Cops are supposed to have an unfair advantage. What do you think about armor piercing bullets?
Cops are supposed to uphold the legitimate rule of law, as well; not to act as the brute force support system of global fascism. There is a vast difference.
Conspiracy theories belong into books or awesome video games, not into the real world *rolls eyes*.
The government really appreciates people like you. You're doing their work for them. After they commit attrocities against their constituents, they can rely on people like you to insist that those people who were killed really *were* terrorists.
We're just fine, guys; keep moving along. Nothing to see here. Our freedom is still perfectly intact. So a couple of people got waterboarded last week; who cares? We're still OK.
I know you think sneering, scoffing, pseudo-skeptical atheism makes you look brilliantly intelligent...but it really doesn't.
Given the presumed rarity of a couple of Linux users having the requisite social skills to even *make friends*, let alone marry, I'd say this qualifies as an absolutely momentous event. They probably should have had the music from 2001 accompanying the bridal march; it'd be appropriate in more ways than one.;)
Is the government just trying to provoke violence to justify more totalitarian actions? Is the supreme court taking a nap and won't hear cases that would limit the amount of intervention that can occur with a protest?
The Supreme Court doesn't need to care about jack shit. The civilian population is completely toothless, at this point.
a) No more than 15% of the mainstream population cares about the political situation, tops.
b) As long as a) remains true, the government can slaughter whoever it wants, with impunity, and the ovine majority will not care as long as too large a number are not killed at once, and it doesn't interfere with the source of the majority's distractions.
As long as the majority get their iphones, their McDonald's, and the latest info about what Paris Hilton is doing this week, any totalitarian behaviour is barely going to register to them as background noise. Even if it does, all the government has to do, for the most part, is have the media play the anthem and wave a few flags, and they'll promptly go straight back to sleep.
Passive protest is not going to work, here. The people in charge of the globalist conferences will, in time, simply begin killing protesters where they stand; and it is only ever a few hundred protesters who ever turn up to these things.
The authorities depend on the fact that there is only a small turnout, because when only a few people get killed, that number is still small enough for governments to be able to claim that they are legitimately putting down civil unrest. The majority will then listen to that.
Pacifist activism only works when the enemy has a conscience. This one doesn't, so it is going to be ineffective. Whoever lies down will simply be slaughtered, and then the cabal will continue with what it was already doing anyway.
There is no hope. Absolutely none. I'd love it if there was, but heads they win, tails you lose.
Pacifist protest will fail, because the protesters will simply be killed.
Armed protest will fail, because the people attempting said protest will be civilians.
Even if we could somehow do something to revert the current political situation, the environment is now sufficiently screwed (especially given the fact that population is still increasing exponentially) that it is likely that we will be extinct within 100 years anyway, whether we have a fascist government or not.
Face it, people. As a species, we are at this point, totally and completely fucked. It is over. Roll over, do another raid in World of Warcraft, and open another bag of chips; because at this point, that is as good as it's going to get.
It being this blatant is a strong indication that freedom has already been dead for a good long while. Plans for "emergency" situations were on the books in the mid-80s; there was Waco in 1992, etc.
Freedom in that sense was already dead by the time the WTC attacks happened, too. You can be sure that they would not have been committed, if the STS crowd thought they weren't going to be able to get away with it.
Apathy is part of the problem, but a bigger part of it is division. The globalist cabal are organised now to a degree that it would take a similar level of organisation to stop them. The whole reason why that organisation doesn't happen, is because everyone is waiting for the person next to them to make the first move, so that they know that they aren't simply going to charge in as a single person, have their head meaninglessly blown off, and for the machine to then simply keep rumbling on.
The other thing is, the contemporary STS demographic know their limits. They're not going to publically institute concentration camps or similar such things, precisely because they know that that is how Hitler operated, so that is what the public thinks that fascism looks like.
They never kill too many people at once, either. 9/11 was the big incident; you won't see the body count that high in one incident again for a long time. That much death in one hit isn't what they want; it makes too many people restless, and causes too many questions to get asked. If it gets too bad, it also can't be reconciled with the patriotic illusion of freedom that they try and maintain, as well.
These days, instead of blatant fascism, they churn out World of Warcraft, pornography, game shows, reality TV, and celebrity gossip as news in order to keep people distracted, so that when an isolated incident like the one in question happens, most people don't notice because they're too busy playing with their IPhones or watching YouTube or TV.
A few people will get killed, but not that many. Because it's only ever small groups that get killed, the STS crew can simply label it terrorism and use that as their justification for murder, and the majority will go back to sleep, if they even batted an eyelid at all.
Wanting freedom in the context of past ages is not a realistically attainable goal, in today's society; because there aren't enough other people who care about it, and without the proverbial critical mass, all you'll get is your own head blown off for trying anything.
If you want some good advice; study survivalism, turn your TV off, get rid of your mobile devices as much as you can, and above all, keep your head down. Political freedom might not be possible any more, but if you play your cards right, a tolerable existence still is. If the guys at the top want to stay in power, they know they have to keep us quiet to an extent.
There have been some cases such as the release of The Man From Earth where online piracy led to wide spread sales of the film.
Sure. I'll quite happily send $12 (the price of a movie ticket) straight to a director for the download of a new movie. Food at home is much cheaper than popcorn in a cinema, and I'm not paying for public transport, either. So he still gets full (concession for me, am on a pension) ticket price, which I have no problem with, and I financially come out ahead of what I'd spend on a trip to the movies right now. Everyone wins.
They basically have labs with one-way mirror. User is left alone in a sound-proof room and given a set of tasks to perform.
The problem is, that if the end result is anything to go by, (in terms of their products) the user in that room quite literally probably doesn't have an IQ of above 60.
Microsoft software is designed to be used by borderline vegetables. I'm not talking about user-friendliness, here, while still assuming that the user is even moderately intelligent. I'm talking about, again, interfaces that are designed for individuals with sub-75 IQ. If you're someone who is remotely competent or intelligent, life is miserable in Windows. Other than PowerShell, the CLI is virtually non-existent, and unless you want to download LightStep and risk its' instability, the GUI is almost completely locked as well.
Mind you, given how much more stable Windows is, at least, these days, I'm actually thinking of going back to it. I love FreeBSD as much as I always have, but I'm getting very, very tired of the relentless toxicity of the Linux community.
I've already given FOSS a 2-3 year hiatus before, because it got to the point where I simply could not stand the FSF and its' drones. If I leave again, I probably will not be coming back.
BSD is where it is BECAUSE of GNU, Linux and the GPL. It's called "Riding the Coat Tails". First look at all of the GNU tools which make up BSD.
FreeBSD uses gcc, binutils, grep, tar, and maybe sed. That's it. Everything else in terms of both the core toolchain and textutils is their own version, and BSD versions of utilities required by the Single UNIX Specification are still maintained, that there are no GNU equivalents of. BSD also has its' own internal make; pmake with FreeBSD, and bmake for NetBSD/pkgsrc.
FreeBSD also actually uses the most GNU stuff. NetBSD has its' own port of tar, and OpenBSD has its' own ports of sed and grep. Porting OpenBSD's versions of those tools is something FreeBSD is seeking volunteers for, as well. All three also have their own C library as well, and it is vastly cleaner, lighter, and better integrated with their respective kernels than Glibc, as well.
Also, BSD not having a non-GNU compiler is not for lack of trying, I assure you. It is well understood how important and necessary it is to have a compiler that is outside the FSF's control; it has simply been difficult given the scope and complexity inherent in a compiler. There are a number of different candidate projects which look promising, but it is slow going, and the FSF's own non-standard extensions to standard C do not help.
I am fed up with the naked, blatant FSF mind control I keep seeing on Slashdot. The attitude here, about the BSDs riding coattails, and about how everyone in the entire world owes Stallman their soul, is baseless and pointlessly vicious. You only serve to emphasise the point; that the BSDs' developers are putting every effort into being free of the GNU project, and many of them very much look forward to the day when they have developed replacements.
I seek an end to fear. I seek an end to hate. I seek an end to paranoia. The Free Software Foundation promotes, and stimulates, all three of those things.
I do not hate the people who express the distortions and misconceptions which Stallman has taught them to believe; quite the opposite. Many of you are well-meaning, passionate individuals, as am I. The FSF has enslaved your minds, and continues to tell you to engage in fear, hate, and paranoia.
Stop fearing Microsoft. Stop hating them and the rest of the corporate world. Stop engaging in paranoia about reciprocity, again because of fear that the corporate world are going to erradicate FOSS in general. They are not.
This is why I continue to read and post to Slashdot, when according to all logic and sanity, I should have walked away long ago. I know cults. My parents were in Amway, and it destroyed my family. I studied Scientology and other such groups for years afterwards, trying to understand how it had happened.
I have a continuing need to try to save the people here who the FSF deceives and manipulates, on an ongoing basis. Until the FSF ceases to exist, I will remain here, and I will continue to fight.
Read this carefully; this is what lets you use the program without agreeing to the GPL. You should be able to decline that aforementioned splash screen, and still use the program.
This is fine, then. As far as I know, shell scripts aren't considered object code, and hence aren't subject to copyleft; and scripting is the only kind of programming I do. I've used gawk, but that doesn't generate object code either.
Is it morally superior to just give money away to whoever asks or to put it towards something that will definitely continue to do the public good, ensuring that those that gain advantage from it also help?
This is the FSF's standard rhetoric for justifying copyleft, to which I will give my own standard response. The enforcement of reciprocity is motivated by anti-corporate hate, fear, and paranoia. These are not emotions which form a sound basis for anything positive.
If you doubt that these emotions dictate almost all of the FSF's behaviour, all you really need to do is look around. Said emotions are blatantly obvious in virtually everything the organisation does.
The BSD license represents a gift which makes no assumptions or demands of its' potential recipients. People talk about pragmatism, of course, because that's necessary to impress corporations, but at the heart of the issue, the license represents a gift given by those who create software for its' own sake.
There is no hatred or terror of corporations such as Microsoft, or of a lack of reciprocity from others; there are simply programmers, following the same nature that they would whether Microsoft existed or not. As has been said, freedom is the only law that genius knows.
Maybe you're familiar, theologically speaking, with the concept of unconditional love. That is love which is given, irrespective of the nature of the recipient. It is, in other words, love which is not even partially distorted by fear.
Stallman has claimed that software licensing should not be considered in a vacuum, ethically, but should be consistent with our stance on other areas of life. Ironically, that is one area where we are in agreement.
You're a zealot.
You know, it's funny. I was just thinking the same thing about you.;)
In all honesty, however, I cannot deny it. I was first exposed to FreeBSD in 1995, and came to feel very strongly about it almost immediately.
I am, admittedly, almost unheard of among BSD users.
I am unusual in the sense that, in addition to the others being much more phlegmatic than the Linux community, the usual BSD attitude is simply to allow the inherent integrity of both the system and its' license to prove themselves on an unaided basis, as there is a very strong, yet generally silent, belief that they are able to do so. Advocacy, therefore, is customarily considered unnecessary.
The difference between us, however, is that you're on the losing team. Richard Stallman continues making an embarassment of himself virtually whenever he is given an opportunity to do so. The current flap about Miguel de Icaza is only the latest outrage.
You will, of course, no doubt immediately leap to your Leader's defense in response to this, but what you or I think, as isolated individuals, is not the point, at this stage. The majority now officially consider Stallman as fringe, or worse. He has at least begun to lose (if not already totally lost) the degree of credibility which he had previously amassed with the computing public.
The FSF as an organisation, are also once again beginning the slide towards irrelevance. You only need to look at the unprecedent amount of derision their followers were exposed to here on Slashdot, in the comments attached to the story about Software Freedom Day.
For the last three months or so, we have also begun seeing stories in the trade press about how business is gradually waking up to the reality of, and abandoning, the GPL as a license; particularly given how much more of a legal minefield version 3 of it is.
The FSF represents a case where the Emperor genuinely has no clothes. The GPL as a license is based on erroneous, fear-based logic, and Richard Stallman has sought to create exactly the same kind of software monoculture (non-commercial, perhaps, but that is the only real difference) which his supporters rail at Microsoft for doing.
Argument down-moderation complete. Cognitive dissonance cascade averted. Systems returning to normal. Resume primary objective; assimilation of new drones and defense of the Collective.
I almost actually forgot to mention something else.
You may not have heard about this, (after all, it was a largely irrelevant occurrence) but Steve Jobs partly based his new operating system on FreeBSD as well, not too long ago.
Of course, as we all know, Steve has always been a wacky, crazy, maverick kind of guy. I'm sure if he'd been able to see your post a few years earlier, it might have prevented him from making a truly disastrous decision.
I mean, after all, why would a major corporation want to base a new operating system on dead code?
There have been a lot of cases (the linksys modding scene for instance) in which the lack of GPL would have meant no release of source or tools. There are a variety of other examples.
In other words, thank God we've got Richard Stallman to use the legal system to beat people into submission, and force them to do exactly what WE want them to do. It might be unfortunate, but given that said people work for corporations, they're not as equal as we are, and hence, their wellbeing doesn't count.
I love the smell of freedom, don't you?
At this point BSD is basically an also-ran
Yep. Marginal, dead, and completely irrelevant; just like Netcraft said. I guess that's why FreeBSD is ranked 13th on DistroWatch. It might also have something to do with why NetBSD just had a new release last month, or OpenBSD having its' most recent release in May. It's probably also why Theo de Raadt gave a keynote speech about OpenBSD's development process in May, as well.
That's also why we've kept seeing stories like this crop up in the trade press over the last three months or so; because the GPL is just such an awesome, business-friendly license. Everyone just loves the freedom that their Uncle Richard has provided for them; I really can't imagine where we'd be if it wasn't for him.
not on the same level as linux or supported in anything like the same way in terms of FOSS and commercial software.
Yeah. Too bad World of Warcraft doesn't run on it. Having to surf the Web withoutFlash really hurts, too. Like you said, FreeBSD is so irrelevant, it doesn't even have 3D video card drivers.
The GPL is simple. You DO NOT HAVE TO AGREE TO IT.
This is true in theory, yes. However, part of the reason why the goal with the GNU project was to create a monoculture, was in order to also create leverage with which to bludgeon people into accepting the GPL.
I know, I know; I'll probably get the usual FSF drone response that it still is optional. However, the truth of the matter is that the FSF want a scenario where ultimately, if people don't accept the GPL, their only other "option," is not to use a computer at all.
Non-copyleft licenses need no "enforcement." Genuine freedom, and not cultic distortions of the word, is not something that needs to be "enforced." Anything which requires enforcement is truthfully the direct opposite of real freedom, by definition.
The solution is simple; we need to abandon the GPL.
Retards. Hiding the past doesn't make the it go away. It can only make it more appealing to the weak minded.
The truly amusing irony is that the German government may well be one of the only governments on the planet, that truly is actively trying to erradicate fascism.
Nearly all of the rest of them, however, can't seem to scramble to implement a fascist state quickly enough.
This is something else I just thought of. Microsoft are going to destroy Linux. Matter of fact, they pretty much already have.
How? By conditioning the majority of the non-technical user population in terms of how to think. The ideas in this don't get used for writing software any more, and 50 WoW gold says that I'll get a reply to this very post from a Windows refugee, calling me an idiot for even bringing that up.
Microsoft has made it so that unless Linux is a clone of Windows, Linux doesn't have a prayer, cos the users don't want anything else, and won't accept anything else. The UNIX philosophy was about how to design genuinely stable software that didn't just fall apart or turn to shit, but you can't write that any more, because like I said, nobody wants it now.
So as a result, Ubuntu has an interface that looks just like Windows, but crashes if someone gives it a hard look, just like Windows.
The idiot end users don't remember the fact that Linux's extra stability was what caused them to leave Windows in the first place. Ubuntu is so much like Windows now, that it also has Windows' problems. In the end the Windows refugees are going to wonder why they bothered switching, because Linux will be exactly the same; viruses everywhere, and it crashing all the time, etc.
The UNIX philosophy could have meant that things were different, and software was more stable. But nobody wants that; because it wouldn't be just like Windows.
So even though Microsoft probably are still going to die now themselves, when they go, they will take Linux down with them.
Someone said in another post that it is high time that Firefox was forked anywayz.
Only problem is, you can't, and the reason why is because in terms of complexity, a Web browser is one of those "Great Pyramid," or "Stonehenge," scale apps, similar to a kernel itself.
So as a result, only Godlike coders can even work collaboratively on a browser, and virtually nobody can start a truly new project of their own.
That tells me that HTTP itself needs reworking, or at least the way image rendering works. The textual protocol is simple enough, so I'm guessing it is mainly the image problem.
I guess that possibly also explains why Tim Berners-Lee didn't originally want images on the Web. It might have been because he figured that would make things too hard to implement. If that was his reasoning, it looks like he was right.
Exactly the point. These days, anyone who thinks of Linux automatically thinks of KDE or Gnome, as if unscaleable GUI bloatware was always a part of the system.
It wasn't, but somebody had to go and tirelessly, endlessly scream for Linux to become a clone of Windows, and so now Linux fails at what could have been its' ideal niche application.
The more I read Slashdot recently, the more profoundly grateful I become that I essentially live in a cave. The corruption, cowardice, short sightedness, laziness, and above all, relentless, utterly brainless stupidity of mainstream humanity is, at times, beyond belief.
But for the rest of you, I'm guessing that's just another day at the office.
Slashdot Mirror
Cops are supposed to have an unfair advantage. What do you think about armor piercing bullets?
Cops are supposed to uphold the legitimate rule of law, as well; not to act as the brute force support system of global fascism. There is a vast difference.
Conspiracy theories belong into books or awesome video games, not into the real world *rolls eyes*.
The government really appreciates people like you. You're doing their work for them. After they commit attrocities against their constituents, they can rely on people like you to insist that those people who were killed really *were* terrorists.
We're just fine, guys; keep moving along. Nothing to see here. Our freedom is still perfectly intact. So a couple of people got waterboarded last week; who cares? We're still OK.
I know you think sneering, scoffing, pseudo-skeptical atheism makes you look brilliantly intelligent...but it really doesn't.
CAPTCHA: 'romantic'. Something I never associate with ESR.
That's not really fair. He has a wife.
ESR is almost neurotypical. That is why he has been able to do the corporate relations stuff that he has.
Given the presumed rarity of a couple of Linux users having the requisite social skills to even *make friends*, let alone marry, I'd say this qualifies as an absolutely momentous event. They probably should have had the music from 2001 accompanying the bridal march; it'd be appropriate in more ways than one. ;)
Exactly the point.
Time to bring out the big guns and fight back obviously.
Good luck. Also, what big guns would those be, exactly?
If the civilian population try anything at all, they will simply be slaughtered like animals.
You won't change the situation. You won't buy anything at all with your life.
You will simply die.
Is the government just trying to provoke violence to justify more totalitarian actions? Is the supreme court taking a nap and won't hear cases that would limit the amount of intervention that can occur with a protest?
The Supreme Court doesn't need to care about jack shit. The civilian population is completely toothless, at this point.
a) No more than 15% of the mainstream population cares about the political situation, tops.
b) As long as a) remains true, the government can slaughter whoever it wants, with impunity, and the ovine majority will not care as long as too large a number are not killed at once, and it doesn't interfere with the source of the majority's distractions.
As long as the majority get their iphones, their McDonald's, and the latest info about what Paris Hilton is doing this week, any totalitarian behaviour is barely going to register to them as background noise. Even if it does, all the government has to do, for the most part, is have the media play the anthem and wave a few flags, and they'll promptly go straight back to sleep.
If they're smart, they won't go to events at all.
Passive protest is not going to work, here. The people in charge of the globalist conferences will, in time, simply begin killing protesters where they stand; and it is only ever a few hundred protesters who ever turn up to these things.
The authorities depend on the fact that there is only a small turnout, because when only a few people get killed, that number is still small enough for governments to be able to claim that they are legitimately putting down civil unrest. The majority will then listen to that.
Pacifist activism only works when the enemy has a conscience. This one doesn't, so it is going to be ineffective. Whoever lies down will simply be slaughtered, and then the cabal will continue with what it was already doing anyway.
There is no hope. Absolutely none. I'd love it if there was, but heads they win, tails you lose.
Pacifist protest will fail, because the protesters will simply be killed.
Armed protest will fail, because the people attempting said protest will be civilians.
Even if we could somehow do something to revert the current political situation, the environment is now sufficiently screwed (especially given the fact that population is still increasing exponentially) that it is likely that we will be extinct within 100 years anyway, whether we have a fascist government or not.
Face it, people. As a species, we are at this point, totally and completely fucked. It is over. Roll over, do another raid in World of Warcraft, and open another bag of chips; because at this point, that is as good as it's going to get.
Just stand by and watch freedom die.
It being this blatant is a strong indication that freedom has already been dead for a good long while. Plans for "emergency" situations were on the books in the mid-80s; there was Waco in 1992, etc.
Freedom in that sense was already dead by the time the WTC attacks happened, too. You can be sure that they would not have been committed, if the STS crowd thought they weren't going to be able to get away with it.
Apathy is part of the problem, but a bigger part of it is division. The globalist cabal are organised now to a degree that it would take a similar level of organisation to stop them. The whole reason why that organisation doesn't happen, is because everyone is waiting for the person next to them to make the first move, so that they know that they aren't simply going to charge in as a single person, have their head meaninglessly blown off, and for the machine to then simply keep rumbling on.
The other thing is, the contemporary STS demographic know their limits. They're not going to publically institute concentration camps or similar such things, precisely because they know that that is how Hitler operated, so that is what the public thinks that fascism looks like.
They never kill too many people at once, either. 9/11 was the big incident; you won't see the body count that high in one incident again for a long time. That much death in one hit isn't what they want; it makes too many people restless, and causes too many questions to get asked. If it gets too bad, it also can't be reconciled with the patriotic illusion of freedom that they try and maintain, as well.
These days, instead of blatant fascism, they churn out World of Warcraft, pornography, game shows, reality TV, and celebrity gossip as news in order to keep people distracted, so that when an isolated incident like the one in question happens, most people don't notice because they're too busy playing with their IPhones or watching YouTube or TV.
A few people will get killed, but not that many. Because it's only ever small groups that get killed, the STS crew can simply label it terrorism and use that as their justification for murder, and the majority will go back to sleep, if they even batted an eyelid at all.
Wanting freedom in the context of past ages is not a realistically attainable goal, in today's society; because there aren't enough other people who care about it, and without the proverbial critical mass, all you'll get is your own head blown off for trying anything.
If you want some good advice; study survivalism, turn your TV off, get rid of your mobile devices as much as you can, and above all, keep your head down. Political freedom might not be possible any more, but if you play your cards right, a tolerable existence still is. If the guys at the top want to stay in power, they know they have to keep us quiet to an extent.
There have been some cases such as the release of The Man From Earth where online piracy led to wide spread sales of the film.
Sure. I'll quite happily send $12 (the price of a movie ticket) straight to a director for the download of a new movie. Food at home is much cheaper than popcorn in a cinema, and I'm not paying for public transport, either. So he still gets full (concession for me, am on a pension) ticket price, which I have no problem with, and I financially come out ahead of what I'd spend on a trip to the movies right now. Everyone wins.
They basically have labs with one-way mirror. User is left alone in a sound-proof room and given a set of tasks to perform.
The problem is, that if the end result is anything to go by, (in terms of their products) the user in that room quite literally probably doesn't have an IQ of above 60.
Microsoft software is designed to be used by borderline vegetables. I'm not talking about user-friendliness, here, while still assuming that the user is even moderately intelligent. I'm talking about, again, interfaces that are designed for individuals with sub-75 IQ. If you're someone who is remotely competent or intelligent, life is miserable in Windows. Other than PowerShell, the CLI is virtually non-existent, and unless you want to download LightStep and risk its' instability, the GUI is almost completely locked as well.
Mind you, given how much more stable Windows is, at least, these days, I'm actually thinking of going back to it. I love FreeBSD as much as I always have, but I'm getting very, very tired of the relentless toxicity of the Linux community.
I've already given FOSS a 2-3 year hiatus before, because it got to the point where I simply could not stand the FSF and its' drones. If I leave again, I probably will not be coming back.
BSD is where it is BECAUSE of GNU, Linux and the GPL. It's called "Riding the Coat Tails". First look at all of the GNU tools which make up BSD.
FreeBSD uses gcc, binutils, grep, tar, and maybe sed. That's it. Everything else in terms of both the core toolchain and textutils is their own version, and BSD versions of utilities required by the Single UNIX Specification are still maintained, that there are no GNU equivalents of. BSD also has its' own internal make; pmake with FreeBSD, and bmake for NetBSD/pkgsrc.
FreeBSD also actually uses the most GNU stuff. NetBSD has its' own port of tar, and OpenBSD has its' own ports of sed and grep. Porting OpenBSD's versions of those tools is something FreeBSD is seeking volunteers for, as well. All three also have their own C library as well, and it is vastly cleaner, lighter, and better integrated with their respective kernels than Glibc, as well.
Also, BSD not having a non-GNU compiler is not for lack of trying, I assure you. It is well understood how important and necessary it is to have a compiler that is outside the FSF's control; it has simply been difficult given the scope and complexity inherent in a compiler. There are a number of different candidate projects which look promising, but it is slow going, and the FSF's own non-standard extensions to standard C do not help.
I am fed up with the naked, blatant FSF mind control I keep seeing on Slashdot. The attitude here, about the BSDs riding coattails, and about how everyone in the entire world owes Stallman their soul, is baseless and pointlessly vicious. You only serve to emphasise the point; that the BSDs' developers are putting every effort into being free of the GNU project, and many of them very much look forward to the day when they have developed replacements.
I seek an end to fear. I seek an end to hate. I seek an end to paranoia. The Free Software Foundation promotes, and stimulates, all three of those things.
I do not hate the people who express the distortions and misconceptions which Stallman has taught them to believe; quite the opposite. Many of you are well-meaning, passionate individuals, as am I. The FSF has enslaved your minds, and continues to tell you to engage in fear, hate, and paranoia.
Stop fearing Microsoft. Stop hating them and the rest of the corporate world. Stop engaging in paranoia about reciprocity, again because of fear that the corporate world are going to erradicate FOSS in general. They are not.
This is why I continue to read and post to Slashdot, when according to all logic and sanity, I should have walked away long ago. I know cults. My parents were in Amway, and it destroyed my family. I studied Scientology and other such groups for years afterwards, trying to understand how it had happened.
I have a continuing need to try to save the people here who the FSF deceives and manipulates, on an ongoing basis. Until the FSF ceases to exist, I will remain here, and I will continue to fight.
Read this carefully; this is what lets you use the program without agreeing to the GPL. You should be able to decline that aforementioned splash screen, and still use the program.
This is fine, then. As far as I know, shell scripts aren't considered object code, and hence aren't subject to copyleft; and scripting is the only kind of programming I do. I've used gawk, but that doesn't generate object code either.
My shell scripts are always BSD licensed.
Is it morally superior to just give money away to whoever asks or to put it towards something that will definitely continue to do the public good, ensuring that those that gain advantage from it also help?
This is the FSF's standard rhetoric for justifying copyleft, to which I will give my own standard response. The enforcement of reciprocity is motivated by anti-corporate hate, fear, and paranoia. These are not emotions which form a sound basis for anything positive.
If you doubt that these emotions dictate almost all of the FSF's behaviour, all you really need to do is look around. Said emotions are blatantly obvious in virtually everything the organisation does.
The BSD license represents a gift which makes no assumptions or demands of its' potential recipients. People talk about pragmatism, of course, because that's necessary to impress corporations, but at the heart of the issue, the license represents a gift given by those who create software for its' own sake.
There is no hatred or terror of corporations such as Microsoft, or of a lack of reciprocity from others; there are simply programmers, following the same nature that they would whether Microsoft existed or not. As has been said, freedom is the only law that genius knows.
Maybe you're familiar, theologically speaking, with the concept of unconditional love. That is love which is given, irrespective of the nature of the recipient. It is, in other words, love which is not even partially distorted by fear.
Stallman has claimed that software licensing should not be considered in a vacuum, ethically, but should be consistent with our stance on other areas of life. Ironically, that is one area where we are in agreement.
You're a zealot.
You know, it's funny. I was just thinking the same thing about you. ;)
In all honesty, however, I cannot deny it. I was first exposed to FreeBSD in 1995, and came to feel very strongly about it almost immediately.
I am, admittedly, almost unheard of among BSD users.
I am unusual in the sense that, in addition to the others being much more phlegmatic than the Linux community, the usual BSD attitude is simply to allow the inherent integrity of both the system and its' license to prove themselves on an unaided basis, as there is a very strong, yet generally silent, belief that they are able to do so. Advocacy, therefore, is customarily considered unnecessary.
The difference between us, however, is that you're on the losing team. Richard Stallman continues making an embarassment of himself virtually whenever he is given an opportunity to do so. The current flap about Miguel de Icaza is only the latest outrage.
You will, of course, no doubt immediately leap to your Leader's defense in response to this, but what you or I think, as isolated individuals, is not the point, at this stage. The majority now officially consider Stallman as fringe, or worse. He has at least begun to lose (if not already totally lost) the degree of credibility which he had previously amassed with the computing public.
The FSF as an organisation, are also once again beginning the slide towards irrelevance. You only need to look at the unprecedent amount of derision their followers were exposed to here on Slashdot, in the comments attached to the story about Software Freedom Day.
For the last three months or so, we have also begun seeing stories in the trade press about how business is gradually waking up to the reality of, and abandoning, the GPL as a license; particularly given how much more of a legal minefield version 3 of it is.
The FSF represents a case where the Emperor genuinely has no clothes. The GPL as a license is based on erroneous, fear-based logic, and Richard Stallman has sought to create exactly the same kind of software monoculture (non-commercial, perhaps, but that is the only real difference) which his supporters rail at Microsoft for doing.
My primary m
Ah, the standard FSF defense.
"Irrefutable argument detected. Error. Does not compute. Immediate action required to avoid imminent cognitive dissonance cascade. Seeking alternate options. Processing...
Proximity drone located. Moderation points available. Down-moderate irrefutable argument to prevent discovery. Working...
Argument down-moderation complete. Cognitive dissonance cascade averted. Systems returning to normal. Resume primary objective; assimilation of new drones and defense of the Collective.
Resistance is futile."
I almost actually forgot to mention something else.
You may not have heard about this, (after all, it was a largely irrelevant occurrence) but Steve Jobs partly based his new operating system on FreeBSD as well, not too long ago.
Of course, as we all know, Steve has always been a wacky, crazy, maverick kind of guy. I'm sure if he'd been able to see your post a few years earlier, it might have prevented him from making a truly disastrous decision.
I mean, after all, why would a major corporation want to base a new operating system on dead code?
There have been a lot of cases (the linksys modding scene for instance) in which the lack of GPL would have meant no release of source or tools. There are a variety of other examples.
In other words, thank God we've got Richard Stallman to use the legal system to beat people into submission, and force them to do exactly what WE want them to do. It might be unfortunate, but given that said people work for corporations, they're not as equal as we are, and hence, their wellbeing doesn't count.
I love the smell of freedom, don't you?
At this point BSD is basically an also-ran
Yep. Marginal, dead, and completely irrelevant; just like Netcraft said. I guess that's why FreeBSD is ranked 13th on DistroWatch. It might also have something to do with why NetBSD just had a new release last month, or OpenBSD having its' most recent release in May. It's probably also why Theo de Raadt gave a keynote speech about OpenBSD's development process in May, as well.
Because, you know, they're fringe, dead, irrelevant operating systems. Nobody uses them.
That's also why we've kept seeing stories like this crop up in the trade press over the last three months or so; because the GPL is just such an awesome, business-friendly license. Everyone just loves the freedom that their Uncle Richard has provided for them; I really can't imagine where we'd be if it wasn't for him.
not on the same level as linux or supported in anything like the same way in terms of FOSS and commercial software.
Yeah. Too bad World of Warcraft doesn't run on it. Having to surf the Web without Flash really hurts, too. Like you said, FreeBSD is so irrelevant, it doesn't even have 3D video card drivers.
The GPL is not a charity.
They offer code in exchange for the promise of other code.
In other words, the BSD is a vastly morally superior license, and of the two, is a far more pure manifestation of the older hacker gift culture.
I already knew that, but thanks for clearing it up for our viewers at home. ;)
The GPL is simple. You DO NOT HAVE TO AGREE TO IT.
This is true in theory, yes. However, part of the reason why the goal with
the GNU project was to create a monoculture, was in order to also create leverage with which to bludgeon people into accepting the GPL.
I know, I know; I'll probably get the usual FSF drone response that it still
is optional. However, the truth of the matter is that the FSF want a scenario
where ultimately, if people don't accept the GPL, their only other "option,"
is not to use a computer at all.
Non-copyleft licenses need no "enforcement." Genuine freedom, and not cultic
distortions of the word, is not something that needs to be "enforced."
Anything which requires enforcement is truthfully the direct opposite of real
freedom, by definition.
The solution is simple; we need to abandon the GPL.
Retards. Hiding the past doesn't make the it go away. It can only make it more appealing to the weak minded.
The truly amusing irony is that the German government may well be one of the only governments on the planet, that truly is actively trying to erradicate fascism.
Nearly all of the rest of them, however, can't seem to scramble to implement a fascist state quickly enough.
Irrespective of your personal beliefs, in the U.S. we hold freedom of speech to be our dearest liberty.
The only people on the planet who still consider America to be a politically free country, are domestic Americans themselves.
The rest of us know better. ;)
This is something else I just thought of. Microsoft are going to destroy Linux. Matter of fact, they pretty much already have.
How? By conditioning the majority of the non-technical user population in terms of how to think.
The ideas in this don't get used for writing software any more, and 50 WoW gold says that I'll get a reply to this very post from a Windows refugee, calling me an idiot for even bringing that up.
Microsoft has made it so that unless Linux is a clone of Windows, Linux doesn't have a prayer, cos the users don't want anything else, and won't accept anything else. The UNIX philosophy was about how to design genuinely stable software that didn't just fall apart or turn to shit, but you can't write that any more, because like I said, nobody wants it now.
So as a result, Ubuntu has an interface that looks just like Windows, but crashes if someone gives it a hard look, just like Windows.
The idiot end users don't remember the fact that Linux's extra stability was what caused them to leave Windows in the first place. Ubuntu is so much like Windows now, that it also has Windows' problems. In the end the Windows refugees are going to wonder why they bothered switching, because Linux will be exactly the same; viruses everywhere, and it crashing all the time, etc.
The UNIX philosophy could have meant that things were different, and software was more stable. But nobody wants that; because it wouldn't be just like Windows.
So even though Microsoft probably are still going to die now themselves, when they go, they will take Linux down with them.
Someone said in another post that it is high time that Firefox was forked anywayz.
Only problem is, you can't, and the reason why is because in terms of complexity, a Web browser is one of those "Great Pyramid," or "Stonehenge," scale apps, similar to a kernel itself.
So as a result, only Godlike coders can even work collaboratively on a browser, and virtually nobody can start a truly new project of their own.
That tells me that HTTP itself needs reworking, or at least the way image rendering works. The textual protocol is simple enough, so I'm guessing it is mainly the image problem.
I guess that possibly also explains why Tim Berners-Lee didn't originally want images on the Web. It might have been because he figured that would make things too hard to implement. If that was his reasoning, it looks like he was right.
What is wrong with grep, find, Perl, etc?
Exactly the point. These days, anyone who thinks of Linux automatically thinks of KDE or Gnome, as if unscaleable GUI bloatware was always a part of the system.
It wasn't, but somebody had to go and tirelessly, endlessly scream for Linux to become a clone of Windows, and so now Linux fails at what could have been its' ideal niche application.
The more I read Slashdot recently, the more profoundly grateful I become that I essentially live in a cave. The corruption, cowardice, short sightedness, laziness, and above all, relentless, utterly brainless stupidity of mainstream humanity is, at times, beyond belief.
But for the rest of you, I'm guessing that's just another day at the office.
Interesting that this got modded Flamebait.
What's the matter, Linux users? Can't handle the truth? ;)