Stallman asserts that "non-free software carries with it an antisocial system that prohibits coopoeration and community." This is MOST certainly overstating the importance of software's influence on each person's ability to cooperate and experience community. And I assert that this is where the open source movement fails. While open source software promotes cooperation and community for the developers involved in its creation, it doesn't attempt to build community by creating more user friendly tools.
Well put.
The Free Software movement (like the Open Source Movement) is not at all focused on creating community. It is focused on giving people real power to use computers whose facilities were only partially available to their owners using non-free software.
A community is attracted to this, in part because it gives the community members more value for their money. For example, if I buy a PC with a network card today, I can install a free operating system and can run a free web server and a free database for no extra expenditure of cash.
This is not a new community. The core of this community is the same one that always wanted to get more value out of the things they use. This is the community of people who were called "power users" or "hackers" when they used non-free software. Thus, Stallman's assertion that "non-free software carries with it an antisocial system that prohibits cooperation and community" is not an overstatement, but simply factually incorrect.
Free software did not create the community. It is the community that creates free software.
Concerning your assertion about the failure of the Free Software movement to serve the community by providing user-friendly tools, I believe that is an overstatement of the case. Free software is constantly being built, improved, added to, and rebuilt. The success of the free software movement comes from the fact that when the community faces a need (for more user-friendly tools, for example) it builds upon what the community has already created. In essence, the free software community is a recursive process whose growth can be summed up: "Build it and they will come and build it."
Your X server is insignificant compared to the power of the Source.
Re:The First Church of Environmentalism
on
Global Dimming
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
You are quite correct; I don't think any educated person would disagree with your assertion that environmentalism is not a science. From WordNet (r) 2.0:
environmentalism
n 1: the philosophical doctrine that environment is more
important than heredity in determining intellectual
growth [ant: hereditarianism]
2: the activity of protecting the environemnt from pollution or
destruction
The inductive approaches to physics, biology, and chemistry are sciences. These form the basis of all scientific research concerning the environment of our planet.
IBM's Linux Techology Center is spread throughout most of the major IBM sites worldwide, not just in Austin. However, probably more relevant is the fact that IBM is one of the largest private employers in Austin.
For an ordinary citizen, this is obviously not a partisan issue. Everybody want's a voice, and for most people, a vote is their only voice. The reason it might be significant that a Republican agrees eludes me.
Vidal's concern is that the more cynical and wealthy members of the prominent policital parties are actively attempting to close the doors to democracy in order to further certain financial interests.
Of course, some people would consider this to be realizing the pinnacle of human achievement, so adherents to such religions may find this situation quite inspiring.
The only corruption here is the horrible corruption of the English language that somehow lead to CmdrTaco thinking "to savage" meant "to ravage." Jeremy
According to the Merriam-Webster Online dictionary (among others) the transitive verb form of "savage" means "to attack or treat brutally". CmdrTaco's usage was correct.
Regarding skycaps, bogie said: They get tipped so much because of the power they have over people. People are afraid that if they don't tip then their bags will end up God knows where. So no they are Not worth the service they provide. People tip out of fear. In the end just like the article states they are way overpaid.
This seems to imply that you would say restaurant serving staff are overpaid, since in this case even more than in that of skycaps, people tip out of "fear". The fear in this case is that if people don't tip the server, their service will be sloppy, or slow. Thus, the acronym TIP: To Insure Promptness.
The fact is, when an older person like my father has a couple of 20 kilogram bags (that's 44.09 pounds for my fellow United States of Americans), it's easily worth a couple bucks to get someone else to help move them. He's not giving the skycap money as the payment in some kind of extortion scheme, as bogie implies, but because he appreciates the help, and he can afford to reward the skycap in this traditional way.
Generally, I find frames to be abhorrent, so I'm wouldn't be concerned, except that Eclipse uses frames.
Hopefully, this will cause the eclipse folks to re-think this piece of "architecture".
This is, of course, discounting the point that others have raised that browsers use frames. Web servers just serve up code that is not rendered in any particular format until a browser hits it.
I say take your money and buy a book on user interface design. The problem is not how well written the docucumentation is; it is the fact that we NEED the documentation.
Because if only the hundreds of commands for which I maintain man pages had a decent user interface, those silly documents could finally be abandoned.
Then I could move on to more important tasks, like posting inane comments on Slashdot.
> Is it that difficult to grasp! Ogg is a container file! Vorbis is the audio codec!
IT DOESN'T F'ING MATTER!
Just like Linux isn't an OS, (it's a kernel) no one aside from you and some other geeks (not meant as an insult, I am a geek too, obviously) will ever convince others of the truth.
Actually, it does matter. Your point about Linux highlights the importance, as in the case where IBM is accused of putting SCO IP into "Linux". Because people generally say "Linux" when they mean more than just the kernel, nobody really knows the scope of the complaint.
According to a visibly self-impressed George Lucas, "yeah, if I had a nickel for every time someone told me it's easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, I'd still be filthy rich. But seriously, I figure all you need is an inside man at the church. According to my metaphysical effects team at ILM, a gargoyle at the National Cathedral should let me bypass all those philanthropic hoops John D. Rockefeller had to jump through."
The Firebird BBS is trademarked as "Firebird BBS". The Firebird database, and now the Mozilla browser, are trademarked as "Firebird". Therein lies the conflict.
This argument is fallacious. The Firebird database project (presumably) knowingly appropriated the name of another software project. Its defense is the unlikely claim that the Firebird BBS is always referred to as "Firebird BBS", thus rendering "Firebird" not a trademark of that project, and available for use by another product in the same industry. However, this is an argument constructed to rationalize the failure to respect a different trademark, and is not legally sound.
The reason the Firebird database might legally be legitimately using the "Firebird" trademark is that the Firebird BBS people didn't defend their trademark. This makes it legal for the database to use the mark "Firebird", but it does not make it ethical in light of the complaint against Mozilla.
The point is, the Firebird database community is exhibiting the same low ethical standard as the people (lawyers, no doubt) who approved the "Firebird" name for the browser.
Furthermore, I suspect the Firebird database community never gave a thought to a project without an English language development community.
I really don't understand why the ferocity of their defense of the "Firebird" name.
Quite, considering that he oldest OSS Firebird (that I know of) is a BBS system that has been around for years. The copyright for Firebird BBS version 3.0 is dated 1999.
I get the impression that many people feel that if it's not in English, it doesn't exist.
Also, why divide people based on gender? I'm sure SOME of the men had poor spacial oriention, and SOME of the women must have been good at the task. Why not simply divide people into "fast" and "slow" groups....
In other words, don't discriminate based on spatial orientation.
I quite agree. Everyone who can see deserves a big display. Keep in mind that a display of affection would usually be preferred over a display of hostility.
So, just to compare "legitimacy", does anyone know the montly download statistics for the Firebird BBS, whose name the Firebird Database project so blithely adopted?
If I were somewhat cynical, I might observe that there is no honour among thieves. If I were more cynical, I might suspect that Firebird BBS was ignored because its development community speaks/writes Chinese.
Nanotechnology is key to the development of 21st century industry much as the transistor was to the latte rhalf of the 20th century.
Spoken like a true nanotech company marketer.
The prediction that nanotechnology will be of similar significance to the transistor is at best pure conjecture. In fact, the applications you describe suggest that a more apt historical analogy would be the antibiotic, rather than the transistor.
Your descriptions of fillings containing mercury and about the origin of LSD and heroin are clarified by this post.
The article states: Most of the post-OOP initiatives do not aim to supplant object-oriented programming; they seek to refine or improve or reinvigorate it. A case in point is aspect-oriented programming, or AOP.
Except that the habitable area is limited to roughly the size of El-Salvador.
Ditto Texas (though for different reasons). I take it you haven't had the occasion to visit the Lone Star State.
In the immortal words of US Civil War (Union) General Phil Sheridan, "If I owned hell and Texas, I'd rent out Texas and live in hell."
Done flame, this is from a Texan. Flames would be redundant.
The non-legacy PC is an Intel-only PC....
on
Legacy-Free PCs
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The non-legacy tech mentioned in the article is limited to tech that is created by Intel.
The article doesn't mention Firewire/1394, Hypertransport, Infiniband, Serial ATA, etc.
In other words, according to the article, "port" of the future is USB, the "slot" of the future is PCI Express, the BIOS of the future is EFI, so perhaps we should infer that the CPU of the future is Itanium 2.
Nevertheless, I don't mean to suggest that the article is intentionally biased toward Intel, since it doesn't really do a good or thorough job of promoting Intel-developed technologies. Perhaps the author just didn't think to research the new technologies which are in PCs that have been shipping for the past year.
for a dude that use linux and gnome your knowleged of computers is less then I exprected.
I, for one, have been using primarily Linux for the past eight years. For the past twenty years I have used such computers as TRS-80, Commodore64, Apple II, RS/6000, various IBM PC "clones", and on rare occasions Apple Macintosh.
Until this thread, I never really knew what the Apple "finder" really was, though the name implies that it helps you find files. In the little time I spent on the Mac, I never saw the finder, or knew that I was looking at it.
To me, knowing about Apple's finder is like knowing about AOL's "chat rooms". Being a frequent user of either seems indicative of a lack of technical knowledge or inclination, rather than the contrary, as you imply.
Slashdot Mirror
Stallman asserts that "non-free software carries with it an antisocial system that prohibits coopoeration and community." This is MOST certainly overstating the importance of software's influence on each person's ability to cooperate and experience community. And I assert that this is where the open source movement fails. While open source software promotes cooperation and community for the developers involved in its creation, it doesn't attempt to build community by creating more user friendly tools.
Well put.
The Free Software movement (like the Open Source Movement) is not at all focused on creating community. It is focused on giving people real power to use computers whose facilities were only partially available to their owners using non-free software.
A community is attracted to this, in part because it gives the community members more value for their money. For example, if I buy a PC with a network card today, I can install a free operating system and can run a free web server and a free database for no extra expenditure of cash.
This is not a new community. The core of this community is the same one that always wanted to get more value out of the things they use. This is the community of people who were called "power users" or "hackers" when they used non-free software. Thus, Stallman's assertion that "non-free software carries with it an antisocial system that prohibits cooperation and community" is not an overstatement, but simply factually incorrect.
Free software did not create the community. It is the community that creates free software.
Concerning your assertion about the failure of the Free Software movement to serve the community by providing user-friendly tools, I believe that is an overstatement of the case. Free software is constantly being built, improved, added to, and rebuilt. The success of the free software movement comes from the fact that when the community faces a need (for more user-friendly tools, for example) it builds upon what the community has already created. In essence, the free software community is a recursive process whose growth can be summed up: "Build it and they will come and build it."
Your X server is insignificant compared to the power of the Source.
You are quite correct; I don't think any educated person would disagree with your assertion that environmentalism is not a science. :
From WordNet (r) 2.0
environmentalism
n 1: the philosophical doctrine that environment is more
important than heredity in determining intellectual
growth [ant: hereditarianism]
2: the activity of protecting the environemnt from pollution or
destruction
The inductive approaches to physics, biology, and chemistry are sciences. These form the basis of all scientific research concerning the environment of our planet.
To learn more about the scientific method you will want to read this article about Francis Bacon and his advocacy of an inductive method (which is now generally called "the scientific method"), and a more detailed article describing the scientific method in some detail.
IBM's Linux Techology Center is spread throughout most of the major IBM sites worldwide, not just in Austin. However, probably more relevant is the fact that IBM is one of the largest private employers in Austin.
For an ordinary citizen, this is obviously not a partisan issue. Everybody want's a voice, and for most people, a vote is their only voice. The reason it might be significant that a Republican agrees eludes me.
Vidal's concern is that the more cynical and wealthy members of the prominent policital parties are actively attempting to close the doors to democracy in order to further certain financial interests.
Of course, some people would consider this to be realizing the pinnacle of human achievement, so adherents to such religions may find this situation quite inspiring.
The only corruption here is the horrible corruption of the English language that somehow lead to CmdrTaco thinking "to savage" meant "to ravage."
Jeremy
According to the Merriam-Webster Online dictionary (among others) the transitive verb form of "savage" means "to attack or treat brutally". CmdrTaco's usage was correct.
Regarding skycaps, bogie said:
They get tipped so much because of the power they have over people. People are afraid that if they don't tip then their bags will end up God knows where. So no they are Not worth the service they provide. People tip out of fear. In the end just like the article states they are way overpaid.
This seems to imply that you would say restaurant serving staff are overpaid, since in this case even more than in that of skycaps, people tip out of "fear". The fear in this case is that if people don't tip the server, their service will be sloppy, or slow. Thus, the acronym TIP: To Insure Promptness.
The fact is, when an older person like my father has a couple of 20 kilogram bags (that's 44.09 pounds for my fellow United States of Americans), it's easily worth a couple bucks to get someone else to help move them. He's not giving the skycap money as the payment in some kind of extortion scheme, as bogie implies, but because he appreciates the help, and he can afford to reward the skycap in this traditional way.
...from getting to or from Darl McBride, Chris Sontag, Blake Stowell, or SCO in general.
I guess the US alcohol culture is different to that in Britain
I infer from this comment that you are currently engaging in "research" on the topic at hand (intoxication), because:
Acording to the article, this is taking place in Vancouver, British Columbia. According to my atlas, Vancouver is in Canada.
Of course, I was able to figure this out before I checked my atlas, because the story is hosted on "canada.com".
and has an MBA from Yale
George W. Bush holds and MBA from Harvard, not Yale.
He attended Yale as an undergraduate.
Please do not continue this childish trollfest.
I read that as "DRI Comes to DirectFBI", and just couldn't understand what DirectFBI is... DirectSound, DirectX, DirectFeds?!
Ahem....
DirectFBI's communication protocol is FedX.
Generally, I find frames to be abhorrent, so I'm wouldn't be concerned, except that Eclipse uses frames.
Hopefully, this will cause the eclipse folks to re-think this piece of "architecture".
This is, of course, discounting the point that others have raised that browsers use frames. Web servers just serve up code that is not rendered in any particular format until a browser hits it.
I say take your money and buy a book on user interface design. The problem is not how well written the docucumentation is; it is the fact that we NEED the documentation.
Because if only the hundreds of commands for which I maintain man pages had a decent user interface, those silly documents could finally be abandoned.
Then I could move on to more important tasks, like posting inane comments on Slashdot.
Comments like this one.
> Is it that difficult to grasp! Ogg is a container file! Vorbis is the audio codec!
IT DOESN'T F'ING MATTER!
Just like Linux isn't an OS, (it's a kernel) no one aside from you and some other geeks (not meant as an insult, I am a geek too, obviously) will ever convince others of the truth.
Actually, it does matter. Your point about Linux highlights the importance, as in the case where IBM is accused of putting SCO IP into "Linux". Because people generally say "Linux" when they mean more than just the kernel, nobody really knows the scope of the complaint.
According to a visibly self-impressed George Lucas, "yeah, if I had a nickel for every time someone told me it's easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, I'd still be filthy rich. But seriously, I figure all you need is an inside man at the church. According to my metaphysical effects team at ILM, a gargoyle at the National Cathedral should let me bypass all those philanthropic hoops John D. Rockefeller had to jump through."
(Parody? Perhaps....)
The Firebird BBS is trademarked as "Firebird BBS". The Firebird database, and now the Mozilla browser, are trademarked as "Firebird". Therein lies the conflict.
This argument is fallacious. The Firebird database project (presumably) knowingly appropriated the name of another software project. Its defense is the unlikely claim that the Firebird BBS is always referred to as "Firebird BBS", thus rendering "Firebird" not a trademark of that project, and available for use by another product in the same industry. However, this is an argument constructed to rationalize the failure to respect a different trademark, and is not legally sound.
The reason the Firebird database might legally be legitimately using the "Firebird" trademark is that the Firebird BBS people didn't defend their trademark. This makes it legal for the database to use the mark "Firebird", but it does not make it ethical in light of the complaint against Mozilla.
The point is, the Firebird database community is exhibiting the same low ethical standard as the people (lawyers, no doubt) who approved the "Firebird" name for the browser.
Furthermore, I suspect the Firebird database community never gave a thought to a project without an English language development community.
I really don't understand why the ferocity of their defense of the "Firebird" name.
Quite, considering that he oldest OSS Firebird (that I know of) is a BBS system that has been around for years. The copyright for Firebird BBS version 3.0 is dated 1999.
I get the impression that many people feel that if it's not in English, it doesn't exist.
Also, why divide people based on gender? I'm sure SOME of the men had poor spacial oriention, and SOME of the women must have been good at the task. Why not simply divide people into "fast" and "slow" groups....
In other words, don't discriminate based on spatial orientation.
I quite agree. Everyone who can see deserves a big display. Keep in mind that a display of affection would usually be preferred over a display of hostility.
God is dead. (Neitzche) Tape is dead. (Innumerable pundits) Disk is dead. (Conquest FS)
Also:
OS/2 is dead. (Almost everybody)
The same thing is true for all of the above:
They are only as alive or dead as the people who depend on them.
So, just to compare "legitimacy", does anyone know the montly download statistics for the Firebird BBS, whose name the Firebird Database project so blithely adopted?
http://www.firebird.org.tw/
If I were somewhat cynical, I might observe that there is no honour among thieves. If I were more cynical, I might suspect that Firebird BBS was ignored because its development community speaks/writes Chinese.
Nanotechnology is key to the development of 21st century industry much as the transistor was to the latte rhalf of the 20th century.
Spoken like a true nanotech company marketer.
The prediction that nanotechnology will be of similar significance to the transistor is at best pure conjecture. In fact, the applications you describe suggest that a more apt historical analogy would be the antibiotic, rather than the transistor.
Your descriptions of fillings containing mercury and about the origin of LSD and heroin are clarified by this post.
Please read the article before you post.
The article states:
Most of the post-OOP initiatives do not aim to supplant object-oriented programming; they seek to refine or improve or reinvigorate it. A case in point is aspect-oriented programming, or AOP.
Except that the habitable area is limited to roughly the size of El-Salvador.
Ditto Texas (though for different reasons). I take it you haven't had the occasion to visit the Lone Star State.
In the immortal words of US Civil War (Union) General Phil Sheridan, "If I owned hell and Texas, I'd rent out Texas and live in hell."
Done flame, this is from a Texan. Flames would be redundant.
The non-legacy tech mentioned in the article is limited to tech that is created by Intel.
The article doesn't mention Firewire/1394, Hypertransport, Infiniband, Serial ATA, etc.
In other words, according to the article, "port" of the future is USB, the "slot" of the future is PCI Express, the BIOS of the future is EFI, so perhaps we should infer that the CPU of the future is Itanium 2.
Nevertheless, I don't mean to suggest that the article is intentionally biased toward Intel, since it doesn't really do a good or thorough job of promoting Intel-developed technologies. Perhaps the author just didn't think to research the new technologies which are in PCs that have been shipping for the past year.
for a dude that use linux and gnome your knowleged of computers is less then I exprected.
I, for one, have been using primarily Linux for the past eight years. For the past twenty years I have used such computers as TRS-80, Commodore64, Apple II, RS/6000, various IBM PC "clones", and on rare occasions Apple Macintosh.
Until this thread, I never really knew what the Apple "finder" really was, though the name implies that it helps you find files. In the little time I spent on the Mac, I never saw the finder, or knew that I was looking at it.
To me, knowing about Apple's finder is like knowing about AOL's "chat rooms". Being a frequent user of either seems indicative of a lack of technical knowledge or inclination, rather than the contrary, as you imply.