I long for the day when the "Green" movement is forced to concede that nuclear power is the ONLY path to true energy independence and abundance. I'm not interested in your pre-industrial-revolution utopia.
We had some ideas for energy independence, but unfortunately they had to be abandoned. It turns out that violations of the Second Law of Thermodynamics make atheists cry.
I knew there was a reason why I don't read that guy.
He's the proverbial Microserf. It is also no secret that Microsoft have customarily had the single worst software design philosophy in computing history.
The really bad thing, however, is that most people think that it is actually something to be admired.
Linux in end user terms is bloated, because the end user demands it.
My window manager of choice is Ratpoison, and I already anticipate the degree of abuse that I will probably receive in response to saying that, from former Windows users. These are people who apparently believe that a computer cannot be usable unless its' interface requires at least 2 Gb of RAM in order to function.
The Western world has been described as having history's fattest humans, and there is a relationship between physical bloat, and operating system bloat, although again, people will accuse me of being mentally ill for mentioning it.
The people who demand and consume McDonalds, however, and who grow obese and diabetic from that, are the same people who demand "junk food" interfaces such as Windows or KDE. There [b]is[/b] a correlation. Both are caused by an incessant craving for speed, convenience, superficial appeal, and above all, a need to avoid either active intelligence or personal responsibility, no matter the cost.
Linux is the operating system with no understanding of SYSTEMS
Actually, completely the opposite is true, although I'm not judging you for not having known that. Read this.
UNIX in an older sense (and ergo Linux) had a number of incredibly well-functioning, mutually independent frameworks; truthfully they worked sufficiently well that they mimicked ecological functions normally found in nature. However, the difference between Windows or the Mac is, that the one thing which they all relied on, was plain text.
Not XML. Not binary RPC. Plain text, often between networked applications. Why text? Because it's a lot more easily editable and viewable (ergo, transparent) than binary data streams.
Learn some shell scripting. If you do, you'll start discovering much simpler and cleaner methods of software development. You can still design a nice, shiny user interface for the end users, but you'll save yourself a lot of headaches as well, if you can design an application as a client/server or engine/user interface pair, with the two cleanly seperated but communicating via an easily readable/editable text stream.
This has a lot of advantages. The single main one is that if anything ever breaks, it makes it a lot easier to actually go and find where the problem is and fix it, than if everything is written monolithically, or communicating via some binary abomination. You can debug it by watching the protocol's messages as it runs.
Another major advantage is that it means a system can often end up being used, and used well, in novel or unexpected scenarios. The IRC protocol is a good example. IRC's developers probably weren't expecting people to do things like running lagless DCC botnets on top of it, but said people did do that, and it worked fine. IRC can actually be jerry rigged to interface directly with the mail protocol as well if you are so inclined, so you can send messages from within the IRC client.
I'm getting tired of kdawson or timothy making it so that every random piece of flamebait or troll post from Linux Today ends up on the front page here.
We don't need to read about every orangutan in the trade press who writes that this is, or isn't the "Year of the Penguin."
We don't need to read and dissect every antagonistic screed that comes up, about whether or not Linux is "ready for the desktop," as if anyone really knows what the desktop means in objective terms, anywayz.
In other words, we don't need to endlessly debate whether or not Linux complies with the (completely subjective and arbitrary) definition of every boneheaded, meaningless buzzphrase that the droids on ZDNet or Computerworld are able to dream up.
You want copy, and you want something which is going to provoke discussion; I get that. Discussion and mindless, pointless flame wars between the FSF drones and the rest of us, however, are two completely different things.
I tried to submit an article about a Vim plugin for Firefox, (ergo, something useful and potentially beneficial to the readership) and that got rejected. I tried submitting an article about PCManFM, another potentially useful piece of software, and that got rejected too. Yet this sort of trollbait routinely gets accepted and posted as a matter of course.
Is cheap sensationalism and inter-community grudge matches under the articles, really what you want this site to consist of, Slashdot editors?
You want to ignore this part of the world? Get off IDF's back and let them do as they please to the Arab threat. But nobody likes the idea of letting the strong conquer the weak, no matter that we're right.
No, you're not right. That's the other reason why I don't support interference in that conflict. Neither side are right.
I've read the Old Testament. The Zionist/ethnocentric element of the Israeli population are every bit as much a group of self-righteous, genocidal megalomaniacs as you have been for your entire history.
Hitler is the only reason why Israel has any cause for feeling justified in its' paranoia, and that also doesn't wash with me. I am autistic; if I'd been alive during Nazi Germany, I would have died too. Hitler was killing us at the time via the gasvagens; go and look that up if you don't believe me.
I was also subjected to both physical and psychological abuse during my experience with the education system; I was nearly killed in my last place of residence on multiple occasions. If I had wanted to become self-righteous and develop a martyr complex, I too could have found justification for doing so.
Just so that you don't start thinking that I am an anti-Semite who is in fact not neutral, I will tell you that I don't think any more highly of the Palestinian side, either. Islam doesn't always have to be, but among a certain demographic of its' followers, that religion is an expansionist disease that makes the Borg look tame by comparison.
This conflict, and most of your religious extremism, in both groups, is primarily generated by old men. Most of the young people don't want it, and the few who do are generally those who have allowed their ears to be bent by the elderly.
I sit here, and I watch one element of earlier human civilisation after another, slowly die. Every time it happens, there is always some ignorant, barbaric, bombastic American who revels in his own supposed intelligence and sophistication as he cheers the continued cultural erradication on.
Yet nobody sees it. Nobody, apparently, can imagine a time when the only thing left, will be the dark blue and steel grey of utterly sterile fascism.
Everything is being removed, one small piece at a time. From the environment, from human knowledge. It always looks so innocuous, so harmless. The spectators cheer that society is being made more efficient, by having less irrelevance, less redundancy.
This is how Hitler will ultimately win. Perhaps 70 years after his death, perhaps 200. The precise date doesn't really matter.
The point is, that these days, the fascists have learned. Their victory will not come through a series of rapid, bold assaults. That is far too blatant, far too visible; and it would be repelled, even now.
No. It is done slowly, quietly, delicately...inevitably. One small piece is removed, and then another, and another...and it is never done so rapidly, so overtly, that it is seen for what it truly is. This way, it is done in such a manner that the spectators, the atheists, those who revel in their own intelligence; they will not see it.
9: It is always better to avert any disaster or crisis from happening than it it to be sure you can blame it on someone else. Even if you have a chance to pin it on an enemy, or someone who is incompetent or stupid, don't stab anyone in the back unless it's a fatal wound.
Machiavelli; "If you are going to do anything at all to a man, then either kill him outright, or leave him alone."
There have been very few times when I have been more grateful for my own situation in life, than when I have read the comments attached to this article.
It is not that I am naive; I have read very extensively about how the game is played. It was, however, that reading, which eventually led me to the conclusion that I would literally prefer death than to play it.
The irony inherent in this being quoted here is incredible.
1984 mentioned the very concept of endless war which America's government has always sought to implement; and which now, with the War on Terror, it has finally succeeded in implementing. That book, which you are quoting from here, also laid bare the consequences of such a doctrine of endless war, at least in political terms.
Yet none of you see it. All of you defend the belief in interventionism that you have simply been raised with, and do so with a kind of smug self-righteousness that blatantly ignores American history, and the grotesque acts of tyranny and mass murder which have been commited within that country's own history. (When the speaker is American, at least)
The replies that I have received here would be laughable, if the implications, for a scenario where people actually believe said replies, were not so distressing.
It doesn't matter how many of your own people are killed, Americans. It doesn't matter how much your own economy is gutted, or how much your own civil liberties are progressively destroyed. Every single time your government and/or military/industrial complex produces the usual lies about why interventionism is necessary, you take the bait as enthusiastically as possible. In the case of Iran, you're apparently doing it even without the Ministry of Propaganda's (sorry, Fox News') encouragement that you do so.
I am tired of your support for interventionism advancing the cause of fascism, Americans. The problem, you see, is the fact that when you continue to support interventionism, the fascist consequences which occur in your own country, do not occur only in your own country. They occur in mine as well.
I also haven't even bothered trying to address the insoluble nature of the Middle East's problems, either. There are two related ethnic groups there, (the Jews and the Arabs) who are determined to exterminate each other, and with whom said determination goes back close to six thousand years. If you really think that animosity which is that deeply entrenched, is going to be resolved in any of our lifetimes, then there is no appeal to logic that I can make.
Yes, it's very nice to suggest "hands off" or "let the idiots turn each others' countries into parking lots", but A) your hands were already in there decades ago and there is a certain amount of responsibility (hello: the Shah of Iran?), and B) your economy would go into an even more serious tailspin than it is now if full-blown war broke out again between major oil producers in the region.
The only people who do care, are gullible, interventionist Americans.
I'm fed up with the Middle East. The region is this planet's equivalent of a high school oval. It's the traditional venue that pretty much everyone goes to when they want to have a fight. There is conflict of some sort happening there constantly, on a literally second by second basis.
These endless conflicts also are not ours. The rest of the world very rarely has any real stake in them, for the most part. Oil is about the only legitimate interest anyone else has there. Semitic monotheism, and who owns a particular mosque or church or whatever, is utterly meaningless as a legitimate incentive for war.
If the Iranian government wants to completely exterminate its' constituency, let it. If the Arabs and Jews want to mutually remove each other from human memory, let them.
At least if that were to happen, the rest of us might finally get some peace and quiet.
No, we need an ad where Windows is represented by a cheap whore, Mac by an expensive whore, Linux by a nerdy girlfriend (subtle STD reference for extra 'disturbingly appropriate metaphor' points),
Represent Windows with Paris Hilton. Represent Linux with a busty Swedish or Finnish female model in black rimmed glasses, and a nerdy shirt with pocket protector, but that also emphasises her breasts.
The Macintosh, in my own ad, would be represented by a skinny, flagrantly (as in, you can almost feel it pouring off him in waves) homosexual male, in the usual nerdish short sleeved shirt/suit pants, with twisted/spiked blue sprayed hair, eating an apple.;)
Nope, you're a fucking retard. I've hired too many like you. See, there's no reason to hire you if I can outsource your work to India. None at all.
Interesting. Very, very interesting.
I spend time reading about the 5% Dark Side/service to self crowd, but it's very rare when I actually get one of them communicating with me directly.
I know, though. The problem isn't actually the fact that this group exist. The problem is the fact that although they're only 5%, the other 95% of us allow them to rule the planet.
...the horrible degree of corruption implied by just about every post under this article?
The essential implication seems to be that your longevity in employment has absolutely nothing to do with your actual work. Rather, it has everything to do with someone else's perception of you, and said perception doesn't necessarily need to have any honest or factual relationship with your work output whatsoever.
If this is the case, I seriously wonder how much longer contemporary human society can last. Is it really so completely, unsparingly rotten out there these days?
I used to think I enjoyed coding. I was working on a version of ports for Linux, but stopped, because every time I ever mentioned it to anyone, I immediately got screamed at about how supposedly retarded that was, and about how it was a waste of effort, and nobody would care, and apt/rpm had already solved that problem, etc. (Even though they haven't)
Although I will admit it; if I was a billionaire, I'd do a lot of things, but the very first thing I'd do would be to assemble a harem consisting of Faith Nelson, Rachel Aldana, Eden Mor, and maybe one or two other similarly built women, have them live with me, and actually breed them; not just have sex with them, but reproduce with all of them. The goal would be to produce as many other women with similar physical characteristics to them as possible, and then turn them loose upon the world.;)
Yes, I'm a sick, sick, perverted, disgusting human being. Good thing I don't have virtually any money at all, isn't it?;)
You seem to not be able to distinguish between free software and open source software. Copyleft is needed for free software.
No, you're not going to drag me into that semantic cesspool. Sorry. I've spent a couple of years studying the methodology of cults, and one of the things which they do, that I know about, is what is called "loading of the language."
It's a technique where either entirely new terms are invented, primarily for the purpose of creating seperation between the cult and the outside world, or, more insidiously, where existing words are given a new, internal, cultic definition.
The fact that you are thinking in terms of Stallman's terminology, and trying to foist it on me here, tells me that you are a cultist; and cultists are people I have very little time for, primarily for the reason that attempting to argue with mind control is an almost entirely futile exercise.
It's exactly like what happened with the Borg. When someone becomes a drone, there often isn't a lot you can do for the individual in question. The best you can hope for, however, is to prevent the assimilation of anyone else.
That is the entire reason why I oppose the FSF. Its' current victims probably can't be saved; the most important thing, then, is simply to do our best to ensure that there won't be any more of them.
For example, you have the case of the iphone. Apple uses free software to restrict users and determine what they can and can't install on the hardware they buy from them.
The appropriate response, then, is not to buy an iphone at all. Shocking, I know, but I don't own one myself; and believe me when I say that physical and/or psychological survival without one is entirely possible. We lived quite fine before Apple first put them on the market, you know.
Either that, or buy a phone whose software and license policy is more to your liking. Nokia, for example, are apparently producing Linux powered phones. With anything that runs Linux, their licensing terms in a formal sense don't matter much, because they can simply be back engineered in the vast majority of cases.
You apathy saddens me, you have no values, no desire to change the world for the better.. I feel sorry for you.
Actually, from my perspective it's exactly the opposite.
I don't have a problem with Stallman because I'm a jaded, amoral sociopath. I have a problem with Stallman precisely because I'm concerned about the wellbeing of my fellow man.
Richard Stallman is a cult leader, who wants to have control over as many other people as he can. The rest of the FSF's leadership also aren't much different in that regard, either; the group is a playground for megalomaniacs.
The GPL was written in such a manner as to facilitate that control, and every version of the license becomes more restrictive than the last. The FSF's main problem is that they are dominated and driven primarily by fear, paranoia, and hatred; and as the proverb says, you become what you hate.
What that proverb means in the FSF's case, is that eventually we will have a scenario where they have a very restrictive monoculture lock on software, in exactly the same manner as Microsoft. Depending on who you ask, we already have that scenario right now. The BSDs have no choice but to use GCC, because of the FSF's tendency to pollute standards with GNU "extensions," (sound familiar?) such that it is the only compiler which will reliably compile most FOSS software. The Linux kernel is horribly dependent on GCC.
If allowing people to have full control of the software they use is something you're concerned about, there are plenty of non-copyleft licenses which fully allow that, but which don't, to use the words of Ulrich Drepper, allow Stallman to potentially, "screw you when it pleases him."
Also, please take some time to learn about the issues before you simply accuse someone who dislikes the FSF of being psychotic. As stated, we do actually have valid reasons for viewing the organisation as a menace.
If it's only technical strengths you care about, why use free software at all?
LOL. The silent implication here is deeply amusing. "We don't mind if technically speaking, the software is garbage. At least it's Free!"
I use FreeBSD. In my own mind, it's pretty much the greatest operating system in existence in technical terms. It being FOSS is part of the reason for that, of course; but that's also the point.
Valuing the fact that software is open source, doesn't have to be about Stallman's cultic propaganda. Source code availability has a lot of positive implications for technical quality as well.
Virtually nobody thinks of that, though. Most of the people who so fervently beat the drum for FOSS, don't do so because they care about the quality of the software, at all.
"Go away" is my reaction whenever someone on the street wants to give me something free - a religious booklet, a pro-something leaflet, a "work from home" job offer printed out on an inkjet...
Exactly the point. We say, "Go away," when the Mormons, the Jehovah's Witnesses, or members of any other cult show up at our door.
Is anyone noticing the similarity in tactics that are being used here, between the FSF, and those other organisations, which the FSF's drones probably don't mind acknowledging as cults?;)
Using proprietary software does harm yourself and everybody, both by giving away your freedom, and by acting against technological advancement. Just ignoring it is not going to make it go away. Of course, much like environmental issues, there are wacky ways to create conscience, and there are reasonable ways to do it, but it doesn't mean it's OK that people don't care.
No. You can't compare Stallman's need for new drones with the need to protect/reclaim the environment. The simple reason why is because, unlike anything which the FSF cares about, the environment is something that actually does matter, to people who aren't simply drinking cultic Kool-Aid.
This is easily demonstrated as fact, when we realise that FOSS survives more despite the FSF, than because of it.
- The FSF generates no code now, at all. Cygnus/Red Hat do that, and have for some time. - Non-copyleft licenses, such as the MIT/BSD license, have survived without copyleft, or without any form of enforcement in court, and they've done so just fine. This categorically proves that any argument which Richard Stallman has ever made about the necessity of copyleft, is completely and entirely false.
I will say it again; the Free Software Foundation needs to die. It produces nothing positive whatsoever at this point; the only things it generates are conflict, division, and pointless heat and noise. The world will be a much better place when it does.
Slashdot Mirror
I long for the day when the "Green" movement is forced to concede that nuclear power is the ONLY path to true energy independence and abundance. I'm not interested in your pre-industrial-revolution utopia.
We had some ideas for energy independence, but unfortunately they had to be abandoned. It turns out that violations of the Second Law of Thermodynamics make atheists cry.
Bloat isn't bad.
I knew there was a reason why I don't read that guy.
He's the proverbial Microserf. It is also no secret that Microsoft have customarily had the single worst software design philosophy in computing history.
The really bad thing, however, is that most people think that it is actually something to be admired.
Linux in end user terms is bloated, because the end user demands it.
My window manager of choice is Ratpoison, and I already anticipate the degree of abuse that I will probably receive in response to saying that, from former Windows users. These are people who apparently believe that a computer cannot be usable unless its' interface requires at least 2 Gb of RAM in order to function.
The Western world has been described as having history's fattest humans, and there is a relationship between physical bloat, and operating system bloat, although again, people will accuse me of being mentally ill for mentioning it.
The people who demand and consume McDonalds, however, and who grow obese and diabetic from that, are the same people who demand "junk food" interfaces such as Windows or KDE. There [b]is[/b] a correlation. Both are caused by an incessant craving for speed, convenience, superficial appeal, and above all, a need to avoid either active intelligence or personal responsibility, no matter the cost.
Linux is the operating system with no understanding of SYSTEMS
Actually, completely the opposite is true, although I'm not judging you for not having known that. Read this.
UNIX in an older sense (and ergo Linux) had a number of incredibly well-functioning, mutually independent frameworks; truthfully they worked sufficiently well that they mimicked ecological functions normally found in nature. However, the difference between Windows or the Mac is, that the one thing which they all relied on, was plain text.
Not XML. Not binary RPC. Plain text, often between networked applications. Why text? Because it's a lot more easily editable and viewable (ergo, transparent) than binary data streams.
Learn some shell scripting. If you do, you'll start discovering much simpler and cleaner methods of software development. You can still design a nice, shiny user interface for the end users, but you'll save yourself a lot of headaches as well, if you can design an application as a client/server or engine/user interface pair, with the two cleanly seperated but communicating via an easily readable/editable text stream.
This has a lot of advantages. The single main one is that if anything ever breaks, it makes it a lot easier to actually go and find where the problem is and fix it, than if everything is written monolithically, or communicating via some binary abomination. You can debug it by watching the protocol's messages as it runs.
Another major advantage is that it means a system can often end up being used, and used well, in novel or unexpected scenarios. The IRC protocol is a good example. IRC's developers probably weren't expecting people to do things like running lagless DCC botnets on top of it, but said people did do that, and it worked fine. IRC can actually be jerry rigged to interface directly with the mail protocol as well if you are so inclined, so you can send messages from within the IRC client.
I'm getting tired of kdawson or timothy making it so that every random piece of flamebait or troll post from Linux Today ends up on the front page here.
We don't need to read about every orangutan in the trade press who writes that this is, or isn't the "Year of the Penguin."
We don't need to read and dissect every antagonistic screed that comes up, about whether or not Linux is "ready for the desktop," as if anyone really knows what the desktop means in objective terms, anywayz.
In other words, we don't need to endlessly debate whether or not Linux complies with the (completely subjective and arbitrary) definition of every boneheaded, meaningless buzzphrase that the droids on ZDNet or Computerworld are able to dream up.
You want copy, and you want something which is going to provoke discussion; I get that. Discussion and mindless, pointless flame wars between the FSF drones and the rest of us, however, are two completely different things.
I tried to submit an article about a Vim plugin for Firefox, (ergo, something useful and potentially beneficial to the readership) and that got rejected. I tried submitting an article about PCManFM, another potentially useful piece of software, and that got rejected too. Yet this sort of trollbait routinely gets accepted and posted as a matter of course.
Is cheap sensationalism and inter-community grudge matches under the articles, really what you want this site to consist of, Slashdot editors?
You want to ignore this part of the world? Get off IDF's back and let them do as they please to the Arab threat. But nobody likes the idea of letting the strong conquer the weak, no matter that we're right.
No, you're not right. That's the other reason why I don't support interference in that conflict. Neither side are right.
I've read the Old Testament. The Zionist/ethnocentric element of the Israeli population are every bit as much a group of self-righteous, genocidal megalomaniacs as you have been for your entire history.
Hitler is the only reason why Israel has any cause for feeling justified in its' paranoia, and that also doesn't wash with me. I am autistic; if I'd been alive during Nazi Germany, I would have died too. Hitler was killing us at the time via the gasvagens; go and look that up if you don't believe me.
I was also subjected to both physical and psychological abuse during my experience with the education system; I was nearly killed in my last place of residence on multiple occasions. If I had wanted to become self-righteous and develop a martyr complex, I too could have found justification for doing so.
Just so that you don't start thinking that I am an anti-Semite who is in fact not neutral, I will tell you that I don't think any more highly of the Palestinian side, either. Islam doesn't always have to be, but among a certain demographic of its' followers, that religion is an expansionist disease that makes the Borg look tame by comparison.
This conflict, and most of your religious extremism, in both groups, is primarily generated by old men. Most of the young people don't want it, and the few who do are generally those who have allowed their ears to be bent by the elderly.
I sit here, and I watch one element of earlier human civilisation after another, slowly die. Every time it happens, there is always some ignorant, barbaric, bombastic American who revels in his own supposed intelligence and sophistication as he cheers the continued cultural erradication on.
Yet nobody sees it. Nobody, apparently, can imagine a time when the only thing left, will be the dark blue and steel grey of utterly sterile fascism.
Everything is being removed, one small piece at a time. From the environment, from human knowledge. It always looks so innocuous, so harmless. The spectators cheer that society is being made more efficient, by having less irrelevance, less redundancy.
This is how Hitler will ultimately win. Perhaps 70 years after his death, perhaps 200. The precise date doesn't really matter.
The point is, that these days, the fascists have learned. Their victory will not come through a series of rapid, bold assaults. That is far too blatant, far too visible; and it would be repelled, even now.
No. It is done slowly, quietly, delicately...inevitably. One small piece is removed, and then another, and another...and it is never done so rapidly, so overtly, that it is seen for what it truly is. This way, it is done in such a manner that the spectators, the atheists, those who revel in their own intelligence; they will not see it.
9: It is always better to avert any disaster or crisis from happening than it it to be sure you can blame it on someone else. Even if you have a chance to pin it on an enemy, or someone who is incompetent or stupid, don't stab anyone in the back unless it's a fatal wound.
Machiavelli; "If you are going to do anything at all to a man, then either kill him outright, or leave him alone."
There have been very few times when I have been more grateful for my own situation in life, than when I have read the comments attached to this article.
It is not that I am naive; I have read very extensively about how the game is played. It was, however, that reading, which eventually led me to the conclusion that I would literally prefer death than to play it.
- War and Peace
The irony inherent in this being quoted here is incredible.
1984 mentioned the very concept of endless war which America's government has always sought to implement; and which now, with the War on Terror, it has finally succeeded in implementing. That book, which you are quoting from here, also laid bare the consequences of such a doctrine of endless war, at least in political terms.
Yet none of you see it. All of you defend the belief in interventionism that you have simply been raised with, and do so with a kind of smug self-righteousness that blatantly ignores American history, and the grotesque acts of tyranny and mass murder which have been commited within that country's own history. (When the speaker is American, at least)
The replies that I have received here would be laughable, if the implications, for a scenario where people actually believe said replies, were not so distressing.
It doesn't matter how many of your own people are killed, Americans. It doesn't matter how much your own economy is gutted, or how much your own civil liberties are progressively destroyed. Every single time your government and/or military/industrial complex produces the usual lies about why interventionism is necessary, you take the bait as enthusiastically as possible. In the case of Iran, you're apparently doing it even without the Ministry of Propaganda's (sorry, Fox News') encouragement that you do so.
I am tired of your support for interventionism advancing the cause of fascism, Americans. The problem, you see, is the fact that when you continue to support interventionism, the fascist consequences which occur in your own country, do not occur only in your own country. They occur in mine as well.
I also haven't even bothered trying to address the insoluble nature of the Middle East's problems, either. There are two related ethnic groups there, (the Jews and the Arabs) who are determined to exterminate each other, and with whom said determination goes back close to six thousand years. If you really think that animosity which is that deeply entrenched, is going to be resolved in any of our lifetimes, then there is no appeal to logic that I can make.
Yes, it's very nice to suggest "hands off" or "let the idiots turn each others' countries into parking lots", but A) your hands were already in there decades ago and there is a certain amount of responsibility (hello: the Shah of Iran?), and B) your economy would go into an even more serious tailspin than it is now if full-blown war broke out again between major oil producers in the region.
You are assuming, here, that I am an American.
That assumption is incorrect.
The only people who do care, are gullible, interventionist Americans.
I'm fed up with the Middle East. The region is this planet's equivalent of a high school oval. It's the traditional venue that pretty much everyone goes to when they want to have a fight. There is conflict of some sort happening there constantly, on a literally second by second basis.
These endless conflicts also are not ours. The rest of the world very rarely has any real stake in them, for the most part. Oil is about the only legitimate interest anyone else has there. Semitic monotheism, and who owns a particular mosque or church or whatever, is utterly meaningless as a legitimate incentive for war.
If the Iranian government wants to completely exterminate its' constituency, let it. If the Arabs and Jews want to mutually remove each other from human memory, let them.
At least if that were to happen, the rest of us might finally get some peace and quiet.
No, we need an ad where Windows is represented by a cheap whore, Mac by an expensive whore, Linux by a nerdy girlfriend (subtle STD reference for extra 'disturbingly appropriate metaphor' points),
Represent Windows with Paris Hilton. Represent Linux with a busty Swedish or Finnish female model in black rimmed glasses, and a nerdy shirt with pocket protector, but that also emphasises her breasts.
The Macintosh, in my own ad, would be represented by a skinny, flagrantly (as in, you can almost feel it pouring off him in waves) homosexual male, in the usual nerdish short sleeved shirt/suit pants, with twisted/spiked blue sprayed hair, eating an apple. ;)
Nope, you're a fucking retard. I've hired too many like you. See, there's no reason to hire you if I can outsource your work to India. None at all.
Interesting. Very, very interesting.
I spend time reading about the 5% Dark Side/service to self crowd, but it's very rare when I actually get one of them communicating with me directly.
I know, though. The problem isn't actually the fact that this group exist. The problem is the fact that although they're only 5%, the other 95% of us allow them to rule the planet.
...the horrible degree of corruption implied by just about every post under this article?
The essential implication seems to be that your longevity in employment has absolutely nothing to do with your actual work. Rather, it has everything to do with someone else's perception of you, and said perception doesn't necessarily need to have any honest or factual relationship with your work output whatsoever.
If this is the case, I seriously wonder how much longer contemporary human society can last. Is it really so completely, unsparingly rotten out there these days?
still others hand out opensolaris and freebsd
That's awesome. If it isn't done in a manner which is overly pushy or annoying to people, I love the idea of FreeBSD advocacy! :)
I used to think I enjoyed coding. I was working on a version of ports for Linux, but stopped, because every time I ever mentioned it to anyone, I immediately got screamed at about how supposedly retarded that was, and about how it was a waste of effort, and nobody would care, and apt/rpm had already solved that problem, etc. (Even though they haven't)
Although I will admit it; if I was a billionaire, I'd do a lot of things, but the very first thing I'd do would be to assemble a harem consisting of Faith Nelson, Rachel Aldana, Eden Mor, and maybe one or two other similarly built women, have them live with me, and actually breed them; not just have sex with them, but reproduce with all of them. The goal would be to produce as many other women with similar physical characteristics to them as possible, and then turn them loose upon the world. ;)
Yes, I'm a sick, sick, perverted, disgusting human being. Good thing I don't have virtually any money at all, isn't it? ;)
You seem to not be able to distinguish between free software and open source software.
Copyleft is needed for free software.
No, you're not going to drag me into that semantic cesspool. Sorry. I've spent a couple of years studying the methodology of cults, and one of the things which they do, that I know about, is what is called "loading of the language."
It's a technique where either entirely new terms are invented, primarily for the purpose of creating seperation between the cult and the outside world, or, more insidiously, where existing words are given a new, internal, cultic definition.
The fact that you are thinking in terms of Stallman's terminology, and trying to foist it on me here, tells me that you are a cultist; and cultists are people I have very little time for, primarily for the reason that attempting to argue with mind control is an almost entirely futile exercise.
It's exactly like what happened with the Borg. When someone becomes a drone, there often isn't a lot you can do for the individual in question. The best you can hope for, however, is to prevent the assimilation of anyone else.
That is the entire reason why I oppose the FSF. Its' current victims probably can't be saved; the most important thing, then, is simply to do our best to ensure that there won't be any more of them.
For example, you have the case of the iphone. Apple uses free software to restrict users and determine what they can and can't install on the hardware they buy from them.
The appropriate response, then, is not to buy an iphone at all. Shocking, I know, but I don't own one myself; and believe me when I say that physical and/or psychological survival without one is entirely possible. We lived quite fine before Apple first put them on the market, you know.
Either that, or buy a phone whose software and license policy is more to your liking. Nokia, for example, are apparently producing Linux powered phones. With anything that runs Linux, their licensing terms in a formal sense don't matter much, because they can simply be back engineered in the vast majority of cases.
F$F $hills not content with harassing people
Interesting. This is the first time I've ever seen the FSF's supporters being referred to as shills, rather than Microsoft's.
The tide is truly starting to turn, it would seem.
You apathy saddens me, you have no values, no desire to change the world for the better.. I feel sorry for you.
Actually, from my perspective it's exactly the opposite.
I don't have a problem with Stallman because I'm a jaded, amoral sociopath. I have a problem with Stallman precisely because I'm concerned about the wellbeing of my fellow man.
Richard Stallman is a cult leader, who wants to have control over as many other people as he can. The rest of the FSF's leadership also aren't much different in that regard, either; the group is a playground for megalomaniacs.
The GPL was written in such a manner as to facilitate that control, and every version of the license becomes more restrictive than the last. The FSF's main problem is that they are dominated and driven primarily by fear, paranoia, and hatred; and as the proverb says, you become what you hate.
What that proverb means in the FSF's case, is that eventually we will have a scenario where they have a very restrictive monoculture lock on software, in exactly the same manner as Microsoft. Depending on who you ask, we already have that scenario right now. The BSDs have no choice but to use GCC, because of the FSF's tendency to pollute standards with GNU "extensions," (sound familiar?) such that it is the only compiler which will reliably compile most FOSS software. The Linux kernel is horribly dependent on GCC.
If allowing people to have full control of the software they use is something you're concerned about, there are plenty of non-copyleft licenses which fully allow that, but which don't, to use the words of Ulrich Drepper, allow Stallman to potentially, "screw you when it pleases him."
Also, please take some time to learn about the issues before you simply accuse someone who dislikes the FSF of being psychotic. As stated, we do actually have valid reasons for viewing the organisation as a menace.
I would have expected a veritable legion of Anonymous Cowards suggesting wave files of fart noises, looped at ultra high volume, by this point.
I guess the ex-WoW demographic moving to this site really has killed it, hasn't it? ;)
Actually, the silent implication is that Mac OS X is much better technically than FreeBSD, partly because it's non-free.
That's just fine. If I could afford OSX, I'd at least think about buying it.
Because I can't afford it, however, FreeBSD is as close as it gets.
If it's only technical strengths you care about, why use free software at all?
LOL. The silent implication here is deeply amusing. "We don't mind if technically speaking, the software is garbage. At least it's Free!"
I use FreeBSD. In my own mind, it's pretty much the greatest operating system in existence in technical terms. It being FOSS is part of the reason for that, of course; but that's also the point.
Valuing the fact that software is open source, doesn't have to be about Stallman's cultic propaganda. Source code availability has a lot of positive implications for technical quality as well.
Virtually nobody thinks of that, though. Most of the people who so fervently beat the drum for FOSS, don't do so because they care about the quality of the software, at all.
They do it purely because Stallman tells them to.
"Go away" is my reaction whenever someone on the street wants to give me something free - a religious booklet, a pro-something leaflet, a "work from home" job offer printed out on an inkjet...
Exactly the point. We say, "Go away," when the Mormons, the Jehovah's Witnesses, or members of any other cult show up at our door.
Is anyone noticing the similarity in tactics that are being used here, between the FSF, and those other organisations, which the FSF's drones probably don't mind acknowledging as cults? ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tfyLbin9gs
Here's the tune I play myself at times, when thinking about the FSF.
Using proprietary software does harm yourself and everybody, both by giving away your freedom, and by acting against technological advancement. Just ignoring it is not going to make it go away. Of course, much like environmental issues, there are wacky ways to create conscience, and there are reasonable ways to do it, but it doesn't mean it's OK that people don't care.
No. You can't compare Stallman's need for new drones with the need to protect/reclaim the environment. The simple reason why is because, unlike anything which the FSF cares about, the environment is something that actually does matter, to people who aren't simply drinking cultic Kool-Aid.
This is easily demonstrated as fact, when we realise that FOSS survives more despite the FSF, than because of it.
- The FSF generates no code now, at all. Cygnus/Red Hat do that, and have for some time.
- Non-copyleft licenses, such as the MIT/BSD license, have survived without copyleft, or without any form of enforcement in court, and they've done so just fine. This categorically proves that any argument which Richard Stallman has ever made about the necessity of copyleft, is completely and entirely false.
I will say it again; the Free Software Foundation needs to die. It produces nothing positive whatsoever at this point; the only things it generates are conflict, division, and pointless heat and noise. The world will be a much better place when it does.