That's not a good idea on your part because it's exactly the example people use to point out why Microsoft likes to let other people come up with good stuff under the BSD license and then selfishly take it with no thank-yous or giving in return.
The predatory stuff they've done is bad, yes...but unlike the GPL, the BSD license doesn't enforce reciprocity, so they haven't done anything in violation of the license by not getting involved in the development of that.
I am deeply tired of the attitude found primarily among advocates of the GPL which constantly focuses on what other people are doing, or should be doing, rather than focusing on their own back yard. It is smug, arrogant, and dictatorial.
The other thing about it which is even more sickening in most cases is the fact that the only reason why you think like that is because you've been brainwashed to do so by the FSF, not because you're actually engaging your own mind at all.
Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. I never hear anything but condemnation and the most vitriolic forms of abuse around here for anyone who would *dare* to even dream of the idea of trying to make money from software development, (including an earlier post on this very article) and yet one of the first questions I see here is whether with MySQL's IPO, the FSF are getting a cut of the cheese.
Let me get this straight. It is by no means, in any way, EVER acceptable in your minds if anyone makes money from developing software, but just in case anybody does, they must immediately hand it over to Stallman?!?
The rank hypocrisy exhibited by you people at times literally leaves me gasping. It is beyond description.
Maybe it's not everyone's beloved P2P being "illegal" or whatever.
Maybe it's the fact that torrents take a fucking ton of bandwidth?
True, people make it sound as though p2p is the only viable file transfer protocol in existence. Learn to use the net, newbs.;)
Seriously though, if you want to do something really crazy, put up an ircd with an eggdrop bot. Technically, DCC is beyond horrible, but for moving files on a LAN it'd do just fine. You can also set the eggdrop up to listen for connections via telnet, and talk to people via its' party line, which could end up eliminating the need for the initial irc server more or less altogether. It's probably the closest you'll get to something entirely untraceable, since DCC can be tied to any port as well.
This is true. If they're going to presumably close everything north of 1024, they will want to make sure to disallow local inbound connections to port 21 as well. Otherwise, even if people need to download stuff off-campus, they'll be able to host it for others in the dorms.
And yes, closing everything north of 1024 *is* downright fascist, but that's what they'll need to do if they want to go anywhere close to enforcably banning p2p.
If you want your concerns to be taken seriously, stop asking the rest of us to play fools. EVERYONE knows what most students most use P2P for: transferring materials in violation of copyright.
Wow...Someone on Slashdot who is opposed to piracy. I'm honestly at a loss for words, here...I didn't know that people who thought like this actually existed outside of the RIAA. What's your motivation? Are you in the music industry yourself, or are you merely ovine and catastrophically naive?
But until then, if you feel that you need unrestricted P2P, you'll have to take it to the taxpayers of your state who are subsidizing your activity. I'm sure they'll be happy to cough up a few more dollars so that you can download porn faster.
I saw another poster here who pays $20 a month for Internet access to his dorm. If other people at his university are doing that, it wouldn't be the taxpayers who are paying for it at all, would it?
...with achieving adoption of this proposal. Namely, that it's an intelligent idea which would likely be extremely effective at solving network problems and increasing the usability and efficiency of the Internet overall.
Nobody is going to tolerate that, you realise.;) People hate anything which actually solves problems. After all, if they didn't have the perpetual activity of merely *pretending* to solve problems, (while in fact merely holding them at bay) what on Earth would they do with their time? What would they get paid for?
In order for anarchism or communism to work, all people, without exception, must be altruistic. Humans are not altruistic by nature. Neither will work because someone who is not altruistic will corrupt the system.
Did I ever once say, anywhere, that I believed it worked? If anything I would have thought the resounding theme of what I was saying here was that given the current state of human development, it'd have no chance.
The fact that as you say, for the most part it can't work, is the entire reason why the Linux community has as many problems as it does.
go sit down some where and think about what happens when a small group of malicious individuals encounter the altruistic anarchist society you think is so wonderful.
I'm agreeing with you. I apologise for not making that more clear.
I watched V for Vendetta again last night, and was reading some related material online afterwards. It introduced me to a couple of ideas which although I'd more or less known about instinctively, I possibly hadn't considered from quite that perspective. This is going to appear to be offtopic at first, but bear with me and you'll see the point as it relates to the issue of choice with Linux.
From what I've read, the central element of anarchic thought is apparently the idea of a scenario where people are genuinely self-responsible; where people are able to make decisions and choices about everything they do, and where it can be at least hoped that the need for an external authority is mitigated by said people having an internalised system of morality. In other words, the idea being while they are able to choose to do whatever they like, that people will eventually figure out what they are meant to do on their own.
However we keep seeing (no doubt unfortunately in the minds of some of us) that the above scenario, not only where Linux is concerned but in every other area of their lives, is overwhelmingly not what the vast majority of people truly want. I've found myself reading quotes from both Freud and George Bernard Shaw over the last 24 hours that stated that contrary to the commonly held belief, the majority genuinely do not want freedom, precisely because a prerequisite of freedom is self-responsibility.
This of course is where not only Microsoft in the case of software, but repressive states of all kinds in general life come into the picture. As V said, they offer order, certainty, stability, an absence of chaos, and most importantly, an absence from the need for a person to think for themselves, and all they ask in return is silent, obedient consent. They give people a scenario where decisions are made for them, where no thought whatsoever is necessary, nor responsibility taken for wrong decisions. As the old saying goes, "Nobody ever got fired for buying from IBM."
This is what people overwhelmingly want; what they are trained from the earliest age to want. National governments use the education system these days in order to start negative reinforcement against the exercise of free will within individuals as early as possible, and if such is instilled deeply enough and early enough, the process produces individuals who refrain from exercising choice as much as possible for the rest of their lives thereafter.
If you're wondering why people continue to want Windows over Linux, and continue to complain about the degree of choice inherent in Linux, you might perhaps also want to ask why people are also willing to allow the likes of George W. Bush and Tony Blair to remain in political office. The answer to both questions is the same, for they are in truth both different elements of the same issue; an insistence on avoiding self-responsibility and reasoned, conscious thought within the majority of the population.
How can Linux advocates overcome such, I hear you ask? Instilling independence in those who do not have it already is by necessity an incredibly slow and transitional process. In the case of someone complaining about being overwhelmed by choice, I'd probably start by asking them what it is that they as individuals want to do with a computer, and then direct their attention to a single distribution (or possibly even Windows itself, if appropriate) which will meet their needs. I've tended to notice that people aren't normally wanting a reduction of choice for people other than themselves, when they are asked, but merely want a scenario where they do not need to engage in it. Hence, if they find something which will meet their own requirements, they will very often cease to complain.
Some individuals are inherently lacking initiative and crave situations where they are taken care of by external parties. Sadly, there isn't much any of us can do in the case of such individuals, other than hand them a copy of Ubuntu or Vista, and a smile. Although I fall into the trap myself on here fairly regularly, I also try and tell myself that such people are not worth getting upset over, since they are a reality that we cannot change anyway.
As people have said, time and time and time again, 'observation' is NOT the human action of looking and comprehension.
They need to get a new word for it, then...cos interaction and observation are two entirely different concepts. Observation can be entirely passive, at least from the point of view of the person being observed.
Windows 95 was damn near completely unusable before 95B; Winsock 2 and a raft of stability improvements made all the difference.
You need to remember that Gates' philosophy has always been, "Ship it now, fix it later." Microsoft throw something broken and unfinished out the door in order to initially plant a flag in the market, and then they worry about actual usability in service packs later. That's always been their MO.
Sure, Aero is completely redundant (like I said it would be) and won't be touched by anyone who cares about hardware efficiency. I'm guessing it will also continue to piss gamers off as well, since one thing Windows has never been good at is RAM flushing, and if Aero fills up your vram with textures, chances are it won't be entirely empty for when you then try and load a game, meaning performance problems.
Once they bring out a few service packs though, Vista will predictably become something which the average person will probably find acceptable. If Microsoft alienate gamers with it however, that will be another nail in the company's coffin.
This is the same old crap about "Science can't prove that the Sun will rise tomorrow, thus the Universe is unknowable."
Yep, and the other thing is that at least some scientists don't really believe that, either...if they did, parapsychology would be a lot more widely accepted than it is. After all, if you're not sure that anything exists, why can't ghosts?
This is demonstrable BS. It's physicists talking about microscopic abstractions that have zero practicable relevance in the real world.
we must also give up (some of) the idea that the world exists when we are not looking.
Just 20 minutes or so ago, I was asleep and was woken by my brother knocking at my front door. He isn't someone I get on well with, and he normally doesn't turn up unless he wants something, so I hadn't thought about him or observed him since the last time he turned up.
If reality didn't exist when I wasn't observing it though, since I wasn't directly observing him, he would not have existed in order to be able to make the decision to come over here. It would also mean that everyone we know only exists on an intermittent basis. If my girlfriend is in bed asleep, and I'm in my room on my computer, she doesn't exist at that time according to this idea because I'm not observing her.
I get the feeling that physicists need to stop coming up with ideas which they think are provable on a microscopic level, only for other people to find that we can disprove them on a macroscopic level quite easily.
See, based on assumptions. For all you know, '07 will go down in history as the great MS exodus.
Sorry to rain on your parade, but I seriously doubt it. The only Windows alternative that I know of that is currently remotely viable for neurotypical adoption is OSX. Yes, I have Ubuntu on my hard drive, and I love it too, but Mark Shuttleworth's optimism aside, Joe Six-Pack and his grandmother aren't going to. Ubuntu still doesn't have non-CLI control of the hardware to rival the XP control panel; AFAIK, such a thing doesn't exist for Linux at all. Ubuntu also doesn't have hardware support that is as genuinely bullet-proof as XP's; like pretty much all of Linux's other problems, the blame for that one can also be laid at the feet of the FSF and their fellow regressives within the Debian project.
I can't see OSX becoming the next big thing, either. Despite some radical changes in the last ten years, Steve Jobs doesn't have a mainstream bone in his body; he never has. If the masses go to OSX, it won't be willingly...it will be because OSX is the least-bad option available.
Want Linux to become mainstream? The only way it's going to happen is if the FSF dies entirely, and if the most vocal minority of Linux's conventional userbase also disappear. That way, there could be a scenario where the use of such things as binary hardware drivers would be seen as entirely acceptable...which is what the neurotypical population want.
I understand that there are a lot of people associated with Linux who think that doing their idea of the right thing is more important than being popular. That's fine; just please don't also keep talking about how you want Linux to achieve world domination. What many of you consider to be the right thing (in terms of binary hardware drivers/codecs) is counter to what the vast majority of computer users want.
I'm also sick to death of hearing some Linux users making noises which imply that new users are somehow "on your turf," and therefore have to accept as law everything you might feel like telling them. Although I of course know where this idea originally came from, it's total BS. No new user of Linux is obligated in any way to become a member of the cult, to refer to the system as "GNU/Linux," or to really conform to your expectations in any way whatsoever. If they're distributing software, then they're legally obligated to comply with the GPL...but as far as coercing other people to adopt your view of reality is concerned, that's as far as it goes.
That however is really the point. Most of the Linux users I've seen who seem to want Linux to become mainstream don't really want Linux *as an operating system* to become mainstream at all. What they really want is for the majority to start imitating the way they think, in terms of the reverence of Stallman and his ideology, and their position on the use of binary firmware and codecs.
The desire for the cultic ideology to become mainstream however is what is preventing the operating system itself from becoming mainstream; and it's the operating system itself that is genuinely valuable. The cult and the dogma aren't.
Sorry, but Cuba isn't anywhere near a "totalitarian country". Lessee, the pre-revolution Romania *was*. On the other hand, Cuba has, I believe, a 95% literacy rate (the US is *way* down from there); has a real national healtchcare system, and exports doctors, as opposed to the US, with between 15% and 20% with *no* healthcare, etc, etc.
These sound like exactly the sorts of claims that countries which are totalitarian would make.
Although I'm still also thinking how marvelously apropos it was for Stallman to visit Cuba. I really do wish we could have had a photo of him and Fidel with an arm around each other's shoulder. That truly would have been the icing on the cake; especially with a nice big red hammer and sickle added above them in the photo afterwards.
Saying that having 70-75% of the global population disappear would make the remaining population all share the same idea of morals is ludicrous.
You know, it's odd...but I don't recall having said that. What I said was that I believed that a reduction in the population to that degree would lessen the intensity of problems caused by overpopulation to a corresponding degree. I didn't say anything about whether or not the people left would all think the same way.
I *have* observed in the past however that people do tend to behave in a manner that is more directly conducive to their wellbeing when there are less of them around. Aside from anything else, it's a simple issue of scale. Less people, less crime, less pollution, less of all the bad stuff that by default goes with having groups of people around.
I've never regarded CDs to be as durable as either analog tape or vinyl. From the point of view of permanence, I've always regarded the format as rubbish. If you look after both, on average a CD will last only half as long as a vinyl record.
Society has shown indications of advanced decline in a lot of ways over the last 20-30 years, but one of the main ways in which it has is that today, very little is designed or built with permanence in mind, or with genuine care invested in its' construction. In the past, things were made to last, and they were made by people who cared about their construction.
The main problem is quite simply overpopulation. I've often wished I could wake up one morning and discover that around 70%-75% of the global population had simply disappeared during the night. The sociological improvement that would be experienced by the 25% that were left would be astronomical. Every human problem that you can think of would be either completely solved or radically reduced in severity by that one incident. People would start actually giving a damn about things again. The individual would be considered worth something, rather than merely a drop in a collectivist bucket as is the case now. We would no longer have to contend with corporations staffed by demoniacs. The burden on the environment would be incalculably eased, and at least until the population rose again, sociopathic amorality and pathological lying would cease to be the basis of society.
From what I've seen, AI work doesn't seem to be something that most people enjoy doing. During the time I spent browsing (I won't say I ever really became part of it) the UT mapping scene, every other part of the mapping cycle was a labour of love, but the one part that met with groans and comparisons with dental appointments was doing the botpathing. Ironically, that was my favourite element.
I think one of the reasons why good AI is hard is because people assume that it's simply going to be mindless drudgery, whereas on the contrary, it's an area where you really need to engage in creative thinking...to think outside the box and figure out ways of making it behave unexpectedly. This is actually one reason why I never understood why otherwise artistic mappers hated botpathing so much, because to me, given that there were so many maps out there with crappy pathing, if I could make a map that had awesome pathing which gave the AI unpredictable behaviour, that could be as much an artistic/individualistic expression as any other single part of the map...it could help the map to even more stand out from the crowd. It's also one of the primary areas where even more than the BSP related stuff, (with 3D engines) art and technology can truly come together.
If you want maximum exposure/use, the BSD license. GPL zealots will most likely fork and relicense it almost immediately if they wish to use it themselves, however.
If the acceptance of at least certain tragically vocal elements of the existing FOSS userbase is a priority to you, the GPL is your only real choice. The cult...sorry, community can have a tendency to refuse to use/develop anything that isn't GPL licensed on reflex, even if it is licensed under the BSD/MIT license.
It is possible to make money from software with the GPL, however be aware that you risk the sort of incident that befell Red Hat recently with Oracle. Oracle took Red Hat's codebase, and began offering support services to people itself, and seeing as support is the only thing Red Hat actually make money from, Oracle effectively took the meat out of their sandwich.
If you want to make money, I'd probably use a BSD/proprietary dual licensing approach; you have a baseline or "reference" version of the code which you keep under the BSD license, which people are free to take and do what they want with, but you retain the right to release a fork yourself which includes such proprietary elements as you see fit. You can then choose whether to add the proprietary elements back into the open source BSD licensed version later or not. I'd also keep downstream contributions clearly seperate from your own work in the code tree if possible; that way you can talk to the individual contributors about what licensing scenario (other than the GPL, the viral nature of which is specifically intended to assimilate an entire codebase if it is used at all) they want for their work. This way you can also avoid people screeching that you're "stealing their code" and issuing threats in the manner that we've seen Bruce Perens doing over the Microsoft/Novell deal.
Realise that if you do use the GPL, you are actually relinquishing control of your work far more effectively than if you were to use the BSD/MIT licenses, and that this is what Stallman originally intended. Although the openly viral element is distasteful enough in itself, its' most dangerous elements are actually the entirely subjective and unwritten ones; the insistence that you not only follow the letter of the license as it is currently written, but also that you accept Stallman and the FSF as (at least ideological, and very possibly legal) authority figures, which also means unconditional acceptance of any future version of the license, irrespective of what terms such future versions might contain. The welfare of the collective in abstract terms is the priority; the welfare of the individual is not considered.
On reflection, if you have the credentials, I would actually recommend seeking employment with a pre-existing software company, rather than attempting to join the FOSS community as an independent developer. Although it originally started out as something positive, I have come to believe that at least as far as Linux is concerned, the FOSS community now represents decentralised collectivism's dark side, or an illustration of what can happen when the anarchist dream is aimed for, but not genuinely reached.
It may be perhaps possible that at some point in the future, humanity could mature to the point where the concept of individual sovereignty could become a concrete reality. However, as members of the Linux community continue to prove on a daily basis, we're not there yet.
...I'm a bit addicted to LOTRO (their acronym, not mine). I've never played WoW or EverQuest, so I can't compare it to them. But I like the sense of freedom on a known (Middle Earth) map.
I haven't seen LOTRO, but I have been playing WoW for the last year. There are two main reasons why I could see someone might play LOTRO in preference to WoW:-
1) The backstory. WoW's lore is the proverbial mulligan stew; a whole heap of disparate elements thrown together. This is reflected in the number of retcons Blizzard have had to perform in order to get it to fit together. Although it's difficult to put my finger on exactly what I mean here, WoW is not a virtual world in the same sense Ultima Online was. It's a lot closer to being an online form of Disneyland with the lore bolted on. You can especially see that by looking at how clearly petitioned off from each other each geographical zone in the game is. Blizz would probably argue that they needed to do that in order to make the game mainstream, and I'd agree with them. However, in gaining mainstream appeal, it also loses the sense of being as organic as UO was.
2) The elves. If I was going to write this anywhere else, people would call me a freak for caring, but seeing as this is Slashdot and I'm among other such freaks, I can do so with impunity.;-) I've read a number of other depictions of elves besides Tolkien, (Dragonlance, AD&D, Shadowrun, and Feist also mentions them at times in passing) and I've always felt that Tolkien was the only author who ever truly grokked the elves. WoW is no exception, although I think in WoW's case this is a problem of taking about the single most non-mainstream element of fantasy in existence and trying to render it mainstream. Peter Jackson more or less managed to pull it off, but I haven't seen anyone else who has.
I realise with the above two points that I'm talking about some very slippery, subjective intangibles; but to me that's also the point. Tolkien's material (to me anywayz) had a very distinctive vibe, and despite some valiant efforts at times I haven't seen anyone who's been able to entirely reproduce that.
I play WoW purely for action. It's a game (think an expanded/more complex version of Diablo 2, for the most part) first and foremost, and any consideration of it as either a virtual or fictional environment comes a fairly distant second. I was actually starting to feel somewhat differently just before the release of the expansion, but with the expansion I feel that Blizzard have wanted to put the "game" element firmly back as the main focus, and so I've done the same.
Some have accused Blizzard of outright McDonaldisation with WoW. I feel that to a degree that is unfair, in that even though they've certainly done that to an extent, it's not so blatant that it prevent genuine enjoyment of the game.
Make sure people can pronounce your damn product name. How the hell do you say Umnbutooo?!? Is that an African word? What does it mean?!?!
i haven't seen anyone having trouble pronouncing it in the real world. it's you-boon-too.
There's a video somewhere where they interview Nelson Mandela and ask him what Ubuntu means. In that, he pronounced it as U-(the same sound as the word food)-bun-(short, as in book)-tu(long again, as in food).
Seeing as I'm Australian, I pronounce the U at the beginning of the word with a y sound at the start. Mandela however didn't do that, and I'm expecting Americans won't either.
See, this is the main reason why OSX and Windows have the market share that they do, while Linux is still somewhere around 4%. It's because they don't have Stallman's regressive troll army voicing comments like this the entire time. The single most frustrating thing of all is that no matter what the rest of us say or do, you just won't die.
"And in the master's chambers, They gathered for the feast. They stab it with their steely knives, But they just can't kill the beast."
Linux From Scratch. This is a project which maintains and outlines the knowledge of how to manually compile a Linux system from source code. In other words, it's about as fundamental as you can get.
The project is also run by some really awesome people...probably the most decent that I've come across in the Linux community.
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That's not a good idea on your part because it's exactly the example people use to point out why Microsoft likes to let other people come up with good stuff under the BSD license and then selfishly take it with no thank-yous or giving in return.
The predatory stuff they've done is bad, yes...but unlike the GPL, the BSD license doesn't enforce reciprocity, so they haven't done anything in violation of the license by not getting involved in the development of that.
I am deeply tired of the attitude found primarily among advocates of the GPL which constantly focuses on what other people are doing, or should be doing, rather than focusing on their own back yard. It is smug, arrogant, and dictatorial.
The other thing about it which is even more sickening in most cases is the fact that the only reason why you think like that is because you've been brainwashed to do so by the FSF, not because you're actually engaging your own mind at all.
You're a good, faithful little drone.
It's times like these when I wish I had mod points, to sink this kind of rubbish into oblivion where it belongs.
Be gone, troll.
Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. I never hear anything but condemnation and the most vitriolic forms of abuse around here for anyone who would *dare* to even dream of the idea of trying to make money from software development, (including an earlier post on this very article) and yet one of the first questions I see here is whether with MySQL's IPO, the FSF are getting a cut of the cheese.
Let me get this straight. It is by no means, in any way, EVER acceptable in your minds if anyone makes money from developing software, but just in case anybody does, they must immediately hand it over to Stallman?!?
The rank hypocrisy exhibited by you people at times literally leaves me gasping. It is beyond description.
Should MySQL indeed care for such customers, given that the current mindshare and marketshate has come from the Open Source loving community?
;)
Let me guess...You'd probably be offended if in response to this, somebody accused you of Communist inclinations, wouldn't you?
Maybe it's not everyone's beloved P2P being "illegal" or whatever.
;)
Maybe it's the fact that torrents take a fucking ton of bandwidth?
True, people make it sound as though p2p is the only viable file transfer protocol in existence. Learn to use the net, newbs.
Seriously though, if you want to do something really crazy, put up an ircd with an eggdrop bot. Technically, DCC is beyond horrible, but for moving files on a LAN it'd do just fine. You can also set the eggdrop up to listen for connections via telnet, and talk to people via its' party line, which could end up eliminating the need for the initial irc server more or less altogether. It's probably the closest you'll get to something entirely untraceable, since DCC can be tied to any port as well.
This is true. If they're going to presumably close everything north of 1024, they will want to make sure to disallow local inbound connections to port 21 as well. Otherwise, even if people need to download stuff off-campus, they'll be able to host it for others in the dorms.
And yes, closing everything north of 1024 *is* downright fascist, but that's what they'll need to do if they want to go anywhere close to enforcably banning p2p.
If you want your concerns to be taken seriously, stop asking the rest of us to play fools. EVERYONE knows what most students most use P2P for: transferring materials in violation of copyright.
Wow...Someone on Slashdot who is opposed to piracy. I'm honestly at a loss for words, here...I didn't know that people who thought like this actually existed outside of the RIAA. What's your motivation? Are you in the music industry yourself, or are you merely ovine and catastrophically naive?
But until then, if you feel that you need unrestricted P2P, you'll have to take it to the taxpayers of your state who are subsidizing your activity. I'm sure they'll be happy to cough up a few more dollars so that you can download porn faster.
I saw another poster here who pays $20 a month for Internet access to his dorm. If other people at his university are doing that, it wouldn't be the taxpayers who are paying for it at all, would it?
...with achieving adoption of this proposal. Namely, that it's an intelligent idea which would likely be extremely effective at solving network problems and increasing the usability and efficiency of the Internet overall.
;) People hate anything which actually solves problems. After all, if they didn't have the perpetual activity of merely *pretending* to solve problems, (while in fact merely holding them at bay) what on Earth would they do with their time? What would they get paid for?
Nobody is going to tolerate that, you realise.
In order for anarchism or communism to work, all people, without exception, must be altruistic. Humans are not altruistic by nature. Neither will work because someone who is not altruistic will corrupt the system.
Did I ever once say, anywhere, that I believed it worked? If anything I would have thought the resounding theme of what I was saying here was that given the current state of human development, it'd have no chance.
The fact that as you say, for the most part it can't work, is the entire reason why the Linux community has as many problems as it does.
go sit down some where and think about what happens when a small group of malicious individuals encounter the altruistic anarchist society you think is so wonderful.
I'm agreeing with you. I apologise for not making that more clear.
I watched V for Vendetta again last night, and was reading some related material online afterwards. It introduced me to a couple of ideas which although I'd more or less known about instinctively, I possibly hadn't considered from quite that perspective. This is going to appear to be offtopic at first, but bear with me and you'll see the point as it relates to the issue of choice with Linux.
From what I've read, the central element of anarchic thought is apparently the idea of a scenario where people are genuinely self-responsible; where people are able to make decisions and choices about everything they do, and where it can be at least hoped that the need for an external authority is mitigated by said people having an internalised system of morality. In other words, the idea being while they are able to choose to do whatever they like, that people will eventually figure out what they are meant to do on their own.
However we keep seeing (no doubt unfortunately in the minds of some of us) that the above scenario, not only where Linux is concerned but in every other area of their lives, is overwhelmingly not what the vast majority of people truly want. I've found myself reading quotes from both Freud and George Bernard Shaw over the last 24 hours that stated that contrary to the commonly held belief, the majority genuinely do not want freedom, precisely because a prerequisite of freedom is self-responsibility.
This of course is where not only Microsoft in the case of software, but repressive states of all kinds in general life come into the picture. As V said, they offer order, certainty, stability, an absence of chaos, and most importantly, an absence from the need for a person to think for themselves, and all they ask in return is silent, obedient consent. They give people a scenario where decisions are made for them, where no thought whatsoever is necessary, nor responsibility taken for wrong decisions. As the old saying goes, "Nobody ever got fired for buying from IBM."
This is what people overwhelmingly want; what they are trained from the earliest age to want. National governments use the education system these days in order to start negative reinforcement against the exercise of free will within individuals as early as possible, and if such is instilled deeply enough and early enough, the process produces individuals who refrain from exercising choice as much as possible for the rest of their lives thereafter.
If you're wondering why people continue to want Windows over Linux, and continue to complain about the degree of choice inherent in Linux, you might perhaps also want to ask why people are also willing to allow the likes of George W. Bush and Tony Blair to remain in political office. The answer to both questions is the same, for they are in truth both different elements of the same issue; an insistence on avoiding self-responsibility and reasoned, conscious thought within the majority of the population.
How can Linux advocates overcome such, I hear you ask? Instilling independence in those who do not have it already is by necessity an incredibly slow and transitional process. In the case of someone complaining about being overwhelmed by choice, I'd probably start by asking them what it is that they as individuals want to do with a computer, and then direct their attention to a single distribution (or possibly even Windows itself, if appropriate) which will meet their needs. I've tended to notice that people aren't normally wanting a reduction of choice for people other than themselves, when they are asked, but merely want a scenario where they do not need to engage in it. Hence, if they find something which will meet their own requirements, they will very often cease to complain.
Some individuals are inherently lacking initiative and crave situations where they are taken care of by external parties. Sadly, there isn't much any of us can do in the case of such individuals, other than hand them a copy of Ubuntu or Vista, and a smile. Although I fall into the trap myself on here fairly regularly, I also try and tell myself that such people are not worth getting upset over, since they are a reality that we cannot change anyway.
As people have said, time and time and time again, 'observation' is NOT the human action of looking and comprehension.
They need to get a new word for it, then...cos interaction and observation are two entirely different concepts. Observation can be entirely passive, at least from the point of view of the person being observed.
Windows 95 was damn near completely unusable before 95B; Winsock 2 and a raft of stability improvements made all the difference.
You need to remember that Gates' philosophy has always been, "Ship it now, fix it later." Microsoft throw something broken and unfinished out the door in order to initially plant a flag in the market, and then they worry about actual usability in service packs later. That's always been their MO.
Sure, Aero is completely redundant (like I said it would be) and won't be touched by anyone who cares about hardware efficiency. I'm guessing it will also continue to piss gamers off as well, since one thing Windows has never been good at is RAM flushing, and if Aero fills up your vram with textures, chances are it won't be entirely empty for when you then try and load a game, meaning performance problems.
Once they bring out a few service packs though, Vista will predictably become something which the average person will probably find acceptable. If Microsoft alienate gamers with it however, that will be another nail in the company's coffin.
Why? Why on earth? What do all these versions do and why do I need to do research into that before I can buy?
Yeah.
"Please God, don't make me use my brain! I'll do anything...anything but that!"
This is the same old crap about "Science can't prove that the Sun will rise tomorrow, thus the Universe is unknowable."
Yep, and the other thing is that at least some scientists don't really believe that, either...if they did, parapsychology would be a lot more widely accepted than it is. After all, if you're not sure that anything exists, why can't ghosts?
This is demonstrable BS. It's physicists talking about microscopic abstractions that have zero practicable relevance in the real world.
we must also give up (some of) the idea that the world exists when we are not looking.
Just 20 minutes or so ago, I was asleep and was woken by my brother knocking at my front door. He isn't someone I get on well with, and he normally doesn't turn up unless he wants something, so I hadn't thought about him or observed him since the last time he turned up.
If reality didn't exist when I wasn't observing it though, since I wasn't directly observing him, he would not have existed in order to be able to make the decision to come over here. It would also mean that everyone we know only exists on an intermittent basis. If my girlfriend is in bed asleep, and I'm in my room on my computer, she doesn't exist at that time according to this idea because I'm not observing her.
I get the feeling that physicists need to stop coming up with ideas which they think are provable on a microscopic level, only for other people to find that we can disprove them on a macroscopic level quite easily.
See, based on assumptions. For all you know, '07 will go down in history as the great MS exodus.
Sorry to rain on your parade, but I seriously doubt it. The only Windows alternative that I know of that is currently remotely viable for neurotypical adoption is OSX. Yes, I have Ubuntu on my hard drive, and I love it too, but Mark Shuttleworth's optimism aside, Joe Six-Pack and his grandmother aren't going to. Ubuntu still doesn't have non-CLI control of the hardware to rival the XP control panel; AFAIK, such a thing doesn't exist for Linux at all. Ubuntu also doesn't have hardware support that is as genuinely bullet-proof as XP's; like pretty much all of Linux's other problems, the blame for that one can also be laid at the feet of the FSF and their fellow regressives within the Debian project.
I can't see OSX becoming the next big thing, either. Despite some radical changes in the last ten years, Steve Jobs doesn't have a mainstream bone in his body; he never has. If the masses go to OSX, it won't be willingly...it will be because OSX is the least-bad option available.
Want Linux to become mainstream? The only way it's going to happen is if the FSF dies entirely, and if the most vocal minority of Linux's conventional userbase also disappear. That way, there could be a scenario where the use of such things as binary hardware drivers would be seen as entirely acceptable...which is what the neurotypical population want.
I understand that there are a lot of people associated with Linux who think that doing their idea of the right thing is more important than being popular. That's fine; just please don't also keep talking about how you want Linux to achieve world domination. What many of you consider to be the right thing (in terms of binary hardware drivers/codecs) is counter to what the vast majority of computer users want.
I'm also sick to death of hearing some Linux users making noises which imply that new users are somehow "on your turf," and therefore have to accept as law everything you might feel like telling them. Although I of course know where this idea originally came from, it's total BS. No new user of Linux is obligated in any way to become a member of the cult, to refer to the system as "GNU/Linux," or to really conform to your expectations in any way whatsoever. If they're distributing software, then they're legally obligated to comply with the GPL...but as far as coercing other people to adopt your view of reality is concerned, that's as far as it goes.
That however is really the point. Most of the Linux users I've seen who seem to want Linux to become mainstream don't really want Linux *as an operating system* to become mainstream at all. What they really want is for the majority to start imitating the way they think, in terms of the reverence of Stallman and his ideology, and their position on the use of binary firmware and codecs.
The desire for the cultic ideology to become mainstream however is what is preventing the operating system itself from becoming mainstream; and it's the operating system itself that is genuinely valuable. The cult and the dogma aren't.
Sorry, but Cuba isn't anywhere near a "totalitarian country". Lessee, the pre-revolution Romania *was*. On the other hand, Cuba has, I believe, a 95% literacy rate (the US is *way* down from there); has a real national healtchcare system, and exports doctors, as opposed to the US, with between 15% and 20% with *no* healthcare, etc, etc.
These sound like exactly the sorts of claims that countries which are totalitarian would make.
Although I'm still also thinking how marvelously apropos it was for Stallman to visit Cuba. I really do wish we could have had a photo of him and Fidel with an arm around each other's shoulder. That truly would have been the icing on the cake; especially with a nice big red hammer and sickle added above them in the photo afterwards.
Saying that having 70-75% of the global population disappear would make the remaining population all share the same idea of morals is ludicrous.
You know, it's odd...but I don't recall having said that. What I said was that I believed that a reduction in the population to that degree would lessen the intensity of problems caused by overpopulation to a corresponding degree. I didn't say anything about whether or not the people left would all think the same way.
I *have* observed in the past however that people do tend to behave in a manner that is more directly conducive to their wellbeing when there are less of them around. Aside from anything else, it's a simple issue of scale. Less people, less crime, less pollution, less of all the bad stuff that by default goes with having groups of people around.
I've never regarded CDs to be as durable as either analog tape or vinyl. From the point of view of permanence, I've always regarded the format as rubbish. If you look after both, on average a CD will last only half as long as a vinyl record.
Society has shown indications of advanced decline in a lot of ways over the last 20-30 years, but one of the main ways in which it has is that today, very little is designed or built with permanence in mind, or with genuine care invested in its' construction. In the past, things were made to last, and they were made by people who cared about their construction.
The main problem is quite simply overpopulation. I've often wished I could wake up one morning and discover that around 70%-75% of the global population had simply disappeared during the night. The sociological improvement that would be experienced by the 25% that were left would be astronomical. Every human problem that you can think of would be either completely solved or radically reduced in severity by that one incident. People would start actually giving a damn about things again. The individual would be considered worth something, rather than merely a drop in a collectivist bucket as is the case now. We would no longer have to contend with corporations staffed by demoniacs. The burden on the environment would be incalculably eased, and at least until the population rose again, sociopathic amorality and pathological lying would cease to be the basis of society.
From what I've seen, AI work doesn't seem to be something that most people enjoy doing. During the time I spent browsing (I won't say I ever really became part of it) the UT mapping scene, every other part of the mapping cycle was a labour of love, but the one part that met with groans and comparisons with dental appointments was doing the botpathing. Ironically, that was my favourite element.
I think one of the reasons why good AI is hard is because people assume that it's simply going to be mindless drudgery, whereas on the contrary, it's an area where you really need to engage in creative thinking...to think outside the box and figure out ways of making it behave unexpectedly. This is actually one reason why I never understood why otherwise artistic mappers hated botpathing so much, because to me, given that there were so many maps out there with crappy pathing, if I could make a map that had awesome pathing which gave the AI unpredictable behaviour, that could be as much an artistic/individualistic expression as any other single part of the map...it could help the map to even more stand out from the crowd. It's also one of the primary areas where even more than the BSP related stuff, (with 3D engines) art and technology can truly come together.
If you want maximum exposure/use, the BSD license. GPL zealots will most likely fork and relicense it almost immediately if they wish to use it themselves, however.
If the acceptance of at least certain tragically vocal elements of the existing FOSS userbase is a priority to you, the GPL is your only real choice. The cult...sorry, community can have a tendency to refuse to use/develop anything that isn't GPL licensed on reflex, even if it is licensed under the BSD/MIT license.
It is possible to make money from software with the GPL, however be aware that you risk the sort of incident that befell Red Hat recently with Oracle. Oracle took Red Hat's codebase, and began offering support services to people itself, and seeing as support is the only thing Red Hat actually make money from, Oracle effectively took the meat out of their sandwich.
If you want to make money, I'd probably use a BSD/proprietary dual licensing approach; you have a baseline or "reference" version of the code which you keep under the BSD license, which people are free to take and do what they want with, but you retain the right to release a fork yourself which includes such proprietary elements as you see fit. You can then choose whether to add the proprietary elements back into the open source BSD licensed version later or not. I'd also keep downstream contributions clearly seperate from your own work in the code tree if possible; that way you can talk to the individual contributors about what licensing scenario (other than the GPL, the viral nature of which is specifically intended to assimilate an entire codebase if it is used at all) they want for their work. This way you can also avoid people screeching that you're "stealing their code" and issuing threats in the manner that we've seen Bruce Perens doing over the Microsoft/Novell deal.
Realise that if you do use the GPL, you are actually relinquishing control of your work far more effectively than if you were to use the BSD/MIT licenses, and that this is what Stallman originally intended. Although the openly viral element is distasteful enough in itself, its' most dangerous elements are actually the entirely subjective and unwritten ones; the insistence that you not only follow the letter of the license as it is currently written, but also that you accept Stallman and the FSF as (at least ideological, and very possibly legal) authority figures, which also means unconditional acceptance of any future version of the license, irrespective of what terms such future versions might contain. The welfare of the collective in abstract terms is the priority; the welfare of the individual is not considered.
On reflection, if you have the credentials, I would actually recommend seeking employment with a pre-existing software company, rather than attempting to join the FOSS community as an independent developer. Although it originally started out as something positive, I have come to believe that at least as far as Linux is concerned, the FOSS community now represents decentralised collectivism's dark side, or an illustration of what can happen when the anarchist dream is aimed for, but not genuinely reached.
It may be perhaps possible that at some point in the future, humanity could mature to the point where the concept of individual sovereignty could become a concrete reality. However, as members of the Linux community continue to prove on a daily basis, we're not there yet.
...I'm a bit addicted to LOTRO (their acronym, not mine). I've never played WoW or EverQuest, so I can't compare it to them. But I like the sense of freedom on a known (Middle Earth) map.
;-)
I haven't seen LOTRO, but I have been playing WoW for the last year. There are two main reasons why I could see someone might play LOTRO in preference to WoW:-
1) The backstory. WoW's lore is the proverbial mulligan stew; a whole heap of disparate elements thrown together. This is reflected in the number of retcons Blizzard have had to perform in order to get it to fit together. Although it's difficult to put my finger on exactly what I mean here, WoW is not a virtual world in the same sense Ultima Online was. It's a lot closer to being an online form of Disneyland with the lore bolted on. You can especially see that by looking at how clearly petitioned off from each other each geographical zone in the game is. Blizz would probably argue that they needed to do that in order to make the game mainstream, and I'd agree with them. However, in gaining mainstream appeal, it also loses the sense of being as organic as UO was.
2) The elves. If I was going to write this anywhere else, people would call me a freak for caring, but seeing as this is Slashdot and I'm among other such freaks, I can do so with impunity.
I've read a number of other depictions of elves besides Tolkien, (Dragonlance, AD&D, Shadowrun, and Feist also mentions them at times in passing) and I've always felt that Tolkien was the only author who ever truly grokked the elves. WoW is no exception, although I think in WoW's case this is a problem of taking about the single most non-mainstream element of fantasy in existence and trying to render it mainstream. Peter Jackson more or less managed to pull it off, but I haven't seen anyone else who has.
I realise with the above two points that I'm talking about some very slippery, subjective intangibles; but to me that's also the point. Tolkien's material (to me anywayz) had a very distinctive vibe, and despite some valiant efforts at times I haven't seen anyone who's been able to entirely reproduce that.
I play WoW purely for action. It's a game (think an expanded/more complex version of Diablo 2, for the most part) first and foremost, and any consideration of it as either a virtual or fictional environment comes a fairly distant second. I was actually starting to feel somewhat differently just before the release of the expansion, but with the expansion I feel that Blizzard have wanted to put the "game" element firmly back as the main focus, and so I've done the same.
Some have accused Blizzard of outright McDonaldisation with WoW. I feel that to a degree that is unfair, in that even though they've certainly done that to an extent, it's not so blatant that it prevent genuine enjoyment of the game.
Make sure people can pronounce your damn product name. How the hell do you say Umnbutooo?!? Is that an African word? What does it mean?!?!
i haven't seen anyone having trouble pronouncing it in the real world. it's you-boon-too.
There's a video somewhere where they interview Nelson Mandela and ask him what Ubuntu means. In that, he pronounced it as U-(the same sound as the word food)-bun-(short, as in book)-tu(long again, as in food).
Seeing as I'm Australian, I pronounce the U at the beginning of the word with a y sound at the start. Mandela however didn't do that, and I'm expecting Americans won't either.
Binary drivers that are completely unsupportable.
See, this is the main reason why OSX and Windows have the market share that they do, while Linux is still somewhere around 4%. It's because they don't have Stallman's regressive troll army voicing comments like this the entire time. The single most frustrating thing of all is that no matter what the rest of us say or do, you just won't die.
"And in the master's chambers,
They gathered for the feast.
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast."
Linux From Scratch. This is a project which maintains and outlines the knowledge of how to manually compile a Linux system from source code. In other words, it's about as fundamental as you can get.
The project is also run by some really awesome people...probably the most decent that I've come across in the Linux community.