An outrageously high percentage of Americans are Christian. Some of these Christians are annoying (a small percentage), and somehow you believe the fault for these annoying people is Christ's.
On the other hand, there is a rather small percentage of Americans that are not Christian (less than 10%). Of this minority nearly all of them are quite vocal in their contempt for Christianity. Look at the number of Darwin fish you see, for example. Just like you don't want to hear me talk of Christ I don't particularly want to hear you compare Christians to Spammers. Especially since the vast majority of Christians are not banging on your door trying to get you to listen. Do you blame everyone in the world with an email address every time you receive spam? Then why do you blame all Christians every time you meet an annoying one.
One of my gripes with Christianity is the lack of concensus about which events are forced by God and which events are chosen by people. People thank God for giving them opportunities, as if the world was contrived just to present them with such a decision; then, a person's response to such a challenge is judged as "sinful" or "righteous" or whatever. My observation of Christians is that their partition between "events that God determines" and "events decided by the morality of people" is cloudy; their classification seems to be based more on convenience and context than on principle.
When Christians talk about "God" they are not talking about some brawny one-eyed diety with a spear that never misses. They are talking about someone that they believe to be omniscient and omnipotent. In other words it is clearly within his power to know how each of us will react and place us in situations which will allow us to excercise our free agency, so that we can learn and grow (assuming we choose correctly:).
Christians might withhold judgement my morality, but often they still try to convert me. In other words, they still say: I know this and you don't. That implied insult just advocates their "better-that-thou" status in a different way.
Yes, this is true. On the other hand if you had something that made your life better wouldn't you want to share it with others. Honestly, most true Christians are only trying to help, and they generally don't get mad if you are not interested.
We all do this to some extent. For example, you talk about your more "normal" explanations. Which, of course, implies that a Christian's explanations would be somehow inferior. Not that I am criticizing you, I am simply pointing out that all of us have opinions on these sorts of subjects, and we all share them quite freely.
We also all believe that we have the "normal" explanations.
That is probably the most convincing argument for becoming a Christian. "Try it, have faith, and you will be rewarded." The only problem is that I have good reasoning skills and knowledge of math and statistics. Therefore, I am unlikely to associate perceived rewards with the appropriate moral actions because I usually find easier, more normal explanations.
Believe it or not, there are well educated Christians. I personally believe that I am a better person for my beliefs, and I know that the Lord has helped me in many ways. I am certainly not perfect, but I am better than I was before, and will hopefully be better still tomorrow. You might scoff at my beliefs as delusion, that is certainly your right. But to judge my belief system without making the experiment yourself is hardly scientific. Open the scriptures with an open mind, read them, and pray to your Heavenly Father in Christ's name and ask him if he truly exists. Then make your judgements as to what is true.
You are quite right. Boycotting the RIAA is like boycotting Microsoft. It doesn't change a darn thing because there are millions of other people that don't care that the RIAA is evil. Since there is very little that I or the RIAA can do to keep you from trading MP3s I can see why it is that you feel that trading MP3s is "the best that you can do" to strike back.
However, there is a better way. While boycotting Microsoft has very little effect, the Free software community has proven that supporting Linux (as competition to Windows) has a huge effect. At first it may seem silly and pointless, but if you spent some of your time sifting through the vast troves of legal MP3s for new bands that are truly good you can do the same thing to the RIAA that Linux is doing to Microsoft.
The RIAA isn't going to change their tune until they have some competition, and that competition is going to come from the Indie bands spreading their music not through RIAA channels but over the Internet. So find some good (legal) music and share it with your friends. You undoubtedly have some people that you trade music with on a regular basis. They will trust your judgement, and will be interested in the "new" bands you discover. Use the Internet for what it's worth.
Eventually these types of grass roots efforts will force the RIAA into selling music the way you want them to, and life will be good.
Yes, I am sure that some people would pay for their MP3s if they could. No doubt you are among this group. However, that still doesn't make it ethical to use Napster to copy this music illegally. The RIAA has the right to package and sell it's intellectual property any way that it sees fit. You can't go into KMart, break out a package of Wrigley's spearmint and then try to pay for just one piece. KMart isn't interested in selling you just one piece. The RIAA, likewise, isn't interested in selling you just one song (yet).
Like I said, if you really want to screw the RIAA the best thing to do is search through the piles of freely redistributable music and find some that you like. There are lots of bands that are offering exactly what you purport to want (the sale of singles at a decent price), they simply haven't signed contracts with the RIAA.
The fact that the music industry is despicable does not justify the theft of their intellectual material. Besides, your act of civil disobedience (stealing songs via Napster) is certainly not helping the artist. At least the record company is giving the artist something, you aren't giving the artist anything but a sharp stick in the eye.
Don't give me any crap about destroying the RIAA, Napster is all about theft.
If you want to screw the content-hoarders the ethical way to do so is to create content and give it away. And if you can't do that, then spend some time sorting through the gigabytes of existing freely redistributable music and make a list of the songs that don't suck (and then share that with everyone you know).
Since the only difference between the new Python licence and the tried and true BSD licence is the jurisdiction clause, where are the UCITA or UCITA-like clauses in the BSD license? Or for those hard of hearing, what is there in the Python license that some Unfreedonia ndictator can latch on to?
Part of the problem with UCITA is that it allows you to change the license retroactively. In other words the CNRI could simply be waiting for the entire world to become Pythonistas (hey, Python is cool, it could happen) and then they would change the license on us and charge us huge money.
UCITA makes that fair and square. The guys at Infoworld call it "sneakwrap" and it's only one of the very evil parts of an utterly despicable law. It's no wonder that RMS doesn't want the jurisdiction specified, especially if the jurisdiction happens to be Virginia.
With the regular old BSD license at least the people who don't live in Virginia or Maryland would have some sort of recourse. Because they could choose their home state as the venue for the trial.
After all... no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.
1) People defending the GPL are becoming more and more fanatic about it because they feel "threatened" by all these incompatible licenses.
RMS and the other Free Software advocates have felt strongly about this issue for a long time. They have a long history of not bending. They simply get more press nowadays because more people are using their software.
Like it or not there are a great deal of talented people that believe strongly in the GPL. Because of this there is a huge body of source code that becomes off limits if your software is not compatible with the GPL. That is why groups like Sun, TrollTech and now the CNRI want their licenses to be considered GPL compatible. Unfortunately for those of us caught in the middle, the people creating these new licenses also have their own agendas. They want RMS to give in on his principles so that they can have their license the way they want it, and still be able to use GPLed code.
Fortunately for all of us RMS is not going to budge unless it is in all our best interests.
2) Maybe the GPL is just a bit too strict and should be loosened to help people develop under some other license withouth having to bother thinking too much about pissing off other developers.
This is not going to happen. The FSF has spent a lot of time and effort creating a body of software that is only available to people who don't object to sharing code. Since sharing code is what RMS is all about, he isn't about to give ground. After years of struggling he finally has the upper hand. Plus, he's on a roll. QT, StarOffice, and MySQL are just some of the recent examples of major software products that have succumbed to his pressure. BSD style license advocates are up in arms because GPLed software is more damaging to their cause than commercial software, but that's another story...
3) People are writing other licenses not caring about the GPL and it's compatibilities and only realise later when they are threatened to not be distributed that they have to modify it??
Bingo! give the man a prize. This is the root of the problem. Instead of sticking to one of the licenses that is already well accepted in the community each and every major non FSF project seems to want to create their own license. There is a long list of acceptable GPL compatible licenses. In fact, the old Python license is one of them. Yet, for some reason, people keep thinking that they need a license of their very own. In this case the CNRI added a clause that specified the jurisdiction for any disputes. Since that is an extra restriction on the rights of us that don't live in Virginia, then RMS is technically right. The license is not GPL compatible.
Now, if the CNRI was smart, it would have simply slapped a standard BSD style license on Python and called it good. But instead they have screwed it up for Pythonistas everywhere. Now every single GPLed program that embeds Python will either have to 1) stay at version 1.5.2, or 2) pick another scripting language.
Since I happen to be one of the Pythonistas affected, I am quite upset, but then again, I probably should have stuck with a language that guaranteed my freedoms. Something nice and LGPLed would be perfect (as I could then also use it in my commercial projects). I suppose I could go back to Perl, as it's dual license is both safe (it's GPLed) and commercial software friendly (the Artistic License).
Hopefully this will get sorted out post haste, but I don't plan on testing the new versions until they do, and if they take too long, I will find some other language. If there is one thing that has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt it is that Open Source software projects that end up with licensing problems have a hard time gaining mindshare. KDE should have been the undisputed desktop leader. They had a years head start, and the Gnome guys had to create nearly their entire framework from scratch. And yet despite all of KDE's advantages it wasn't until after StarOffice was pledged to become a part of Gnome that they finally relented.
There are enough good truly Free scripting languages that Python can ill afford to have problems of this sort. Perhaps now would be a good time to take a look at Ruby...
What are those funny lines supposed to mean? Is it some sort of code that people in this site use? I'm sorry if I don't know the conventions you people use to communicate. I'm new to this site, and I'm not very technical oriented. All I want is to learn from you.
The "funny lines" are snippets of code in the C language. Many (perhaps even most) of us here on this site read at least a little bit of C, but if you don't, that's just fine. The poster was simply pointing out the correct way to use the printf() function.
/. is a great site, but it's not really a tutorial. I would suggest taking a look at Eric Raymond's Hacker Howto. Install Linux on a machine (it's not that hard) and get a good book on Python. Join a Linux Users Group, or just hang out on some of the excellent Linux mailing lists or IRC sites.
It's that sort of fuzzy logic that got KDE into trouble in the first place. Like it or not the licensing of open source software is a big issue, and it will only become more important as open source software becomes more prevalent.
Right now we are still under the radar of the IP lawyers, but it won't be long before the GPL gets its day in court. RMS is simply trying to do all he can to make sure that the GPL wins when it gets to the big dance.
The GPL is probably RMS's greatest hack. It is quite literally a hack of epic proportions, and so you can't hardly blame the guy for wanting to protect it. Just because you think that the subject is boring and nitpicky does not mean that RMS isn't spot on. IP law is like coding GUIs in assembler on a machine that changes its instruction set every 4 months. It makes little sense, and is full of seeming contradictions and picky nits. Unfortunately, when it comes to the law, the nits matter.
You have hit on one of the few problems with Debian. Stable is too darn stable, and unstable sounds bad.
Personally I simply run stable with a few packages from unstable (PostgreSQL for one) that have packages that I know are solid upgrades. This sort of thing is trivial to do with Debian Linux. It involves changing one line in/etc/apt/sources.list and then run apt-get update apt-get install and then changing/etc/apt/sources.list back.
The Debian project is also adding yet another distribution that will be somewhere in between stable and unstable.
I can understand your response to Debian backporting patches. I mostly agree. It would probably be easier for all concerned (less wasted effort) if they just upgraded to the newest stable version. As for Debian developers telling someone to "piss off" when they find a bug in unstable, clearly you have never used Debian, nor their bug tracking system. Most developers actually use unstable, and they are VERY interested in making sure that it works.
I suppose it would depend on whether or not you needed an administrator for Netware 3.1 and DOS 5.0 machines.
Believe it or not such setups still do exist. And if you did have such a setup the documentation for Windows 2000 and the newest version of Netware simply aren't going to be useful.
There are plenty of computer text books that have withstood the test of times. Pretty much anything by Knuth (for example) is going to be useful probably long after we are both dead. Now if you are talking about books like "Learn foo in 21 days" then you are probably right, but there are plenty of computer manuals that will be useful for some time.
Sure Windows 2000 (and Windows NT 4.0 for that matter) are stable enough, but Linux isn't competing with Windows 2000 for the desktop. It is competing with Windows ME.
After all, how many people actually use Windows 2000? I would bet that Linux is already competitive with Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0 on the desktop. Sure, Windows NT probably has a fairly substantial lead, but it is not anywhere near the astounding lead that Windows 9X has over Linux on the desktop.
Windows NT advocates don't get this, but when it comes to most people's desktops price is a more important factor than stability. That is why Microsoft can't get people to buy computers with Windows 2000 installed, the added stability does not justify adding $200 to the price (or whatever it is that Microsoft is charging nowadays). This is especially true since most software and nearly all hardware drivers are written and tested for Windows 9X. If you buy Windows 2000 you end up with some of the same problems that Linux users have (though not to the same degree).
And with the rapid improvement of the Linux desktop it is soon going to be possible to ship a fairly competitive package for Windows + MS Office + MS Visual Interdev for the astounding low price of absolutely free. With the rapid decline in the price of hardware OEMs are balking at Windows ME's prices (especially compared to Linux), you can bet your bottom dollar that they aren't going to be interested in selling sub $1000 PCs and then turning around and giving $200 to Microsoft for Windows 2000.
So unless Microsoft drops Windows 2000's price so that it comes in line with Windows ME's price (or lower) don't expect it to become a desktop standard anytime soon. Sure, some large corporations will undoubtedly pull out the big checkbook and write checks for 2000, but Windows 2000 is not going to become mainstream until your grandmother is using it to store her recipes. And Linux probably has a better shot at that market than Windows 2000 does.
That is the whole point of creating User Friendly tools for Linux. After all when a Windows user needs a power tool they are stuck. It doesn't matter how much they are willing to learn their platform won't take them any farther.
Linux, on the other hand, has a platform that makes everything possible, but you have to put in the effort. Gnome and KDE are simply bridging this gap. They make the simple things easy for the novice to do, but the do not remove all of the tried and true power tools that the rest of us have grown accustomed to.
How many times has someone come up to you and said "How do you do foo?" and you have realized that under Windows the answer is "you don't." Probably about as many times as you have watched someone's eyes glaze over when you showed them some neat trick in bash or Perl.
Personally I am quite excited about Gnome (despite the fact that I use very little of its features, just like the article pointed out) simply because it will allow my Grandmother to use the same OS that I do. She still won't have any idea what a regular expression is, but when she needs to have 400 gifs changed to PNG format she won't need to open them one by one in Paint Shop Pro either. She can ask me to help and we'll have the task licked with plenty of time left for her to repay my brave deed with a batch of cinnamon rolls.
Actually Darwin's point was that the most successful organisms end up with the most surviving prodigy. In other words, the bearded Mormon polygamist from the 1850's with 5 wives and 54 children was almost certainly more successful biologically than your ancestors.
Success as Darwin would define it doesn't have anything to do with being smarter, or stronger, it has to do with successfully passing on your genes. You could be of sub-par intelligence, and weak, but if you have lots of children that survive you will still be more "successful" than the Professional Wrestler with a PHd in Astrophysics that decided to stop at one child.
Not that any of this matters, I just don't particularly care if I am off topic.
While I certaily agree that licensing matters, it is not always the most important consideration.
For example, in BSDs case, the reason that Linux is more popular than the various x86 BSDs is that Linux has been open about supporting weird hardware, and the BSDs weren't. Heck, they didn't even acknowledge that some people might want to use IDE CD-Rom drives until fairly recently.
Of course the license is still important, for example, Linux can "borrow" code from from FreeBSD, but FreeBSD can't borrow Linux code without adopting the GPL (because the GPL is "viral"). That works out as an advantage for Linux, but not nearly as big an advantage as the fact that Linus has been much more inclusive of hardware drivers.
As for Gnome, if you haven't used the newest Helix Gnome with Sawfish, then your opinions are hopelessly outdated. Gnome is no longer anything like RedHat's evil version that they shipped on the early 6.+ versions of their distro. Honestly, I was a long time KDE user, but HelixGnome + Sawfish is impressive. And the fact that their stuff is LGPLed is simply icing on the cake.
Another thing to consider is the fact that Gnome uses industry standard Corba, while KDE uses DCop/Kparts. That makes a big difference when you are an organization like Sun with a lot of Corba-ized software floating around.
Here is the relevant bit of the GPL for examination.
9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions
of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will
be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to
address new problems or concerns.
Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program
specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any
later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions
either of that version or of any later version published by the Free
Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of
this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software
Foundation.
As you can see the FSF doesn't necessarily have any power over the users or the writers of software. Each group is free to use whatever version of the GPL that they want when the version number is not particularly specified.
The FSF does, however, retain the right to change the GPL as they see fit "to address new problems or concerns." Such is their stature in the Free Software community that were they to decide to change the GPL a good deal of code would almost immediately fall under their new version of the GPL. Users could continue to use their old versions of the software in question, and the KDE group would be welcome to maintain their own forks of all of the software that they have "borrowed" from, but new development on these projects would fall under the new version of the GPL.
Note, the FSF certainly does not have the power to force people to use their new version of the GPL, but they do control a heck of a lot of GPL software (the copyrights are in their name), and their opinion (like it or not) carries a lot of weight in the Free Software community. Many, if not all, of the GPL developers would probably go along with the switch.
If the Free Software Foundation decided tomorrow that Dynamic Linking was a serious enough hole that it absolutely needed to be filled, then the KDE group would be in a world of hurt, and they would have no one to blame but themselves. After all the FSF and the Debian group have been telling the KDE developers all along how they felt that the GPL should be interpretted, and the KDE group has simply thumbed their noses and resorted to name calling.
Whether the KDE group likes it or not the license certainly does matter. This article may write off the Gnome Foundation and the donation of the code in StarOffice, but it is a big deal, and it will give Gnome a serious boost. This boost could have been KDE's if it weren't for the licensing issues.
Re:Desktop Religion [spelling corrected]
on
KDE Strikes Back
·
· Score: 2
If you haven't tried the version of sawfish (ie. sawmill) that comes with HelixGnome you really should take a look at it. I used to be a fan of IceWM, but the GNU (oops I mean new) HelixGnome combination of Gnome + Sawfish is really quite impressive.
Gnome really has come a long way in the last little bit.
Although in this particular case I would tend to think that Debian and especially the FSF have the upper hand. After all, if you pay careful attention to the GPL it gives the FSF special rights to change the GPL and make the new license apply retroactively.
In other words, I would be wary of contradicting the FSF on this point. After all, they can change the wording of the license so that it is unambiguous and then millions of lines of existing GPL code will be unavailable to KDE, and many existing KDE apps with borrowed GPL code will be illegal to distribute.
Unfortunately the QT and KDE folks have a long history of being sloppy with their licensing, and they are unwilling and unable to change now. My personal guess is that this whole issue will turn into a train wreck.
The primary reason is that SCO has been denigrating Linux and the BSDs for years. They have been openly hostile to the Open Source community, and have come out against us in the press numerous times. Heck, quite a few of us have even received insulting faxes and sales literature from our friends at SCO. Basically even Microsoft hasn't treated Linuxers with as much disrespect as SCO has.
Which is fine and dandy, I suppose. Or at least can be chalked up as part of "business," but from all accounts SCO has created some of the worst Unixen ever. I am fortunate to have never had to use it, but now that it is going away I am suddenly curious.
Anyone know where I can get a hold of one of those "free" SCO CDs so I can see for myself how bad it is (was)?
Interesting how you seem to assume that not voting for either of the major candiates implies not voting at all. There are more than two entries on the ballot this time, and when there aren't there's always write-in. (Write-in can fun, it confused the bejezus out of the blue-haired ladies working the polls last time when I asked how I could write in my presidental vote.)
I suppose that I inferred that you didn't vote because that is essentially what I am talking about. I have never said that you should vote for a Republicrat, I have simply pointed out that people that are competent politically vote. Actually I think that votes for third parties can have a tremendous influence on the system, and one should definitely cast their vote that way if their conscious dictates.
Please pardon me for miscasting you. Sometimes its hard to tell who it is you are talking to when the interface is plain old ASCI text.
Actually my first paragraph was supposed to be sarcastic.
I am still fairly young (under 30), but I am convinced that while the rising generation always thinks that they have the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, they don't.
Generally what they do have is a poor understanding of history, and an overinflated sense of their own importance.
My point was that the reason that the Senior Citizens get what they want from the government is that their age bracket has finally gotten wise enough to realize that voting is the key to political power. Us Youngsters think that the key is to be seen on that most magical of devices, the Television. And so we riot and push over cop cars, and generally make a nuisance of ourselves so that NBC will capture our sorry little lives on film.
And then we complain because the Senior Citizens (and the other special interest groups that actually vote) weren't paying attention to us, but instead simply voted for their own agendas.
Have you ever wondered why no politician has ever really worried about the under 30 demographic? The answer is simple. People my age are too cool (or jaded, or stoned, or stupid) to vote.
If you keep voting for the lesser of two evils, you'll always have two evils to choose from.
And if you don't vote, then someone else is going to choose for you, and they will probably choose the greater of the two evils.
One of the funniest sigs I have ever seen said:
Democracy is three wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
Unfortunately, this is actually quite true. Most of us have just one small voice in a sea of differing opinions. We don't have the money and power that it takes to actually influence the president of the United States. However, there is still plenty that we can do. For example, if you have problems with the current political system then there are plenty of groups that advocate campaign refoms of one sort or another. Many of these groups are already quite large, and if you were to help one of them there is a good chance that some progress could be made. After all, campaign finance reform is turning into a relatively big issue.
Of course, if you don't want to vote, then feel free to excercise that right. You are also free to move to a different country and apply for citizenship there. If you do find Shangrila, perhaps you would share directions with the rest of us here on/. so that we can share in your enlightenment. In the meantime, I prefer to work in the real world. I also prefer to change my local government first. It's easier, and it makes more of a difference to my particular community.
Special interest groups get what they want out of the system because they take the money to buy politicians. It's really quite simple.
If all politics took was money, then Microsoft wouldn't be in the pickle it is now.
Politics is about votes. Pundits would like you to believe it is about money, because most Americans have a built in distrust of "monied interests," but the reality is that with today's fund-raising laws (specifically maximum contributions) the group that raises the most money almost certainly has the most supporters.
What was it Bill Hicks said about Americian politics? "I think the puppet on the left represents my views. No, I think the puppet on the right it more to my liking." Meanwhile it's the same guy with his hand up both puppet's asses.
If you don't believe that there is a difference between Al Gore and GW Bush, then I don't want to know who it is that you think should be president of the US. While both are clearly centrist, there are definite differences in their beliefs on foreign policy, taxes, the role of government in the lives of the people, the environment, etc.
I would certainly agree that neither candidate is ideal, but almost certainly one of the candidates is closer to your idea of perfection than the other.
I know plenty of people who are quite consistent about voting and are also completely partisan and completely uninformed. The most consistent voters are the True Believers who would vote for their party if they nominated a slime mold.
It's easy to see people that don't agree with you as uninformed. However, your clueless friends undoubtedly vote for people that espouse their same "clueless" beliefs. They probably don't feel that their actions are useless, and they are almost certainly right. Almost without a doubt they have helped to elect several officials (especially at the local level), who have then carried out many of the same plans that they would have carried out themselves.
Part of the tragedy of the American system of government is that every idiot has the same amount of votes as you do. Unless of course you don't vote. In which case you shouldn't be surprised that the politicians don't follow your particular credo.
Slashdot Mirror
An outrageously high percentage of Americans are Christian. Some of these Christians are annoying (a small percentage), and somehow you believe the fault for these annoying people is Christ's.
On the other hand, there is a rather small percentage of Americans that are not Christian (less than 10%). Of this minority nearly all of them are quite vocal in their contempt for Christianity. Look at the number of Darwin fish you see, for example. Just like you don't want to hear me talk of Christ I don't particularly want to hear you compare Christians to Spammers. Especially since the vast majority of Christians are not banging on your door trying to get you to listen. Do you blame everyone in the world with an email address every time you receive spam? Then why do you blame all Christians every time you meet an annoying one.
When Christians talk about "God" they are not talking about some brawny one-eyed diety with a spear that never misses. They are talking about someone that they believe to be omniscient and omnipotent. In other words it is clearly within his power to know how each of us will react and place us in situations which will allow us to excercise our free agency, so that we can learn and grow (assuming we choose correctly :).
Yes, this is true. On the other hand if you had something that made your life better wouldn't you want to share it with others. Honestly, most true Christians are only trying to help, and they generally don't get mad if you are not interested.
We all do this to some extent. For example, you talk about your more "normal" explanations. Which, of course, implies that a Christian's explanations would be somehow inferior. Not that I am criticizing you, I am simply pointing out that all of us have opinions on these sorts of subjects, and we all share them quite freely.
We also all believe that we have the "normal" explanations.
Believe it or not, there are well educated Christians. I personally believe that I am a better person for my beliefs, and I know that the Lord has helped me in many ways. I am certainly not perfect, but I am better than I was before, and will hopefully be better still tomorrow. You might scoff at my beliefs as delusion, that is certainly your right. But to judge my belief system without making the experiment yourself is hardly scientific. Open the scriptures with an open mind, read them, and pray to your Heavenly Father in Christ's name and ask him if he truly exists. Then make your judgements as to what is true.
You are quite right. Boycotting the RIAA is like boycotting Microsoft. It doesn't change a darn thing because there are millions of other people that don't care that the RIAA is evil. Since there is very little that I or the RIAA can do to keep you from trading MP3s I can see why it is that you feel that trading MP3s is "the best that you can do" to strike back.
However, there is a better way. While boycotting Microsoft has very little effect, the Free software community has proven that supporting Linux (as competition to Windows) has a huge effect. At first it may seem silly and pointless, but if you spent some of your time sifting through the vast troves of legal MP3s for new bands that are truly good you can do the same thing to the RIAA that Linux is doing to Microsoft.
The RIAA isn't going to change their tune until they have some competition, and that competition is going to come from the Indie bands spreading their music not through RIAA channels but over the Internet. So find some good (legal) music and share it with your friends. You undoubtedly have some people that you trade music with on a regular basis. They will trust your judgement, and will be interested in the "new" bands you discover. Use the Internet for what it's worth.
Eventually these types of grass roots efforts will force the RIAA into selling music the way you want them to, and life will be good.
Or you can just steal MP3s, I suppose :).
Yes, I am sure that some people would pay for their MP3s if they could. No doubt you are among this group. However, that still doesn't make it ethical to use Napster to copy this music illegally. The RIAA has the right to package and sell it's intellectual property any way that it sees fit. You can't go into KMart, break out a package of Wrigley's spearmint and then try to pay for just one piece. KMart isn't interested in selling you just one piece. The RIAA, likewise, isn't interested in selling you just one song (yet).
Like I said, if you really want to screw the RIAA the best thing to do is search through the piles of freely redistributable music and find some that you like. There are lots of bands that are offering exactly what you purport to want (the sale of singles at a decent price), they simply haven't signed contracts with the RIAA.
The fact that the music industry is despicable does not justify the theft of their intellectual material. Besides, your act of civil disobedience (stealing songs via Napster) is certainly not helping the artist. At least the record company is giving the artist something, you aren't giving the artist anything but a sharp stick in the eye.
Don't give me any crap about destroying the RIAA, Napster is all about theft.
If you want to screw the content-hoarders the ethical way to do so is to create content and give it away. And if you can't do that, then spend some time sorting through the gigabytes of existing freely redistributable music and make a list of the songs that don't suck (and then share that with everyone you know).
Part of the problem with UCITA is that it allows you to change the license retroactively. In other words the CNRI could simply be waiting for the entire world to become Pythonistas (hey, Python is cool, it could happen) and then they would change the license on us and charge us huge money.
UCITA makes that fair and square. The guys at Infoworld call it "sneakwrap" and it's only one of the very evil parts of an utterly despicable law. It's no wonder that RMS doesn't want the jurisdiction specified, especially if the jurisdiction happens to be Virginia.
With the regular old BSD license at least the people who don't live in Virginia or Maryland would have some sort of recourse. Because they could choose their home state as the venue for the trial.
After all... no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.
RMS and the other Free Software advocates have felt strongly about this issue for a long time. They have a long history of not bending. They simply get more press nowadays because more people are using their software.
Like it or not there are a great deal of talented people that believe strongly in the GPL. Because of this there is a huge body of source code that becomes off limits if your software is not compatible with the GPL. That is why groups like Sun, TrollTech and now the CNRI want their licenses to be considered GPL compatible. Unfortunately for those of us caught in the middle, the people creating these new licenses also have their own agendas. They want RMS to give in on his principles so that they can have their license the way they want it, and still be able to use GPLed code.
Fortunately for all of us RMS is not going to budge unless it is in all our best interests.
This is not going to happen. The FSF has spent a lot of time and effort creating a body of software that is only available to people who don't object to sharing code. Since sharing code is what RMS is all about, he isn't about to give ground. After years of struggling he finally has the upper hand. Plus, he's on a roll. QT, StarOffice, and MySQL are just some of the recent examples of major software products that have succumbed to his pressure. BSD style license advocates are up in arms because GPLed software is more damaging to their cause than commercial software, but that's another story...
Bingo! give the man a prize. This is the root of the problem. Instead of sticking to one of the licenses that is already well accepted in the community each and every major non FSF project seems to want to create their own license. There is a long list of acceptable GPL compatible licenses. In fact, the old Python license is one of them. Yet, for some reason, people keep thinking that they need a license of their very own. In this case the CNRI added a clause that specified the jurisdiction for any disputes. Since that is an extra restriction on the rights of us that don't live in Virginia, then RMS is technically right. The license is not GPL compatible.
Now, if the CNRI was smart, it would have simply slapped a standard BSD style license on Python and called it good. But instead they have screwed it up for Pythonistas everywhere. Now every single GPLed program that embeds Python will either have to 1) stay at version 1.5.2, or 2) pick another scripting language.
Since I happen to be one of the Pythonistas affected, I am quite upset, but then again, I probably should have stuck with a language that guaranteed my freedoms. Something nice and LGPLed would be perfect (as I could then also use it in my commercial projects). I suppose I could go back to Perl, as it's dual license is both safe (it's GPLed) and commercial software friendly (the Artistic License).
Hopefully this will get sorted out post haste, but I don't plan on testing the new versions until they do, and if they take too long, I will find some other language. If there is one thing that has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt it is that Open Source software projects that end up with licensing problems have a hard time gaining mindshare. KDE should have been the undisputed desktop leader. They had a years head start, and the Gnome guys had to create nearly their entire framework from scratch. And yet despite all of KDE's advantages it wasn't until after StarOffice was pledged to become a part of Gnome that they finally relented.
There are enough good truly Free scripting languages that Python can ill afford to have problems of this sort. Perhaps now would be a good time to take a look at Ruby...
The "funny lines" are snippets of code in the C language. Many (perhaps even most) of us here on this site read at least a little bit of C, but if you don't, that's just fine. The poster was simply pointing out the correct way to use the printf() function.
/. is a great site, but it's not really a tutorial. I would suggest taking a look at Eric Raymond's Hacker Howto. Install Linux on a machine (it's not that hard) and get a good book on Python. Join a Linux Users Group, or just hang out on some of the excellent Linux mailing lists or IRC sites.
Good Luck
It's that sort of fuzzy logic that got KDE into trouble in the first place. Like it or not the licensing of open source software is a big issue, and it will only become more important as open source software becomes more prevalent.
Right now we are still under the radar of the IP lawyers, but it won't be long before the GPL gets its day in court. RMS is simply trying to do all he can to make sure that the GPL wins when it gets to the big dance.
The GPL is probably RMS's greatest hack. It is quite literally a hack of epic proportions, and so you can't hardly blame the guy for wanting to protect it. Just because you think that the subject is boring and nitpicky does not mean that RMS isn't spot on. IP law is like coding GUIs in assembler on a machine that changes its instruction set every 4 months. It makes little sense, and is full of seeming contradictions and picky nits. Unfortunately, when it comes to the law, the nits matter.
You have hit on one of the few problems with Debian. Stable is too darn stable, and unstable sounds bad.
Personally I simply run stable with a few packages from unstable (PostgreSQL for one) that have packages that I know are solid upgrades. This sort of thing is trivial to do with Debian Linux. It involves changing one line in /etc/apt/sources.list and then run apt-get update apt-get install and then changing /etc/apt/sources.list back.
The Debian project is also adding yet another distribution that will be somewhere in between stable and unstable.
I can understand your response to Debian backporting patches. I mostly agree. It would probably be easier for all concerned (less wasted effort) if they just upgraded to the newest stable version. As for Debian developers telling someone to "piss off" when they find a bug in unstable, clearly you have never used Debian, nor their bug tracking system. Most developers actually use unstable, and they are VERY interested in making sure that it works.
I suppose it would depend on whether or not you needed an administrator for Netware 3.1 and DOS 5.0 machines.
Believe it or not such setups still do exist. And if you did have such a setup the documentation for Windows 2000 and the newest version of Netware simply aren't going to be useful.
There are plenty of computer text books that have withstood the test of times. Pretty much anything by Knuth (for example) is going to be useful probably long after we are both dead. Now if you are talking about books like "Learn foo in 21 days" then you are probably right, but there are plenty of computer manuals that will be useful for some time.
Sure Windows 2000 (and Windows NT 4.0 for that matter) are stable enough, but Linux isn't competing with Windows 2000 for the desktop. It is competing with Windows ME.
After all, how many people actually use Windows 2000? I would bet that Linux is already competitive with Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0 on the desktop. Sure, Windows NT probably has a fairly substantial lead, but it is not anywhere near the astounding lead that Windows 9X has over Linux on the desktop.
Windows NT advocates don't get this, but when it comes to most people's desktops price is a more important factor than stability. That is why Microsoft can't get people to buy computers with Windows 2000 installed, the added stability does not justify adding $200 to the price (or whatever it is that Microsoft is charging nowadays). This is especially true since most software and nearly all hardware drivers are written and tested for Windows 9X. If you buy Windows 2000 you end up with some of the same problems that Linux users have (though not to the same degree).
And with the rapid improvement of the Linux desktop it is soon going to be possible to ship a fairly competitive package for Windows + MS Office + MS Visual Interdev for the astounding low price of absolutely free. With the rapid decline in the price of hardware OEMs are balking at Windows ME's prices (especially compared to Linux), you can bet your bottom dollar that they aren't going to be interested in selling sub $1000 PCs and then turning around and giving $200 to Microsoft for Windows 2000.
So unless Microsoft drops Windows 2000's price so that it comes in line with Windows ME's price (or lower) don't expect it to become a desktop standard anytime soon. Sure, some large corporations will undoubtedly pull out the big checkbook and write checks for 2000, but Windows 2000 is not going to become mainstream until your grandmother is using it to store her recipes. And Linux probably has a better shot at that market than Windows 2000 does.
That is the whole point of creating User Friendly tools for Linux. After all when a Windows user needs a power tool they are stuck. It doesn't matter how much they are willing to learn their platform won't take them any farther.
Linux, on the other hand, has a platform that makes everything possible, but you have to put in the effort. Gnome and KDE are simply bridging this gap. They make the simple things easy for the novice to do, but the do not remove all of the tried and true power tools that the rest of us have grown accustomed to.
How many times has someone come up to you and said "How do you do foo?" and you have realized that under Windows the answer is "you don't." Probably about as many times as you have watched someone's eyes glaze over when you showed them some neat trick in bash or Perl.
Personally I am quite excited about Gnome (despite the fact that I use very little of its features, just like the article pointed out) simply because it will allow my Grandmother to use the same OS that I do. She still won't have any idea what a regular expression is, but when she needs to have 400 gifs changed to PNG format she won't need to open them one by one in Paint Shop Pro either. She can ask me to help and we'll have the task licked with plenty of time left for her to repay my brave deed with a batch of cinnamon rolls.
Now that is what I call progress.
Actually Darwin's point was that the most successful organisms end up with the most surviving prodigy. In other words, the bearded Mormon polygamist from the 1850's with 5 wives and 54 children was almost certainly more successful biologically than your ancestors.
Success as Darwin would define it doesn't have anything to do with being smarter, or stronger, it has to do with successfully passing on your genes. You could be of sub-par intelligence, and weak, but if you have lots of children that survive you will still be more "successful" than the Professional Wrestler with a PHd in Astrophysics that decided to stop at one child.
Not that any of this matters, I just don't particularly care if I am off topic.
While I certaily agree that licensing matters, it is not always the most important consideration.
For example, in BSDs case, the reason that Linux is more popular than the various x86 BSDs is that Linux has been open about supporting weird hardware, and the BSDs weren't. Heck, they didn't even acknowledge that some people might want to use IDE CD-Rom drives until fairly recently.
Of course the license is still important, for example, Linux can "borrow" code from from FreeBSD, but FreeBSD can't borrow Linux code without adopting the GPL (because the GPL is "viral"). That works out as an advantage for Linux, but not nearly as big an advantage as the fact that Linus has been much more inclusive of hardware drivers.
As for Gnome, if you haven't used the newest Helix Gnome with Sawfish, then your opinions are hopelessly outdated. Gnome is no longer anything like RedHat's evil version that they shipped on the early 6.+ versions of their distro. Honestly, I was a long time KDE user, but HelixGnome + Sawfish is impressive. And the fact that their stuff is LGPLed is simply icing on the cake.
Another thing to consider is the fact that Gnome uses industry standard Corba, while KDE uses DCop/Kparts. That makes a big difference when you are an organization like Sun with a lot of Corba-ized software floating around.
We live in interesting times.
Here is the relevant bit of the GPL for examination.
As you can see the FSF doesn't necessarily have any power over the users or the writers of software. Each group is free to use whatever version of the GPL that they want when the version number is not particularly specified.
The FSF does, however, retain the right to change the GPL as they see fit "to address new problems or concerns." Such is their stature in the Free Software community that were they to decide to change the GPL a good deal of code would almost immediately fall under their new version of the GPL. Users could continue to use their old versions of the software in question, and the KDE group would be welcome to maintain their own forks of all of the software that they have "borrowed" from, but new development on these projects would fall under the new version of the GPL.
Note, the FSF certainly does not have the power to force people to use their new version of the GPL, but they do control a heck of a lot of GPL software (the copyrights are in their name), and their opinion (like it or not) carries a lot of weight in the Free Software community. Many, if not all, of the GPL developers would probably go along with the switch.
If the Free Software Foundation decided tomorrow that Dynamic Linking was a serious enough hole that it absolutely needed to be filled, then the KDE group would be in a world of hurt, and they would have no one to blame but themselves. After all the FSF and the Debian group have been telling the KDE developers all along how they felt that the GPL should be interpretted, and the KDE group has simply thumbed their noses and resorted to name calling.
Whether the KDE group likes it or not the license certainly does matter. This article may write off the Gnome Foundation and the donation of the code in StarOffice, but it is a big deal, and it will give Gnome a serious boost. This boost could have been KDE's if it weren't for the licensing issues.
If you haven't tried the version of sawfish (ie. sawmill) that comes with HelixGnome you really should take a look at it. I used to be a fan of IceWM, but the GNU (oops I mean new) HelixGnome combination of Gnome + Sawfish is really quite impressive.
Gnome really has come a long way in the last little bit.
Although in this particular case I would tend to think that Debian and especially the FSF have the upper hand. After all, if you pay careful attention to the GPL it gives the FSF special rights to change the GPL and make the new license apply retroactively.
In other words, I would be wary of contradicting the FSF on this point. After all, they can change the wording of the license so that it is unambiguous and then millions of lines of existing GPL code will be unavailable to KDE, and many existing KDE apps with borrowed GPL code will be illegal to distribute.
Unfortunately the QT and KDE folks have a long history of being sloppy with their licensing, and they are unwilling and unable to change now. My personal guess is that this whole issue will turn into a train wreck.
The primary reason is that SCO has been denigrating Linux and the BSDs for years. They have been openly hostile to the Open Source community, and have come out against us in the press numerous times. Heck, quite a few of us have even received insulting faxes and sales literature from our friends at SCO. Basically even Microsoft hasn't treated Linuxers with as much disrespect as SCO has.
Which is fine and dandy, I suppose. Or at least can be chalked up as part of "business," but from all accounts SCO has created some of the worst Unixen ever. I am fortunate to have never had to use it, but now that it is going away I am suddenly curious.
Anyone know where I can get a hold of one of those "free" SCO CDs so I can see for myself how bad it is (was)?
I suppose that I inferred that you didn't vote because that is essentially what I am talking about. I have never said that you should vote for a Republicrat, I have simply pointed out that people that are competent politically vote. Actually I think that votes for third parties can have a tremendous influence on the system, and one should definitely cast their vote that way if their conscious dictates.
Please pardon me for miscasting you. Sometimes its hard to tell who it is you are talking to when the interface is plain old ASCI text.
Actually my first paragraph was supposed to be sarcastic.
I am still fairly young (under 30), but I am convinced that while the rising generation always thinks that they have the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, they don't.
Generally what they do have is a poor understanding of history, and an overinflated sense of their own importance.
My point was that the reason that the Senior Citizens get what they want from the government is that their age bracket has finally gotten wise enough to realize that voting is the key to political power. Us Youngsters think that the key is to be seen on that most magical of devices, the Television. And so we riot and push over cop cars, and generally make a nuisance of ourselves so that NBC will capture our sorry little lives on film.
And then we complain because the Senior Citizens (and the other special interest groups that actually vote) weren't paying attention to us, but instead simply voted for their own agendas.
Have you ever wondered why no politician has ever really worried about the under 30 demographic? The answer is simple. People my age are too cool (or jaded, or stoned, or stupid) to vote.
Someone mod this up!
And if you don't vote, then someone else is going to choose for you, and they will probably choose the greater of the two evils.
One of the funniest sigs I have ever seen said:
Unfortunately, this is actually quite true. Most of us have just one small voice in a sea of differing opinions. We don't have the money and power that it takes to actually influence the president of the United States. However, there is still plenty that we can do. For example, if you have problems with the current political system then there are plenty of groups that advocate campaign refoms of one sort or another. Many of these groups are already quite large, and if you were to help one of them there is a good chance that some progress could be made. After all, campaign finance reform is turning into a relatively big issue.
Of course, if you don't want to vote, then feel free to excercise that right. You are also free to move to a different country and apply for citizenship there. If you do find Shangrila, perhaps you would share directions with the rest of us here on /. so that we can share in your enlightenment. In the meantime, I prefer to work in the real world. I also prefer to change my local government first. It's easier, and it makes more of a difference to my particular community.
If all politics took was money, then Microsoft wouldn't be in the pickle it is now.
Politics is about votes. Pundits would like you to believe it is about money, because most Americans have a built in distrust of "monied interests," but the reality is that with today's fund-raising laws (specifically maximum contributions) the group that raises the most money almost certainly has the most supporters.
If you don't believe that there is a difference between Al Gore and GW Bush, then I don't want to know who it is that you think should be president of the US. While both are clearly centrist, there are definite differences in their beliefs on foreign policy, taxes, the role of government in the lives of the people, the environment, etc.
I would certainly agree that neither candidate is ideal, but almost certainly one of the candidates is closer to your idea of perfection than the other.
It's easy to see people that don't agree with you as uninformed. However, your clueless friends undoubtedly vote for people that espouse their same "clueless" beliefs. They probably don't feel that their actions are useless, and they are almost certainly right. Almost without a doubt they have helped to elect several officials (especially at the local level), who have then carried out many of the same plans that they would have carried out themselves.
Part of the tragedy of the American system of government is that every idiot has the same amount of votes as you do. Unless of course you don't vote. In which case you shouldn't be surprised that the politicians don't follow your particular credo.