I do my best to let my beliefs be formed by reason and evidence, not by metaphysical or epistemic prejudices. I realize that I cannot guarantee that all my beliefs are thusly formed, but at least I try.
Dennett is a _reductionist_ about consciousness -- he thinks that consciousness _just_is_ the processing of certain kinds of information in a certain kind of way (where "information" is equally murkily defined, but that's someone else's problem). This isn't the same as saying there's no such thing.
True -- but you are forgetting that what most people think they mean by 'consciousness' is not reducible. By treating it reductionistically, he destroys the common notion of consciousness, he takes out of the equation that which people vaguely imply when they use the word 'consciousness'. For all intents and purposes, Dennet did not explain consciousness -- he explained it away as something not requiring a real explanation above and beyond that which is alotted to mind itself. (in common usage of the word, mind is the information-processing stuff, and consciousness is that little something mysterious in addition to mind, the quale of self perhaps).
Don't take me wrong -- I think Dennett was on the right track, in terms of getting rid of the veil of mystery surrounding consciousness, I just think he was not explicit enough.
After all, if an artificial consciousness can be created, it demonstrates the lack of any "spark" given to a biological being, of any "soul".
Don't count on it. The fools will simply proclaim that the artificial consciousness is just 'faking it', and that it cannot be real consciousness -- nevermind the referrential incoherence of such a distinction, or the fact that it essentially amounts to an argument from ignorance.
Most people believe what they want to believe -- and if they want to feel that they are a special, unique creation of the invisible sky pixie, that's what they will believe.
Emperor's new mind was a relatively complex philisophical argument about conciousness.
Yes -- an argument by someone who does not sufficiently understand the issues involved (he is a physicist, don't forget that). His argument relies on essentially fallacious application of computational incompleteness theorems to human epistemic process, and is ultimately quite unsound.
Now mind, you, that does not mean that we have a complete but non-Penrosesque understanding of mind; it merely means that Penrose utterly failed to prove that human mind cannot be emulated by a Turing machines, which was more or less his ultimate goal.
I disagree, but agree that it is a very good book. Dennett provides a very good theory of how information can be processed in the way that humans do, but really fails to convince as to whether this is actually "consciousness".
That's because 'consciousness', just like 'soul', is an incoherent feel-good notion that people think they understand, but really have no idea what they mean by it. Speaking of 'consciousness' is essentially like speaking of totally undetectable firebreathing dragon under my chair -- what we can talk about is mind. What Dennett essentially does is simply shred the veil of artificial mystery that surrounds 'consciousness', nothing more.
Jon, you first of all have to learn to not try to dredge profundity where there is none -- such as this book. Yes, human brain is just a result of evolution; yes, there is no ultimate purpose; but to leap from that to 'there can be no consciousness in a pourely material Universe without god' is simply an idiotic appeal to personal incredulity of an uneducated religious fool who cannot conceive of themselves as not being special. It's just an appeal to personal incredulity, nothing more.
We don't feel as if our brain is just a tremendously complex biological 'computer' -- but neither do we feel that out bodies are a tremendously complex biological machine, and yet they are. You, Jon, along with the author of the book, have to face reality, instead of relying on uninformed wishful thinking (and it is quite obvious that the book's author is not very informed about philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence, philosophical semantics, etc.)
I am personally undecided (agnostic, but leaning towards existance) on the existance of God. However, what I do find amusing is the adamant atheist dogma on slashdot. What is quite intriguing is how many of their "gods", those who did tremendous work in the sciences, were religous. What is even more intriguing is you'll never find a slashdot athiest reply to a post that brings this issue up:].
You must be one of those ignorant sophomores who think that proclaiming themselves agnostics will lend them an undeserved mantle of 'free thinkers'. Well, let me disabuse you of at least one error in your message: Einstein did not believe in god, as the word is usually used in English. He believed in the 'god' of Spinoza -- which is simply the totality of laws and properties of nature. In short, he was a pantheist, just like yours truly; so, had you come to him with the question 'Does god exist?', his answer would most likely be 'No'.
Now go and parade your wanna-be freethinking ass in front of a mirror -- nobody else is going to take your ignorance seriously.
I'll bite--how would musicians make money? Nobody needs maintenance or an upgrade on their copy of Sgt. Pepper.
it's simple, really. Almost all but the most famous musicians make whatever money they do, not from CD sales but from performances and stuff. You have to sell a lot of CDs to actually make profit on them.
What this means is that 'Free music', if it works as intended, will most allow musicians to use recordings as promos for their real product -- live performances, merchandise, etc. Quite similar to OpenSource, actually.
As everyone knows, US has been discreetly thumbing its nose at UN. I personally noticed an anti-UN sentiment rise in US public, and I frankly am not surprised -- if US is indeed the superpower it considers itself to be, the gut reaction of many US citizens is "What the fuck do we need UN for?"
Of course, my personal take on this is that ignoring UN will actually lead to steady diminution of US political influence in the world (not that that would be such a bad thing, mind you).
OK, back to the topic. The reason I am saying this, is because I am seeing interesting paralleles between US/UN relationship, and commercial closed source companies and OpenSource. Just like US, if the commecrial software providers don't shape up in terms of their social agenda, they will simply lose relevance, despite the fact that such a move will benefit them in the short run.
Add to this the fact that a huge number of major closed software companies are headquartered in US, and you will suddenly realize that we are living through the major shift of political scenery, an emergence of a New World Order almost -- an order that is based on principles subtly but radically different from dog-eag-dog ones that has been in evidence so far.
Would breaking up MS into OS company, application company, and Internet company, do the trick? Even if OS MS is prevented from competing in the application market, one of the main strengths of MS Office is its use of undocumented Windows APIs. Both App-MS and OS-MS would still benefit from MS Office continuing this practice, so can the breakup along departmental lines be actually a solution to the MS monopoly?
Is it a viable long-term alternative? AT&T could be reasonably broken up thusly because individual Baby Bells were regionally separated, but wouldn't the Baby Bills rather rapidly squeeze each other out of the market -- or is there some legal way of ensuring that Baby Bills remain mutually competitive, rather than having one of them emerge as the Big Bill?
--
It's the Worm Ouroborous all over again
on
NetSlaves
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· Score: 1
Yes, the high-tech jobs are indeed not the magic fairyworld that it sometimes seem to be -- so what? The rules have not changed -- but the very fact that people perceive the field as the fairyland, is what makes the high-tech hell possible -- like the Ouroborous Snake, eating itself.
The businessmen always have tried, and probably always will try, to make a buck -- nothing new or immoral here. The workers always have been, and probably always will be, selling their skill -- ditto. The difference is that this is a new field, not that it is a fundamentally different one -- things are not settled, workers have not come to grip with it, and it is still a primordial capitalistic cahos.
The answer, of course, is not to lament our fates, but to take control of them. Me, I am finishing my MS now, and working as a systadmin at my university (40-hour week, minimum stress) -- I would never, never take one of those archetypical high-stress 80-hour-week jobs, no matter how much they pay me. I refuse to be treated like an expensive slave -- and so I live a life that I actually enjoy.
Stop and think -- what do YOU want from your life? Is all the stress and the work actually worth it? Happiness and satisfaction come from within, after all...
In my experience, most people don't buy NT to use ASP. They use ASP becuase they have NT already installed and ASP is the easiest option on that platform.
That's not what I meant. I had in mind all the companies who have their huge web sites written in ASP, and for whom a migration to another dynamic-content platform would be a major pain and a serious disruption. Having some easy migration paths for such companies would remove a major obstacle for those of them who would otherwise want to move to a different web server platform.
'Cuz doing that would remove the single biggest (IMO) reason for NT server users to not use Unix for web serving...
MS's pricing scheme was weird and expensive in the past, nothing new there -- now if the wind in their sails (ASP) could be stolen, that would be a different matter. I don't think this minor change in pricing will have much of a negative impact on NT server market penetration, it's the Other Stuff (tm) that could yank the carpet away from under their feet. (damn, I am just overflowing with metaphors today...)
I am not a big strategy fan, but I like an occasional strategy game or two. Alpha Centauri (Alien Crossfire kit) is rocking my world right now, and I was wondering how Railroad Tychoon compares to it. Any first-hand accounts?
I think this is a very good example of cooperation among people with common goals but minor ideological or technical differences. I think it's a great thing, that various BSD fractions can work together on something like this.
I just hope for more such cooperation in the future -- we are in the same boat after all, we all want the same thing -- a world of free, high-quality software
I think all projects should skip any.13 release purely for the fun of it. (Like old hotels skip the 13th floor). Imagine how bland our culture would be without stupid little superstitions?
No, no, no! In software industry, '0' is the unlucky number -- most initial (.0 implied) releases are buggy, just look at gcc 2.95(.0)!
They all want money, and this is understandable -- free market and all that. What puzzles me, though, is -- WHY Why now? When the data-intensity of the net grows, and the regular modem lines are slowly becoming simply incapable of keeping up with the needed speeds -- why try to squeeze water out of what is rapidly becoming stone? Do they really think they actually WILL get any money out of this?
Me pesonally, if this happens, I am ditching my dedicated flat-rate phone line and finally breaking down for a cable modem... and I would bet the farm that there are plenty of others like me, who would simply view this as the last drop in the cupfull of reasons for ditching modems.
It merely allows us to plumb ourselves deeper. It is ourselves we ought to be wary of, not some technology bogey-man.
Those who used to stagnate in front of TVs, now stagnate in front og computers; those who never read a good book in their lives, still don't; those whose lives where a whirlwind of getting somewhere and doing something without having time to stop and smell the flowers, still do it -- wether it's cellphones, those fancy horseless carriages, makes no difference; lastly, those who used to think, still do it as well.
People are so eager to blame everything around for the perceived worsening of humanity -- but the always heard that 'in the old times, things were better': we heard it before computers, we heard it before cars, through the ages the mantra has remained the same: Things suck because of these newfangled doodads, the new generation does not appreciate the finer things in life, it's all the new stuff that is at fault!
Bullshit. All the bad stuff we see around us, is what was inside us from the beginning -- we simply refuse to see it, because it would damage our flattering self-image. Technology does not make people worse -- but our own creations allow us to express our innermost desires in a wider and wider variety of ways. We are our own worst enemy, and our own best friend -- and we have no-one to blame or praise but ourselves.
--
And the application for this technology will be...
on
Smart Dust
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· Score: 4
minimal -- at least in the civilian arena. Yes, I can think of a number of applications for a dustmote-sized observation units, but most civilian applications don't have a need for such minuscule size. Military and spy applications, on the other hand, would most benefit from such a technology.
I am not dissing the invention -- it is indeed a substantial step forward for science and technology. Rather, I am lamenting the fact that the coolest and most powerful stuff is most useful for applications other than peaceful ones. It is a sad state of affairs, when the our military and spy needs are far ahead technologically of the peaceful ones. Almost as bad as back in USSR, where all the cool tech went to the army, and the civilians got the dregs of it.
What can I say? I just wish that we as a species simply thought for a moment about this perversion, about the fact that our best and brightest is spent on either spying on, or destroying, one another -- still so now, even after the Cold War is over.
All we need now for ultimate mobile experience, is a cheap, low power uplink technology. We are almost at a stage where wearable computing would actually become practical...
The author's experience is obviously of value here, and his insider's perspective is important. However, I think that he missed the opportunity to point out the bigger issue.
Much of the problems he describes -- bad management, lack of well-understood engineering mechanisms, etc. -- are very widespread in software industry in general, not just the game industry. However, software industry in general is rather profitable -- and gaming industry, according to the author, is not.
There is a differentiating factor here -- there is something about the gaming industry that makes it work by different rules from the rest of the software world. Pointing out that difference, is what the autrhor should have done, rather than just enumerate the problems that plague software industry in general.
What is that difference? I don't know -- but I am fairly certain it's not the fact that the target audiences differ. Could it be the very nature of games as both software and entertainment products?.. It is possible, I suppose, but I lack the knowledge to say this with assurance.
In short, the author raised an interesting problem, but failed to dig deep enough for the answers, IMO.
This is a poll. As such, its statistical validity is very questionable.
The sample draws from the population of Borland users. As such, it is not at all representative of general attitudes.
That being said, I think that there is some useful conclusions to be drawn. For example, I seriously doubt that the Linux distro distribution is in any way correlated with this sample's non-representative origin -- although of course it is possible that Borland users tend to prefer RedHat more than the general Linux population.
You do not speak for me, or the large group of folks who believe the GPV is anything but "free". I do not stand for coercively making software freely available.
Oh, this is to tired and overused...
Let me put it simply: There is no such thing as 'absolute freedom'. have you considered the fact, for example, that my 'freedom to pursue happiness' confliucts with someone else's freedom of the same kind, if their pursuit of happiness involves punching me out?..
Freedom necessarily comes with SOME restrictions, one way or another, there is no way out of it. Just as you cannot have absolute ethical relativism, you cannot have absolute freedom -- it conflicts with itself. The best you can do is pick which restrictions you wish to use.
Do you want to guarantee that others do NOT have freedom to infringe upon my freedom? If so, you agree with the typical interpretation of 'freedom' by the modern societies (on the society level, that is) -- just as you lack the freedom to pursue your happiness by, say, robbing me and thus depriving me of my chances to pursue happiness. This is the GPL way.
Do you prefer to impose NO restrictions? then you leave the door open for others do deprive me of freedom by pursuit of their version thereof; this is the BSD way.
Both ways are free, in a different manner. So say that GPL is 'less free' than BSD is like saying that minimalistic libertarian government is 'less free' than anarchy. The latter seems to afford people more freedom -- by including freedom to deprive others of it; it is not at all clear that one is actually more 'free' than the other.
So, man, drop the political shit and get that anti-GNU chip of your shoulder. We are not the enemy.
Metcalfe is saying nothing coherent at this point. His one weak attempt at lucidity -- his claim of the third reason why Linux is doomed, that being its flameful advocacy -- was implicitly contradicted just a couple of paragraphs above, when Metcalfe, in answering the 'first third' who claimed that more coding and less talking will allow Linux to push ahead, answered that he does not believe that will happen.
Which one? Is too much talking and not enough coding the reason why Linux is behind, or is it irrelevant to Microsoft's market penetration lead?
All in all, this article looked to me like Metcalfe's attempt, after having realized that he put both of his feet and his left hand into his mouth, to salvage what little is left of his face -- by kinda agreeing with his previous column, but without being either too aggressive or too comittal in stating his point (or so detailed and coherent as to have accidentally put the abovementioned appendages into his mouth once again).
Yet another under-informed over-opinionated person trying to back out of the corner they painted themselves into. Film at 11...
Slashdot Mirror
--
True -- but you are forgetting that what most people think they mean by 'consciousness' is not reducible. By treating it reductionistically, he destroys the common notion of consciousness, he takes out of the equation that which people vaguely imply when they use the word 'consciousness'. For all intents and purposes, Dennet did not explain consciousness -- he explained it away as something not requiring a real explanation above and beyond that which is alotted to mind itself. (in common usage of the word, mind is the information-processing stuff, and consciousness is that little something mysterious in addition to mind, the quale of self perhaps).
Don't take me wrong -- I think Dennett was on the right track, in terms of getting rid of the veil of mystery surrounding consciousness, I just think he was not explicit enough.
--
Don't count on it. The fools will simply proclaim that the artificial consciousness is just 'faking it', and that it cannot be real consciousness -- nevermind the referrential incoherence of such a distinction, or the fact that it essentially amounts to an argument from ignorance.
Most people believe what they want to believe -- and if they want to feel that they are a special, unique creation of the invisible sky pixie, that's what they will believe.
--
Yes -- an argument by someone who does not sufficiently understand the issues involved (he is a physicist, don't forget that). His argument relies on essentially fallacious application of computational incompleteness theorems to human epistemic process, and is ultimately quite unsound.
Now mind, you, that does not mean that we have a complete but non-Penrosesque understanding of mind; it merely means that Penrose utterly failed to prove that human mind cannot be emulated by a Turing machines, which was more or less his ultimate goal.
--
--
Jon, you first of all have to learn to not try to dredge profundity where there is none -- such as this book. Yes, human brain is just a result of evolution; yes, there is no ultimate purpose; but to leap from that to 'there can be no consciousness in a pourely material Universe without god' is simply an idiotic appeal to personal incredulity of an uneducated religious fool who cannot conceive of themselves as not being special. It's just an appeal to personal incredulity, nothing more.
We don't feel as if our brain is just a tremendously complex biological 'computer' -- but neither do we feel that out bodies are a tremendously complex biological machine, and yet they are. You, Jon, along with the author of the book, have to face reality, instead of relying on uninformed wishful thinking (and it is quite obvious that the book's author is not very informed about philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence, philosophical semantics, etc.)
--
You must be one of those ignorant sophomores who think that proclaiming themselves agnostics will lend them an undeserved mantle of 'free thinkers'. Well, let me disabuse you of at least one error in your message: Einstein did not believe in god, as the word is usually used in English. He believed in the 'god' of Spinoza -- which is simply the totality of laws and properties of nature. In short, he was a pantheist, just like yours truly; so, had you come to him with the question 'Does god exist?', his answer would most likely be 'No'.
Now go and parade your wanna-be freethinking ass in front of a mirror -- nobody else is going to take your ignorance seriously.
--
it's simple, really. Almost all but the most famous musicians make whatever money they do, not from CD sales but from performances and stuff. You have to sell a lot of CDs to actually make profit on them.
What this means is that 'Free music', if it works as intended, will most allow musicians to use recordings as promos for their real product -- live performances, merchandise, etc. Quite similar to OpenSource, actually.
--
As everyone knows, US has been discreetly thumbing its nose at UN. I personally noticed an anti-UN sentiment rise in US public, and I frankly am not surprised -- if US is indeed the superpower it considers itself to be, the gut reaction of many US citizens is "What the fuck do we need UN for?"
Of course, my personal take on this is that ignoring UN will actually lead to steady diminution of US political influence in the world (not that that would be such a bad thing, mind you).
OK, back to the topic. The reason I am saying this, is because I am seeing interesting paralleles between US/UN relationship, and commercial closed source companies and OpenSource. Just like US, if the commecrial software providers don't shape up in terms of their social agenda, they will simply lose relevance, despite the fact that such a move will benefit them in the short run.
Add to this the fact that a huge number of major closed software companies are headquartered in US, and you will suddenly realize that we are living through the major shift of political scenery, an emergence of a New World Order almost -- an order that is based on principles subtly but radically different from dog-eag-dog ones that has been in evidence so far.
Vivat la liberté! (or something like that)
--
Would breaking up MS into OS company, application company, and Internet company, do the trick? Even if OS MS is prevented from competing in the application market, one of the main strengths of MS Office is its use of undocumented Windows APIs. Both App-MS and OS-MS would still benefit from MS Office continuing this practice, so can the breakup along departmental lines be actually a solution to the MS monopoly?
--
Is it a viable long-term alternative? AT&T could be reasonably broken up thusly because individual Baby Bells were regionally separated, but wouldn't the Baby Bills rather rapidly squeeze each other out of the market -- or is there some legal way of ensuring that Baby Bills remain mutually competitive, rather than having one of them emerge as the Big Bill?
--
Yes, the high-tech jobs are indeed not the magic fairyworld that it sometimes seem to be -- so what? The rules have not changed -- but the very fact that people perceive the field as the fairyland, is what makes the high-tech hell possible -- like the Ouroborous Snake, eating itself.
The businessmen always have tried, and probably always will try, to make a buck -- nothing new or immoral here. The workers always have been, and probably always will be, selling their skill -- ditto. The difference is that this is a new field, not that it is a fundamentally different one -- things are not settled, workers have not come to grip with it, and it is still a primordial capitalistic cahos.
The answer, of course, is not to lament our fates, but to take control of them. Me, I am finishing my MS now, and working as a systadmin at my university (40-hour week, minimum stress) -- I would never, never take one of those archetypical high-stress 80-hour-week jobs, no matter how much they pay me. I refuse to be treated like an expensive slave -- and so I live a life that I actually enjoy.
Stop and think -- what do YOU want from your life? Is all the stress and the work actually worth it? Happiness and satisfaction come from within, after all...
--
That's not what I meant. I had in mind all the companies who have their huge web sites written in ASP, and for whom a migration to another dynamic-content platform would be a major pain and a serious disruption. Having some easy migration paths for such companies would remove a major obstacle for those of them who would otherwise want to move to a different web server platform.
--
'Cuz doing that would remove the single biggest (IMO) reason for NT server users to not use Unix for web serving...
MS's pricing scheme was weird and expensive in the past, nothing new there -- now if the wind in their sails (ASP) could be stolen, that would be a different matter. I don't think this minor change in pricing will have much of a negative impact on NT server market penetration, it's the Other Stuff (tm) that could yank the carpet away from under their feet. (damn, I am just overflowing with metaphors today...)
--
I am not a big strategy fan, but I like an occasional strategy game or two. Alpha Centauri (Alien Crossfire kit) is rocking my world right now, and I was wondering how Railroad Tychoon compares to it. Any first-hand accounts?
--
I think this is a very good example of cooperation among people with common goals but minor ideological or technical differences. I think it's a great thing, that various BSD fractions can work together on something like this.
I just hope for more such cooperation in the future -- we are in the same boat after all, we all want the same thing -- a world of free, high-quality software
--
No, no, no! In software industry, '0' is the unlucky number -- most initial (.0 implied) releases are buggy, just look at gcc 2.95(.0)!
--
They all want money, and this is understandable -- free market and all that. What puzzles me, though, is -- WHY Why now? When the data-intensity of the net grows, and the regular modem lines are slowly becoming simply incapable of keeping up with the needed speeds -- why try to squeeze water out of what is rapidly becoming stone? Do they really think they actually WILL get any money out of this?
Me pesonally, if this happens, I am ditching my dedicated flat-rate phone line and finally breaking down for a cable modem... and I would bet the farm that there are plenty of others like me, who would simply view this as the last drop in the cupfull of reasons for ditching modems.
--
It merely allows us to plumb ourselves deeper. It is ourselves we ought to be wary of, not some technology bogey-man.
Those who used to stagnate in front of TVs, now stagnate in front og computers; those who never read a good book in their lives, still don't; those whose lives where a whirlwind of getting somewhere and doing something without having time to stop and smell the flowers, still do it -- wether it's cellphones, those fancy horseless carriages, makes no difference; lastly, those who used to think, still do it as well.
People are so eager to blame everything around for the perceived worsening of humanity -- but the always heard that 'in the old times, things were better': we heard it before computers, we heard it before cars, through the ages the mantra has remained the same: Things suck because of these newfangled doodads, the new generation does not appreciate the finer things in life, it's all the new stuff that is at fault!
Bullshit. All the bad stuff we see around us, is what was inside us from the beginning -- we simply refuse to see it, because it would damage our flattering self-image. Technology does not make people worse -- but our own creations allow us to express our innermost desires in a wider and wider variety of ways. We are our own worst enemy, and our own best friend -- and we have no-one to blame or praise but ourselves.
--
minimal -- at least in the civilian arena. Yes, I can think of a number of applications for a dustmote-sized observation units, but most civilian applications don't have a need for such minuscule size. Military and spy applications, on the other hand, would most benefit from such a technology.
I am not dissing the invention -- it is indeed a substantial step forward for science and technology. Rather, I am lamenting the fact that the coolest and most powerful stuff is most useful for applications other than peaceful ones. It is a sad state of affairs, when the our military and spy needs are far ahead technologically of the peaceful ones. Almost as bad as back in USSR, where all the cool tech went to the army, and the civilians got the dregs of it.
What can I say? I just wish that we as a species simply thought for a moment about this perversion, about the fact that our best and brightest is spent on either spying on, or destroying, one another -- still so now, even after the Cold War is over.
--
--
The author's experience is obviously of value here, and his insider's perspective is important. However, I think that he missed the opportunity to point out the bigger issue.
Much of the problems he describes -- bad management, lack of well-understood engineering mechanisms, etc. -- are very widespread in software industry in general, not just the game industry. However, software industry in general is rather profitable -- and gaming industry, according to the author, is not.
There is a differentiating factor here -- there is something about the gaming industry that makes it work by different rules from the rest of the software world. Pointing out that difference, is what the autrhor should have done, rather than just enumerate the problems that plague software industry in general.
What is that difference? I don't know -- but I am fairly certain it's not the fact that the target audiences differ. Could it be the very nature of games as both software and entertainment products?.. It is possible, I suppose, but I lack the knowledge to say this with assurance.
In short, the author raised an interesting problem, but failed to dig deep enough for the answers, IMO.
--
Don't forget, folks:
That being said, I think that there is some useful conclusions to be drawn. For example, I seriously doubt that the Linux distro distribution is in any way correlated with this sample's non-representative origin -- although of course it is possible that Borland users tend to prefer RedHat more than the general Linux population.
--
Oh, this is to tired and overused...
Let me put it simply: There is no such thing as 'absolute freedom'. have you considered the fact, for example, that my 'freedom to pursue happiness' confliucts with someone else's freedom of the same kind, if their pursuit of happiness involves punching me out?..
Freedom necessarily comes with SOME restrictions, one way or another, there is no way out of it. Just as you cannot have absolute ethical relativism, you cannot have absolute freedom -- it conflicts with itself. The best you can do is pick which restrictions you wish to use.
Do you want to guarantee that others do NOT have freedom to infringe upon my freedom? If so, you agree with the typical interpretation of 'freedom' by the modern societies (on the society level, that is) -- just as you lack the freedom to pursue your happiness by, say, robbing me and thus depriving me of my chances to pursue happiness. This is the GPL way.
Do you prefer to impose NO restrictions? then you leave the door open for others do deprive me of freedom by pursuit of their version thereof; this is the BSD way.
Both ways are free, in a different manner. So say that GPL is 'less free' than BSD is like saying that minimalistic libertarian government is 'less free' than anarchy. The latter seems to afford people more freedom -- by including freedom to deprive others of it; it is not at all clear that one is actually more 'free' than the other.
So, man, drop the political shit and get that anti-GNU chip of your shoulder. We are not the enemy.
--
Metcalfe is saying nothing coherent at this point. His one weak attempt at lucidity -- his claim of the third reason why Linux is doomed, that being its flameful advocacy -- was implicitly contradicted just a couple of paragraphs above, when Metcalfe, in answering the 'first third' who claimed that more coding and less talking will allow Linux to push ahead, answered that he does not believe that will happen.
Which one? Is too much talking and not enough coding the reason why Linux is behind, or is it irrelevant to Microsoft's market penetration lead?
All in all, this article looked to me like Metcalfe's attempt, after having realized that he put both of his feet and his left hand into his mouth, to salvage what little is left of his face -- by kinda agreeing with his previous column, but without being either too aggressive or too comittal in stating his point (or so detailed and coherent as to have accidentally put the abovementioned appendages into his mouth once again).
Yet another under-informed over-opinionated person trying to back out of the corner they painted themselves into. Film at 11...
--