
"Thanks for your reply. It is always good to have someone trundle out incorrect and poorly reasoned arguments so they can be beaten down in public. You've done the community a service, and I, for one, thank you"
heh. So you tell me I look foolish in front of a bunch of stoners..and they agree because they don't agree with the fact that I don't want hard drugs legalized (I'm shocked!). hmm..I think you better look again at the current situation.
If you notice, the only people agreeing with you are also recreational drug users...which will never give you your drug laws passed in the United States. You are going to have do a better job convincing the american public as to why drugs should be legalized (which will never happen, because we can just look at our history..when it was legalized..and see all of the problems).
I think if we really want to help the american public, we should concentrate on using less drugs (anti-depressants are over-prescribed and have very bad side-effects) not allowing more.
"If we just legalize it, then I wouldn't need anything harder. The government is capable of making some really premo stuff. lol
Besides, for me, harder stuff isn't for when pot won't cut it. It's for when I want to dance all night and get laid."
If you can't dance all night and get laid without drugs..I really feel sorry for you.
"I hate to point you to a NORML page, but take a look at this: http://www.norml.com/index.cfm?Group_ID=7073 "
Wow!
Advocating drug usage on a site built around "working to reform marijuana laws". How about a less biased example.
"But health care is the problem. We could build more hospitals. We can help people treat their problems instead of out casting them into an unwanted sub-culture which just gets worse every day. The big line for major surgery is not caused by Canada's relaxed views on drugs. Are you saying that your medical needs are to be put above everyone else's?"
"I envision a future where our children are free to make their own choices (as long as they don't hurt others or jeopardize the freedom of others) and where everyone is able to get equal medical attention when they really need it. Don't you see? You won't pay more in taxes because what you're paying for now requires a ridiculously large amount of taxpayer money and it obviously doesn't work"
Your ideals sound nice and sweet, but they just don't work in the big, bad, real-world. Because resources are limited, everyone cannot be equal.
It's not their drug laws. It's their public health care system. Resources are not unlimited, so there must be a choice on who gets what kind of care (either everyone gets shitty health care or some people get good care and some people get bad care..I would rather have the ability to have really good health care than never have the choice).
When you have a public health care system, you flood hospitals and people that actually need care cannot get it (my aunt could not get major surgery in canada because there was a 2 year waiting list. She got it in the U.S. in a matter of weeks).
"It sounds like you're implying that being a "stoner" is a bad thing. The big picture is that countries with relaxed drug laws traditionally have lower crime rates and lower drug usage among its citizens."
Seeing as everyone I have ever known that was a "stoner" didn't turn out to do much with their lives or died as a result(the drugs became the most important thing), yes.
"Public health care is something pretty much every other civilized country has and seems to work out pretty well for them I think you missed the point though, where did he talk about increasing taxes?"
Where do you think the money for public health care comes from?
Look at the amount of taxes that "every other civilized country" has to pay every year and get back to me.
"Why are you so against drug use that you would penalize your fellow man for his or her personal choices with no benefit to society?"
Because that personal choice endangers the rest of society.