For some reason, Big Blue seems to have decided to side with the public good rather than fear open-source as most corporations do.
They're doing it because I'm guessing they're able to think big picture. IBM have been in existence for nearly 120 years now. The only way you get to last that long, especially while staying as big as they still are, is by being able to ride the rapids of consumer demand and desire.
They're still going to want to make money, of course...but they're smart enough to realise that a company doesn't really control either half of the supply and demand equation. The consumer declares their demand, and a company that wants to make money and last a long time supplies that demand, rather than trying to change or control what the consumer's demand is.
It is deeply appropriate that the animal most often associated with IBM is an elephant, I think. As well as being large, an elephant is a long lived and very intelligent animal. Also, although its' huge size means that things that shouldn't might get inadvertently stepped on occasionally, being herbivorous, an elephant is usually a fundamentally benevolent animal, as well.
Interesting idea, but the atomic bomb was used in 1945, which means that its' existence obviously had to be public knowledge by 1947, which is when Roswell happened. Thus, there wouldn't be much sense in trying to cover that up.
I could go into why, but people will simply tell me I'm a troll and to shut up, so I won't bother. Only thing I will say is that we see these posts every year, and they only get more annoying with time, not less.
I've honestly started to believe that Windows' successor is something we haven't seen yet; not Linux, and not Mac OSX. If it *is* UNIX based at all, it will have to be in such a way that the UNIX core is buried so deeply that not even geeks can get at it...because UNIX that the mainstream consumer can see is UNIX that the mainstream consumer doesn't want; hence Linux's problem.
This is an urban myth. Linux can be relicensed at any time, with a simple legal process. It is not necessary to find all of the developers to get their permission.
Yep, and like I've said before, it's more or less imminent that it will happen, regardless of the delay, because the people who want it can just keep chipping away.
Linus can have whatever perspective on the license he wants, whether good, bad, or indifferent. Although it will probably be spun to look that way, the ability to ultimately make this decision has been taken out of his hands. The reason why is because no matter how many times he or anyone else might say no to the FSF, they can ask one more time after that. It's a simple battle of wills, and by virtue of the number of people the FSF has, Linus will inevitably be the first to blink. As I said about this earlier, in the end, he will do it if for no other reason than purely to get them to shut up and leave him alone about it.
If anyone wanted the kernel to remain its' own project, they never should have got involved with the FSF in the first place. That was the first, and only, real opportunity Linus ever had to say no...and he didn't.
Although I think it's somewhat lesser known, a similar thing was the Wingmakers craze a few years back. That consisted of a CD with a pdf novel, and some other multimedia, (music and artwork) to essentially create something that seemed like a cross between the Blair Witch Project and the X Files.
Although I don't think they're still doing it now, the similarity to the Blair Witch Project was due to the authors initially casting doubt on whether the material was intended to be seen as possibly being based on fact.
Still, it's interesting stuff, and although the novel wasn't particularly original, it was an entertaining read. It's worth checking out if you're a fan of the X Files and Majestic in particular.
Hint: there's this concept we have called 'innocent until proven guilty'.
It's also one of those concepts which looks great on paper, but is sadly shown as so much idealistic BS in the real world.
From everything I've read, I'm inclined to believe that Reiser is probably guilty, but if the above concept had really been applied in this case, the police would not have arrested him before they produced a positively identified body.
...that they don't lose this case. Having it on record as being successfully prosecuted under RICO would solidify and make official their reputation as a criminal organisation.
It would also be a major victory for piracy in general, because it would mean that if the RIAA want to call pirates criminals, the playing field would then be level...which would also make the RIAA hypocrites.
Even if we terraform Mars, where's the water that we will need for everything?
I'm no chemist, but I'm assuming we'll get water on Mars the same way I tend to suspect we originally got it here; via jump starting a hydrogen-oxygen-carbon closed circuit reaction...creating a scenario where presence and combustion of either of these three elements ends up producing amounts of the other two. I was reading some stuff about how the Russians were studying that up on Mir a bit back...they of course needed to know about it to give their astronauts breathable air and fresh water.
Thinking about that, it makes sense that there is a link between increasing global desertification and the massive amounts of carbon dioxide now in the atmosphere...the degree of carbon is excessive, and is throwing the above loop out of whack to the point where it is in danger of no longer being self-perpetuating.
Careful. You're robbing FSF apologists of one of their favourite comebacks for me, here. Namely that they're not a cult, and that in calling them one, I'm simply a lone, mindless, provocative troll spouting erroneous ideas which I came up with all on my own.
If other people start agreeing with me and/or voicing the same opinions, they're not going to be able to use that rationale for dismissing said opinions as baseless any more. No longer having that as a comeback will probably cause them significant psychological distress...and we don't want to do that, do we?
I think we can officially say goodbye to the real internet. Some of you may not be old enough to remember this, but there was a time when people produced content and communities on the internet for no other reason than they cared and enjoyed doing it.
Bah, humbug.
The original Internet crowd was primarily made up of human leftovers of a number of different kinds; sexual deviants, social rejects, the autistic, and the terminally mentally ill. They were people whose main incentive for coming online was due simply to the fact that nobody offline wanted to be reminded of their existence. It was a means for them to achieve some degree of dubious social interaction with others of their own kind, while at the same time, mercifully sparing anyone the unspeakable horror of being exposed to their presence in an actual physical sense. While online, their corporeal forms could thankfully remain locked in their customary subterranean environments.
These days, the basement-dwelling freaks that I'm talking about here still inhabit the same purely textual cracks in the cybernetic pavement that they did back then. The only difference is that we're now on the other side of the extremely brief period when the protocols they use (primarily Usenet and IRC) entered something vaguely approaching mainstream awareness.
And yes, like every other untamed frontier to have ever been encountered by human beings before it, the Internet too has been swamped by a tidal wave of sociopathic, utterly amoral, suicidal capitalism of the kind that apparently exists on a literally genetic level within the American heart.
I once read of the effect of commercialism on the Internet being described as, "the greatest human conversation to have ever been held having been silenced." I thought then, as I do now, that the only thing truly great about that description was the degree of pretentiousness and self-indulgence inherent within it.
The Internet was never a "community" in a primarily positive sense at all; rather, it was initially simply a gigantic virtual psychiatric inpatient unit. If online commercialism has done anything truly positive for the net at all, it is that it has forced the human cockroaches that originally inhabited it to need to bury themselves even more deeply in order to avoid contact with mainstream society.
You couldn't have described the "20-year-old filmmaker" from this article any better...
I've had a YouTube account since last November, and have spent at least a certain amount of time watching the material that gets produced there.
Although there are a lot of people who, I believe, genuinely are motivated by a desire to be creative, there is also a particular group of individuals (the organisers of the "As One" events are actually the best example of this) who are motivated purely by a desire for popularity and whatever other social or material gains they can obtain for themselves, as a byproduct of said popularity.
The real problem is that the people who in fact are not genuine, can sometimes have at least a certain degree of ability at creating a convincing illusion that they are. It thus becomes difficult to seperate the fake populists from the genuinely creatively oriented.
The single main reason why is because the people with the most traffic on YouTube are also usually the people producing the worst actual content; they're populist attention seekers producing mindless drivel, purely for the sake of their own self-promotion.
There are people on YouTube producing material that is genuinely worthwhile, and that isn't purely superficial...but such people are never who you're going to see on the front page, and thus they also aren't the people who YouTube are going to pay. Thus, the erosion of the signal-to-noise ratio actually becomes a self-reinforcing negative spiral.
...over the last few days, Hell has begun reporting temperatures in the range of -2,000 degrees centigrade. We have also received reports from famed PC game developer 3D Realms that the game Duke Nukem Forever may be available for release by next week. Finally, earlier today, a lion was reportedly observed lying asleep next to a human being and a sheep within its' enclosure at a local zoo.
I'm really shocked at all the negative reaction to this announcement here.
The negative reaction is very simple to understand. Most people here do not want to see the OSI being relevant or authoritative in any way, but simply wish for the FSF to be the sole arbiter of the definition of FOSS, and/or the ability to enforce said definition.
Personally, I think that sucks. The OSI allow for a far more inclusive definition, with a broad plurality of licenses. Of course, in the minds of FSF fanboys, that's exactly the problem; they think the GPL is the only license with the right to exist. They're going to seek the outright destruction of any organisation which tries to promote an idea contrary to that.
What does my opinion matter, though? I'm just a troll; someone else opposed to the FSF juggernaut who therefore, in the minds of its' cultists, also needs to be erradicated, or at least silenced. Hooray for freedom.
I'm trying to remember how many years I've already known about this for. A couple, at least.
Although it's a good thing that it's finally being given attention on Slashdot. I think this is one project that should have large amounts of money thrown at it...it could be extremely beneficial for many, many people.
Given that you're a troll - and you are - I prefer to have your comments unburied just in case some absurd accusation you make goes unchallenged - otherwise you're harmeless
If I'm harmless, and my accusations are absurd, why is there a need to challenge me?
'There is sustained and cumulative casual sadism in the way in which these killings are committed, and encouraged, in the game.'
They talk about casual sadism as though it's a bad thing. Honestly, how are kids supposed to grow up to be normal members of contemporary society if they're not fed a steady cognitive diet of consistent, vicious sociopathy from a young age?
The way these people talk, you'd think they were trying to ensure that these poor kids end up loving people as adults! Is that really the sort of future you want for your child?
I can just imagine what the response to this is going to be. At the very least, I'm surprised the parent hasn't been modded down to -1 already. Although I expect it will be.
So I assume that you take you psicotic hate for RMS, the FSF and the GPL to such a degree that you would prefer for RedHat to strike this shameful deal with Microsoft?
That's "psychotic.";-) And did I say that? No, I didn't...which means you're making assumptions.
I'm also mildly disappointed, fsmunoz. We've conversed a couple of times before now, and you haven't added me to your foes list yet? What's taking you so long?!
I'm aiming to have pretty much everyone from this site who views the FSF even remotely positively, on my freaks list. (As in, having added me to their foes) You can help!
Red Hat are pretty much the oldest Linux company in existence of any reasonable size. When asked, they consistently make noises that very strongly suggest that they're aware that anyone who wants to in any way make money with Linux should consider themselves Stallman's bitch by default.
As such, they're not going to sign agreements with Microsoft or do anything else which might upset the "community" of red eyed fanatics in any way. They know who their father is.;)
Hawking might think migration into space is necessary, but I haven't seen any material from him on how on a genuinely practical basis, such a move might actually be possible.
The current space shuttles are to spacefaring what an aboriginal putting one leg on either side of a log was to sea travel; there's massive celebration whenever they manage to get one of them into orbit without it exploding on the way.
Primarily we need a new propulsion system. Something which doesn't rely on fossil fuel at all. A lot more work IMHO also needs to be done on creating artificial environments; preferably environments which aren't as horrifically fragile as what they have right now.
To be honest, I've believed for a while that space exploration should probably be postponed more or less in general for another hundred years or so. There might be a lot technologically which they aren't showing us, but from what I have seen, we're nowhere near ready to do it truly safely, yet.
...is that a desire for greater security was probably the motivation behind the move. If, as TFA says, the RIAA site is one of the most regularly defaced on the planet, then it makes a lot of sense that the people running it would want to try and make defacement more difficult. Cracking the site was probably trivial when it was hosted with IIS.
Personally however, Red Hat wouldn't have been my own first choice, but a lot of web hosting providers do run it and I doubt the RIAA host their website in-house.
Slashdot Mirror
For some reason, Big Blue seems to have decided to side with the public good rather than fear open-source as most corporations do.
They're doing it because I'm guessing they're able to think big picture. IBM have been in existence for nearly 120 years now. The only way you get to last that long, especially while staying as big as they still are, is by being able to ride the rapids of consumer demand and desire.
They're still going to want to make money, of course...but they're smart enough to realise that a company doesn't really control either half of the supply and demand equation. The consumer declares their demand, and a company that wants to make money and last a long time supplies that demand, rather than trying to change or control what the consumer's demand is.
It is deeply appropriate that the animal most often associated with IBM is an elephant, I think. As well as being large, an elephant is a long lived and very intelligent animal. Also, although its' huge size means that things that shouldn't might get inadvertently stepped on occasionally, being herbivorous, an elephant is usually a fundamentally benevolent animal, as well.
Interesting idea, but the atomic bomb was used in 1945, which means that its' existence obviously had to be public knowledge by 1947, which is when Roswell happened. Thus, there wouldn't be much sense in trying to cover that up.
...at this event will be the ones in the audience. Although in their case, I suspect "intraterrestrials," might be a more accurate term. ;-)
I could go into why, but people will simply tell me I'm a troll and to shut up, so I won't bother. Only thing I will say is that we see these posts every year, and they only get more annoying with time, not less.
I've honestly started to believe that Windows' successor is something we haven't seen yet; not Linux, and not Mac OSX. If it *is* UNIX based at all, it will have to be in such a way that the UNIX core is buried so deeply that not even geeks can get at it...because UNIX that the mainstream consumer can see is UNIX that the mainstream consumer doesn't want; hence Linux's problem.
It says on Engadget that the demonstration has been cancelled.
This is an urban myth. Linux can be relicensed at any time, with a simple legal process. It is not necessary to find all of the developers to get their permission.
Yep, and like I've said before, it's more or less imminent that it will happen, regardless of the delay, because the people who want it can just keep chipping away.
Linus can have whatever perspective on the license he wants, whether good, bad, or indifferent. Although it will probably be spun to look that way, the ability to ultimately make this decision has been taken out of his hands. The reason why is because no matter how many times he or anyone else might say no to the FSF, they can ask one more time after that. It's a simple battle of wills, and by virtue of the number of people the FSF has, Linus will inevitably be the first to blink. As I said about this earlier, in the end, he will do it if for no other reason than purely to get them to shut up and leave him alone about it.
If anyone wanted the kernel to remain its' own project, they never should have got involved with the FSF in the first place. That was the first, and only, real opportunity Linus ever had to say no...and he didn't.
Although I think it's somewhat lesser known, a similar thing was the Wingmakers craze a few years back. That consisted of a CD with a pdf novel, and some other multimedia, (music and artwork) to essentially create something that seemed like a cross between the Blair Witch Project and the X Files.
Although I don't think they're still doing it now, the similarity to the Blair Witch Project was due to the authors initially casting doubt on whether the material was intended to be seen as possibly being based on fact.
Still, it's interesting stuff, and although the novel wasn't particularly original, it was an entertaining read. It's worth checking out if you're a fan of the X Files and Majestic in particular.
Hint: there's this concept we have called 'innocent until proven guilty'.
It's also one of those concepts which looks great on paper, but is sadly shown as so much idealistic BS in the real world.
From everything I've read, I'm inclined to believe that Reiser is probably guilty, but if the above concept had really been applied in this case, the police would not have arrested him before they produced a positively identified body.
...that they don't lose this case. Having it on record as being successfully prosecuted under RICO would solidify and make official their reputation as a criminal organisation.
It would also be a major victory for piracy in general, because it would mean that if the RIAA want to call pirates criminals, the playing field would then be level...which would also make the RIAA hypocrites.
Even if we terraform Mars, where's the water that we will need for everything?
I'm no chemist, but I'm assuming we'll get water on Mars the same way I tend to suspect we originally got it here; via jump starting a hydrogen-oxygen-carbon closed circuit reaction...creating a scenario where presence and combustion of either of these three elements ends up producing amounts of the other two. I was reading some stuff about how the Russians were studying that up on Mir a bit back...they of course needed to know about it to give their astronauts breathable air and fresh water.
Thinking about that, it makes sense that there is a link between increasing global desertification and the massive amounts of carbon dioxide now in the atmosphere...the degree of carbon is excessive, and is throwing the above loop out of whack to the point where it is in danger of no longer being self-perpetuating.
Careful. You're robbing FSF apologists of one of their favourite comebacks for me, here. Namely that they're not a cult, and that in calling them one, I'm simply a lone, mindless, provocative troll spouting erroneous ideas which I came up with all on my own.
If other people start agreeing with me and/or voicing the same opinions, they're not going to be able to use that rationale for dismissing said opinions as baseless any more. No longer having that as a comeback will probably cause them significant psychological distress...and we don't want to do that, do we?
I think we can officially say goodbye to the real internet. Some of you may not be old enough to remember this, but there was a time when people produced content and communities on the internet for no other reason than they cared and enjoyed doing it.
Bah, humbug.
The original Internet crowd was primarily made up of human leftovers of a number of different kinds; sexual deviants, social rejects, the autistic, and the terminally mentally ill. They were people whose main incentive for coming online was due simply to the fact that nobody offline wanted to be reminded of their existence. It was a means for them to achieve some degree of dubious social interaction with others of their own kind, while at the same time, mercifully sparing anyone the unspeakable horror of being exposed to their presence in an actual physical sense. While online, their corporeal forms could thankfully remain locked in their customary subterranean environments.
These days, the basement-dwelling freaks that I'm talking about here still inhabit the same purely textual cracks in the cybernetic pavement that they did back then. The only difference is that we're now on the other side of the extremely brief period when the protocols they use (primarily Usenet and IRC) entered something vaguely approaching mainstream awareness.
And yes, like every other untamed frontier to have ever been encountered by human beings before it, the Internet too has been swamped by a tidal wave of sociopathic, utterly amoral, suicidal capitalism of the kind that apparently exists on a literally genetic level within the American heart.
I once read of the effect of commercialism on the Internet being described as, "the greatest human conversation to have ever been held having been silenced." I thought then, as I do now, that the only thing truly great about that description was the degree of pretentiousness and self-indulgence inherent within it.
The Internet was never a "community" in a primarily positive sense at all; rather, it was initially simply a gigantic virtual psychiatric inpatient unit. If online commercialism has done anything truly positive for the net at all, it is that it has forced the human cockroaches that originally inhabited it to need to bury themselves even more deeply in order to avoid contact with mainstream society.
You couldn't have described the "20-year-old filmmaker" from this article any better...
I've had a YouTube account since last November, and have spent at least a certain amount of time watching the material that gets produced there.
Although there are a lot of people who, I believe, genuinely are motivated by a desire to be creative, there is also a particular group of individuals (the organisers of the "As One" events are actually the best example of this) who are motivated purely by a desire for popularity and whatever other social or material gains they can obtain for themselves, as a byproduct of said popularity.
The real problem is that the people who in fact are not genuine, can sometimes have at least a certain degree of ability at creating a convincing illusion that they are. It thus becomes difficult to seperate the fake populists from the genuinely creatively oriented.
It is a bad way to do it.
The single main reason why is because the people with the most traffic on YouTube are also usually the people producing the worst actual content; they're populist attention seekers producing mindless drivel, purely for the sake of their own self-promotion.
There are people on YouTube producing material that is genuinely worthwhile, and that isn't purely superficial...but such people are never who you're going to see on the front page, and thus they also aren't the people who YouTube are going to pay. Thus, the erosion of the signal-to-noise ratio actually becomes a self-reinforcing negative spiral.
...over the last few days, Hell has begun reporting temperatures in the range of -2,000 degrees centigrade. We have also received reports from famed PC game developer 3D Realms that the game Duke Nukem Forever may be available for release by next week. Finally, earlier today, a lion was reportedly observed lying asleep next to a human being and a sheep within its' enclosure at a local zoo.
I'm really shocked at all the negative reaction to this announcement here.
The negative reaction is very simple to understand. Most people here do not want to see the OSI being relevant or authoritative in any way, but simply wish for the FSF to be the sole arbiter of the definition of FOSS, and/or the ability to enforce said definition.
Personally, I think that sucks. The OSI allow for a far more inclusive definition, with a broad plurality of licenses. Of course, in the minds of FSF fanboys, that's exactly the problem; they think the GPL is the only license with the right to exist. They're going to seek the outright destruction of any organisation which tries to promote an idea contrary to that.
What does my opinion matter, though? I'm just a troll; someone else opposed to the FSF juggernaut who therefore, in the minds of its' cultists, also needs to be erradicated, or at least silenced. Hooray for freedom.
Is this for real?!
I'm trying to remember how many years I've already known about this for. A couple, at least.
Although it's a good thing that it's finally being given attention on Slashdot. I think this is one project that should have large amounts of money thrown at it...it could be extremely beneficial for many, many people.
Given that you're a troll - and you are - I prefer to have your comments unburied just in case some absurd accusation you make goes unchallenged - otherwise you're harmeless
If I'm harmless, and my accusations are absurd, why is there a need to challenge me?
'There is sustained and cumulative casual sadism in the way in which these killings are committed, and encouraged, in the game.'
They talk about casual sadism as though it's a bad thing. Honestly, how are kids supposed to grow up to be normal members of contemporary society if they're not fed a steady cognitive diet of consistent, vicious sociopathy from a young age?
The way these people talk, you'd think they were trying to ensure that these poor kids end up loving people as adults! Is that really the sort of future you want for your child?
Wow...
I can just imagine what the response to this is going to be. At the very least, I'm surprised the parent hasn't been modded down to -1 already. Although I expect it will be.
Can't have anyone stating the truth, after all.
So I assume that you take you psicotic hate for RMS, the FSF and the GPL to such a degree that you would prefer for RedHat to strike this shameful deal with Microsoft?
;-) And did I say that? No, I didn't...which means you're making assumptions.
That's "psychotic."
I'm also mildly disappointed, fsmunoz. We've conversed a couple of times before now, and you haven't added me to your foes list yet? What's taking you so long?!
I'm aiming to have pretty much everyone from this site who views the FSF even remotely positively, on my freaks list. (As in, having added me to their foes) You can help!
Red Hat are pretty much the oldest Linux company in existence of any reasonable size. When asked, they consistently make noises that very strongly suggest that they're aware that anyone who wants to in any way make money with Linux should consider themselves Stallman's bitch by default.
;)
As such, they're not going to sign agreements with Microsoft or do anything else which might upset the "community" of red eyed fanatics in any way. They know who their father is.
Hawking might think migration into space is necessary, but I haven't seen any material from him on how on a genuinely practical basis, such a move might actually be possible.
The current space shuttles are to spacefaring what an aboriginal putting one leg on either side of a log was to sea travel; there's massive celebration whenever they manage to get one of them into orbit without it exploding on the way.
Primarily we need a new propulsion system. Something which doesn't rely on fossil fuel at all. A lot more work IMHO also needs to be done on creating artificial environments; preferably environments which aren't as horrifically fragile as what they have right now.
To be honest, I've believed for a while that space exploration should probably be postponed more or less in general for another hundred years or so. There might be a lot technologically which they aren't showing us, but from what I have seen, we're nowhere near ready to do it truly safely, yet.
...is that a desire for greater security was probably the motivation behind the move. If, as TFA says, the RIAA site is one of the most regularly defaced on the planet, then it makes a lot of sense that the people running it would want to try and make defacement more difficult. Cracking the site was probably trivial when it was hosted with IIS.
Personally however, Red Hat wouldn't have been my own first choice, but a lot of web hosting providers do run it and I doubt the RIAA host their website in-house.